"Four More Years" May Herald The End
of American Democracy As It Has Existed

By William Finucane

So, as 2004 nears its close, President George W. Bush has another four years ahead as president. How did that happen? And what does it mean for the future?

Pollsters of course asked people how they based their votes. Huge numbers said moral matters made the difference. Many were Evangelical religious people with strong feelings about moral issues. What they wanted more than anything from this election is respect. Yes, respect.

Evangelicals, sometimes aligned with Protestants, sometimes with Catholics and others, all with apparently sacred feelings toward their churches, went to the polls and cast more votes than they had in many years past, especially in the deep south, the states of the Old Confederacy.

George Bush offered them deep respect.

He is one of them.

Bush has, he declares, personally been touched by Christ.

Not metaphorically; he really feels he has Christ with him.

Offered to the massive group of religious faithful as a candidate, his attraction was understandable. Religious zeal has many adherents.

Sure, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry won the presidential debates. What would you expect from him, he is an intellectual. He can make any simple question an excuse to sound like a smart wordsmith. The wisdom or accuracy of his positions were easily lost in the smugness of Mr. Bush, who portrayed Kerry as a know-it-all with an attitude.

And that was what the Religious right sought. Forget all that fancy talk. Give us our answer and give it to us straight and simple; if you make it complex, you must be trying to fool us.

Ok, then, if that’s what they want, Bush will gave it to them in spades: war needs winning, gay marriage is perversion, abortion is murder.

Bush did not say precisely that, but it was close enough to get the clear, plain, unvarnished facts of his viewpoint communicated. So he got across to the Religious vote.

Now he intends to show just how much he respects them.

There will be Supreme Judicial Court appointees, and many more to lower courts, that will paint a conservative history upon the nation for years, maybe decades into the future. Social Security will be a huge debate, with the Religious Right smack in the middle. Simplifying the tax code will be another massive fight. And the Religious Right will be out there swinging.

Of course the reinforced Republican House of Representatives and Senate will have their say. If they decide to keep excluding Democrats from committee debate and present finished bills to the floor of either chamber, the nation will not become closer. It will grow sharply farther apart. That can happen quickly.

Watch the U.S. House to see how this scenario unfolds through the loss of Democratic voices in any legislative debate. The new order will show up in the House most prominently. Democrats still have enough seats to put on a filibuster in the Senate, although the increasingly reactionary Bill Frist, the surgeon turned politician who is the GOP Majority Leader in the Senate, has a new plan; Mr. Frist wants to do away with filibusters. The long-winded speech device was okay when the Republicans needed it in years past, sometimes to fight civil rights legislation, etc., but now it may be used to stop or at least delay the GOP's march to the right, so it is now a problem that needs to be resolved. Mr. Frist has a simple plan; change the Senate rules and do away with filibusters.

Ironically, when they were in the minority, Republicans could sit on committees and speak; the Democrats didn’t try to disenfranchise them and the Americans who voted for them. The Republicans would often lose the overall argument. But the key thing was that there was an argument in the first place, and often the GOP viewpoint was at least partially encompassed in the final legislative product in a compromise fashion.

Democracy demands that.

But Republicans no longer believe that is the case.

This truly endangers the country.

It is, right now, a bitterly divided nation, and the GOP clearly has no intention of mending fences; the Republicans seem bent on making American government a one-party political process.

In the South, and in some of the middle and western states, the GOP has developed a majority of people who seem to have wanted it simple, wanted it clear, wanted the war won, wanted protection from terrorists and want all their answers to arrive in that manner – decided beforehand by unwavering truth. Such people can look to the same sureness in government as they do in church. Life fits. All things work together.

That’s what the GOP is now calling the so-called middle, although it may actually just be the Deep South – the states of the Old Confederacy - where such criteria has become a political absolute.

On the two coasts, and spread out everywhere in large numbers except perhaps in the deepest south, are Democrats, who over the past few decades have muddled up everything that should be so simple. They have complex theories and ideas and sometimes what appears like European viewpoints, plus they even seem to have some sympathy for average Muslims. They have convoluted reasons for supporting gay marriage and abortion. They are unlikely to do any better than the Republicans are at stopping terrorists, but they will fight, and fight without political subterfuge or a desire to turn terrorism into a reason for creeping totalitarianism at home.

But those positive attributes are cast aside by the current GOP. What is worse, according to the GOP, is that the Democrats and middle-of-the-road voters on the coasts look down their noses at the "conservative" people in the middle of the country. That feeling has been pressing the middle’s nose into the ground for years, the GOP pundits declare in their never-ending attempt to divide and conquer Americans by making them suspect each others motives.

This is justification, the right-wing Republicans assert. Now that they have the power as a majority, liberals and their middle-of-the-road supporters can choke on it if they want, since they are out of power and will have to do what the so-called conservatives say; if that means safety at the expense of liberty, so be it. These radical Republicans forget Benjamin Franklin’s far-seeing axiom; i.e., those who would forego liberty for safety deserve neither, and that is what they will get.

But standing proud on the premise that safety trumps liberty is George W. Bush. A diminishment of individual liberties and freedoms suits Mr. Bush's world-view very well; he clearly believes that the exercise of power should not be questioned.

He is a Christian leading the war against infidels.

No quarter to the terrorists and enemies, he urges. He is astride a metaphorical stallion like El Cid in his fight against the Moors. But maybe it is not so metaphorical.

Mr. Bush is, in fact, a Christian waging war on Moors. And all the Red State majorities, all the Religious Right and other reactionary groups are clinging to his coat tails. He leads now, certainly not a liberal or even a middle-of-the-road politician, and of course he is not an intellectual man or even one with an ear trained to how Europe and Asia are perceiving the United States; he leads as a zealot with a fondness for the reactionary accumulation and use of power, especially secret and unquestioned authority.

The mandate is small, and it largely and most strongly emanates from the American South, the states of the former Confederacy, but unless it is vigorously challenged by Americans who are not afraid, either in their personal beliefs or their world view, Mr. Bush will clearly lead the country into a conundrum where the politics of absolutism will allow for little or no negotiation and the only solution will be increased warfare. 

This is the challenge facing all Americans who do not subscribe to the viewpoints of the religious zealots, who now are combining with the militaristic and authoritarian minded, and are supported by the timid and fearful sycophants who follow the belligerent in the hope of being protected at all costs. The great hope is that this collection of the belligerent, the hateful, the opportunistic and the cowardly only seem to represent the majority of Americans because the media is captivated by them. The great hope is that the actual majority of Americans will begin to express their collective will and turn this fear-driven, authoritarian minded segment of the populace aside.

If middle-of-the-road Americans can’t somehow join with liberal minded Americans and stand against this new and radicalized GOP, it seems clear that America will be permanently changed. It is time to speak out, in casual conversations and in any podium that becomes available. Public opinion can make the difference.