Election Day Musings

Some October entries and postscripts:

10/1/2009

Read article by Gore Vidal: “We’ll have a dictatorship soon in the US.”

[10/1/2024: At 15 years, it’s an interesting juxtaposition that Jimmy Carter, a standard bearer of the spiritual nature of democracy turns 100 today]. 

10/2/1998

Interview on NPR with Serbian government official. The interviewer asked with rhetorical disbelief: ‘‘Isn’t there anyone in Serbia that feels for the Albanians?”, to which he replied, with a rhetorical snark, “Not really, only about 5%.” The answer in essence was, “Serbians all assume that we all hate Albanians, but there are detractors in every crowd.”

[Now in the US we ask the similar question, “Is there any cultist who will not easily leave a cult?”]

10/5/2004

Report doubts Iraq’s WMD ability. It was written by the chief weapons inspector there. This is so poetic on the heels of Edwards’ claim that the Bush Administration is lying to the American people.

[In John Mearsheimer’s book Why Leaders Lie he talks about the different shades of lying, such as spinning and concealment, explained away and justified as protecting from harm, even if there is no clear evidence of it. If someone is trying to seize or hold on to power, everything is deceitful in some way, especially in an election year].

10/2/2005

Bush nominates Harriet Meiers as a contender to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court. 

[It’s astonishing how much the US has changed in 20 years. In 2005 I would have never thought that the bench would be packed as much as it is now. It’s the “Disco Demolition” for both sides in the sense that you think you’re going to eliminate ideas and ideologies by blowing up a pile of disco albums].

10/4/2002

Listened to Senate hearings on war resolution on Iraq.... 

[Is the world better or worse as a result of the decisions and strategies the US made in those wars? We know the answer. We’ve known the answer.  It never is. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 is still an inert Declaration and has never been followed]. 

10/4/2004

Interesting: Regional contexts, “birds of a feather” effect explains how Bush can be such a popular president in the face of such vehement opposition.

[Many of us can’t conceive why Trump is as popular as he is, but the answer might be how the narratives were (forcibly) changed during the Bush administration, with the inflection point being 9/11. You can’t say “if 9/11 hadn’t happened” because there still would be some kind of inflection point in history that polarizes the people].

10/6/2002

Read article in Tribune about scholar Robert Kagan. He says Europe and America have evolved in opposite ways to the point that they no longer share a common view of the world, or even occupy the same world.

[I recall during the Balkans War we were saying it was a European problem all the while supporting NATO alliances. They haven’t evolved in opposite ways. It was the way we were seeing the post-9/11 world at the time. We’re not really in a post-9/11 world any longer. It’s interesting that “post” eras don’t go on indefinitely in the sense that younger generations are psychologically affected by them. Boomers weren’t affected by World War II other than in the cultural response such as the rise of rock’n’roll and pop art . My parents lived in that collective psyche–Boomers didn’t, just as Millennials or Gen-Z weren’t directly affected by 9/11. Ultimately it doesn’t have anything to do with direct memory. We all live in the same world where certain technologies exist even if you don’t use them. If you’re not on TikTok you still live in a TikTok world. Putin (or his successors) certainly will never buy the idea that the US was thinking it was a European problem and were involved only as a bystander.].

10/11/2011

Protests continue at LaSalle and Jackson. The energy here is amazing at both ends of the spectrum, with people looking downtrodden or completely electric. There’s a very loud drum circle grooving away, with car horns providing melody. With my camera it is exciting to be a part of the bazaar of democracy and “The American Spring”.

[10/11/2024: I see 2011 as the year of the shift towards anarchy where revolutionary thinking became the global meme.]

10/16/2021

Email this morning: “Last week, Reuters released a bombshell report revealing that AT&T helped build the far-right television network OAN”

[10/16/2024: What is tremendously useful about keeping a diary is that it becomes a running list of things to revisit, and creates Threads, which can get tangled into “nasty little knots–a reminder of the prospect of the danger we forgot”].

10/29/1998

It’s interesting to hear public opinion preceding an election. The main cause of apathy is confusion on the issues, and/or mistrust of the whole system. I also think by and large people vote on charisma, like Jesse Ventura the former wrestler running for governor of Minnesota. He has good ideas without all the stereotypical politician posturing and doesn’t have to cover up common foibles. We know this upfront and it’s out of the way and we can focus on the issues. This is the future of the democratic process.

[10/29/2024: I would say in retrospect it is the vague mistrust and cynicism that no one seems to really define. It’s like a typical protest, particularly the Occupy movement in 2011, that had a laundry list of grievances, many of which persist today (transformed in some way by younger generations). That future of the democratic process has arrived indeed. I’m reminded of the book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia by John Gray, published in 2007 in the midst of the Iraq occupation. Its primary premise is that Utopias of any kind are unachievable. In 2007, the Utopia was that Iraq would flourish as a democracy and was holding its first elections. Now we can’t have elections in this country without immediate claims of fraud. And yet we spent trillions of dollars on nation building to support elections but can’t maintain our own democracy.]

10/29/2004

Osama Bin Laden airs tape, trying to influence election.

[10/29/2024: This is what is happening now in the US. It was unthinkable (to most Americans) in 2004].