Bush wins by one and a half million votes

[fpb]

The first thing to be said is that, given the degree of hatred among the losing party - easily gauged in the entries of my fellow LJ-ers - there is certain to be at least one major attempt on President Bush's life in the next four years. America is a country stuffed with guns - not least thanks to the efforts of this president. If he is killed by one of the automatic weapons his inaction has let back on the market, there will be a grim element of retribution.

As I said a month ago, this election was a choice not only between evils, but between absolute evils: the corrupt aristocracy of the Bush camp against the hypocrisy and blasphemy of the Kerry lot. Neither victory would have done America good, and in fact the country can now look forward to four more years of disastrously spendthrift, socially unjust, starry-eyed incompetence. The Patriot Act will be slowly whittled down by court challenges, since Bush neither can not really wants to destroy the power of the legal estate in American society (no politician will ever do that; too many of them are qualified lawyers themselves). Some others of the worst displays of ignorant arrogance on the part of this bunch of insular gits will probably suffer the same fate. But day-to-day mismanagement of the economy will continue, and lead to a real decline of American power in the world. Commitment to Iraq is likely to last for at least another couple of years (not that it would have been different if Kerry had won) and paralyze the American ability to effectively intervene elsewhere if a major crisis takes place. Some lunatics speak of invading Syria or - even madder - Iran; the truth is that if a war against Iran ever takes place, the Americans are certain to lose.

A positive and desirable outcome of this election may well be the final collapse of NATO and the rise of Europe as an independent world power. This is something for which I have been itching for twenty-five years. The relationship between a richer and more stable Europe, potentially a greater power, and a smaller, less prosperous, and less stable United States, has been a distorting and diseased feature of the world scene ever since the sixties. European political leadership has effectively taken refuge in domestic affairs under the protection of American military power, while the US overextended themselves offering military cover to countries that were more than able to afford their own. This has forced upon America a role of permanent world garrison that is quite outside its traditions and that has done a lot to poison its political life; while the rich and comfortable states of Western Europe made no effort to take a place in world affairs commensurate with their immense collective wealth and the multifariousness of their world interests. This has to change. The spendthrift policies of the Bush administration and the enduring weakness of American economy this will cause will weaken America to the point where it will have to make grim strategic choices.

Another outcome which I regard as positive and desirable, though nobody on my f-list will agree with me, is the resurrection of the Christian voice in America. Of the millions of new voters who rushed to the polls in this election, a large majority were evidently Christian; and this shows that, until this election, many ordinary Christians did not bother to vote in America because they felt excluded from the political process. In the 1999 elections, where about one American in two voted, Bush lost the popular vote by 150,000 units; in the 2003, where the proportion rose to more than three in five, he won by ten times that margin. Nothing could show more clearly that the vast majority of new electors were his supporters. And the kind of this support was clearly shown by the fact that the Republican candidates to House and Senate won more than the President, and that the anti-gay marriage propositions won by a larger margin than either. If this election were taken for what it really means, it should be understood as a decisive rejection of all the welter of loosely-connected heresies to which Americans misattribute the glorious name of Liberalism.

It will not, because the Christian vote has been hijacked by a party whose chief interest is not in morality or religion at all, or rather handed out free to them by their opponents. The Republicans will do the least they can against abortion, a few ineffective gestures to appease their electoral base, and will then turn with relief to the much more congenial task of destroying public finance. It is a damned shame. Christians voted Bush because they perceived that Kerry was against any values that could properly be understood as Christian; that is the simple fact. And I will add that Kerry would probably not have lost so many especially Catholic votes if he had not insisted on taking Holy Communion in public. No Catholic minds an agnostic acting like an agnostic; but we all mind disrespect to the Church and to the Host. Look, think of it what you like: think of it as an outrageous piece of superstition; think of it as an error to be extirpated; but, even if you hate it, try and understand what sort of thing we are. To us, the Eucharist is the most serious thing in the world, with no exception. It is the literal presence of God in the world. And you may think what you like about this belief, so long as you are clear on it that it is our belief, and that we take it seriously. Kerry should never have abused it. We would not have minded an agnostic taking agnostic positions, but we have to be revolted by the thought of the most obstinate supporter of abortion in the Senate presenting himself at the altar rails. The image of Candidate Kerry approaching the Body of God for electoral purposes may well have lost him the election: there is no telling how many hundreds of thousands of devout Catholics turned away from that picture in disgust.

Comments

[chthonya]

Personally, I'm wary of something being defined as 'the Christian vote', because all too often it's taken to denote a support for legislation that restricts an individual's choice in matters of personal morality, rather than addressing issues of public morality such as the way the injustices of the economic system and the way it encourages people to overwork (hence interfering with healthy family life).

