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About The North Coast times-eagle. (Wheeler, Oregon) 1971-2007 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 1, 2004)
PAGE 2 4 MORE YEARS OF W? INTERVIEWS BY MICHAEL McCUSKER RICHARD JOHNSON "Here in America, land of the free, anyone can grow up and be President. It’s one of the risks we live with. ” -JACK DENNON The question: Will George Bush be elected later this year, and if so, what may be the consequences? — is, I think, a powerful, thought provoking question, one we would all do well to contemplate. Important questions challenge the mind to deliberate in our deepest conscience, with all the resource we can muster, and have us come to a place of personal resolve, true insight, and action when needed. To my mind there is no question that if this sitting President is elected later this year, the lower aspects of our collective nature will most certainly continue to dominate the body politic, and take us further down roads leading to our eventual collective demise, which it seems to me we are now headlong into. In my opinion, the only thing more important than replacing this President is to address all aspects of how he got there in the first place. Those aspects (largely unknown but knowable when one digs) are at the core of our real trouble. 2004 is Leap Year and Presidential Election Year. The real candidates of this election, more than ever before in U.S. history, are Money versus Votes. There is hardly any subtlety about it — and so far George W. Bush has already won the Money primary. North Coast residents were asked two questions by this newspaper: -D o you think George Bush will win election this year? (Most interviewees rejected the term "re-elected"} -W hat do you think will be the consequences if Bush wins the election? DAN RING If the mainstream media hadn’t been bought and brainwashed, the odds of seeing four more years of George W. Bush would be remote. This also depends on the general public tiring of artificially induced patriotism generated by the power elite. Though white collar people are starting to see they are under attack by means of exporting their jobs, as has already happened to the blue collar ranks, the timing may be too late for the two classes to band together for a stronger voting block. 9/11 is all about us — not the Bush administration. Our genuine patriotism and outrage has been stolen and turned back on us as a weapon. As usual, the power elite is thriving at the expense of common people — us. LEE MILLER If the election were held today, I think George Bush would win. A lot of Americans prefer to be misled and deceived rather than deal with facts. It is easier to ignore the unconstitut ional acts performed by the regime (for which the unelected executive ought to be impeached).The masses have exchanged civil rights for a sense of false security. If elected (legitimately this time, perhaps) we can expect the accountability clause of the Constitution to continue to be violated by Congresspeople, military adjutants and weapons contractors. Untried high-tech weapons will continue to be deployed without cost controls. Soldiers will continue to bleed and die in undeclared ('preemptive') wars. Contractors will become rich beyond the dreams of avarice at the expense of the taxpayer. Congresspeople will consolidate power within their districts because of defense contracts. Military officers will demand more high-tech programs. This triad, the very people who swear to protect the Constitution, will be the very domestic enemies the oath describes. In a time of asymmetric warfare we need human assets. We need people who are part anthropologist, understand local economies and are expert in close-in fighting. With this type of soldier we could intercept terrorist cells at a much more elegant level, before they can even be deployed. We do not need a new jet fighter/bomber to fight this kind of war. The problem is that human attributes are not a high- priced ticket, therefore not likely to appeal to the Congressional- military/industrial complex. It is a moral dilemma, all the more scary because it seems beyond control. I hope something serious does not happen before November that would prompt Bush to declare martial law and •••.■■ suspend elections. BRANDON MASSEY Could that canting nypocrite actually be re-elected? That’s if you believe he got elected the first time. If he gets in again he’d have nothing to lose. The rest of us will get a government controlled by fanatics and crooks. ERIC HELLBERG A lot of this country is so afraid of change that it’s very possible George Bush will be re-elected. It's scary to look at the person in office and think, “Maybe the guy who had an affair with his intern wasn't so bad.” If he is able to keep his position, I just hope he goes through his speeches to make sure he can pronounce all the words correctly. RON CODDINGTON JOHN WARD LARRY Z/AK . , ,8 The intelligence of the American electorate can be determined by looking south to California and the recent election of its governor. I’m not sure if the electorate is dumbing down or if its attention span is getting shorter. Or are we so well off we just don’t give a damn? The higher part of my mind says George Bush will not be ’elected’, whether that makes any difference. The lower part of my mind (or fear) says it may well happen that he remains in office. Is this the swing of the pendulum from the 1960s? The ‘right’ seems to be trying to swing it so far that it will take another