Volume 6 number 11: November 2004 (this article received 2nd place from the Alaska Press Club for Best Editorial Writing, small newspapers) Cheering Up the Left So the election is over, and the people have spoken. And what they said was “Duh…” Like just about everyone else I know who voted for the losers, I had to go through the phases of dealing with a death in the family—disbelief, anger, bargaining, grief. Though the mourning period will last for four more years, I have been talking myself into some measure of acceptance. First: had John Kerry won the presidency, he would have been blamed for the utter mess worsening daily in Iraq. The neocons and their claque would have been all over every strategy President Kerry tried, and every new suicide bombing or assassination there would be spun as the result of the Democrats not staying the wise course that President Bush had set. (Of course, nothing Bush had done before the Kerry inauguration would have contributed to the destruction of Iraq, not even the invasion itself.) This not-my-fault ploy is already well practiced—remember, Bush knows he’s not made any mistakes during his first four years, except maybe an imperfect appointment or two—and the American public has bought it. We the people would certainly buy it again. I think Kerry is a thoughtful, intelligent man who listens to knowledgeable advisors, but I suspect Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt combined couldn’t fix Iraq now. And as Iraq sinks into chaos, the liberal side of American politics would catch the blame. On those grounds alone, a Kerry victory could have been the last win for the left in a long, long time. Second: many of the things we worried about won’t really be as bad as we feared. Take the federal lack of support for embryonic stem cell research. Sure, the science might progress more swiftly if the U.S. government was pouring money into it, but it’s going great guns elsewhere. Bright young scientists who want to work in the field have been relocating to Britain, where carefully monitored and ethically sensitive research is well advanced, and the brain drain should continue even with California bonding itself to undertake state-supported stem cell research. It’s true that a bill presently in Congress would make it illegal for Americans to avail themselves of any treatment derived from work with embryonic stem cells (with pretty sincere penalties appended), but if we can contain our feelings of pity and horror, the court cases over that law should be pretty entertaining. Similarly, we loser-lovers worry about matters falling below Republican radar, such as air pollution and global warming. But as the Bushy policies continue, more factories will close, so fewer chimneys pour pollutants into America’s air and water. As the unrest in the Middle East keeps spiraling out of control, oil prices climb upward, and market forces will drive U.S. consumers toward more fuel-efficient vehicles, power generators, and furnaces. And of course with fewer decently paid jobs in this country, fewer people will be able to afford conspicuous oil consumption. Less hydrocarbon combustion, lessened contribution to global warming—see? Without meaning to, the Bushies’ policies are befriending the environment. True, this decline won’t help prevent some of the catastrophes coming as the earth heats up. But consider: even though the Arctic feels more effects of global warming, low-lying Florida will be the first place flooded by the rising waters, after it’s been battered by the more numerous hurricanes rolling off the warmer oceans. Justice, of a sort, may yet prevail. And as for Lisa Murkowski’s victory—well, we Alaskans want to be sure our trotters stay in the trough. And we have a long history of supporting the originally unethical (“Don’t look at how I got my job, look at what I’ve done in the job”—very akin to “Don’t pay any attention to how I got my money, look at what I’ve done with it,” an attitude we have supported in many a retired madam or purportedly reformed horse thief). So the left’s small comfort here is that we’ve truly maintained our state’s historic precedents. Tradition isn’t uniquely the property of the conservatives after all. | ||
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