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The Triumph of Fear

November 9, 2004

Though Dead End Days has a political slant, it is not, by and large, a political film. Though I take pride in layering some level of social or cultural or political awareness into the various projects I’ve worked on, I’m always conscious not to digress into manifesto territory. The goal, I suppose, is to keep our stories relevant. I want these stories to mean something to people with whom I share a social or cultural or political experience, to reflect the experience of living in the world today. For better or worse. I’ve always likened my approach to writing as presenting one side of a debate that is, ultimately, left unresolved. I don’t like to preach, and I don’t like to pander, and I would never presume to have all the answers. It’s enough that I know I’m always right, there’s no need to gloat.

Since Dead End Days is not a political project, I’m wary of using the Production Journal as a soapbox to discuss political issues. Brad assured me that given his myriad tangents on issues of technology and graphic novels and aardvarks, I’m entitled to use this platform as I see fit. Despite this, I’m still wary. But then, there’s really no point in pretending that I haven’t been as consumed with the recent American election as most people in most countries. This election was a really big deal. The stakes were high. The conflicts clearly defined. You want high drama, you want characters, you want action – I give you the American electoral process. Six months, man. Six long months. And now it’s over, and it was so, so close.

I’m reluctant to offer my thoughts on the subject. Firstly because that seems to be what everyone is doing right now, and I take great pride in not doing whatever the majority of people are doing. Secondly because the idea of inciting a heated political debate makes me tired. I’m sure that most of us have long since overdosed on heated political debates over the last weeks and months, and not but a miniscule few have custom-molded high-tech transmission devices attached to our backs piping Karl Rove’s sweet, dulcet whisperings into our left inner-ear canal to calm our nerves.

The thing is, I really don’t have much thought to offer on any other topic at the moment, and I’m due for a purging, so if you’ll kindly indulge me…

I am a political person. I am an armchair activist. I stay informed. I write letters. I write essays. I think and read and write about politics a great deal. My parents are socialists. I am a socialist. I have watched the evolution of the Bush presidency and contemporary American political discourse with a great deal of curiosity and dismay. Now, so it seems, another four years of curiosity and dismay are to follow. I don’t want to presume to know what Mr. Bush et al have in store for term two, and I don’t much care to know. Medicare and Social Security will inevitably take a hit. I imagine the environment will not be well looked-after. Seems likely that the abstract concept of “terror” will continue to play a concrete role in the forefront of the national consciousness. Lots of people in Alberta are worried about beef, and relieved that the “isolationist” Kerry was defeated. I’m not. I’m worried about a civilian death toll in Iraq that’s now over six digits. I’m worried about more preemptive military incursions. I’m worried about gay people (being singled out, not getting married – anyone who gets married has sown the seeds of their own destruction and gets no pity from me). But whatever the cabal have in mind will invariably make me sad. Luckily I’m not one for the “one fell swoop/give it to me up front” school of bad-newsery. Draw it out. Lets suffer.

Now, as much as prior to November 3rd, people are talking election. People are talking Bush and mandate, Kerry and defeat. Being a socialist, and reading primarily leftist pinko commie news sources, Kerry’s failure to win is, not surprisingly, the dominant topic of discussion and debate. Did he fail to capture the public’s imagination? Were his policies too obtuse? Did he wait too long to address the smear campaigns directed against him? Was he a flip-flopper, or did he simply insist on giving nuanced answers to complicated questions? Should any politician ever give the public nuanced answers to complicated questions? Did Kerry fail to grasp the fundamental public precedent for presidents – that they be glowing, charismatic, movie-star, father-figure, gun-slinging, ceremonial figureheads, but not necessarily intelligent, thoughtful, pragmatic, and dignified. Clinton with his African-American midas touch. Ronald Regan with his twinkling eyes and warm smile. Bush with his confident swagger and moral “clarity”. I’ve read many times that the last thing the American people want their president to be is a politician. It’s the ugly, malformed peons in the Senate and Congress who take care of all the grunt work. The president can “hire smart”, he need not be so. Ultimately, so they say, it is not so much what a president does, but how he makes the people feel. Successful presidents make the population feel good. And who doesn’t want to feel good? Who doesn’t want to feel confident and optimistic? Who doesn’t want to be reassured by a good-looking, morally sound, movie-star leader that they are a great and righteous and dignified people, following the yellow brick road all the way to the promised land – an emerald city wrought with free markets, hard work, family values, fiscal wealth, and God’s gift of freedom?

I’ll admit I was never sold on Kerry. Though he certainly had his moments, he never quite shook that stiff, dry, stuffed-shirt aesthetic. He gave of the sterile fluorescent vibe of that hard-working guy at the office – nice, affable – but death to have a conversation with; doesn’t come out for weekend barbeques, the perennial designated driver at the Christmas party. You know what I mean? You want to like him more than you actually like him. You’re glad that you know him, but you don’t go out of your way to spend time with him. Not very exciting, when all is said and done.

