I'm always a day behind on my Daily Show watching, due to certain TiVo related issues not worth getting into here, but as such I just watched the interview with Madeline Albright from last night.
She's smart, I like her. She really fucked up on the whole Rwanda thing, but you know.. it was only genocide. Actually, she wanted to do something about Rwanda but was told it couldn't be done; that it wasn't politically possible. From what I understand she was one of the strongest dissenters. Still, in the end she caved, which sucks.
Anyway, now she's talking about now.
She brings up a very interesting point, one that I've heard floating around a bit lately -- that much of the world is waiting for November 2 to see just how crazy we really are.
Currently, many people in the western world are really pissed at us, but their anger and disgust is focused on our leaders and our government, not we, the people. They consider the Bush presidency to be illegitimate, which, you know, it is. He's a psycho, but a majority of us voted for the other guy and we are not blamed for his running around invading everything.
Additionally, we didn't really know him in 2000. He was a relative new arrival in politics, most people had never heard of him and he seemed all folksy and whatnot. And, say it with me, the world was a different place then, we didn't think he'd cause too much trouble. (More accurately, we didn't listen to the people who knew he would, but we can be somewhat forgiven for that too, given the above discussion.)
If we reelect him now, though, knowing what we know about him, and having lived through the last four years, we're going to lose all that benefit of the doubt, but quick. We will no longer be separate from our leaders, in fact we'll be worse for having applauded them for ruining the world. We will show to the world that we've really lost our damn minds, and I'm not sure what will happen then.
Certainly nothing good will come of it. Does anyone really imagine a big celebration if Bush wins? I mean other than in secret chambers and lairs or in the yards of the dangerously misguided. What's to celebrate? War? Poverty? The ruining of the environment? Giant leaps backward in science and education?
So, at the risk of being repetitive (more so), can we please not reelect him? We'll never be able to show our faces in civilized society again.
