And here I am going through the city and cannot say a word in shock. I cannot recognize the city. Only ten days ago it was an Iraqi town with its regular for centuries Arabic life. Boling bazaars, noisy streets. And here I am going through the empty dead city, between the ugly “pyramids” of destroyed buildings, broken streets, whole quarters wiped from the face of earth. The city is killed and dismembered by some monstrous maniac. Beelzebub – the lord of the flies. Under the flag of stars and stripes, where the stars look so alike to thick flesh flies.

–Hakim Mirzoev (newspaper “Zavtra”)

http://www.iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=31878

When I speak of enormous pressure to NOT talk about white folks as white folks, I mean among other things that feedback is going to be conflicted right away. And who wants to start these kinds of arguments?

A fellow Southerner writes that “it’s true that many Whites, especially down here, were manipulated and delusional on Election Day.” BUT, the writer continues: “you have no problem freely envoking the stupid, White southernor stereotype to fill the glaring holes in your utterly vacuous article.” He asks, would I sling so freely my adjectives if it were some other group in question?

A Boston correspondent gives reasons why he thinks that white voters are not the only group to favor stupid candidates. And then he adds: “Continue to look down your nose at others and you will continue to lose elections. Snobbery is bad box office. It is based upon a misapprehension of self worth in addition to a faulty evaluation of others.” He thinks Kerry and Clinton were stupid candidates, too.

“The last time I was in Tx.,” writes another, “the black central area in Dallas didn’t have paved streets (1974). The whites I talked to with blacks present…the whites treated thr blacks in such a cruel verbal way I was dumbstruck, it was chilling.” The writer wants to know, am I making things any better? Or am I just exploiting these issues for myself?

An escaped white Southerner, on the other hand, writes to say that she is ashamed of being Southern and white. She finds it “a breath of fresh air” to have the issue outed, and imagines a book about the problem bearing a title, “Dumb Like Me.”

A fellow Texan reminds me that Southerners do not all drive pick up trucks nor cling to Confederate imagery. He would have liked to see a Dean candidacy:

Much to my dismay, I saw Dean get attacked for suggesting the Democratic Party make an attempt to reach white voters in the South. Dean himself offered up the image of the white male driving the pickup truck with the Confederate sticker in the back, theeby inviting a certain amount of ire, but I’m sure they understood what Dean was suggesting and instead used his statements as an opportunity to slam him (one of these opportunists was Kerry). As I watched the other potential Demoratic nominees slam Howard Dean the image I walked away with was:

All white male voters living in the South are Confederate flag-waving narrow- minded imbeciles who do not deserve any sort of effort on our part. Let’s just ignore them.

It makes me wonder how often these people, who want to become president, have merely visited states in the South. You see plenty of Republican candidates but not too many Democrats. Despite all this, I did manage to vote for Kerry but only because Nader was not on the ballot and since Bush seems to be opposed to everything I like and hold dear; I just could not stand the thought of voting for our current president.

So election night rolls around and I watch the tallies. Knowing Texas was a safe state for Bush he would not carry my county, Denton, but he did and by wide margins. I find myself asking, “If Dean had his way and made an effort to reach white voters in the South, how wide would the margin of victory had been for Bush?’

Pity, we now have four more years of our current president. I wonder how many senators from the Northeast realize that segregation was outlawed in the South decades ago and many who reside in the South either were not born during that era or they are not from here and have no concept of the segregationist philosophy. Oh yeah, how many people of color does John Kerry and other white voters of Massachusetts live near in relation to white voters of the South? Perhaps many white males in the South, who happen to drive pickup trucks, are far more tolerant and appreciative of diversity than given credit. Perhaps they would be receptive to an alternative viewpoint if given a chance to hear one.

I thought your article was spot-on.

“Points on target,” agrees another writer. “The solution is for a real third party, a doing away with the Electoral College, and a push for run-off electioneering. Many nations use that model to have their diverse voices heard. But I won’t hold my breath on that one–even for a nanosecond.”

And “Right on target!” writes one reader. “One of my personal mantras, especially after reading Derek Bell’s At the Bottom of the Well (have I got that right? quoting from memory) is ‘never ever ever underestimate the power of racism in the US’. Yours is one of few articles I’ve read since black Tuesday to openly address the issue. I’ve calculated that if you subtract out the 11 states of the old Confederacy – even leaving in such wacko states as Utah and Idaho – Kerry would have won the election 51% to 49%, and both Senate and House would have Democratic majorities.”

Finally, one brief note asks if I’ve seen the CounterPunch Map of the Day for Nov. 24? Indeed, I have seen the map, and you’ll find it linked below.

I reply that, I was happy to see the CounterPunch map, especially since I had recently posted a few articles about “the moral equivalent of Civil War.” The day that CounterPunch posted the map, I had just finished writing an article in which I noted that the Bush movement looked to me like a cultural heir to Southern secessionism (the article is also posted below). The “White Vote” article was my attempt to “punch it up a notch” in the prose department, to make a thousand words worthy of that map.

The words stupid or white are provocative enough when used alone. Putting the two together is going to be volatile business. It scares me a little to write these words in the same sentence, but there are reasons for valuing courage. America has been stupid on questions of slavery, segregation, and Indian affairs. These cultural legacies say something about the specific personality of the American electorate as white-powered. And I think the Bush movement appropriates this legacy in palpable ways. If my “White Vote” article were the last word on these questions, it would be a shame.

