It is often that we make the case for being against our opponents, and as a society, a people and a world that has largely defined ourselves based on opposition, it makes sense to say that there are those that are on our side and that there are those against us, and knowing where the dividing line is drawn, ought certainly to determine our alliances.
Either you are for me or against me, that is the ultimate question of alliance, without mincing words or swords, the grandiose defining factor of any alliance, devotion or patriotism is if you are willing to fight for the cause, liberal or democrat, Christian or Muslim the right cause is usually always my cause.
This is all well and fine, throughout the centuries we have found that loyalty pays off handsomely, knights were knighted on account of their contributions and the Vikings were successful because they rewarded barbarism, and all successful presidents spend the first year in office anointing their political aficionados with the appropriate office. We shall then reward those that are loyal and we ought refuse those that are disloyal, we shall embark in campaigns against those that do not believe in our cause, those that are not willing to fight on our team or more clearly those that can not be trusted.
Team spirit, group effort, focus, devotion, dedication and loyalty cannot ever be seeing as other than paramount characteristics of any successful campaign and or adventure. To succeed in business, politics, even religion devotion to the cause is a fundamental factor, it is the fanatics like Jesus Christ, Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King, that define, direct and accomplish great deeds!
But what if to succeed we need to take our opponents side?
Is it possible for us to imagine that there might be a more successful adventure if we promote our opponents cause? Can we have such a large worldview that we might comprehend when it is truly in our interest to side with those that oppose us? Or must we be blind to the possibility that at times our enemy might in fact be on our side if only by virtue of the fact that they are human and that they have a family and thus suffer needs just like us.
Today we find ourselves in a most acrimonious situation; the political divide has become so poisoned by righteous partisanship that neither right nor left see compromise, as possible but rather complete demise of the other seems the only acceptable proposition.
In the end, logic would have us surmised, that either the left or the right will win a final victory but for now the two parties will cohabitate in the same political universe.
All this is so because the dichotomy that divides the left and the right has reached such absolute definition that they can now feel completely comfortable as members of their pertaining camps, without having to cross partially or wholly to the other side. The last democratic election embodied the absoluteness of the right-left divide when the outcome of the election had to be determined by a judge!
Even today as we are on the run up to the 2004 presidential election we find ourselves in another photo finish type race, where we will not know with any certainty which pundit or statistic is right until the bitter end.
This rather fascinating situation is not an argument for the diversity that is promoted by democracy but rather evidence that democracy has a natural tendency to simplify and simmer. The simplification comes in the fact that America only has a two party system, black or white if you will, a donkey or an elephant, the fact that right wing voters opt to stay in their camp and left wing voters opt to do the same is a sign that there isn’t a catalysts to alter their mutual reactionary positions. The voters do not see a formidable difference either to motivate them to shift or to challenge the prevailing view of their own party.
Simmering occurs when the ambivalence reaches such a heights that corporations, social entities, religious organizations and even foreign countries opt to support both sides rather than side with a particular party or candidate. Most revered organizations and corporations don’t take sides, they contribute to both parties, equally, thus canceling out their vote so as to benefit from any outcome.
Under such conditions it might be argued that political ambivalence is justified, and I would not be one to argue differently, the people have sufficient comprehension to know when their vote will not make a difference and so the fact that voters feel disenfranchised by all the political hubris which is in the end contrived merely to maintain a perfectly symmetrical left-right political hegemony, under such conditions voter apathy is wholly justified, and lack of participation is even an intelligent choice as any other choice is equally defunct.
However I am here to claim that this year we can make a substantial difference, but first we must acknowledge that there isn’t that much of a difference between parties, this in order to accept the contradicting and yet favorable opportunity that is now before us. Some people might be able to substantiate a difference between the Regan years and the Clinton years but they both made the country feel good. One could argue that their success could be attributed to both their lack of interference and good fortune. Either character can claim a good reading of the signs of the times, and a happy go lucky character that went forth and claimed success as warranted. I am sure history will give them more credit for all the changes that took place on their watch, while today those changes seem rather inevitable. China and Russia had to open up, their centralized localized economies were fantasies, both Regan and Clinton were people who, more than anything, didn’t stand in the way of change, and as a result they did not hinder our progress.
