3/18/2002
The effects are still being felt of our early plunge, after 9/11, into a frantic voodoo of patriotic displays. The administration has done much to encourage this. But they don't have the privelege of defining patriotism, and his second honeymoon is shuddering to a halt. Events have moved on, and with every move the adminstration makes--whether evil or stupid or both--a few more people fall off the bandwagon and start talking back. At home, Mary McGrory and William Safire have been scolding the administration (rather longer than many others) about military tribunals and our treatment of foreign nationals and the erosion of our credibility abroad that follows inevitably.
Here's a hawkishly-minded American calling the administration on the madness of its reckless policies in terms of diplomatic strategy.
Abroad, people were quicker to complain. Here, for example, is an Iranian talking good sense to an Australian who can't quite seem to follow it. Many regard our posturing as showing off for the voters at home. The Russians have always been quick to call our bluffs, of course. But the leaders of Europe have been roused as well, now (finally). And particularly bitter rebukes have been pouring in from the countries we've dubbed evil (some more darkly than others)--and their neighbors who had been patiently making peace with those countries.
Even the English, whose Tony Blair has been our most inexplicably obsequious backer from the beginning, have been raising hell for some time about our behavior; there are signs that Blair is damaging his standing badly at home by sticking with us too long. Here's some sedate but clear disapproval fromThe Guardian.
And the EU is anxious to get on with business in some sensible way, and uninterested in stirring up trouble all over the globe.
Dissent in general is gaining ground now. Former senator Paul Simon asks the obvious question: why spend so much money on weaponry when it hasn't made us safe before? Senators Tom Daschle and Robert Byrd have spoken up of late to question the White House, to the vocal displeasure of Trent Lott. Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich has received a storm of approval for his Prayer for America, a speech of strident rhetoric damning our policies. And the judiciary, too, is beginning to get frustrated with the administration's taste for unaccountable freedom of action.
Outside the halls of government, even more voices have been clamoring. Michael Moore has hit a new high with his current book and loud denunciations of the administration (and its Enron connections). And Alec Baldwin spoke at a university in Florida, comparing the presidential election to the 9/11 attacks themselves in its damaging effect on American democracy. Go Alec! This makes me want to run right out and rent every movie he ever made. Actually, now I think about it, yeah: I encourage you to go rent your favorite Alec Baldwin, and then write him to let him know why. Sort of a counterblacklist.
More strongly than anything, bowing to an overwhelming public certainty, a bill aimed at (modest) campaign-finance reform seems set to pass. Not because congressional Democrats like it any better than the Republicans do--the Democrats are every bit as elitist an amoral as the Republicans, certainly caring nothing for third parties or electoral fairness--but because the population is thundering for it. In any event, the voters in some states are making reforms of their own that serve as really exciting examples for the rest of us--maybe we don't have to wait for the legislature to clean itself up.
There are still those who think Bush is doing great work, of course--but that seems precarious now.