At this point, looks like my prediction is way off. I still think Bush will win, but it seems that it will be as close as everyone predicted. We went to the Bluesboro bar in Murfreesboro tonight, where the local Republicans were assembled to watch the results. There was a wine-tasting and free food, which was great. Everyone wearing a Bush/Cheney sticker, us included when the guy came around who was passing them out. Three glasses of wine for five bucks and a bunch of free food. I kept looking around, trying to see the crowd as my kind of people, but it was an uphill struggle. Nice looking people, but when I looked into their eyes, it was clear to me that, by and large, these were people who had never gone off the rails, never been dirt-poor, never taken massive amounts of psychedelic drugs, never engaged in forbidden sexual practices. In short, never placed themselves on the other side of the invisible glass wall that separates one from straight society, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Now I really feel alienated. I no longer belong to the hippie, hate-America, delusional crowd, but I can tell I will never feel comfortable among Republican devotees either. Where are my people?

So, write it down. Kerry 49.5, Bush 48.5, Nader and all others 2.0.
Electoral College:

Kerry 299, including Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire

Bush 239, including Iowa, New Mexico

Turnout huge–about 120 million, 58-59 percent of eligible voters.

Bush 53, Kerry 46, nader 1

It has become a cliche that the right/left, liberal/conservative labels are becoming meaningless. Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit is constantly called a conservative even though he is pro-choice, pro gay marriage, anti-drug war, etc. There are conservatives for the war and against the war, for free trade and against free trade. When the liberal or conservative label is applied to someone, you don’t know anything more about where they stand on any particular issue than you did before.

I would suggest that a more useful distinction is between utopianism and messy, imperfect, corrupt compromise, better known as liberal (in the original sense of that word) democracy. Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Castro, L. Ron Hubbard, Karl Marx, Osama Bin Laden, Ralph Nader, and all who believe in the perfectability of humankind, are utopians. Where they fall on the political continuum is irrelevant. Thus we see the current phenomenon of “War is not the answer” leftists allying themselves with Kim Jong Il and Jew-hating, women-oppressing Islamic fascists.

The American founding fathers were visionaries, but they were not utopians. Principles such as the serparation of powers and the separation of church and state, and institutions like the electoral college are frank admissions that human nature is not perfectable. There will always be demogoguery, ambition, greed, lust, and all the seven deadly sins. There will always be disagreement about everything. And war will remain as the ultimate settler of disagreement when there is no other way. The reason that no democratic nation has ever, thus far, attacked another democratic nation, is that democracy is a method that acknowledges and accepts the inevitability of disagreement and provides mechanisms for imperfectly resolving it without violence. Citizens of democracies gradually evolve cultures where the expectation is that one will never have things just exactly as one wants them to be. Perfection can only be imposed, because there will always be someone who objects to the program.

The pitfall of anti-utopianism is the trap of believing that improvement is not possible. As the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki once said to his students, “You are all perfect just as you are, but you could use a little improvement.” Believers in human perfectability have traditionally been the leaders and shock troops of movements to extend civil rights to all races and to women. They have been in the forefront of the efforts to care for the sick and the elderly, to eliminate child labor, to clean up the environment, and a host of other worthy causes. Just because human nature is essentially unchangeable does not mean that therefore the status quo is always the best we can hope for. The trick is to work within the parameters of human nature, rather than against them. Forward, “progressive” evolution of human society always involves a mixture of idealism and appeals to baser human instincts.

My favorite president is Abraham Lincoln (apparently he was gay!). Lincoln was the great compromiser, and a master manipulator. He had no qualms about dealing, often quite underhandedly, with all kinds of racists, megalomaniacs, and utopian crusaders in order to reach his goal, which was not utopia but Union. And by union he meant the acceptance of the Constitution as the framework within which disagreement must be constrained. Slavery was reluctantly acceptable to him, but secession was not, because if the principle of secession were to prevail, then there would be no constitution, no democracy, no way to reconcile disagreement except might. And then the flickering beacon of a middle way that the constitution represents would fade back into war-lordism. Without Lincoln there would be no United States of America, and in all likelihood the present spread of democracy in the world would not be happening. Instead there’s a good chance we would all be citizens of the Third Reich, and there would be no Jews.

So I’m glad that there are Democrats and Republicans, and that they are both so wrong about so many things, and that we never seem to have a very good choice of candidates. I’m glad that Iraq is a mess. It’s a big improvement on what it was before. And I’m glad that no matter who wins the election, a bunch of people are going to be very unhappy about it.

This email from a Peace Corps volunteer in the Ukraine about the election taking place there lends some perspective to the U.S. election:

Actually, I feel I am witnessing a moment that will herald the beginning of a great future for this important country or its return to the sphere of Russia. Of course the American election is important, but I think this election could have a greater impact on the future of Europe and the world.

I know things are nasty in the USA but I have to think that it is mostly rhetoric. Here, I am afraid it is much worse.

