Politics

Check out this Republican attack ad on the Democratic senate candidate for North Carolina, Kay Hagan (to me, it comes across more as a promo for a better, more sensible America that really does separate church and state!). All secular Americans really ought to show their support for Godless Americans PAC, and let Kay Hagan know that her support of them means she has your support as well. You can make your voice heard by donating to Kay Hagan’s campaign, and letting her know that you’re doing so because of her support of Godless Americans PAC. Otherwise, American politicians may be even more reluctant to associate themselves with the secularist agenda than they are now.

So what did everyone think of the final Presidential debate? I see McCain is still desperately trying to whip up a controversy over Obama’s “relationship” with William Ayers, even though (as this video shows) he has a perfectly good explanation for it. It’s just so typical of the Republicans to base their campaign on negative mud slinging, while at the same time their own Vice Presidential candidate is actually convicted of breaking her state’s law by violating the public trust. I’ve been impressed that Obama hasn’t stooped to slinging mud back, even though Palin would have made it very easy for him to do. And even better, the American public seems to be responding very positively to his approach.

In other news, we’ve taken the opportunity today to do some upgrades to the navigation of my blog, which have become necessary as it’s grown. We now list my tags in the lefthand column, so you can more easily find articles on the particular topics that interest you. We’ve also upgraded the archives listing, so you can now go straight to a particular article. Plus we’ve added a related posts feature to each entry, so you can easily go to other articles like the one you’re reading. On top of that, we’ve started using excerpts of the longer posts on the home and archive pages, to make it easier to go through everything and get to what you want to read.

October 28 Update: We have now added an extra “Comments” section in the lefthand column, where you can go to the last 40 comments and subscribe to a comments feed for the entire blog, instead of just individual posts. Of course, you can still subscribe only to specific posts if you want to as well!

Well I think it’s definitely time for a little comic relief, so in recognition of the opening of Bill Maher’s Religulous, here he is with a very topical discussion of the economy, John McCain and Sarah Palin.

It is an essential part of American folklore that “anyone can be President of the United States”. This idea goes back to the establishment of the US constitution and its rejection of monarchy, along with the idea that only people in a position of privilege (usually by birthright) can lead the country. Of course, this is also a fundamental principle of democracy as a whole, but is it really true in practice? After all, we very nearly had a situation where the last four Presidents of the USA would have been Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton. The realities of the party political system mean that you have to have the right connections to have a real chance of becoming President of the USA, and you also need to have enough financial support to gain pre-selection as your party’s Presidential nominee. However, in light of the current Presidential election, perhaps an even more important question to ask is this: should just anyone be President of the United States?

Of course, I’m not questioning the fundamental democratic principle here. What I mean to ask is this: is the average person qualified to be President of the USA? Given the way many people vote (particularly on the conservative side), it would seem that many people consider the answer to this question to be an unqualified “yes”. Bush gained some points in the last Presidential election by asking voters the question “who would you like to have a beer with?”. And in this election, John McCain has chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate primarily on the basis of her “folksy appeal”. The conservative media have indulged in an orgy of reverse snobbery to support her, dismissing anyone who criticises her as a “stuck-up elitist”. They keep trying to play up the idea that she’s “one of us”, even taking it to the point of describing any criticism of her as an insult to average American people. The problem with this idea though is that she isn’t being judged as an average person—she is being judged as a potential President. Read the rest of this entry »

Well how about that? It seems the fundamentalist middle American churches have heard about me.

I’m sure that many of you who read my modelling web site‘s FAQ would’ve loved to have posted your comments on it. Well now you can, because I’ve re-posted it here! (You can see the link to it in the navigation bar at the top of every page.) I’ve only re-posted the actual FAQ though—I’ve left out the extensive sociopolitical commentary, because that’s what this blog is for! I will cover everything I discussed in my old FAQ in more detailed articles here—that way everything will be more focused.

Also, what did everyone think of the first Presidential debate? I was very disappointed that McCain accused Obama of being “naive” for wanting to engage in diplomacy wherever possible (including with Iran), and was even more disappointed to learn that the majority of Americans seem to agree with him! Surely if there’s anything we’ve learned from the screw-ups of the Bush administration, it’s that it is very naive not to engage in diplomacy, instead of shooting first and asking questions later?

The Photoshop mock-up is courtesy of OldiesLover.

In response to my last couple of posts—which implored Americans to vote for Barack Obama in the upcoming US Presidential election—those who disagree with me (both here and via email) often put forward arguments that basically amount to one thing: that I should have a better understanding of conservative “middle America” (of course, when they say “conservative” in this case, what they really mean is “Christian fundamentalist”). Indeed, they seem to think that everyone across the world should try to gain a better understanding of them. Well for one thing, understanding is a two way street: one of the biggest problems the outside world has with fundamentalist middle America is their apparent unwillingness to try and understand the rest of the world, and the effect of US foreign policy on it. Besides, they seem to be confusing understanding with agreement—just because we don’t agree with them, doesn’t mean we don’t understand them. Indeed, I suspect the majority of people understand fundamentalist middle America quite well, as they are—let’s face it—so simple.

They believe in the complete, literal word of the Bible, and that those who don’t are “evil”, or at least “misguided”. Hence they always vote Republican, because only Republicans are willing to accept the literal “truth” of the Bible. They also think America is the greatest country in the world, and that everybody else thinks (or at least should think) the same way. This leads them to think that the US has a God given right to impose its values on the rest of the world, and that anybody who disagrees with this must be “anti-American”. There is no room for anyone to criticise any aspect of US foreign policy, because the US can do no wrong, as it is on a mission from God. In short, they have a very simplistic, black and white, good versus evil, “you’re either with us or against us” kind of attitude to the world. Yet the real world simply does not work this way, and this not only creates problems for people outside of middle America, but ironically—indeed, especially—also for middle America itself. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, of course, marks the seventh anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US. Coming as it does in the midst of an American Presidential campaign, I thought it might be a good idea to reflect on whether Americans have learned the lessons of these attacks, specifically with regards to their vote in the upcoming US election.

So what did September 11 teach us? Fundamentally that—even when your military superiority is so enormous that you are the world’s only remaining super power—no one is impervious to terrorism. Indeed, terrorism has actually come about as a means of attacking and (literally) terrorising an opponent who is too powerful to attack militarily. This in turn obviously means that military force alone is totally insufficient for dealing with terrorism—and as we can’t just deal with it militarily, we clearly have to find another, more effective way to deal with it if we really want to put an end to it. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, well, well. John McCain may be the most progressive Republican Presidential candidate we’ve had for a very long time, but at the end of the day, he’s still a Republican. That means he has to tow the party line, which in turn means—very concerningly—that he has to pander to the religious right.

Hence his selection of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running mate. She must seem like a dream come true for McCain: a woman to try and grab the Hillary vote, and an ultra-conservative, fundamentalist Christian to please the religious right. If there’s any disaffected Hillary voters reading this though, please be aware that her sex is probably about the only thing she has in common with Clinton. Like all good conservative Christians, she is anti-choice—Palin will do nothing to advance the rights of women in the US (if anything, she may even set them back). And even more worryingly, she is also a staunch creationist, who advocates the teaching of creationism alongside (although I’m sure she really wants it to actually be instead of) evolution in science class. Read the rest of this entry »