forty years to swing it back. JOANNE HALVERSON KARL NORDQUIST I have no idea if Bush will win or lose the election. I don't think it makes any difference. The course is already set. It’s all big money and computerized voting. I think with all the people who normally don’t vote who are registering this year that it’s a message saying we no longer want a President with a hypocritical religious agenda. Unfortu nately, with the massive financial backing of special (corporate) interests behind Mr. Bush, it will be an uphill battle. So many people get their information from a biased mainstream media that it’s easy to instill fear and pound a patriotic (nationalistic) drum and paint his opposition as somehow UnAmerican. If George Bush is re-elected and continues appointing people to positions of power that have agendas contrary to the purpose of the offices they hold, America will become less democratic than ever before. I might start looking for a place with less oppression and more actual freedoms and liberties instead of rhetoric. DANTON THORNE This is another test to see how stupid the American electorate is. If they re-elect Bush w.e will know they are no smarter than they were last time. Four more years of war and looting. VALERIE LINDHOUT Fate has it that Mr Bush perfectly presents an irresist ible image to a great many people. He is able to speak his lines as though they are spontaneous and from the bottom of his heart. He is able to carry a (fake) turkey, pose in costume with Mission Accomplished, or in any other kind of PR backdrop soliciting funds and votes — not only without an iota (not one!) crumb of embarrassment, but instead with an air, a powerful aura yet, of extraordinary entitlement and confident accomplish ment. I think this is an astonishing gift and one that is truly amazing to behold I am convinced he believes himself to be a benevolent ruler dispensing rightness to the world, especially chosen by God for the purpose. This is a tremendously powerful and magnetic belief and image projection into the theater of the collective mind, viscerally irresistible to a large number of people who are drawn to it as surely as filings to a magnet. He could be returned to office. The country? There would still be no element in human nature in charge of working for the good of the whole. What a quaint and sappy notion! Instead, of course, the ugliness and spectacle of the accumulation of wealth upon wealth by the few will continue, as will the use and abuse and spread of depriva tion and extreme pain for the many — reflecting us unpleasantly accurately as the sadistic and masochistic lot we are. THE COMPLEAT PHOTOGRAPHER 475 14TH ST., ASTORIA & 303 S. HOLLADAY, SEASIDE 325-0759 736-3686 JIM HANSON I think, yes, Bush will be elected, followed by disaster. This won’t be the first time the American people have been persuaded to vote against their own best interests. The American people are politically quite naïve. With all the money the Bush people have and the control of communication, I don’t see how they can lose. This is without question the worst government the United States has ever had. It has taken directions the govern ment has never taken before. We've become the pariah on the planet. When the American media heralds Bush’s new space program, not once has there been mention of his destruction of the United Nations plan to demilitarize space. ANNA MYERS I think he will be elected, and I think he will be disaster because he has already corrupted the system. CYNDYLEE The Democrats could run Bonzo and still beat Bush. The polls are owned by megamedia, so don't believe what you read or watch on TV. If Bush does manage to usurp office illegally again, you can kiss-off the process of democracy as yet another fairy tale along with Santa Claus, God and vaginal orgasm. Good luck, suckers! BEN JEREMIAH Bush will be re-elected! Apathy will continue to run amuck, and I might move to Iceland. VAST RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY The American Enterprise Institute — a key VR-WC pillar — hosted a lecture in November by Governing Magazine Editor Alan Erhenhalt with the intriguing title “The Vast Right- Wing Conspiracy & How It Grew.” Ehrenhalt brought with him a disappointing message for the conspiracy: Despite current GOP dominance of electoral politics, the era of Republican ascendancy ushered in by the 1968 election is over According to Ehrernhalt, emergence of a “Republican megaphone” of media outlets and think tanks, and, indeed, the entire “elaborate and sophisticated conservative network," serves to mask the fact that the party has lost the popular vote in three straight Presidential elections and that “Republicans can’t claim hegemony until they win an election the old fash ioned way." Democrats, conversely, “have become a party of minorities and people who listen to NPR, but that's not far from a majority." The Democrats don’t have 2004 in the bag, either, but with trouble brewing in Iraq, Ehrenhalt warned conservatives against a growing arrogance he's detected in their ranks. To this the assembled conspirators replied with, well, arrogance. The right, it seems, has won the battle of ideas and will control the White House until hell freezes over Ehrenhalt’s rejoinder was to ask the crowd who among them thought George W Bush could have won the 2000 election had W. faced off against Bill Clinton rather than the inept Al Gore In a crowd of more than 100, five or six hands went up - T H E A M E R IC A N P R O S P E C T I