But now we stand on a completely different presidential platform, President Bush is actually an interventionist and a spender, not a very republican platform but he definitely sides with it, he wants to proselytize democracy throughout the world and he wants to prevent dangers before they ever occur to the nations potential enemies. He is also very defined in his objectives by the assumption that winning makes right, not might makes right, but winning. The assumption that America won the cold war makes Bush imagine that that makes it the policeman, teacher, and leader of the world. The natural nature of capitalism to secure wealth also assures president Bush that capitalism, creates jobs and economic well being, therefore it should be adopted by the Arabs, the Indians, the Chinese, the Russians, the Latin Americans and so on. The United States became a great country with capitalism and democracy the rest of the world can succeed just the same hence the current crusades.
Liberals have decided to fight against Bush because of his pronounced necessity to homogenize the rest of the world based on American values and ideals. But I think back to Nietzsche who often said that one should listen to ones enemies because enemies primarily attack our weaknesses.
Liberals aside many foreign peoples and nations are against the Bush doctrine, but again I go back to Nietzsche’s insightfulness on the matter, and perhaps also to the martial art of Judo which centers on the doctrine of using an opponents energy against them. From that I deduce that we liberals might have a problem realizing when our enemy has become his own worst enemy and thus our friend.
For foreigners such as China, France and Germany Bush is the ideal president because he is giving them a voice, he is allowing them to define themselves against his policies in a rather overt manner. Bush is not a diplomat, his is more of a bully type, and so anyone can run against him and look at least a moderate. This gives the EU and others a super advantage to take a position against NATO, against America institutions and values without having to go though the usual rigor of esoteric diplomatic machinations. And because President Bush doesn’t believe in alliances but rather prefers to go at it alone he is justifying isolationist ideals which can only benefit and fortify any acting block of nations. Even the fact that the president has turned Clinton’s budget surplus into a huge deficit is a benefit for foreigners as these places a check on American actions, that is, without prior consent of those nations, like China and Japan, that are lending America huge sums to maintain a semblance of economic stability. And you can thank Bush for the lower value of the dollar which gave the euro the monetary importance in badly needed.
In some ways even the Muslims and Arabs and all those that oppose American ideals have the best president they could have ever desire, president Bush by promoting either Christian or Secular values and preempted preventive Force is acting as a unifying, though repelling, power to those that oppose those values. President Bush is actually forming a coalition of peoples and nations that now may have a greater and clearer definition of their mutual interest and causes; as owed to the greater antagonism these ideologues are plugged-in and turned on through American actions.
Based on that information, and making the gross assumption that liberals are more interested in an international cause, a cause that serves the world community and not just America, which one would plot as a cause that levels the playing field of geopolitics, where there really are groups of interests that intertwined and endear themselves to bipartisan policies and actions; then Bush is the president for these times. He alone is making obvious the need to contain and manage American world power, he is also humbling Americans, by showing his aggressiveness and amply demonstrating that American interest are paramount to all others. In a sense Bush is forcing America to mature by exposing how worldly naive it has been, and by overtly alerting the world, that obviously America is not always the enlightened power or the benevolent maximum.
Liberals should and ought to unite their vote for Bush, the world and America will best be served by a Bush presidency as he exposes the fallacies of American benevolence and amply demonstrates how blind self interest can be. In a sense, like it or not when America won the cold war it reached the climax of its own power, and had to flounder around until it found its own Gorbachev, that will liberate it from its grandiose fantasy of manifest destiny. Bush is Americas Gorbachev.
Bush as president will create a necessity, as Gorby once did for Russia, for all Americans to learn to get along with the rest of the world. Liberals unite - vote for Bush!
RC
