Nicholsclan.com : a dimension of mind...

Sad and Scared

Well, Mr. Bush has sufficiently scared enough of you (and you know who you are) into voting for him such that he got reelected. The polls agree, he was largely elected on the basis of two things. People are scared of terrorism. People think his morals are "correct".

Both are poor reasons for having elected him. But those were points doubtless lost on the evangelical, under-educated, ill-informed, and/or emotionally fragile Bush supporters who were the substantial anchor to his voting base.

I hope I'm wrong about what has been unleashed unto our country. I expect we will slip further into becoming a Christian theocracy. (Ironic, in that we are so opposed to Islamic ones.) Laws will be passed, judges will be appointed, programs will be funded (or not) which further promote and legislate the conservative Christian moral agenda, including overturning Roe v. Wade, erosion of gay rights, and outlawing of stem-cell and other related bio-tech research.

In general, fundamental research funded by the government (which is most of it) will continue to be cut. This will erode our base of technological innovation on which much of our economy is based. Science will be politicized and polluted to justify the corporate and Christian agenda.

Big business will continue to win out over the environment, workers, or most anything else. Short term profit will be the focus. Building for the future will be assumed to be a foregone happenstance, but in reality will be a delusionary bubble to explode in the next generation. The growing class discrepancy in the US will exacerbate. Your effective wages (in constant dollars) will continue to decline. Environmental damage and public debt will pile up.

The "War on Terror" will continue apace. Personal freedoms and privacy will be curtailed in the interest of public safety. If Iraq ever subsides, the war will go somewhere else. It has to. Bush has built his power from our fear of terror. He can't relent on that front. Military action will continue on a large scale - somewhere - for the next four years. This will further pile up debt and alienate the average-Joe whose family will be the ones on the front lines. Reinstatement of the military draft would not be unlikely as long as an angle can be found to justify it. Wait for the next major domestic terror attack (and yes, there will be one). This will be the ticket to whoop-up support for drafting fresh soldiers and heading to a fresh battlefield.

The pile up of debt and class alienation along with the erosion of freedom and legislation of personal choice will be here long after Bush's next four years are past. It is with sadness that I recognize that my children will be able to sup the poisonous fruits of yesterday's election.

My faith in democracy is shaken... perhaps irreparably. It is said that Democracy is the worst possible system, except for all the others. That may never have been more true, for democracy suffers the admonition of Karl Marx - "The masses are asses."

I've never before hoped to be proven so wrong.