We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Despite that CNN keeps insisting the election was incredibly close, Bush now has exactly the cosy sofa of a mandate I have been predicting for months: good majority in the senate, four million more popular votes than his opponent, above litigation-level majorities in the electoral colleges, plus the endorsement of millions of people who do not usually vote at all, despite that nearly everyone expected increased turnout to be good for the Democrats.
The polls were, of course, wrong in a leftwards direction, as polls have been for years (see Natalie Solent), because the sound and fury of the media and liberal extremists does not make people change their minds, only encourages them to keep quiet about their allegiances so as to avoid having their tyres slashed.
But more important than all these things is the great battle against terrorism that has just been resoundingly won. Every Islamist from Arafat to Bin Laden wanted America to reject its president and vote for the relatively antiwar John Kerry. Anti-Americans everywhere were hoping that the U.S. people would either retreat in fear from the Middle East, or pretend that the “nuisance” did not exist. As the anti-Bush candidate, Kerry would have been the anti-American-values president, standing for ambivalence, appeasement and, in the eyes of Islamism, weakness.
It did not happen. Americans recognised the threat, and voted to continue fighting it. They stood by the Afghan and Iraqi people, waiting for hours in queues in the rain to register their support for George W. Bush and the moral imperative he has vowed to enact. The biggest voter turnout in American history has refused to be cowed by terrorism. And when terrorism fails to terrorise, it has lost.
Perhaps now, for the first time since 9/11, we can begin to hope that an end to this war may be within our distant sights. In any case, the world is safer now than it has been since Al Qaeda launched war on America a little over three years ago. And for that we can afford a few extra sighs of relief between our conservative/ anti-liberal victory toasts.
Dear Michael,
Although things are hectic at my end, as I am sure you can imagine, I wanted to take time out to thank you for your part in my success. Difficult times make for difficult decisions and in the final analysis, the buck stops on my desk. As a result I am not surprised that Rummie, Condi and I have taken flak over Iraq and in retrospect we might have done some things differently.
But thanks to you, many people became so polarized that in the end, millions decided that no matter what they thought of me, the chance to give you one in the eye was all that really mattered. I mean, that loathsome dissembling lard ass shtick of yours is just amazing!
So thanks, I couldn’t have done it without you! Oh, and when you see Noam next, tell him I will also be sending him a few ‘kees’ of that great jerky to thank him for what he did too.
You guys are the best!
Yours faithfully,
George W.
The following item was passed to us via our secret underground network of samizdatistas and has struck me as both so true and so humorous I simply must share it with you. It is purportedly written by George Carlin, a comedian whom I greatly admired in the seventies. It does indeed read like Carlin patter. If anyone has definitive information on the source, please let us know. George or not, I love it, so here it is.
YES, I’M A BAD AMERICAN
by George Carlin
I Am Your Worst Nightmare. I am a BAD American. I am George Carlin.
I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family, not some mid level governmental functionary, be it Democratic or Republican!
I think owning a gun doesn’t make you a killer; it makes you a smart American.
I think being a minority does not make you noble or victimized, and does not entitle you to anything.
I believe that if you are selling me a Big Mac, try to do it in English.
I think fireworks should be legal on the 4th of July.
I think that being a student doesn’t give you any more enlightenment than working at Blockbuster. In fact, if your parents are footing the bill to put your pansy self through 4 years plus of college, you haven’t begun to be enlightened.
I believe everyone has a right to pray to his or her God when and where they want to.
My heroes are John Wayne, Babe Ruth, Roy Rogers, and whoever cancelled Jerry Springer.
I don’t hate the rich. I don’t pity the poor.
I know wrestling is fake and I don’t waste my time arguing about it.
I’ve never owned a slave, or was a slave, I didn’t wander forty years In the desert after getting chased out of Egypt. I haven’t burned any witches or been persecuted by the Turks and neither have you! So, shut up already.
I want to know which church is it exactly where the Reverend Jesse Jackson practices, where he gets his money, and why he is always part of the problem and not the solution. Can I get an AMEN on that one?
I think the cops have every right to shoot your sorry tail if you’re running from them.
I also think they have the right to pull you over if you’re breaking the law, regardless of what color you are.
I think if you are too stupid to know how a ballot works, I don’t want you deciding who should be running the most powerful nation in the world for the next four years.
If this makes me a BAD American, then yes, I’m a BAD American.
If you are a BAD American too, please forward this to everyone you know.
We need our country back!
ED: The consensus so far is that this is not George Carlin’s work. I still like it though!
Glenn Reynolds has a good article in the Guardian about the election and expresses some interesting ideas about its lessons for the media.
Thanks to the internet, cable news channels and talk radio, media bias is easier to spot and easier for people to bypass. This not only changes views, but prevents the formation of a phoney consensus – what experts call “preference falsification” – resulting from widespread, and unified, media bias.
Those of you across the Atlantic may wish to take a lesson from this. As the BBC’s atrocious handling of the Gilligan affair – and, indeed, its war coverage generally – illustrates, media bias is hardly limited to the United States.
But what is with that photo? I would not have recognised that as Glenn but for the context in which it was displayed.
Over at the Daily Kos, things are are, how can I put it – deflated. I followed their coverage on the basis that the longer it took to post and the more shrill the content, the better things were going.
