From The Morgue

*stares*

There have been all kinds of other things going on in my life and in the world.
But all I can think about is the US election.
The very first polls close at midnight UK time, and the big swing state polls don’t close until three or four a.m. I am still considering staying up all night.
I think I’ll just get up real early. That’s the ticket.
I’m not nervous about the winner. I’m confident it’s Kerry.
I’m nervous about the popular vote. I’m nervous about how much traction the Republican legal dogs will have to force the country through an unpleasant pit-fight in the aftermath. I’m nervous that somehow or other Bush and his sickening puppeteers will find a way to walk away with their heads held high.
I don’t just want them to lose – I want them and their entire mad project to be humiliated.
Cross fingers.

Be warned: this is quite long and it is basically me thinking out loud about political stuff.
I just watched a Channel 4 documentary, “The Dirty Race For The White House”. Peter Oborne concluded that democracy in the US has gone horribly awry.
His structure was drawn from the Gettysburg address, where Lincoln spoke of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Instead of government of the people, the US Presidency is determined by small voting blocs that live in the right swing state. Appeasing these small groups is of crucial importance, so government serves their interests disproportionately.

Instead of government by the people, the election is corrupted by nominally independent organizations that do the dirty campaigning so the candidates don’t have to.

Instead of government for the people, the election has little connection to the plight of the poor, particularly minority groups.

It wasn’t a well-made argument, but it was compelling nonetheless for many individual moments of insight. I was uncomfortable, however, with the angle Oborne took on the 527 groups – independent organisations with a political message. The Republican example was the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group attacking Kerry’s military credentials. I never looked too hard into the Swift Boat Vets or their claims, because sources I find reliable have exposed the group as a dishonest political tool spreading misinformation. Like Oborne, I see this group as a sign of how far democracy has gone astray in the US.

Then, however, Oborne turned his attention to MoveOn. MoveOn is a large network promoting grassroots activism for the general left-wing cause. It was founded during the Clinton Presidency to provide a response to the incessant, desperate hounding of President Clinton over allegations of sexual transgression. (Hence the name: “can we please move on to more important things now?”) In 2004, they operate transparently with millions of online members working together to support the Democratic party.

Oborne’s case against MoveOn was: they receive a lot of funding from the Democrat elite; and they produce sophisticated, manipulative attack ads so Kerry and Edwards can stay aloof from the dirty work of politics.

I think it’s somewhat disingenuous of Oborne to paint MoveOn and Swift Boat vets for truth as equivalent examples. To my eyes, the groups are very different.

Thinking further, though, I started wondering whether the differences are really so large after all. Which led in turn to a bigger question: how can we evaluate the different voices in an electoral campaign?

Clearly, context is important. When the political parties speak, we hear their message with full context. They are electioneering; they are trying to say their guy is great, the other guy is terrible, and they have a certain amount of leeway to do it. Neither side will ever do justice to their opponent; when we listen to these messages, we keep this in mind.

(Not that we are as good as evaluating this stuff as we think we are, by and large; but I’ll leave that aside for now and assume we’re all good rational logical folk.)

Other groups that add their messages to the noise of an election come without that clear context. How much will they be bending the truth? What will they be omitting in their message? If they’re outright lying, who will challenge them, and how do we judge the challenger?

I approve of the principle of anyone with something to say being able to stand up and say it. Obvious imbalances will result, of course. If access to media is governed by wealth (and it is), and those who have wealth tend to support conservative political strands (and they do), then the independent voices in any election will be biased towards the conservative side.

(Kiwi readers will happily call to mind all the occasions the Business Roundtable has pushed media campaigns against left-wing initiatives such as proportional representation and promoting such shibboleths as the ‘brain drain’ as a way of undermining the left-wing government.)

These imbalances are inevitable given the way access to media is channelled, but they are worth putting up with for the greater principle.

The real problem in the US is that any ‘independent’ voice will be seized on for its utility to partisan politics. True independence isn’t really possible for any group with a political stance – if an organisation supports a political position, the party of that position will find a way to deliver support back to them.

Republicans recognise the value the Swift Vets and support them; Democrats recognise the value of MoveOn and support it. Does this hurt democracy? Where is the line? And are the SwiftVets and MoveOn two points on the same continuum, or are they different entities entirely?

I feel they are different categories, as much as categorisation is ever possible in the real world: one is legitimate and the other is illegitimate.

But I can’t come up with the basis of the categorisation. I’ve been sitting here for half an hour trying. It just isn’t coming. Everything I try, I can quickly falsify. Even the notion of “truth” as a barometer is tricky – is the outright dishonesty of the Swift Boat Vets really so different from the lies-of-omission used by both Democrats and Republicans? Is it really so far from the emotions-not-facts school of political campaigning? Is there such a difference between old men saying Kerry’s a liar and sinister music playing over judiciously-edited clips of Dick Cheney being scary?

Perhaps the true test of legitimacy for any independent group with a political message is simply this: the extent to which citizens can inform themselves about the group. If this is the case – and I’m starting to think it is – then that lays yet another burden on the voting citizen. The urgency of educating people in comprehending the media seems more and more essential every moment.

Consider it. The test of legitimacy for an independent group is its transparency.

And the test of legitimacy for a political party is the extent to which it empowers its citizens to serve as its watchmen.

Satirical US newsmagazine ‘The Onion’ has a long history of, along with the straight out absurd stuff and the point-out-human-foibles stuff, making sobering political points at the right time. The issue they produced following 9/11 was astonishing – without compromising their commitment to their principles and style, they honoured the event.
In the buildup to the new election, with the big issue the mobilisation of voters, it has done it again.
Republicans Urge Minorities To Get Out And Vote On Nov. 3rd
I read it and I almost cried.

