November the Second

The US Preisdential election, Nov 2004

Palden Jenkins

I get a little weary of all the angsting about voting in USA and about who should have been elected president. This, to me, represents a core issue pervading the American problem - the placing of so much weight on the constitution and the office of the president. In fact, this or that president is a 'shades of grey' issue, concealing a much bigger and more central question, which is the American system. And, wider than this, capitalism, materialism, the 'Western' system, the 'developed world' and a few other things thrown in. Presidential elections have a certain importance, but they're not the main issue.

So people go on about the irregularities of the voting system in Ohio, or about why this or that should or should not have happened. While this has some importance, it conceals the real issue, which is that all the bickering, checks-and-balances, false representation and so many other much-discussed things disguise a big issue: the American system is dominated by counter-democratic and counter-constitutional background forces, and the attention invested in democracy and the constitution deludes everyone into disregarding the real state of play.

The media do a lot to reinforce this, persuading us that the American presidential election is overridingly important while, at the same time, downplaying such things as the importance of the changes of government currently taking place in the EU and in China, less dramatic and more arcane though they are. To the extent that changes of government are important, these two are probably more important for the world's future than the American election. Why? Because the immediate future is getting worked out more in China and Europe, the world's two biggest political blocs, than in USA. But even this is missing the point, because Europe and China aren't superpowers - they're just big players in the international community. The international community as a whole is the arena in which the future is being worked out.

America is unfortunately encumbered with the burden of having been the dominant superpower in the most recent chapter of world history, from WW2 to 2000. This historic burden is understandable, and Britain suffered such a fate during what Hobsbawm called the 'short twentieth century' between 1914 and 1989 - it spent those years dealing with the sad consequences of its own decline. Until USA has shed the past to a sufficient degree - which could take some decades - it won't be a primary determinant of the future. Though it might try.

Similarly, while Britain was residually influential in the development of innovations such as the computer in the 1940s-50s, it didn't have what it took to develop computers to the degree that America did. Now we are faced with a similar situation, though the details have changed. The countries that are developing the new technologies and solutions of the 21st Century are such places as China (solar panels and fuel cells) and India (dirt-cheap handheld computers built for illiterate villagers). The places that are likely to be the social-cultural leaders in coming decades are likely to be parts of Africa and Latin America, the Middle East and Central and SE Asia. That is, these are the places that weren't the beneficiaries of the last round. They are now driven by a need to get their acts together, and they will. Just watch: it's happening before our eyes, right now, noted in the small print at the bottom of page five.

Here are two interesting footnotes to this observation. In India, Coca Cola, an American flagship commodity, has been doing badly. However, Indian farmers have now discovered that Coca Cola serves well as a good, available and cheap pesticide to spray on crops such as cotton. Bingo! This is innovation par excellence, which a $100m research programme in USA would never have discovered. It happens also to help resolve another question, concerning the role of pesticide use and the control it appeared to be giving to big corporations like Monsanto. For Indian farmers this constitutes a major on-the-ground solution, cheap and easy. The second footnote is the dread al Qaeda and the simple fact that, to have an effect in the world terror wars, it needs simply to spend $100,000 to have a big effect - the salary of one of many senior American generals. Meanwhile, USA, to counteract al Qaeda, has to spend billions of dollars, by borrowing, with no promise of success. This is a simple question of efficiency and effect. The Empire Strikes Back, but not with the outcomes it seeks to create.

So, I believe, the American presidential election is of less consequence than is made out, and has less importance than is invested in it by media- and groupthink-victims. This is the majority of TV-watching, web-crawling people, who are more busy sifting through noise and looking in their rear-view mirrors than at the road ahead. The US election is important, but not the biggest question. The big question in America is the system, the undeclared power-arrangements and the prevailing social atmosphere in USA, not the marginally-important election of the president. Sure, had Bush not been in power, Iraq would probably not have been invaded and the Patriot Act might not have been enacted, but the relentless logic of American domestic politics and global outreach would nevertheless have proceeded in some similar form. The difference between Bush and Kerry is marginal.

Even so, America's world influence is waning, and the world is no longer dancing to American tunes - it's playing world music instead, pumped out by people from Gambia, Guatemala and Guangdong. Americans err when they subscribe to the belief that they hold the geopolitical initiative. If truth be known, many of USA's current innovations are seeded by foreign immigrants and then developed by, outsourced to or most effectively taken up by other countries. The lead and initiative USA possessed in the 1940s-1970s is contracting, and has passed not to one emerging, replacement superpower such as China but, in a multiplicity of ways and channels, to the 'international community'. Such as it now stands.

In this regard, Europe is unlikely to inherit the mantle of world leader, even though it has an important future role as a stabilising global influence. But the difference with Europe is that, having let go of more of its past glory than America, and having been at its peak of power and initiative further back in the nineteenth century, Europe is now more receptive to the future than America is. It is thinking a little clearer and carrying less baggage. The formation and expansion of the European Union has given Europe, as a collectivity of nations, new energy in its mature years.

