As I woke up this morning...
the morning after Election Day
11/03/04

The previously "selected President" Bush is now "duly elected President" Bush. It is virtually certain now that he has won both a majority of the electoral votes needed, and unlike four years ago, the popular vote as well.

Sad, sad, very sad... but true!

I recall a speech from Bill Moyers at the Inequality Matters Forum, New York University, June 3, 2004. He concluded by saying:

"What we need is a mass movement of people like you. Get mad, yes -- there's plenty to be mad about. Then get organized and get busy. This is the fight of our lives."

In essence, that is what a great many of us have been saying all along. We are sick and tired of U.S. Foreign Policy. While, in my opinion, the U.S. domestic policy has been disastrous as well, in essence we have stuck to our global outlook. It is true however that those two perspectives are not disconnected: to continue to reward the very rich, American foreign policy needs to ruthlessly pursue its aims of world domination and global exploitation. Should the focus for change then turn inward to our grave domestic inequalities or continue to spotlight the worst of the Empire (not strictly American) 's orchestrated horror in Haiti, in Iraq, in Sudan, in Palestine and elsewhere?

For the majority of us who will care to read this message, the temptation is strong to simply continue to denounce U.S. Foreign Policy (and clearly, we must). However, let's be frank, the 2004 U.S. elections have clearly proven that the majority of Americans could not care less what the rest of the world thinks about them and are not moved by the injustices, of a massive human scale, occurring in Haiti, in Iraq, in Palestine, and elsewhere. I have come to the regrettable conclusion that while a great many Americans care and are moved, the majority however do not care and are unmoved. We have witnessed perhaps in the U.S. a fatal blow to idealism, just as we have witnessed its death in Haiti. True, the corpses are still rolling in their graves, but as we wake up today, November 3 2004, the depressing reality in both countries may well be summarized in Sweet Micky's lyrics: "I don't care. I don't give a damn" (or whichever four-letter word he may have used).

It always seems to come down to "What's in it for me?", "A Fistful of Dollars" or tax cuts, "For a few Dollars more", in a never-ending replay of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". So, we too will have to address those issues more adequately. We will have to make people see that what they don't want to know about will come back to haunt them. We will have to demonstrate that the tree that falls in the forest, unbeknownst to them, has indeed fallen and will never provide to them or their children the shade that they will seek one day.

American people will one day understand that the history of the world did not begin on September 11, 2001. They were many other "September 11" in years fore, when American bombs and guns killed thousands more than the number of theirs who regretfully lost their lives at the World Trade Center in Manhattan and at the Pentagon, in Washington DC. The blood of that fateful day's victims was red, but red too is the color of the blood of tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens killed by U.S. military might, red too is also the color of the blood of U.S. soldiers and international civilian workers that has been shed and will continue to be shed in the service of a bloodthirsty empire. Sooner or later, in Iraq as previously in Vietnam, the majority of Americans will come to realize that the price of U.S. foreign policy, of its crass inhumanity is simply too great to bear. But how many thousands more will die before we stop prostituting our conscience for a few dollars more?

Is idealism dead? Why are we then still rolling in our graves? May an army of zombies rise to defeat once and for all the victorious, selfish, and unthinking forces of George W. Bush, that is "the greater than half of U.S. Americans" to which we do not belong.

Guy S. Antoine
Windows on Haiti
Social Commentary