So I’m thinking back to where I agree with my fellow Southerner as quoted above: “it’s true that many Whites, especially down here, were manipulated and delusional on Election Day.” And I’m arguing that if this is true, it’s only going to get worse if progressives don’t make it our business to intervene. If I were buying into the stupid white stereotype (as my correspondent alleges) why would I insist that these conditions be changed? We know that it is possible for a majority of white voters in Massachusetts to favor Kerry. My work is dedicated to the proposition that the white vote can be transformed if there is enough courage, resolve, and resource applied–yes, even in the white South.

If I’m looking down my nose, it’s at national elites who think they can be progressive and not make the white South their business, too. Why have white elites in New York, Illinois, and California, not delivered their own blocs? I think it’s because they are afraid to talk about white folks as white folks in ways that would effectively confront the problems that need to be solved. No election cycle should ever begin with calls to write off white, Southern voters.

PS: As for the allegation that I make a living in this line of work, I’ll confess that I have tried to. My correspondent will be happy to learn that it remains an elusive ambition for me.

NOTES:

Derek Bell. Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism

Truth you Can’t Hide From

By Greg Moses

ILCA Online / CounterPunch

I once asked a student what percent of the American population did he think was Black. “At least sixty percent!” He said eagerly.

“Are there any other guesses?” I asked the class. How was I going to talk this young man down?

In fact, 77 percent of voters in the Bush-Kerry-Nader election were white. It is the most obvious reason why the election turned out the way it did.

For white voters and their pundits, however, the stupidity of the election would be experienced as an expectation of politics as usual. “Of course, it’s a stupid election,” they would tell you. “Aren’t all elections stupid?” OK. But every great stupidity has its personality. And not enough folks are talking about the personality of the white vote in the wake of this most recent election.

In fact, the stupidity of American elections to date has been heavily imprinted with the specific personality of white America. Imagine, for instance, any other race of a candidate acting as stupidly as George Bush, performing as poorly, and yet–among white voters–being so well liked.

But if you live in white America, George Bush’s stupidity is the very form of mind necessary and sufficient to constitute political power. That’s why white folks in America could serve up a majority for Bush, unlike Black, Latino, and Asian voters–who would not have re-elected him.

And if I’m wrong about this, why else do you think the South was considered untouchable all year long? The solid South is not solid without a big, fat, white vote. So among elites who claim their latitude to bypass the American South, it sounds like a far better idea to work around this problem. Pressures are enormous to find some other thing to talk about. Take responsibility for transforming the white vote and do it in the South, too? Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?

Only Howard Dean was willing to talk about the Confederate Flag waving white voters down in Dixie. Dean is occasionally discredited on that account (for example, see Chait’s column in today’s LA Times [Nov. 26]). Now that we are four years away from the next Presidential election (Lord willing and the creek don’t rise) it is not yet too late in the election cycle to raise the question–what are we going to do about the white vote? No white Democrat without an answer is smart enough to lead.

“But white voters will dominate the electoral process for decades,” reports Aurelio Rojas in a preview of the California vote. There, Kerry wins 47 percent of the white vote compared to Bush’s 51. In New York, Kerry gets 49 to Bush’s 50. Compare the margins of the Kerry losses among white voters in those progressive states to Texas, where Bush got 74 percent–of the white vote. In none of these states (nor in Illinois for that matter) do white voters favor Kerry, but in the blue states a significant bloc of white voters present themselves to the Democratic Party.

A Massachusetts liberal is such a dangerous spectre to raise among white voters (who are not Massachusetts liberals) because white voters in Massachusetts behave differently. They actually gave a majority to Kerry.

Tom Hayden in a recent essay encourages anti-war activists to “become more grounded in the everyday political life of their districts, organizing anti-war coalitions including clergy, labor and inner city representatives to knock loudly on congressional doors.” But I wonder if this outreach to “inner city representatives” doesn’t hide the political problem that anti-war activists actually have, that is, convincing white voters to favor less belligerent politics.

Perhaps Hayden means to say that anti-war activists should get more grounded in their existing political base. The Congressional Black Caucus, for example, does very well on the war issue already. The CBC and the NAACP were two groups who early on expressed “strong opposition to war” (writes the Associated Press in 2002, archived at NathanielTurner.com). So if it were up to “inner city representatives” there would be no need for an anti-war movement in the first place. And if it were up to black voters, Bush would never have been elected.

So, yes, it was a stupid American election, and many of us did stupid things along the way. Let’s not be so stupid again as to quit working on the transformation of the white vote–especially in the South–until we’ve made Massachusetts liberals of them all.

Back to my student. Obviously, he was an urban youth. For him, sixty percent of life was Black life. And God bless him for not imagining things any differently. I can still recall, after hearing several guesses from the class, that I looked back at him and gave him Perlo’s numbers on percent Black in the USA. It was a cruel moment for the same reason that the election was cruel. And white folks who scoff at Massachusetts liberals should think about the eagerness that falls out of a person’s eyes when he realizes there’s no getting around white folks in the USA.

LINKS

NathanielTurner.com

http://www.nathanielturner.com/pollwaragainstiraq.htm

CounterPunch Map of the Day visualizes a cultural geography in which today’s political divide looks a lot like 1860. A moral equivalent of civil war, but this time with the secessionists in Washington….

Fighting for One World of Human Rights and Global Law

By Greg Moses

OpEdNews / IndyMedia – NYC & Austin / ILCA Online / Alternet / Civil Rights Org

By continuing to withdraw his administration from the spirit and letter of human rights and global law, President Bush is seceding from the rest of the world. Through a moral equivalent of Civil War, we must prevent this secession from taking place.