But though it is now economically the world's largest trading bloc, it too is still rather backward-looking, and is not fully and directly in touch with the primary needs surreptitiously defining the twenty-first century agenda. Europe is shielded from these by its affluence and comfort, even though, intellectually, it is aware of them and acting on them to an extent. These primary needs concern humanitarian, ecological, economic and social justice issues we're all well aware of, yet they largely impact most heavily on people in the 'developing' world. It is the world's disadvantaged who are most motivated to create change - they have everything to gain and little to lose. This change is not about who stands where in the world's league-table of nations: it concerns the rules and the nature of the game itself.

It is here that the future is being forged - in such places as Iraq, Nigeria, India, Bolivia, Palestine and Malaysia. These are likely to be world-leading places by the 2050s or 2070s. This is not as improbable as it looks. Take, for example, the 'economic miracles' of Japan and Germany in the 1970s, prompted by the sheer hardships experienced by Japanese and Germans in the 1940s-50s. In other words, necessity is the mother of innovation and reform. Meanwhile, comfort softly suppresses change. For many people, the next meal is the big question, generating far more energy than the question of which restaurant to go to next. In the comfortable nations, we want change as long as little changes. This must change.

Progressive Americans indeed do have cause for concern about the state of their country, but my intuition is that they're perhaps missing two big factors. First comes the shift of initiative and energy that has come with globalisation and hardship, as mentioned above, in the so-called 'developing' world. Second comes the big internally unresolved issue many Americans are encountering, yet seem not to see clearly. That is, the issues of the American Civil War of the 1860s are still unresolved and are resurgent again in the early 2000s. America risks either a repeat civil war (a terrible possibility), or perhaps a division into perhaps three nations (East, West and South - less terrible unless it involves using all those weapons America possesses), or it faces an enormous and as yet improbable internal reconciliation and transformation of enormous and deep-digging proportions. Even so, such reconciliation will not put it back on top: it will merely save America from a much worse fate, and give it a new and different future.

As far as the risk of civil war goes, while southern neocons play an undoubted defining role in provoking it, the uncompromising responses to neo-conservatism from progressive Americans also raise the stakes, making domestic conflict a higher likelihood. It always takes two to tango, and conflict-resolution always involves both parties stepping back from the brink, establishing both peace and mutual justice. This risk of civil war is not just the responsibility of Texans, but of all Americans, by dint of the polarisation to which most Americans currently subscribe. Even if, after Bush's re-election, things go quieter, the matter will remain unresolved, heating up for another round sometime in future, and provoked most likely by the angst generated by withdrawal symptoms from former greatness and plenty.

American domestic reconciliation is a deeply emotional issue, not just a debate over politics, parties and presidents. America's next phase is likely to be deeply inward-turning, and the Iraq war and other American unilateral actions represent a dangerous evasion of the central issue: the soul and future of America itself, as part of the world family of nations. On the surface this struggle is enacted through high court appointments, presidential elections, money markets, Beltway politics and geopolitical shenanigans, but it's far deeper, and it goes back to the time of the Founding Fathers and the definitions of freedom laid down at that time. These freedoms have led to gun law, ecological devastation, overconsumption, social division, overblown legalism, corporatism and a state of quasi-democracy and social control where, in truth, USA has suffered a coup d'etat of enormous proportions. And most people now know it. The constitution has become something of a manipulable charade. Most countries are ruled by small cliques, but the extent to which USA has taken its concealed, background power-arrangements is staggering. This is disturbingly well-shrouded in a collective belief in democracy, consumer freedom and getting ever richer.

One of America's key cultural problems is that it does things to excess, and then spends a lot of time reacting to such excess or pretending it hasn't happened. Thus we foreigners hear moralistic Christian conservatism being vociferously imposed in a country which is also the world's leader in pornography, homicide, wealth disparity and other forms of social devastation. It sees a country associated with freedom which outstrips dictatorships in the size of its prison populations and abuses of citizen rights. It sees a country anxious to export democracy and justice, while itself fundamentally failing in these very objectives. Not that other countries are free of such problems, but the scale of self-delusion is at its greatest in USA. When the Ayatollah Khomeini referred to USA as the Great Satan, he referred to the Muslim concept of Satan as a great deluder, not to the Christian idea of Satan as an evil one. Khomeini was more charitable and accurate than Americans understood him to be.

So, the presidential election in USA was important, but not as important as many people believe. Tony Blair, in a fit of wry oratory, summed it up in the UK parliament on November 2nd. "I would like to congratulate the newly elected president... (pause) Karzai of Afghanistan - and I'll talk about the other one later!". Everyone laughed but, consciously or not, he made a point concerning the relative importance of things.

Looking at the state of things today, I'm often reminded of the South African Xhosa chant which goes "Listen more closely to things than to people...". In other words, don't just get caught up in what the media say, and what busy minds rave about on Internet. Much of this is noise, obscuring the real signals and patterns that are emerging. Step back, read between the lines and look behind the appearances at what's really happening. There you will find that the world is not waiting for president Bush or America's next move: it's getting on with its own reality. Also, it happens to constitute the global majority and the worldwide centre-of-gravity. The US election is a blip in history that won't be remembered long. There are other things happening.

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