I hate to post just another newspaper column. But it is Gore Vidal in today's Independent on Sunday
link. and he at his best:
Here ares some excerpts:
It is often hard to explain to foreigners what an American presidential election is actually about. We cling to a two-party system in the same way that imperial Rome clung to the republican notion of two consuls as figurehead - to mark off, if nothing else, the years that they held office conjointly. They reigned ceremonially but were not makers of the political weather. Our two official parties have, at times, dedicated themselves to various issues, usually brought to their attention by a new president with a powerful popular mandate - hence the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, which gave, if nothing else, hope to a nation sunk in economic depression. [...]
Should Bush lose (a possibility not even whispered in TV land) it will be entirely due to one of the most ancient reflexes of the American electorate: a dislike of foreign wars in general and imperial wars in particular.
Recall Ulysses S Grant, a great man and a great general but a failed president, reflecting upon our war of aggression against Mexico. As a young lieutenant, recently graduated from West Point, Virginia, he fought dutifully against Mexico in 1846. Later he registered his hatred of that war. To us it was an empire, and one of incalculable value, but it might have been obtained by other means. The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war in modern times.
The true American imperialist would find our greatest general and winner of the civil war sentimental! After all, the war that we fought against Mexico gave us California and half a dozen other states. And wasn't the 1860 civil war about the abolition of slavery? No, it was not, but our historians tend to be cut from the same material as the media. A lie repeated often enough is, plainly, the truth. Bush told us so often that Saddam Hussein was in league with al-Qa'ida and the 9/11 attack on the US, that 60 per cent of Americans still believe this to be true. Even so, the anti-imperial movement is growing throughout the land; and it now gives unusual substance to the present election [...]
Perhaps the election after next - should we survive this one - will have as its subject the necessity of a new constitution, obviously a dangerous but inevitable notion. That is when the most eloquent of the presidential candidates this year, Dennis Kucinich, will come into his own. He is already shaping up as a leader of an as-yet-unborn progressive alliance. Naturally, he is branded a leftist, the word used for any thoughtful conservative. Actually, we have never had a left or even a conscious right. We divide between up and down. The downs may now be on the rise..