If we agree with the terse thesis of Francis A. Boyle–that the Bush movement constitutes “a comprehensive and malicious assault upon the integrity of the international legal order”–then the muscle of the Bush grip at home is connected through sinews of illegality to the trigger finger in Falluja. The bad news about Bushist secessionism is that principles of law are under attack at home and abroad. The good news is that principles of resistance can be welded together. From every node of resistance, we can forge ladders of international law, the better to scale collectively the walls of fortress Bush.

Bush has appropriated enormous power from the government of the USA as he belittles “focus groups” at home and “international tests” abroad. When millions of Americans hit the streets pleading with Bush not to pursue a literal war on terrorism, Bush called the protesters nothing but “focus groups.” When his campaign opponent said that presidents should respect international law, Bush scoffed at the concept of an international test, saying quizzically, “I’m not exactly sure what you mean…”

In a moral equivalent of Civil War, Bush’s belligerence toward international law is cultural heir to secessionist Governors in the American South who once scoffed at federal authority as stridently as they cherished their own authority over others. (No wonder, then, that Black voters in America today are 88 percent likely to vote against Bushsim. Why Jewish voters also refuse to be drawn into BushWorld speaks to longstanding filiations, I think, between Dixie and Nazi ideologies.) At home and abroad, we can speak with converging voices if we demand reconciliation between the Bush movement and obligations of international law.

At home, Bushist secessionism attacks Constitutional rights and liberties that have won international standing as human rights and liberties. Respecting women’s reproductive rights, or the rights of people to form their own families, plain-speaking Bush refuses to speak up. Regarding rights to due process, open records, and free speech, the warm-faced president works with bone-cold hands.

As for Iraq, argues Professor Boyle, laws of war compel definition of USA soldiers as “belligerent occupants.” So long as these soldiers remain in Iraq, they should take no actions that would contravene Articles 42-56 of the Laws of War as adopted at Hague II.

Yet, Globelaw editor Duncan Currie notes with concern that, “incidents have been reported to have been initiated by the coalition forces involving civilian casualties, including the bombing of a Syrian bus, use of cluster bombs, destruction of electricity supplies leading to disruption of civilian water supplies, attacks on Iraqi television stations, on Al-Jazeera and on the Palestine hotel, on markets at Al-Shaab and Shula, on civilians at Nasiriya and Hilla, on a van at Najaf, shooting at ambulances, and shooting of protesters.”

“In addition,” continues Currie, “there have been reports of a failure to restore water, electricity and other humanitarian needs and encouragement, toleration and failure to avoid looting, including of nuclear installations. State responsibility and individual criminal liability for these and other actions has yet to be determined. Any responsibility or liability assistance after the fact of other States or individuals or the adoption of these acts by other States, or the actions of States as belligerent occupants in Iraq, could be determined by the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice or an ad hoc or arbitral tribunal.”

Currie’s allegations were made in May 2003, within weeks of the invasion. During that same month, Leah Wells of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation questioned USA intentions for Iraq’s water. She worried about water privatization. More recently, Daniel O’Huiginn in behalf of Cambridge Solidarity with Iraq (CASI) has documented allegations that water cutoff has been used as a weapon. Yet, people have rights to water. Here is another area where Bushist secession from international law must be stopped.

Naomi Klein also appeals to international law in her muckraking review of the Bremer administration, published in Harpers. When international law declares that belligerent occupiers are supposed to treat occupied properties as “private”–that means treat the properties as if they belong to the people who live there. But in sinister misappropriations of legal spirit, the Bremer occupation “privatizes” Iraq and puts it out for bid. The legal obligation to “usufruct” is replaced with a license to usurp. As a result, writes Klein, “where economic reforms were introduced at their most shocking and most perfect, they created, instead of a model free market, a failed state no right-thinking investor would touch.” International law (go figure) may offer a better structure for doing business than Bushist secessionism.

Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) brings news that one American innovation in Iraq involves “a system of monopoly rights over seed.” The FPIF discussion paper appeals to international rights of “food sovereignty”–the right of a nation, “to define their own food and agriculture policies, to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade, to decide the way food should be produced, and to determine what should be grown locally and what should be imported.”

Since Americans have been told very little about the privatization of Iraq, the population of the USA is little prepared to empathize with righteous indignations that Iraqis feel as they witness their own country sold out from under their feet. Neither can the average American understand the aggravation that must be provoked among Iraqis watching Bush play to global cameras with his schtick about American gifts of freedom and democracy. For Iraqis, a big schtick, indeed.

At least 56 million Americans, however, are open to suggestion that something about the Bush agenda is headed in the wrong direction. Bushist secessionism declares a Civil War that we have no choice but to stop. Both at home and abroad, a unifying theme of struggle may be found in a call to restore BushWorld to a global sovereignty of rights and laws.

LINKS:

Hague II Laws of War, Article 42 [Avalon]

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/hague02.htm#art42

Duncan Currie on US legal obligations in Iraq [Globelaw]

http://www.globelaw.com/Iraq/Preventive_war_after_iraq.htm

Leah Wells on Iraq Water [CounterPunch]

http://www.counterpunch.org/wells05162003.html

CASI Report on Water Cutoffs in Iraq [pdf]

http://www.casi.org.uk/briefing/041110denialofwater.pdf

Monopolizing Seed in Iraqi Agriculture [FPIF]

http://www.fpif.org/papers/0411grain.html

Great to hear a voice of compassion and honesty. I am a Canadian of Pakistani origin. As you are aware, we the peoples of the third world suffered centuries of humiliation at the hands of the colonialists. I thought that the African Americans could relate to our situation, in view of their own experience with the practitioners of the ‘white man’s burden’ philosophy; it is really incomprehensible to me how someone like Colin Powell and Condi Rice, could join hands with the same people in their effort to dominate the world.

