segunda-feira, novembro 01, 2004
Polls apart
An American election that reveals much about the outside world
The chiaroscuro caricatures of America drawn during a close and compelling election campaign suggest that the most pressing problem after the votes are cast will not be the litigious lawyers (are there any other kind?) but the lingering external preconceptions about the US that have hardly been given more colour and depth over the past few months. For the apparent sake of clarity, and to reinforce one’s own smug sense of moral superiority, Americans are, in general, portrayed as religious rednecks who somehow balance crass consumerism with a fundamentalist spirituality that is only or a tree or two better than rock worship. For all the wealth of a country supposedly in thrall to mass materialism, dialectical materialism is yet to be sold on hypermarket shelves and God still mans the checkout.
That the world outside is destined to be disappointed by John Kerry, if he were to win, is far more certain than the outcome of the election itself. Not because Mr Kerry is incompetent, but because he is not what Europeans want him to be. And for all the mocking of George W. Bush, a second term would at least be informed by a recognition that some mistakes were made and economic principles violated. The serious external problem for both candidates is the single-axis sensibility that leads countries to define themselves as being "not America".
After the end of the Second World War, national identity in the West was, in part, plotted against two axes, the Soviet and the American, but the former has disappeared and the latter is almost viscerally rejected. The change was obvious during the Clinton presidency, but he charmed all comers, while a language-mangling President Bush has struggled to play outside Peoria. Mr Kerry may appear presidential in that he has a face fit for Mount Rushmore, but instead of displaying the winning wit of the crafty diplomat, he turns the English sentence into a never-ending delight for fetishists of subordinate clauses.
There are serious international issues at stake in the election, foremost among them Iraq. President Bush has not cut and run, as his critics suggested was inevitable six months ago, though the immediate aftermath of the war was tragically mismanaged and there has not been decisiveness in dealing with areas such as Fallujah. Mr Kerry, too, is unlikely to cut and run, but does he have a longer-term commitment to rebuild Iraq? Without guarantees of security, there will be little investment, and without investment, the people of Iraq will hardly be able to fulfil their potential.
The Iraq issue again highlights the mismatch of US domestic reality and international expectation. Do those who have sincere concerns about Iraq genuinely want the US to withdraw immediately? Should the Iraqi people be left to stew in a cauldron spiced with absurdist nationalism, extremist Islam and go-for-broke gangsterism?
Unless there is more effort to comprehend the US, and presidential campaigns bring coverage but not necessarily enlightenment, the frustration outside will grow exponentially. And to presume that America is “polarised”, as much coverage suggests, and that one of those poles is firmly planted in the values of neo-socialist liberal rationalism, or however else the dominant ideology of Europe is defined, is to believe that the most telling difference between Athens, Greece, and Athens, Georgia, is topographical.
That the world outside is destined to be disappointed by John Kerry, if he were to win, is far more certain than the outcome of the election itself. Not because Mr Kerry is incompetent, but because he is not what Europeans want him to be. And for all the mocking of George W. Bush, a second term would at least be informed by a recognition that some mistakes were made and economic principles violated. The serious external problem for both candidates is the single-axis sensibility that leads countries to define themselves as being "not America".
After the end of the Second World War, national identity in the West was, in part, plotted against two axes, the Soviet and the American, but the former has disappeared and the latter is almost viscerally rejected. The change was obvious during the Clinton presidency, but he charmed all comers, while a language-mangling President Bush has struggled to play outside Peoria. Mr Kerry may appear presidential in that he has a face fit for Mount Rushmore, but instead of displaying the winning wit of the crafty diplomat, he turns the English sentence into a never-ending delight for fetishists of subordinate clauses.
There are serious international issues at stake in the election, foremost among them Iraq. President Bush has not cut and run, as his critics suggested was inevitable six months ago, though the immediate aftermath of the war was tragically mismanaged and there has not been decisiveness in dealing with areas such as Fallujah. Mr Kerry, too, is unlikely to cut and run, but does he have a longer-term commitment to rebuild Iraq? Without guarantees of security, there will be little investment, and without investment, the people of Iraq will hardly be able to fulfil their potential.
The Iraq issue again highlights the mismatch of US domestic reality and international expectation. Do those who have sincere concerns about Iraq genuinely want the US to withdraw immediately? Should the Iraqi people be left to stew in a cauldron spiced with absurdist nationalism, extremist Islam and go-for-broke gangsterism?
Unless there is more effort to comprehend the US, and presidential campaigns bring coverage but not necessarily enlightenment, the frustration outside will grow exponentially. And to presume that America is “polarised”, as much coverage suggests, and that one of those poles is firmly planted in the values of neo-socialist liberal rationalism, or however else the dominant ideology of Europe is defined, is to believe that the most telling difference between Athens, Greece, and Athens, Georgia, is topographical.
# posted by Rui Ferreira @ 6:03 da manhã 