I was mulling this over a lot today, after reading an account of a voter who found literature at the polling station detailing how it was a sin not to vote for Bush. I think it's great if Christians take their faith into the polling booth - and every other area of their lives - and I do think that Churches should lobby on issues on which they have a particular perspective (as should any other interest group). But I also think that they should stop short of endorsing one candidate or another. The 'Christian perspective' is hardly homogenous in application and suggesting otherwise smacks of moral blackmail.

I hadn't heard that about Kerry taking Communion. Has he been confirmed at some point, then?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I have no idea, but I for one took Communion before I was confirmed. It is standard in Italy at least.

And I find it rather stretches the notion of "Christian" vote when it is applied to someone who voted for abortion at the ninth month of pregnancy and who denies the Christian definition of human sexuality. Sorry, but there it is. I hope I have sufficiently explained that I do not like Bush any more than Kerry and that I regarded this election as - I quote myself - not only a choice of evils, but a choice of absolute evils.

At a moment like this, however, I warmly appreciate your thoughtful and courteous attitude. It is something that will be in rather short supply for a while, I suspect.

[chthonya]

I have no idea, but I for one took Communion before I was confirmed. It is standard in Italy at least.

Heh. Good point. Serves me right for posting late at night!


And I find it rather stretches the notion of "Christian" vote when it is applied to someone who voted for abortion at the ninth month of pregnancy and who denies the Christian definition of human sexuality.

Fair enough - but that doesn't take away from the fact that someone else might make their choice from a deeply-held Christian faith and come to the conclusion that Bush has also made some very non-Christian choices that would preclude that person from voting for him in good conscience. I'm not saying that person would be 'right' - I'd rather leave such judgements to God - but if they have honestly tried to make their choice from their Christian faith then I find it hard to see how they would not be considered part of the 'Christian vote'. Unless 'Christian' is defined as 'those who think like this' rather than 'those who try to follow Christ's teachings to the best of their ability'.

Hmmm. I suppose for Catholics one could define 'Christian' as 'those who follow the Church's teachings', but I don't think that would hold for Christian traditions which put prime emphasis on a direct personal relationship with God.

Anyhow, I'm not making a pro-Kerry argument here (nor seeking to imply that you like Bush), merely wishing to express my belief (and experience) that 'Christian' does not automatically equal 'right wing'. And that's more a response to media coverage than to what you said in your original post. I'm worried that left-wing Christians might become reluctant to express a strong faith perspective because they would automatically be tarred with a right-wing brush. It's part of my whole frustration with the attitude - so prevalent in the UK - that pro-freedom means pro-abortion and pro-meaningless-sex.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I suppose for Catholics one could define 'Christian' as 'those who follow the Church's teachings', but I don't think that would hold for Christian traditions which put prime emphasis on a direct personal relationship with God.
That is not, in my view, the difference. The essence of Catholicism is the surpassing importance of a correct relationship with God; in fact, once, discussing morality with a sweet and extremely upright Italian Communist I know, I surprised him by saying that he overvalued morality and justice, and that the whole point of the Christian religion is that if you get your relationship with God straight first, everything else will follow. That means that to have a proper understanding of God and of one's position with respect to Him means that everything else slips into place, according to a properly ordered scale of affections and obligation - Augustine's order of loves; and those will, of course, include an understanding of morality and justice, according to what this order of loves inevitably demands for them. To love God most is not to love anyone else less; it is pretty nearly the opposite.

The difference between Catholic (and Orthodox, Nestorian and Monophysite) tradition, on the one hand, and Protestant tradition on the other (in so far as the Protestants are otherwise orthodox - excluding, that is, Unitarians, Arians such as the Jehova's Witnesses, and non-Christian bodies such as the Mormons and the American Episcopalians) is not the centrality of the Trinity, but the sacramental nature of the Church. Protestant Churches are communities dedicated to prayer, which reject the very notion of sacrament and sacrificial priesthood - a notion common to all the more ancient Churches, however otherwise distant from each other. I think it is from this that arises the wholly different emphasis on obedience in the two areas; not that Protestant theory does not emphasize obedience, but that it is much more difficult to enforce it.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I'm not making a pro-Kerry argument here (nor seeking to imply that you like Bush), merely wishing to express my belief (and experience) that 'Christian' does not automatically equal 'right wing'... I'm worried that left-wing Christians might become reluctant to express a strong faith perspective because they would automatically be tarred with a right-wing brush. It's part of my whole frustration with the attitude - so prevalent in the UK - that pro-freedom means pro-abortion and pro-meaningless-sex.
Amen, sister. Amen.

[(Anonymous)]

In some parts of American, like the Deep South, people are taught as children that Catholics aren't really Christians. He might as well have been Jewish or Muslim, if these people were judging his fitness to lead based on his religious background.