The word ‘stockpile’ has been frequently used with reference to WMD’s. Now, if America were to put all of its WMD’s in a stockpile, it would easily exceed the height of Mt. Everest; and if Israel were to put its WMD’s in a stockpile, they would most definitely dwarf the Pyramids of Egypt. In my quest to explore certain defintions, why I wonder are nations like Iraq, which were only SUSPECTED of having WMD’s referred to as a ROGUE NATION?

Many thanks and God Bless

Shahid

Nicely said, Greg. We have been down the road with this kind of nuttiness before, and some of us who’ve lived in out of the way places like Fairbanks, Las Cruces, Bend, Lodi, Phoenixville, Oneonta, Clewiston, we know the “Amurrikins” are always busting our chops. They just get louder every once in awhile, and need a good ass whumping. So let’s get about the business of making sure they receive that which they are so desperately asking for. I’m tired of listening to the whining. The hard, cold truth is that the reelection of Bush is just another turd in the shit sandwich that a lot of people in this country have been eating for a long time. Let’s roll, as the bastards say. The workers will win.—M. H. Perez, Seattle

This New American Barbarism Will End

By Greg Moses

Counterpunch / Austin IndyMedia / ILCA Online

If, at the break of this century, you feel like an abolitionist, who 200 years ago hissed at bloody murder, then you have but three-score years and one Civil War to go.

If, in 2004, your outrage feels like W.E.B. Du Bois in 1904, censuring American pornographies of lynch, then you have only six decades, two World Wars, exile, and death between you and The Dream.

If, today, you would share the choice fates of abolitionists and anti-lynchers who wrestled America down, then, on or about Juneteenth of the year 2063, you shall carry your story, finally, beyond the killing zone. But, Lord, don’t be foolish about the costs these journeys take.

In the moral history of America, presidents have always fed public appetite for turf, guns, and frontier contracts. In the case of Jefferson, who got re-elected in 1804, land-grabbing and Indian genocide went right along with slavery.

Teddy Roosevelt, by the time he got re-elected in 1904, had already stolen Guantanamo Bay from the Spanish and leased it to the Marines. Meanwhile on the domestic front, reported Mary Church Terrell, “Before 1904 was three months old, thirty-one negroes had been lynched.”

And how have the press helped out, as presidents helped themselves? Let’s see what Terrell says about that: “The facts are often suppressed, intentionally or unintentionally, or distorted by the press.” Because pornographers of violence love a good, bloody fight, lynching news, like war news, could be instigated, and according to Terrell, it was.

So let’s keep a few wits sharpened as we read about gunpoint executions in the City of Mosques or trash bags filled with voting records in Florida. This is not a beast we have never known before. Nor is it a power that we have not tamed.

As the slave whip of 1804 and the lynching rope of 1904 were both finally taken out of popular hands, so will the black bags of 2004 eventually be lifted from the heads of prisoners, and the terror of US foreign policy will be brought to law. But the popular will that supports these technologies will require the moral equivalent of civil war to defeat.

“And in each nation,” scolded Thrasymachus in Republic Book I, “whoever rules passes the laws that are to their own advantage. After they pass these laws, they say that justice is obeying the law.” Thrasymachus was a hothead patriot, whose heirs today pound their steering wheels to the rhythms of kick-ass country music.

“Whoever fails to keep the law is punished as unjust and a lawbreaker. So that, my good man, is what I say justice is.” Although the loudmouth opinion of Thrasymachus echoes down our halls of power today, endorsed by a Texas attorney who would become Attorney General, we don’t forget how Socrates could make that man blush.

So these are old, old struggles and we’re walking in well worn shoes. We’re gonna fight these war crimes that seek to globalize the whips and ropes that we once put down, and we’re gonna resist these attorneys who never got as far as Republic Book II. And as for all this lately talk about the downright popularity of homophobic core values, please pass the earplugs. That kind of noise only keeps us from our work.

Ironically, Khomeni could not get anyone to see America as “the great satan,” but it took George W. Bush and his minions only a few years to do exactly that, to show America is now the great satan in Muslim eyes.

Counterpunch

Iraqis will never forgive this- never. It’s outrageous- it’s genocide and America, with the help and support of Allawi, is responsible. May whoever contributes to this see the sorrow, terror and misery of the people suffering in Falloojeh.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

Got a few responses to the CounterPunch Civl War dispatch. One email said simply, “it’s abortion stupid.” But according to the exit poll, 55 percent of Americans think abortion should be legal or “mostly legal” and they mostly went for Kerry.

Another email looked more carefully at Kerry’s pledge to reduce everyone’s health care costs by $1,000. Actually, he promised to reduce it by “up to” $1,000 per year, which, as the emailer points out, could reduce your costs by zero. I also learned that sarcasm can be a difficult tone to convey.

Finally, sez another reader, backlash 2004 is just like backlash 1865 and so many backlashes before and after. While 88 percent of black voters stood firm with Democrats, only 44 percent of white voters stood with them. That wasn’t enough. Whites were the only race/ethnicity to favor Republicans, but Asians and Latinos each contributed 44 percent to the new white power coalition. “If you’re brown stick around.” As my correspondent queried sarcastically, “What else is new?”

