Come Back, America

This is the first posting on my weblog.

I love the idea of weblogs, It seems that they're bringing the internet back to the glory days of the mid 90's when it was all about information rather than selling stuff, it seems that with the growth of blogs, the pendulum is swinging back to people who want to use the medium to spread information, though I haven't heard of Amazon or eBay filing for bankruptcy just yet.

It disturbs me a little, though, that so many of the blogs out there seem to be right-wing, with those on that side of the spectrum dominating this branch of the internet the way they do talk radio and cable TV, while those on the left rely on old-fashioned media like Books and Magazines. It reinforces my fear that the future belongs to them, that the zeitgest is blowing in their direction.

I'm still getting over the trauma of the election result last week. I see it as a victory for fearmongering, for deceit, for greed, and for a pernicious form of religous fundamentalism.

It seems that the conventional wisdom that's emerged in the last 10 days or so is that it was so-called 'moral issues' that won the day for George W Bush. Usually I'm a bit wary of Prof Con. Wisdom's pronouncements; a decade ago he had us all believeing that the end of history was upon us and liberal democracy had won. How wrong could he have been?

But there is overwhelming evidence that it's religous fundamentalists who swung the election for Bush. It shouldn't surprise anyone that there's a lot of them in the US, which after all was founded by religous radicals. What surprises me is the ferocity of their views, in particular their antipathy to science, and how such views can co-exist with the internet, iPods and the ultra-sophisticated smart weaponry that keeps them safe from religous zealots. I read that some fundamentalists in Kansas refuse to allow evolution to be taught in schools because they don't want to be cared for in their old age by people who think her ancestors were monkeys. To me, the idea of being cared for by people who believe in science is far less terrifying than that of being put in the hands of zealots who think that, as a non-believer, I'm going to burn in Hell, but that doesn't mean that I think people aren't entitled to their religous beliefs.

Perhaps that's the problem with liberalism, that liberals are always willing to see other people's point of view, whereas the other people rarely are. One of the factors in the growth of the religous right in America is that they've filled in a gap left by the evisceration of the US welfare state, providing soup and shelter for homeless people. The differerence, of course, is that in a state welfare system, people don't have to accept any particular belief system to be fed or housed.

This helps to explain why fundamentalism is spreading like a virus, from it's base in the Bible Belt to Northern areas like Ohio and even to the suburbs of California. While the religous fundamentalists are in no doubt of what the believe, no matter how weird their beliefs might seem to outsiders, the liberal left can only offer a flaccid centrism in response, scared even of the word 'liberal', which still has connotations of the upheavals of the 1960's.

But watching the red areas gradually encroach, virus-like, on the blue citadels on election night, it's hard not to be reminded of World War II documentaries where Europe gradually turned black.

Am I suggesting that America is turning fascist? The always-worthy-of-a-read George Monbiot
argues that what's happening there right now is more tantamount to a rebirth of puritanism, but I'm not so sure. I think the growing evidence that voting machines were manipulated by people who want the American constitution to be replaced with the Bible (No Shit!) is a worrying indication that America is going down a seemingly irreversible road democracy to fascist theocracy. But this information is only available on the internet, as the mainstream press doesn't seem to have the stomach for a fight, another indication that liberals are meekly accepting the zeitgeist.

One piece I read a while back (in the Financial Times, off all places) suggested that the two most fundamentalist countries in the world were in fact the two biggest democracies, India and the US. It's not surprising that India, which has had the same religion and culture for four thousand years should be this way, but why America? It's arguable that the country needs a set of shared values to bind it together, but do they have to be values like homophobia and militarism?

The horrible truth is that all the great imperial powers have needed religion or some sort of quasi-religous value system to maintain order and in a century's time, it may seem that the last few decades of social liberalism might seem like the aberation, and not the growth of religous fundamentalism that's marked the last few years in the US.

I'm writing this from the comfortable distance of Europe, where people are warning me not to be so smug, as they'd have me believe that there are just as many fundamentalists over here, but they haven't really gotten organised yet. I think this is a bit specious, as birth rates are lower all ever Europe than anywhere in the US, even in Catholic countries like Italy, which is an indication that people are marrying at a later age, having multiple partners and using contraception, whereas in the so-called red states of the US, people are taking chastity pledges, getting married earlier and having big families, which will provide an expenable population for whatever war the US is fighting in 18 years time.

When the Silver Ring Thing chastity project visited Europe, few teenagers were willing to pay €15 to promise that they weren't going to have sex until after they were married. Can't imagine why not. Also, while George W Bush managed to get the senate, which at the time was democrat controlled to approve John Ashcroft, the EU parliment finally did something to earn all the money they get by blocking the nomimation of Rocco Butt-ilogine. I'm not saying this makes the EU better than the US but, um... I can't think of a way to finish this sentence.

I'm confident that Europe, which has suffered so much in the past from fundamentalisms of all sorts over the years, isn't going to go down that path again in a hurry. Bear in mind that while Americans associate World War II with Andrews Sisters records, Band of Brothers and Audie Murphy movies, in Europe we tend to associate it with hunger, disease and death, and that's what makes us wary of any sort of extremism. Also, most religous right-wingers in Europe are from Catholic countries, and the reputation of the Catholic Church has become so tarnished that it's hard to see them galvanising their flock to vote on 'moral issues'

I don't want to see the divide between Europe and America grow as this will push the EU into the arms of Russia, India and China, the latter is already exporting more stuff to Europe than America, which considering that all the stuff in Wal-Mart is from China, is a lot of stuff. But it's going to happen unless the American left starts to fight back. I've got to confess that I've got no idea where they should start, though a legal challenge to the election result would be a start.

Then some more radical stuff. If fundamentalists don't want people who believe in evolution taking care of them then doctors, who for the most part believe in science, should refuse to treat them when they get sick. People should boycott places like Wal-Mart at the very least and set them alight if they get a chance, they're made mainly of wood so they should burn down pretty easily. If stuff like that seems extreme then bear in mind that the anti-abortion right have no problems setting planned parenthood clinics alight.

Such a course of action could lead to civil war, but I think America might be heading that way. This time, instead of standing idly by, the European nations should arm both sides and let them completely eviscerate each other for two or three years and then join on the side of the coastal states and then loudly take the credit for victory for at least 60 years. And see how America likes that.