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Nov. 7th, 2008 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
felis_ultharusWell, the American election is over. I don't expect the US to transform into a utopia and I expect there's going to be a lot of disappointed people -- no one gets to be president without being friendly with megacorporations, and you don't step on those people's toes without losing all your funding for the next election.
Still, there'll probably be some changes for the positive. He's talking about closing Guantanamo, and it's after the election so he has no reason to say that unless he really intends to. Let's hope Omar Khadr can catch a break.
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad he won, but mostly for the things he won't do than for the things he will. He's not likely to invade Iran just because it's there, not likely to strongarm Canada into further nasty trade agreements. He's not likely to take his economy (and the world's) into another tailspin.
It's also nice to have a neighbour who at least pays lip service to socialized health care and cap-and-rade policies. It'll take the wind out of the sails of our neo-cons, who are constantly harping on about we should be more like the US.
But what this election was really about was keeping the Pandora's Box of the uglier aspects of the US psyche firmly closed. It was those uglier aspects that Sarah Palin embodies -- that combination of might-makes-right evil and intolerance of all things different from the evangelical Chrisitan worldview. The better half of America's psyche won out for four-to-eight years.
That buys time. But there's got to be some serious changes -- structural and cultural -- or every election a near miss of this kind. And there's nothing the rest of the world can do except watch, so that change has got to come from within the US.
And a good reminder of how close a miss it was, was Proposition 8 in California. The lid came off that Pandora's Box just enough to strip a people of their fundamental right to equality. The theocrats got the measure passed. And while activists are already working hard to overturn it in court, the fact that it passed at all is a major moral failure for the state.
Still, there'll probably be some changes for the positive. He's talking about closing Guantanamo, and it's after the election so he has no reason to say that unless he really intends to. Let's hope Omar Khadr can catch a break.
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad he won, but mostly for the things he won't do than for the things he will. He's not likely to invade Iran just because it's there, not likely to strongarm Canada into further nasty trade agreements. He's not likely to take his economy (and the world's) into another tailspin.
It's also nice to have a neighbour who at least pays lip service to socialized health care and cap-and-rade policies. It'll take the wind out of the sails of our neo-cons, who are constantly harping on about we should be more like the US.
But what this election was really about was keeping the Pandora's Box of the uglier aspects of the US psyche firmly closed. It was those uglier aspects that Sarah Palin embodies -- that combination of might-makes-right evil and intolerance of all things different from the evangelical Chrisitan worldview. The better half of America's psyche won out for four-to-eight years.
That buys time. But there's got to be some serious changes -- structural and cultural -- or every election a near miss of this kind. And there's nothing the rest of the world can do except watch, so that change has got to come from within the US.
And a good reminder of how close a miss it was, was Proposition 8 in California. The lid came off that Pandora's Box just enough to strip a people of their fundamental right to equality. The theocrats got the measure passed. And while activists are already working hard to overturn it in court, the fact that it passed at all is a major moral failure for the state.