PS: Thom Hartmann also sent a nice note. Here’s what I wrote in reply:

There’s the side of history that wins power today,
and the side that wins progress tomorrow.
May we never forget which side we’re on!

He liked that, too. Thanks again, Thom.

On the Homefront of our Civil Wars

By Greg Moses

Counterpunch / ILCA Online

Campaign 2004 is over, but civil war continues. Like Lincoln standing at Gettysburg, the commentator at today’s battlefields, whether in Cleveland or Samara, will share some bewiderment and grief with the common folks who do the suffering in these glorious affairs. Everywhere we look for America, we find the production and export of civil war.

Reports from Kentucky quote folks as deliriously happy that the USA finds itself now in red-hot Republican hands. They behave just like Iraqis were supposed to act last year at the sight of America on the move. So there’s that side of the civil war to write about. You can call it the Toby Keith side if you want, but I think that even Toby Keith has grown out of his boot kissing days.

On the other side of the civil war at home is a scurry of activity over election fraud that you can follow at most IndyMedia websites, helpfully summed up for Common Dreams in an article by Thom Hartmann. Why and when did close advisor Karen Hughes tell Bush that he had lost Florida? Why and when did Bush’s brain get changed out a few hours later to turn all his frowns into smiles?

And Thom Hartmann’s radio show Friday (this is not a paid advertisement) found guest and callers speaking insistently about the New York Attorney General’s inquiry into high crimes of negligence against the USA for its oversight of the massacres of Sept. 11, 2001. There is a lot of pent up paranoia in the civil war at home. So far, the official commissions have not allayed what many citizens still fear about the Bush regime.

And way up above it all, in the skies, like a remote spy planes, the professionals of American Mass Media Airways, they just keep following Bush around.

In contrast to adrenaline-soaked reports from election-fraud netizens, who are moving so fast that any observer would be wise to study quantum indeterminacy, web pages at the corporate press bellow their lowing assessments of cud pulled back up from the exit polls.

They are curious phenomena, these exit poll debriefs, because many of the polls once upon a time seemed to agree that Kerry had bagged every crucial house of electors by Tuesday supper (hence the legendary candidate-maintenance call by Hughes on Bush). You’d even expect the professional media analyst to mention in passing that exit-poll data has been tainted by the election fraud controversy, because either the exit polls expose election fraud, or the exit polls are wrong.

But, as I say, passengers of American Mass Media Airways fly way too high to bother with anything grassroots. No. Check that. I did read about some phone calls placed to Ralph Nader after he was herded into the one percent column. Having contributed heavily to Nader’s irrelevance, the passengers of AMMA found him to be quite a useful spear tip for poking the Democrats. Which is fair enough. This year, Nader gets to blame the Democrats for a change.

In the morning-after exit polls at CNN (revised overnight to match fraudulent election totals, allege netizens who pay close attention to these things) Americans were reported to be just barely happy enough on election day to re-elect Bush. For example, on questions of job approval, terrorism, and the decision to invade Iraq “as part of the war on terrorism,” Bush gained approval from 51 to 55 percent of the voters.

And despite a majority who said that the Iraq war had not made the US more secure, people still “trusted” Bush more to protect them against terrorism. The paradox in this combination–where his policies make us less secure but we trust him more with our security–is explained by passengers of American Media this way: Bush has an ability to “connect” directly with voters in such a way that the principle of contradiction does not apply. This quality of “connection” moreover is the most valuable stuff that a political candidate can push. Kerry didn’t sell enough of it. So contradictions in his case tended to stick.

Significantly, however, among voters who were “very worried” about terrorism, Kerry got the most votes. Doesn’t that surprise you? In the top tier of fear, you might say, voters wanted Kerry most badly. Gallows, it would seem, do have a way of bringing the mind back to life. But why does this fact remain buried in raw numbers? Do these numbers suggest that the Kerry campaign could have intensified fears of terrorism to selfish effect? Do the numbers suggest that the Bush campaign had to set the thermostat of fear to a “somewhat worried” level of reality-show suspense?

Forty three percent of voters reported worsening job situations. But again, when they compared the candidates’ abilities to handle the economy, people came to the polls distrusting Bush, who had presided over worsening jobs–but distrusting him less than Kerry, who had not. Kerry, you’ll remember, is a flip flopper. He might get you a job one day, take it away the next. Who knows? At least with Bush, the uncertainty is removed. It’s that connection stuff again.

A huge majority of voters (70 percent) were “very concerned” about the “availability and cost of health care.” And they voted for Kerry 58 percent of the time. As union guru Andy Stern had signalled loudly during the Democratic convention, health care would be Kerry’s strongest card to play. And don’t you remember Kerry’s memorable reply? He promised to reduce every family’s medical bills “by an average of $1,000 per year”? Whew. Still gives me goosebumps.

So I’m trying to figure out two things here. First, could Kerry have done better on health care, winning more than 58 percent support among 70 percent of the voters had he sworn that $1,000 promise on the Bible? And second, if Kerry did in fact win 58 percent of 70 percent, tell me again, how did he lose the election?

Along the way, somebody got my hopes up by pointing to Southern young voters, but I checked it out. Young voters in the South went for Bush, unlike young voters everywhere else who went for Kerry. The numbers at CNN are not clear enough on the racial breakdown by age. Maybe the good news is that 47 percent of young Southern voters went for Kerry, putting them in play next time around. But you know the Southern white youth have got to be disproportionately skewed toward Bush.