[chthonya]

I've met people in the UK with that attitude as well - usually born-agains who feel that their first flush of enthusiasm counts for more than many years of lived Christian experience.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

My point was the specific fact of the shift of Catholic votes away from their ancient Democratic home. Evangelicals have traditionally been regarded as likely Republican supporters, while Catholics, following the urban Irish tradition of bosses and party machines, were always taken to be reliable Democrat election fodder. Part of the seismic shifts that have affected this election has been the effective liquidation of this tradition. The after-effect of the paedophile scandal has been the neutralization and silencing of numerous leading archdioceses - Milwaukee has seen its archbishop resign in disgrace, Boston is on the edge of bankruptcy and convulsed by clashes between laity and diocesan bureaucracy after the incoming Archbishop quickly squandered the initial benevolence; Chicago and Washington are nervous, and New York is coincidentally in the hands of a somewhat uncharismatic figure. Most significant is the situation in Los Angeles, where Cardinal Mahony - the most typical figure of an old-style Irish machine church politician one could possibly imagine - is almost literally a hunted fox, using every trick in the book to avoid being linked to major responsibilities in the paedophile scandal. Rumour has it that in the recent meeting of the Bishops in Denver, he was virtually isolated.

The connection of Irish-style machine politics within the Church and the paedophile scandal is too long to explain here, but it has led to a dramatic change in the attitude of the Church, especially of the laity. The importance of Chaput of Denver and Burke of St.Louis goes far beyond their rather secondary archdioceses: these men have risen in the estimate of the Church and the media because they are in tune with the feeling of the man-in-the-pew. The next few years are going to see a severe internal conflict in the American Catholic Church, as militant lay groups such as Roman Catholic Faithful try to eliminate or neutralize abortion supporters and other "liberals" especially in diocesan and university bureaucracies. I suppose this means one machine replacing another; already Roman Catholic Faithful and the like give disquieting signs of fanaticism and shallowness. But I fear it is inevitable.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

In some parts of American, like the Deep South, people are taught as children that Catholics aren't really Christians.

Ayup!

Much of why I despise and distrust Bush, aside from his warmongering policies, is that he's allied with Evangelical Protestants.

I can scarce believe that Bush is not an anti-Catholic down inside. And even if he's not, personally, his allies are and I expect he'd sacrifice our right to practise our faith in an instant if he found it convenient. The Catholic school system in America developed because the public schools were really Protestant schools, complete with the King James Bible and anti-Catholic indoctrination.

My da's from New Orleans, and came up in Mobile, Alabama, which at the time (post WWII) was about 50% Catholic. Mobile also had large Jewish and Greek Orthodox communities, and most Mobile Protestants were mainline Methodists and Presbyterians and Episcopalians.

But go north, into cracker country, and Catholics were in danger of their lives. When my da's high school football team went out into the country for games, there was need sometimes of police protection. Those people thought Catholics had horns and tails and cloven hooves.

Bush invited Ian Paisley to the White House. Bush's friends are folk who're nothing more than Ian Paisley clones with twangy drawls and white sheets in their closets instead of orange sashes. Folk who would happily use Catholic support in their takeover, then turn round and hunt us from our homes like Cromwell reborn.

The friend of my enemy is _not_ my friend. Kerry was only the friend of folk I don't agree with. That's why I voted for him. I wish there had been a viable alternative (say a Catholic Worker candidate), but there wasn't.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You will pardon me for reminding you that that was fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, there was no such thing as Wade vs. Roe and the orgy of extremism that followed it (when I tell European supporters of abortion that the US allow partial-birth abortion, their eyes widen in disgust). Fifty years ago, the Deep South had not experienced the civil rights movement and the disguised second civil war that followed it, fought by the FBI by all fair and unfair means to destroy the KKK and its influence on society. Fifty years ago, there were no black Mayors of Atlanta or black Secretaries of State. If you want to know where the danger to the Church comes from now, who is the most active and by far the most powerful of her enemies, who really does want the destruction and silencing of the Church, and the exclusion of Catholics from public life, have a look at Canada - where the authorities are carefully avoiding any promise that church ministers will be excluded from the provisions of the coming gay-marriage laws - and at the Buttiglione affair. Paisley, outside Northern Ireland, is an ancient joke; the current administration's thinkers (in so far as it does any thinking) are Jews like Wolfowitz and Catholics like R.J.Neuhaus and Deal Hudson. You are fighting yesterday's battles: tomorrow's enemies are in charge in both the EU and Canada, and Kerry was one of them. And please remember that even supposing that A really is your hereditary enemy, that certainly does not mean that B is, by that alone, your friend! Personally, I have repeatedly stated that if I had been an American citizen, I would either not voted or found a third-party candidate to my liking. But as far as I am concerned, voting for Kerry was voting for my own disenfranchisement as a Catholic and for the perversion of the basic tenets of the Faith. Voting for Bush was voting for hypocrisy, irresponsibility, caste self-interest, corporate greed and criminality, mismanagement, and vanity. Some choice!