This was my experience, anyway. I watched Kerry’s appearance on “The Daily Show” with curious detachment. He managed one decent anecdote about people approaching him in bathrooms, but otherwise regurgitated those same, bland, standard talking points, cracking and wilted with overuse. You could practically see the cue cards they’d been written on. The party platform, the grievances against the other guy, the problems we face, etcetera, etcetera. As important as all those points were (and are), he couldn’t make them seem interesting. That was a problem.

Problem enough not to elect the guy? Is the population of the most powerful nation on Earth, the greatest superpower the world has ever seen, really, truly that fickle?

No. They’re not. And the issue isn’t nearly as simple as one guy being likable and the other guy being boring.

I admit that I was surprised by the election results. Things were looking good for Kerry in those few final days. There was a buzz, there was much talk of “momentum”. Throw a couple of relatively minor Iraq-related scandals into the mix (say, a few hundred tons of explosives missing from a warehouse the understaffed invaders forgot to secure) and bad polling numbers for an incumbent, and mayhaps you have the makings of an upset. I was positive. I was optimistic. I read leftist news publications. They were positive. They were optimistic. Did we dupe ourselves? Yes. Yes we did. But I maintain that it was, for a brief time, looking good.

So what happened? That’s the big question. The big answer? I don’t know. Nobody knows. And now we’re awash in post-election analysis and rhetoric and theory. I suspect that once the dust has settled – if the dust does settle – the big picture will be no less confusing. Many people who are way smarter than I am – now consumed with decoding and interpreting the shit that just went down – will find themselves mighty perplexed by the dots they are expected to connect.

Unlike the 2000 election, there was no electoral college upset. Fifty-one percent of the 2004 popular vote went to Bush. This was a decisive victory. Not overwhelming (Clinton beat Dole by ten percent in 1996), but definitely decisive. Thank you Supreme Court, you can take the night off.

So what happened? Some Diebold-related voting machine shenanigans? Diebold, as you well know, is the company who developed the technology for, built and distributed the paper-trail-less voting machines used in several states, including Florida. Two years back, the CEO of Diebold was quoted as saying he “promise(d) to deliver the state of Ohio to Bush” in 2004. Both Florida (governed by Bush’s brother Jeb) and Ohio did go to Bush. There is no paper trail from these voting machines. And there were further questionable voting problems. Machines in predominantly African-American communities were in short supply – in some cases half the number were provided this year than last, despite the projected massive turnout. There were also isolated incidents of shredded voter applications, all of them for Democrats. And so on and so forth. Regardless, none of this, cumulatively, would likely tip the scales in Kerry’s favour.

So what happened? What about Rock the Vote? Vote for Change? Vote or Die? What about Springsteen, and Stipe, and Vedder? What about Eminem’s incendiary Mosh video? What about Moveon.org? What of an emancipated (by recent standards) Bill Clinton’s appearance at a Kerry rally in Arkansas? What happened to this projected massive youth turnout – a demographic that favours Kerry and liberal principles by a significant margin? What about Michael Moore and Farenheit 9/11, with a video/DVD release coinciding with the final stretch of the campaign?

What about the freakin’ momentum?

Well, momentum is a double-edged sword. We recently had a federal election up here in Canada (hard to believe we even bother anymore, but there’s tradition for you). The reigning Liberal party was reeling from a sponsorship scandal that saw buckets of money thrown at Quebec advertising firms who, well, didn’t actually do anything. And then we kept paying them not to do anything. The Conservative Party (not, mind you, the Progressive Conservatives, the Reform Party, or the Canadian Alliance), saw they had the advantage, ran a tight, aggressive campaign, and – though our elections last only a few weeks – looked like they had the inside track on the last lap. There was a buzz. There was “momentum”. What once seemed impossible – a Conservative-led minority government – not only seemed within reach, but a…well…conservative estimate.

But it was not to be. The Liberals once again ascended our meagre throne, and as shaky and imperilled as their minority government may now be, it could have been worse (and if you can look into Harper’s flinty, reptilian eyes and convince me otherwise, I’ll buy you a donut). Was it the spectre of the Conservative party’s supposed “momentum” that energized left-leaning voters and gave false comfort to right-leaning ones? Did this same fate befall Kerry? Did reports, maybe exaggerated reports, of the Democrats’ momentum cause the Republicans to rally in response?

Would momentum have mattered if the youth vote had materialized as so many celebrities were sure it would? Though there was a sharp increase in youth voter turnout (commonly regarded as the 18-25 year old demographic) to the tune of four-point-six million – not an insignificant increase – it was hardly the projected earth-shattering surge many fantasized about. But this is a recurring leftist fantasy, and has thus far never been realized. Maybe it never will. If P. Diddy and Eminem can’t incite a revolution, then maybe there’s no revolution to be incited.