Can the Democrats get to southern white youth with an anti-racism vaccine before the Republicans tickle them with that lynch mob tingle? Well, for youth who joined the Republican movement this year, it may be too late.

And Texas liberals, can you believe it? Thirty five percent of them voted Bush. How do one third of a state’s liberals vote for a man to the right of Caesar? Unless you’re a genetic determinist, you gotta think it’s the upbringing. Texas moderates went for Kerry, too, believe it or not. But again, you’d have to believe the exit polls.

And perhaps like many of the 56 million voters officially enrolled in the Kerry column, I feel a little more steady after throwing a few fits last week. I’m not apologizing for preserving those moments. As the Black Commentator said with dead eye verve, this Bush movement is nothing but a lynch mob waiting to happen. You can be excused for all the things that drop out of you when you realize that the Sheriff has just handed you over to that crowd. Do you hear me, up there, American Air? Oh that’s right, you flew above the South all year long. Time to look now for reports from Falluja, where our civil wars continue abroad…

A Question for the American Media:
What’s that you See in the Mirror?

By Greg Moses

ILCA Online

Amidst the rubble of what was the Democratic Party, Nader doesn’t sound like a voice in the wilderness. He’s saying what a lot of Democrats are coming to grips with, that they will be a permanent minority party for the next 20 years if they don’t come up with some compelling ideas.–Eleanor Clift

Allow me to speak briefly for 56 million voters. The last thing we need on this “morning after” is some yapping crapola from a mainstream media mouth about our lack of compelling ideas.

Because, we have compelling ideas. For instance, the idea of a free press. And we wonder if the media refusal to look in that mirror is related to the problem faced by vampires, who have no real lives of their own to reflect?

So, if media mavens want to honestly analyze and reform the effects of their own blatant propaganda, if they want to explain why so many Bush voters believed that Sept. 11 was connected to Saddam, if they want to interrogate their racist patterns of reporting, if they want to explain why they didn’t blare the news of the 150,000 Iraqi deaths reported during the last weekend of the election, etc., then, yes, I think they could contribute something to my own understanding of this bombed out playing field called politics in America.

But when Thomas Frank tells me from the pages of the New York Times that the Republicans are winners because they have spoken uniquely for “the forgotten man without causing any problems for their core big-business constituency” oh please get him out of my face!

Mr. Frank cannot pretend to write for the 21st Century when he learns no lessons from the 20th. This phrase, “forgotten man,” for instance. Does he mean to say, “forgotten person?” Or does he think that eliding the significance of gender is another thing we should do as we seek to widen the Republican path to victory?

And if he doesn’t mind himself forgetting “the forgotten woman” does he notice how he neglects the racial assumptions that he and the Republicans share when they focus on the meaning of “man” as “white only.” Excuse me, Mr. Frank, neither you nor your Republican models seem to be remembering which men voted for whom last week.

But congratulations, I suppose, for placing your “ideas” on the vaunted pages of the New York Times. That’s the same place, is it not, where Thomas Friedman begged us to “give war a chance”? A compelling idea, I guess.

In fine, liberal fashion, Mr. Frank uses the space in the New York Times to purvey an analysis that discards the racist undertones of Republican politics (as if everything the Republicans say they’re doing is only what they’re up to), as if Democrat politicians do not have to survive in a gravitational field of racism, misogyny, and imperial disinformation, too. As if putting together a movement of 56 million voters this year was nothing but a failure.

Sorry to be so cranky this morning. My head is hurting. Let me suggest a pro-active agenda, if I may. If you professional pundits are looking for something to write about, why not go talk to the 56 million voters who, against all the odds of this messed-up system, said, you know, there has got to be another way. And, ask them, do they believe they have been well served by the American press lately?

The People Ain’t Stopped Pumpin’ Yet

By Greg Moses

Austin Indymedia

The blue state, red state game is another one-dimensional propaganda stunt. I live in a red state, and the first thing I heard at the bus stop Wednesday morning was, “stupid Republicans!”

A friend and fellow bus rider reports that she heard two former soldiers asking themselves if they didn’t need a militia now, “to protect us from our own government.”

In the signs outside also, my friend saw folk protest brewing: “The bus passed a large spray painted message on a wall: ‘MEET THE DECLINE.’ At a stop on the East side there was a nice poster taped to the bus shelter: ‘VOTE AND BE COUNTED,’ but someone had written ‘Ballot box, Vote here’ on the trash can nearby.”

Was it just my mood that day, or did I actually see it reflected in the steely eyes of fellow travelers? If you were on the bus Wednesday, you were definitely off the bandwagon.

“My Mother got angry with me, because I said I wasn’t going to leave the country,” explained one kid to his friend. It’s like, “what do you mean you’re not leaving!”

These red state voters were behaving like New Yorkers: bewildered, incredulous, and pissed. Asking, “who are these people who think Bush is anything but a warmongering demagogue?” Moral values?! You have got to be brain dead!

A correspondent from India tells me via email that he reads about 56 million people who voted against Bush, but he doesn’t care about them anymore. And his rejection is not much different from many American intellectuals who pass over 56 million voters as if they were nothing but losers, or what’s worse in their eyes, Democrats.

But now that Kerry is no longer distracting us, perhaps we can turn some attention to those 56 million.

“How you doin’ today?” asks the cashier, as she talks about the beautiful weather we’re having on Friday. “But watch out for those drivers out there,” she grins. “They think they know where they’re going, but they really don’t.”