Let me put my political assessment reputation on the line.
Kerry will win. It won’t be a landslide, but it will be a clearcut win with about 5 percentage points separating him from Bush in the popular vote (not that the popular vote decides the election, of course).
All polls are flawed. We all know this. They are never going to give a perfect picture. And I am confident that, in this situation, in this particular race, with this future at stake, the picture they are giving is disguising the lead the Democrats have.
The polls show a lot of undecideds. The majority of undecideds will go for Kerry.
One big reason people are undecided in this, the single most important election in the world in decades, is that the media keeps telling them that Bush is their man. But the man himself doesn’t convince. They can’t figure out what to listen to – the voices on the air, or the voice in their head. In the end, they’ll listen to the voice in their head.
The polls show a solid one percent of Nader voters. At least a quarter, probably half, of these will vote for Kerry.
For a change, this isn’t an election between two parties which are alike in all but fine details, and which exaggerate their difference to give an illusion of “right” vs “left”. This is an election between democracy and not-democracy.
There is too much at stake. At the moment of truth in the voting booth, they’ll hold their nose and recognise that.
Polls always under-represent young voters. The vast majority of young voters are going to vote for Kerry.
Eminem, the biggest name in music that no-one can call a sell-out, has released his song Mosh. Mosh is a ‘get out the vote’ song. The difference is, it comes from someone credible. This matters. The video is worth seeing and thinking about – it speaks to collective action, it ties the election to a range of injustices both current and historical, it is determinedly macho to the point of militancy.
And, of course, Howard Stern, the biggest name in US radio, with a big devoted audience among yer average frat boy yahoos, has been relentlessly hounding Bush for months. As some dude on the web muses, “could this go down in history as the election decided by eminem and Howard Stern?
Polls always under-represent minority voters. The vast majority of minority voters are going to vote for Kerry.
Remember Fahrenheit 9/11? Every black voter in the US will remember it, and the message it delivered. The black communities of the US may, if they’re at all sensible, have issues with the Dems – but the GOP is the enemy, and they all know they’re in a war. The other minority communities are the same. Even Andrew frikkin’ Sullivan is going to tick for Kerry-Edwards, because his gay identity trumps his sickening sycophancy to the lies and fabrications of the Bush administration.
Young people and minority communities are going to turn up to vote in greater numbers than have been seen in decades.
These are the same people not turning up in polls. They will turn up and they will make it the day the Bush administration falls.
This is my prediction. Kerry will win. The win will be beyond the reach of the biggest shenanigans Bushco can pull. (And they’ll try anything – missing Florida ballots anyone?)
See if I’m wrong.

I am actually back in Scotland now. No longer in Ireland. And there’s loads to do, especially a big Halloween RPG thing that Steve, Brian and I are pulling together and that looks like it’ll be quite spooky indeed.
Apparently Cork is a flooded disaster area all of a sudden. Yike! It was sunny when we were there (mostly)!
Um, it’s late so I’m going to go to bed now.
————
BTW, I’m somewhat unnerved by the number of lefty columnists who are giving good odds that Osama will be arrested on Saturday. An October Surprise is one thing, but this – this stretches credulity too far. It requires belief not just in the unfettered mendaciousness of the Bush administration, but also a certain minimum level of competence of same. Competency? Doesn’t really fit with their track record, does it?

That is all.
Really.

The BBC tonight pulled off what looked like a rather cheesey stunt. ‘Flashmob: The Opera’ was a short contemporary opera, using famous opera toonz with nifty modern words to fit the story, performed live at a central London railway station (Paddington). The finale was the ‘flashmob’ part – they hoped a big ol’ chorus would turn up and sing along with the end bit.
And you know what? It was *great*.
The cameras roved around and the four main performers – the girl, the guy she’s just broken up with, the rascal who tries to seduce her, and the dude who advises the guy how to win back his girl – were astonishing, delivering the vocals and the acting while moving, sometimes at speed, through crowds of curious people, oblivious people, rushing-for-their-train people, trailed by cameras, distant from the orchestra (which was on site but away from where the main action took place). It was great fun, with great melodramatic emotion, despair and love and tearful choices and a loving reunion. The music was great, although it was kind of a ‘opera’s greatest hits party mix’.
But the crowd – the crowd just made it special.
People watched. They got engaged. They followed the action, or they stumbled through it looking startled. The guy in the sushi bar having his meal almost fell out of his chair when this girl sat next to him then started singing opera into a camera that was trained on her. Little kids, lots of teenagers, adults, senior citizens, it was startling how well it worked.
The theory behind flashmobs was that they would open people’s minds just for a moment, and change their perspective on the world. Usually, they didn’t achieve much more than a shrug and a snort.
This – corporate, big, clumsy, manipulative, a year after the flashmob fad was done and dusted – somehow felt more genuine than any of the true skool flashmobs that have been and gone.
There was wonder in the crowd, and there was joy in the railway station. small dreams bursting out all over the place.
Brilliant.

I’ve added another entry to my travel emails, this one describing our trip to the sinister and mysterious Derby Gaol.
Check it out at the bottom of the page here.
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I bring this up now because, this Thursday, Cal and I set off for three weeks in Ireland. While on the road in the Emerald Isle, morgueatlarge is gonna be getting a workout and this blog will likely lie fallow.
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“WHY? BECAUSE TODAY WAS NEW ZEALAND’S DAY, MAN! It was DESTINY, PURE AND SIMPLE!”
Full scan of letter here.
Background here.
If you don’t know who Dave Sim is, I’m not gonna explain it here. That’d take waaaaaay too long. Read wikipedia’s short short entry on Dave if you really wanna know.