One of the interesting things about watching the US elections from the sidelines of Canada is how out of touch the Canadian main stream media was with our neighbors. These are the pundits that are paid for their punditry and almost without exception they called it wrong, wrong, wrong. They had more apparent interest in intellectually disarming themselves then using their intellect to see what was before their nose.
Watching and reading the post-election coverage has been just as entertaining. All that angst and the best they can come up with is that the Bible belt came out in force and how stupid the average voting American is. The fact remains George Bush won his mandate because his message had broad appeal to the middle class. Teresa might have received a bigger tax rebate than Mr. & Mrs. America, but Mr. & Mrs. were happy to see to see the cheque come in the mail. Furthermore, Mr. Bush might not be the best steward of the economy but the attacks on 9/11 were not just solely attacks on human/physical targets. They were designed to be devastating to the American economy as well. The bounce back from the economic havoc that the 9/11 wrought has been is astonishing.
War is always heartbreaking and heart-wrenching, but again Mr. & Mrs. America are happy to have their forces go off in the world and fight bad guys rather than waiting for the bad guys to come to the neighborhood, and then, after the damage is done rounding up the usual suspects. And yes, Saddam was a really bad guy and I don’t care how long he was a best bud with Jacques Chirac – he was evil. If your choice of dinner partners is evil what does that make you? Nuanced?
Americans voted with full knowledge that the next President they elected had the power to change the make-up of the Supreme Court. On the whole, Americans choose to elect politicians on the stands they take and the laws they promise to make rather than letting unelected and unaccountable make law.
Americans in 11 states voted against gay marriage. That does not make them homophobic or gay bashers but what is it does say is that they are not ready to change the nature of their social fabric. The time may come when it won’t be an issue but before Canadians start feeling too smug and superior, polls have suggested that if gay marriage was left up to the voting Canadian public the time has not come here either. The difference is our social policy is now being determined by a small handful of justices and not the electorate.
In the post-election coverage there has been a demonization of the religious among us – explicitly Christian but the motif extends to all the religious among us. Why do secularist think that their intolerance for religious people should be a shared common value among reasonable people? Ironically, my experience has been that the religious are more tolerant than most of the secularist I than I have known or read lately. Maybe I need to get out more but the worse I have had a Christian say to me is that I don’t mend my ways I will go to hell. It may be true, and it may be annoying to have my spiritual shortcomings pointed out though it does not endanger my life in the here and now or my livelihood. Here’s the question of the day. Why is making decisions based on your religious values a bad thing? From all accounts that I have read, Jesus wasn’t a bad guy, so why is living in Jesusland such a bad thing? Is it the Jew thing again?
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