56 million people aren’t about to stop pumping their lives back into the body of this nation. When I look at the sky covering my state today, it don’t look red to me.

[56 million figure corrected fri. pm]

[for an interesting graphic re-visioning of the vote see http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/]

(CANADA) Thanks for your article today on Counterpunch. I too woke up this morning and thought of Fallujah and what it means for those people.

What a world we live in! How can we make a difference in a world seemingly bent on destroying one another!

But then your article shows that people do care about each other, perhaps one day that will make a difference!!!

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(SWEDEN) And not only now but from the beginning of the “pounding”. Most of the time the attacks happens at night and I imagine this poor people falling apart. During the day the snippers kill everybody who dare to cross a street. The cruelty against Falluja´s defenceless population has no limits.

A friend of mine who worked in that area told me yesterday that Falluja is just a little town, tight populated, more or less as my own town here.

You are not alone Greg, thank you for your blues.

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(OKLAHOMA) Read your piece on ‘Counterpunch’ after I stopped screaming!! Great as ALWAYS!!

If they have the audacity and gall to try a coup under the implication as an impeachment, what can we do? Strike? How is it that fear of embracing a culture of civil rights with its glorious diversity which extends to ALL citizens be so scary?! As I heard on the BBC’s ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ programme, Americans do wear rose coloured glasses and are insular from the outside. Guess it’s back to the Colonias?!

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In Regards to your recent article “Blues For Fallujah” I simply wanted to say well done. So few words to convey a mosts wonderful meaning. Thank You

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The sound a little person makes when she covers her head with her bare
hands.

POWERFUL WORDS. THANK YOU

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(NORWAY) I write from Arctic Norway. Thank you for the essay. It amazes me that nations that destroy communities in foreign lands (ie, Americans, Brits, Israelis, Russians now, and Germans and Japanese in the last war), how is it possible not to have empathy for families with dead children or destroyed homes. How is that possible? Anyone who has a child or a home, which means most of us, must know how that must tear the heart and hope out of someone. But somehow, we don’t.

Your essay reminds us. Thank you.

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(UNITED KINGDOM) I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your article on Fallujah (if “enjoy” is a word that can be used for such a grim subject). It cut right through the bullshit to the very heart of the matter — the true central issue of the election, which was of course completely ignored: the innocent dead murdered in our name. Anyway, it was a great piece, strong and true. Thanks very much for writing it.

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(SOUTH CAROLINA) F**KIN’ A!!!!! That needed to be said, so badly…I’m clickin’ around, saying to friends; “READ THIS, GG***MMIT!!!”

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(MASSACHUSETTS) Nice piece of writing.

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(INDIA) I’m a religious conservative Hindu writing from India. I happened to read your piece “Blues for Fallujah”. You are not alone in your thoughts. Here is what most of us here in India feel about this vote.

I can tell you that even here in my town ****, where Hindus are staunchly unsympathetic to Muslims, we were horrified and disgusted by the spectacle of your American election even as your Army prepares to “pacify Fallujah”. In many ways, the utter helplessness of the Iraqi people and their abandonment by the rest of humanity is beginning to resemble the fate of the Jews in the Europe of the 30s and 40s. Republican supporters don’t seem to understand that for us, us non-Americans, the invasion of Iraq based on lies holds an echo of the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany. I pray that Fallujah will not witness the kind of total “pacification” that places like Auschwitz and Treblinka became synonymous with.

I myself narrowly escaped being in WTC on Sep 11 and was an eyewitness to the horrors. And seeing what the Israelis are doing under Sharon and the school massacre by Chechen militants in Beslan hasn’t left any room in my heart for any understanding of the ‘Establishment’ or ‘powers that be’ in either the Jewish or Muslim communities. However, I doubt that either of these peoples would have 51% of their population feeling the kind of insensate nationalistic stupidity and bloodlust that half of adult America has demonstrated by re-electing Bloody Bush. There is indeed a God and even though there are no mechanisms of human justice that can stay the hand of American military in Iraq, there definitely is a divine justice ( call it cause and effect if you will…) that will yet come back to haunt America for the evil that its people have wrought with this vote for Bush despite all the lies, the deception, the horrors of Abu Ghraib,…. It is clear that at least every second American is a willing accomplice in the planned and deliberate murder of hundreds of thousands of innocents in the most bloody and fiery and merciless manner so that some of those who control your industrial empires may hoard the wealth of other nations and peoples than you.

If this is how I, a non-Muslim non-Arab Indian who detests Muslim fanatics and typically likes the average American Joe feels at this moment in history, your countrymen need to sit back and ponder over the hate they have earned from the rest of humanity by this dastardly vote. For the last four years, the American people had the sympathy of non-Muslims on account of the events of Sep 11 and the accidental/stolen election of 2000. However, 2004 is a different matter altogether. By a majority of over 3 million votes, and the vast swathe of your red states that voted for Bush,you have certified your hatred and contempt for the rest of us. With this vote, there is no longer the benefit of doubt. During the last Bush tenure, we non-Muslim non-Americans were on the sidelines, trying to differentiate ordinary Muslims from the beasts of al-Qaeda and trying to differentiate ordinary Americans from the beasts in Washington and trying to differentiate the bloodlust of white Americans from the naivety and sycophancy of black, Hispanic and other immigrant Americans who had just discovered the sinful sweetness of their individual ‘American Dream’.

That grace is now over. And the suffering of the Iraqi people and the fallout of these events on the rest of us is henceforth your responsibility – or at least every second one amongst you – whether white, black, red, brown or yellow.

