By Sam Parry
February 3, 2004
The U.S. news media may have trouble looking beyond the trivia of politics – from John Kerry’s wrinkles to Howard Dean’s arm-waving – but American voters seem tired of those distractions. Indeed, many now see the stakes in November as monumental: a choice between a world that cooperates on environmental, economic and security challenges versus one that promises endless war, deepening economic disparity and neglect of environmental dangers like global warming.
From the intensity of voter interest in the early Democratic presidential race, it appears “the Democratic base” as well as many political independents sense that what’s at stake may be nothing short of the future of the American democratic experiment and a healthy planet, possibly a last chance to avert catastrophe.
To these voters, Election 2004 is shaping up as a real-life Lord of the Rings’s “battle for middle earth.” Disparate groups – anti-war activists, “deficit hawks,” civil libertarians, union members, environmentalists and other traditional grassroots supporters of the Democratic Party – are trying to unite for one last, desperate battle against a political Sauron, represented by George W. Bush and a Republican administration that even Bush’s first Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill has concluded is detached from reality and a threat to the future.
From the beginning of the campaign, the “Democratic base” has been sending messages to the party leadership that stress the urgency of the moment.
(snip)
Like much else, this sense of urgency has been mischaracterized by the mainstream media and conservative pundits as an irrational hatred of Bush. Instead, the reaction of the Democratic base reflects a far more rational sense of foreboding. Bush and the neo-conservative ideologues who surround him appear to be putting in place a radically different kind of political system than what Americans have known, one that supplants facts and reasoned debate with bogus information and ideological rants, backed by punishments for those who dissent or simply disagree.
much more...
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/020304.htmlJust a little reminder of what this is all about.