One pundit’s analysis the flaccid youth turnout posited that the kids were too “drunk, stoned, and busy having sex” to bother to register to vote. Doubtless, there were some young people drinking, smoking pot, and/or – god forbid – fucking during the lead up to, and even on election night. (Frankly, I would have settled for any of the three rather than the seven hours I wasted watching CNN.) Doubtless, a good chunk of kids could give a flying fuck about the election, but it’s disingenuous to the nth degree to assume that young adults are abdicating their voting rights simply because of drugs and sex. Could it be, possibly, that they saw little difference between these candidates and their respective parties? Do they feel savvy and secure in the knowledge that there’s really little point in substituting one corporate suit for another? Do they take exception to leaders beholden to statistics, to polls, to public opinion, to their handlers, to their entourage, to pundits? Are they acutely aware of the systemic rot eating away at the core of democracy? Are they sick of it? Already?

In the end, despite it all, I’m stunned. The largest superpower in the history of the world has democratically (should that word be in quotation marks or not?) elected the most corrupt, deceitful, secretive, and unrepentant administration we’ve seen in a modern, industrialized society, and all because… Because why? Because of terrorists? Because of abortion? Because of gay marriage? Does it all boil down to, as Jon Stewart surmised on November 4th, that the majority of middle-Americans can’t stand the thought of “dudes kissing”? Is it bigotry? Is it fear? Is it fags? Is it that Bush is the perfect blend of John Wayne and granddad?

Here, now, we find ourselves huddled in the aftershocks of 9/11, engaged in an infinite “war on terror” (an Orwellian war against a tactic, not a defined enemy), fighting a pre-emptive incursion – a Crusade – based entirely on false pretenses; justifications patched together from archaic, obsolete, cherry-picked “information” and spiked with the sobering tonic of mushroom clouds and impending doom, then sold, with polished gravitas, by the president and his staff before being repurposed by Fox News into palatable bite-sized nuggets saturated with fancy graphics and brazen orchestral movie-scores. Those fair and balanced conservative news “anchors” – and why won’t they say they’re conservative? – disseminating administration talking points wrapped up in the red, white and blue ribbons of jingoistic rhetoric, all candy-coated to resemble objective fact, with the other networks tripping over each other to follow suit; a surgically-enhanced, market-savvy media edifice not tethered to the myth of truth, integrity, and objectivity, but defining itself along partisan ideological lines. With insurgents and explosions and Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay and no Weapons of Mass Destruction, who reports and who decides?

What really throws me is that the people who voted Bush back into office clearly have the most to lose by his stewardship. Social Security, Medicare, an ever-widening chasm between the poor and wealthy via lopsided tax cuts, FCC and EPA gutting and deregulation, record level-deficits that, at this point, will take generations to pay off. And it is these people whose children are fighting and dying in Iraq. This, their righteous leader, who has not captured bin Laden, has ensured them is the right war at the right time for the right, or righteous, reasons. People for whom right-leaning ideology means smaller, less-intrusive, fiscally responsible government voting for a government bent on curtailing civil liberties, increasing bureaucracy, and incurring unheard of deficits, not to mention Constitutional Amendments to restrict private behaviour and reproductive rights. What could be more intrusive? Moreso, they see Bush and his ilk as safeguarding the tenets of the American Dream. The real American Dream: wealth. Though the sizable majority may be poor, it is their birthright that they – with luck, work, and the right attitude – will be rich someday, and when that day comes, they’ll have the right man in office to protect their interests. How else can the spoiled son of oil executives be considered a populist? A commoner, just like the rest of us. Uncle George. Trips on his words. Don’t speak English too good, but he knows what’s right and wrong. A good Christian boy. Everyone’s Pa. Listen to granddad, he knows what’s best. He’s got swagger. He’s got moral certitude. He’s a good guy. A movie star. We trust him. We love him. Our president. Again.

As lefties reel and the right-wing celebrates, Bush kicked things off in appropriately absurd fashion when he announced, during what was ostensibly a victory speech, in what we can only assume was meant to be a plea for unity, that he will “reach out to his supporters.” Should be easy to figure out who his supporters are. They all signed loyalty oaths. As for the rest of you, that sad, sad forty-eight percent…

In some alternate, parallel universe, there was no 9/11. Was Bush re-elected there?
As despicable and unproductive as every act of terrorism is, they don’t occur in a vacuum. There is a purpose, and that purpose is designed by process of logic, however warped that logic may be. They do not hate us because of freedom, they hate us because they feel they have legitimate grievances – grievances rooted in real problems, real issues – and feel or are led to believe that they have no means other than violence to induce change.

But I ask you, is flying planes into buildings, killing thousands of innocent people, any less evil than invoking that event, time and time and time again, to make people angry? To make people afraid? To scare a population into obedience, into unity, and, ultimately, political leverage? An event that devastating, burned into the retina of the mind’s eye, a luminous image, glowing with fire and fear, never allowed to fade. Isn’t that terrorism of a different sort? Terrorism of the mind? Terrorism of the soul? To stoke those embers when convenience calls? A terrifying portrait of a country under siege by forces on both sides of the fence, hung over the public mantle, a place of prestige, its priceless political capital on display for the elite few who can truly admire its beauty.

Catastrophic success indeed.

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