The Nazis got into power sneakily, through an odd confluence of circumstances, perhaps comparable to Nov 2000. Bush in 2004 comes to power stamped with the approval of the American people. Finished product of the neo-cons! Inspected and approved by the good folk of America! Congratulations, America! You’ve come up with the first popularly elected Fascist administration anywhere in the world.

I hope for the sake of the conscience of your nation that the 48% of you who did not vote for Bush never stop speaking up against the 51% who did, even though these be your own parents, children, spouses, siblings, cousins, friends, colleagues… However, don’t expect the rest of us to keep remembering that 48% of you did not vote for Bush. That’s not the kind of complexity that has influenced the fate you Americans have dealt to Iraq and the fate you will soon be dealing Fallujah.

As for me, I can certainly say that I am no longer divided in my feelings. I have an opinion and it is no longer sympathetic to America.

God save America from Americans! God save us all!

PS: Thank you for your thoughtful editing and for posting my response on peacefile.org.

Please please keep writing without being disheartened. People like you are not only America’s conscience, but the conscience of every soul on this planet we share. Sometimes giving voice to conscience may be all that someone can do in this existence, but better that than the apathy which will guarantee us perdition in the hereafter.

And for hope, I return to the words of the Gita, where Lord Krishna says,
“yada yada hi dharmasya glanirbhavati bhaarata
abhyutthaanam adharmasya tat aatmaanaam srjaamyaham
dharma sansthaapanaarthaaya sambhavami yuge yuge”

“Whenever unrighteousness rears its head all around
To fight injustice and for the succour of souls
I manifest myself from time to time”

Perhaps the moment will manifest the leadership that can face the evil Bushmen.

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(VIRGINIA) Thank you for your wonderful short piece on Fallujah that I read at the Counterpunch site this morning and put out to the…readers in my morning news service. I am an old combat veteran who opposes all war, and a leftist who opposes corporate government.

I used your piece to pull people back to reality. Yes, there is a lot to argue about in the election, it was filled with the usual fraud and deceit. There is a lot of hand wringing to do about the way the left is now in disarray with the Democrats having spent the last six months attacking Nader and the Green Party splintered into factions. The right wing and Democratic Leadership Council could not be more pleased.

But, as I pointed out in introducing your piece this morning, whether Kerry or Bush was elected, with the pressure from Shiah leaders in Iraq pushing the occupiers to hold elections in January, thousands of Fallujahns are going to probably be killed as they present a roadblock.

My heart goes out to the people of Fallujah. That is where our attention should be. Thank you for attempting to get people focused on that. We all know it’s coming, and it is so much easier to stick our heads in the sand and try not to notice, try not to be tied to it in any way, put our fingers in our ears to stifle the screams, and close our eyes to the trickles of blood.

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I really love you thug lovers, You dirt bags who wring your hands and whine everytime a terrorist dies, everytime a despot is spanked, everytime the slimey, smelly leftist lose. You people cause love to swell in my heart and soul for hard ass conservitives who cause you to whimper, snot running down your trembling lips. So do yourself a favor, go live in france, stop bathing, and rub shoulders with the rest of feces of the world.

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I’m listening for the still-born child, the heart attack, the stroke. The sound a little person makes when she covers her head with her bare hands.

After thirty hours, I’ve finally had my good cry.

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Just read your article on Counter Punch’s site, ” Blues for Fallujah”. Thanks. Cant get the image of the “sound a little person makes when she covers her head with her bare hands” out of my mind. Just wish I could make it stop. Maybe your eloquent words will help.

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Thank you, Greg Moses…

It read like a beautiful poem.

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(DENMARK) This reader can only offer lonely silence. Tears won’t help anybody. But may your heart live forever, as a beacon, and the rest of who is you tirelessly see and hear and tell others to follow. And may your listeners be many and strong, and may the sounds of death and despair and the urgent voices of truth one day be mingled with laughter.

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I’m listening to Fallujah, too.

But how many other people are? I thought “it” would happen today. Not a word.

Would we know? Will we know?

Thanks for your sensitive piece.

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(HAWAII) Subject line: Are you listening hard enough?
Message: [In fat, large font.] BOOM!!!

By Greg Moses

Counterpunch

Hush. Enough chatter about the stupid American election. I’m trying to listen to Fallujah right now.

Stop telling me how closest advisors to the aggressor in chief hugged each other this morning in the Oval Office, and expressed great relief. Scrubbed teeth, shining all around.

I’m trying to hear the sounds of their helicopters overhead, trying to feel the rattle in my bones as chop, chop, chop, over Falluja, they draft the very air into war.

No more stories please about the four-hour lines, the embargoed ballots, Supreme Court refusals, or the missing youth vote. Speak of battleground states no more. They didn’t even try to change the South.

Crashes and cries are what I’m listening for. Not more stupid talk about “margins of litigation,” that politico-mathmatic trigger point in which stupid embargoed ballots exceed differences in stupid ballots cast.

Chinaview reports (8 hours ago) that two have been killed and six injured in Falluja, but we know since reading last Friday’s article in the Lancet that we have to multiply these numbers times ten.

So shush that grating talk about how we’re all soon back together in some conspiracy of imperial purpose, all hailing the chief.

I’m listening for the still-born child, the heart attack, the stroke. The sound a little person makes
when she covers her head with her bare hands.

Please mute that electoral count recap, would you?

I’ve got to listen to Falluja right now.