Christopher Hitchens has now published two pieces, back to back, one in The Nation endorsing Bush, and one in Slate endorsing Kerry. What an apropos omen that this will indeed be as close an election as everyone is predicting. Except me. I still maintain that this will be a landslide for Bush. But if I am wrong, and it is close, and, God forbid, we have another election in which the winner of the popular vote loses in the electoral college, it is inevitable that there will be an outcry demanding a constitutional amendment to get rid of this supposedly ananchronistic institution. So, as a pre-emptive strike, I would like to direct the reader to a brief and excellent article in the LA Times defending said institution. Here is the concluding paragraph:

Yes, the electoral college is easy to poke fun at. Yes, it occasionally frustrates the will of the plurality or majority. But the founding fathers understood the dangers of direct democracy and struggled to create a system that reflected the will of the people while constraining the majority. The electoral college serves those ends well.

Living in the historic district of Murfreesboro is to be steeped in the civil war. A major battle was fought here. Many of the houses are pre-civil war (see photos here). You can almost see soldiers in union and confederate uniforms on the porches and in the streets. The guy who put in a couple of phone jacks for us asked if he could come back with his metal detector and look for stuff in our yard. So he came by with his son yesterday. They spent the day scanning and found a bunch of junk, but also a civil war bullet and a piece of lead off of a mortar round.

Jay Nordlinger is right on the mark today:

“In my view, this election is not a contest to determine how we’ll fight the War on Terror; it’s a contest to determine whether we will fight it at all. And the decision made by the Americans will be fateful.”

I’m currently reading William Safire’s civil war novel Freedom. The parallels between then and now are quite striking. Lincoln was hated by almost everyone, constantly castigated in the press, portrayed as an ignorant, imbecilic baboon. The war was a continuing disaster, much, much worse than Iraq. He had generals plotting against him and each other. How could anyone conclude that this was NOT the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Would you have voted for Kerry, oops, I mean ,McClellan?

It is very disappointing to read Andrew Sullivan these days. In order to take revenge on George Bush for the FMA, he has wholeheartedly joined the chorus of Bush-bashing on the post-war management in Iraq, and is passing it off as fearless objectivity. Invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein was a huge gamble. Leaving him in power would have been an even bigger gamble. The risk had to be taken, and it had to be taken now. Andrew agrees with that part, but is now horrified that the aftermath is not all neat and tidy and predictable.

It was impossible to predict all of the post-war scenarios that have unfolded. Could we have known in advance that the Iraqi army would simply fold and disappear rather than fight? No. Could we have known in advance that Al Sadr would appear on the scene and attempt to lead a Shia uprising? No. Could we have known in advance that Al Qaeda and Iranian terrorists would pour across the borders to prevent democracy in Iraq? Yes, but that’s a good thing. It’s a draw play, to use a football analogy. Should we have immediately smashed the terrorist occupation of Fallujah? I don’t know, and neither does Andrew, but there is certainly evidence that the restrained approach that is being taken is the right one. Did we send enough troops to do the job? I have no idea and neither does Andrew. That question has many variables, such as, how many troops need to be held in reserve for other contingencies in the world, and other strategic and tactical, military and political considerations that are beyond my meager knowledge and understanding, and Andrew’s as well.

One thing that was undoubtedly predictable is that things would be very messy in Iraq post-invasion, that the transition to democracy would be fraught with unforeseen and unforeseeable difficulties. How this will all play out is anybody’s guess at this point. Discussing, questioning, and criticizing what is going on in Iraq is a good thing to do. Hyperbolically assuming the worst is not. This is war. This is the Middle East. It is inevitable that there will be plenty of grist for the mill of those who wish to undermine the effort there. When I read Sullivan these days, I can’t help but conclude, to mix metaphors, that he has a personal axe to grind.

Here’s the thread of a three-way email discussion between R.J. Smith and Harcamone, with me popping in occasionally. It’s long, but worth reading, a very real, down and dirty talk about the whole ball of wax. Warning: There are some bad words, and frank sexual references.

R.J. Smith:

Agnostic, Gay, and in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment

I see on this site, as on so many others, that folks are not willing or able to make moral judgments concerning sex. Gay Marriage, at its core, involves giving tacit approval to anal intercourse among men. Now, to be blunt, I like sticking my cock in another man’s ass and getting off, very much so, but although I may be confused (for whatever reason, environmental or hereditary) about just which orifice my cock goes in, I’m not confused about the fact that I am indeed confused. I don’t think you have to be religious to conclude that the proper pairing is between a man and a woman, not a man and another man. It’s just not rocket science.

Now, gay marriage proponents may bring up many of the benefits of it to themselves concerning everything from parental rights to inheritance to health insurance, yada yada yada. But in point of fact, very few of them have children, very few of them need health insurance from their partners, etc. But most of them would be engaging in anal sex. So the real salient feature of gay marriage, and civil unions, would be the implied acceptance in law of anal intercourse. (There are far and away more gay men then gay women, so I’m not even going to bother mentioning that small subset.) Sticking a cock in another man’s ass is simply not healthy sexual conduct, especially for the bottom. It tears the hell out of the tissue linings, and is the reason why hiv is so prevalent among gay men. There are no inherent benefits to society from anal intercourse that I can discern.

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