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We're hearing a lot of talk about depression, psychiatrists and suicide among the people who thought more of their country. Citing the election of Bu$h to friends and family, a 25-year-old Georgian committed a dramatic suicide at the World Trade Center remains called "ground zero" on November 6.(1)
Many Democrats and other Amerikans never really had to deal with the fact that Bu$h might have real support. They just blamed Nader and the Supreme Court. It says a lot about how people prior to now escaped all the signs. They apparently managed to live with a Supreme Court, Congress and 47% of the public that was Republican as of 2000 without drawing any conclusions.
Evidence says that Amerikans are more political now than since the 1960s. In 2000, Bush was just a Texas governor and people could have voted for him sleep-walking. But ever since 911, there is no way to deny that politics has been in Amerikans' face daily--just at that very low Amerikan level. There can be no doubt what Bu$h is doing and yet he increased his vote by millions, even if we leave aside the exact percentage.
In 1968, some Democrats had something of an escapist attitude because Wallace ran against Democratic candidate for president Humphrey, and that caused a lot of "what-ifs" about what would have happened had Wallace not run. They wonder if Humphrey would have beaten Nixon if Wallace had not run. The problem again was not looking squarely at whites and seeing that the combined Nixon/Wallace white vote was unambiguous in meaning.
One perysn said, "this country means nothing to me anymore, nothing." The trouble is that that is exactly the right conclusion, but now we need to get to the next step of commitment to a new idea. We need to get to the stage that when traveling abroad and someone mutters "fucking Amerikans," we agree and keep moving. In fact, we perk up, because we know that means people abroad are working on the Amerikan problem and that may one day mean progress for the Amerikans. We progressives need the help.
Contrary to the Buddhists for example, MIM would say that not all egoisms are equal. Persynal egoism can put pride before progress in one's own thought. National egoism can become stodgy and stiff, but in the world today, the egoism of the imperialist countries is conservative and even backwards-looking, whereas the pride of Iraqis spurs them on to learn new things to defeat the aggressor. So we differ from the Buddhists because we have a concrete and general theory about where the worst egoisms are to be found holding back humyn thinking.
For Amerikans to progress as a population, pride in the status quo must be punctured. That means giving up patriotism unless it's Thomas Jefferson's definition of patriotism which is simply participation in the country's politics. Puncturing white nationalism also means giving credit to those who puncture it, especially in Iraq today. It cannot be more evident when we see all the backward yahoo patriots running around saying "America is great!" and nothing else for why they support the Iraq war and everything else Bu$h does.
Kanada's immigration department had 110,000 Amerikan hits in the day after the election.(2) That's a better idea than suicide, but some Democrats are no doubt in a good place to put up a better fight than before.
Becoming cynical enough to think Bu$h stole the election is also better than total apathy or suicide. Such people may stay in politics to fix it.
On the other hand, the "stolen elections" approach prolongs one's difficulties in another sense in not having an accurate view of the country. Seeing that Alabama whites just elected a Confederate activist Supreme Court justice, a justice who spoke for keeping language of segregation in the Alabama Constitution, what exactly did these people expect from Amerika we are wondering and how different did they think those rural whites bordering Alabama in Florida are anyway.
Liberal white patriots make a big mistake. The proper time for nationalist pride is after the whites have accomplished something worth being proud of--and we're saying that's not in the foreseeable future. The achievements along with their genocide and slavery belong to the generations of Washington and Lincoln. Today nothing moves forward in Amerika: it's only oppression and repression. The white man contributes nothing to the world but genocide and nothing to himself anymore except stolen riches.
Another danger is pure cynicism. Pure cynicism can also lead to taking jobs in the Bush administration and an eventual adjustment to the power structure as it is. The adage "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" ends up applying to the pure cynics. That possibility is one reason it is important to have properly placed hopes--not just to hope randomly as Jesse Jackson and Bill Clinton would tell us, but to really look around the world and see why hope might be justified.
In Amerika, we can see this: Nixon won re-election in 1972 and he had to resign by 1974. In the meantime, he lost the Vietnam War completely. That was the single largest plus for pushing white thinking along in the last 40 years-- all credit to the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese could have rolled over and played dead and the world would be an even more horrible place. If you lived in 1968, and looked for hope, you should have seen it in the Vietnamese.
Today, the vast majority of the world's population has already spoken against Amerikan politics. Iraqis are taking the most visible action, because they have the honor of fighting the bulk of the Yankee beast face-to-face. If we are stuck looking for progress just among Amerikans all the time, we're going to become cynical and give up hope for progress. Some will commit suicide, others waste more time with psychiatrists. Internationalism is the only secure basis for a progressive outlook in Amerika and similar countries.
Note:
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/nyregion/07suicide.html
2. http://www.smh.com.au/news/US-Elections/Many-look-north-and-south-for-refuge/2004/11/05/1099547388553.html?oneclick=true