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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
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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
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