Robert Reich looking like he’d just developed piles on the air, whilst trying to pretend that everything was going according to plan provoked deeply uncharitable thoughts in me. I like watching BBC coverage on occasions like this. You can rely on Nanny BBC to dig out scores of ‘independent’ collectivists to first announce their confidence in victory before squirming in the face of reality.
Has anyone seen Michael Moore lately?
Well, that was painful. Although it must have been a whole lot more painful for those who wanted Kerry to win. First, the good news:
The least bad alternative won.
The Islamists were denied the moral and propaganda victory of a Kerry win (what did you think bin Laden’s last video was all about anyway?)
The victory appears to have been beyond the “margin of lawyer” (in Mark Steyn’s priceless phrase), although several states were close, and nothing exceeds the ability of a lawyer being paid by the hour to cook up a marginal claim.
The establishment media were made to look like fools, mostly because they acted like fools.
The odious and unspeakable Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle lost.
The Democrats, running (again) on a nanny state/class warfare platform, were driven a little further into the wilderness. Perhaps they will reach the point soon where a major restructuring can occur and I can start voting for mainstream Democrats.
The bad news:
Ohio is still contested, as Kerry hopes for salvation from that mother lode of fraudulent voting, the provisional ballot.
I was wrong about Wisconsin – I was sure Bush could flip it.
And my prediction? Pretty much on target. Bush won by a small margin, Kerry topped in the high ’40s, Bush lost one state that he carried in 2000 (New Hampshire), and I believe he picked up a few (New Mexico, for one).
Oddly enough, for someone who was up until all hours four years ago, I was out like a light at 9:30 last night, before anything had been decided. I have a tiny niggling qualm about the ability of the Dems to manufacture enough votes to flip Ohio, but the margin there is into the six figures, so this should be a wrap.
Unlike David I actually got some sleep. But this morning, I was woken by some loud bang-bang-bang pop music. But as the thuds thudded through my building and my brain, the thought gradually formed in the latter that there might now be a result in that… that… election… thing. Stagger into kitchen. On with TV.
Bush winning.
And Tony Blair losing. The Labour Party hates Bush, and hates hates hates that their leader has been cosying up to him these last three years. Another four years of Bush gazing out across the world, apparently not even knowing let alone caring that they hate him – well, it is just frightful. This could break Blair, by breaking the through-gritted-teeth support of his party for Blair’s vile vile policy of not hating Bush.
But ‘could’ is not ‘will’. Labour will suffer yes, but they will probably carry on suffering. Today as yesterday, the big questions in British party politics are: How long will Blair last? and: How will his successor conduct himself? For as long as Blair carries on the Conservatives are unelectable. If Blair’s successor gets how Blair has done this, then the crucifixion by opposition of the Conservatives will continue indefinitely, just as the crucifixion of Labour by the horror of having to share the planet with President George W. Bush will continue.
The ITV news is now saying that it is essential that Blair tells Bush that he must do what Kerry would have done. Retreat in his various wars, sign the Kyoto Treaty, blah blah blah. But we all know, and more to the point Bush and his cronies know, that you can only do well in a war if you show no sign of wanting to duck out of it. And America is not convinced about Kyoto. Dream on British media.
As for the USA, here is how it looks to me. The big story that I now see, for whatever that may be worth, is that Bush won despite a much increased turnout. When I went to bed, Kerry stroke British media optimism was based on the notion that all these New Voters who were even then queueing in their millions to actually vote in a Presidential Election for the very first time, would obviously help Kerry. Only settled old farts support Bush. Young people, bright eyed and (if you will part the expression) bushy tailed, will obviously back Kerry, on account of him being obviously nicer, better, wiser, better at talking, not so Christian, etc. etc. Ditto all those gypsies, tramps and thieves who last time around were too befuddled and too unregistered to vote. All these folks were now voting. Democrats, all of them. Got to be. Kerry camp happy. Bush camp ‘subdued’.
What actually happened was that the New Voters turned out in strength, yet Bush still won. Had Bush won with the kind of low and falling turnout that happened last time around, with the Settled Old Farts again voting for Bush but the New Voters again not actually voting, this result would have had a far less definite feel to it. Democrat fundamentalists would have spent another four years saying that they had won really, and that next time around this blip would be corrected.
But this was more than a blip. Either those New Voters are not as pro-Democrat as they were supposed to be, or a whole bunch of Settled Old Farts who had not voted last time around because they were too busy trying to work out how to set their new digital video whatchamacallit machines and forgot, managed to totter out to the polls this time around and vote for George W. Bush. Either way, that is a Bush win, and more of a win than last time.
Apparently Bush got more votes than anyone has ever got before in one of these things.
Amidst all the kerfuffle over the US elections, I urge you to spare a charitable thought for all those American writers, actors, singers, poets, puppeteers, directors and musicians whose right to dissent will continue to be crushed in George Bush’s Amerikkka – a country where it is dangerous to speak out.
Mind you, they can always decamp to tolerant, liberal Europe where they will be free to express themselves:
An outspoken Dutch film-maker was shot and stabbed to death yesterday by a Dutch-Moroccan man in apparent reprisal for his campaign against Islam, sending shock waves through a country that exalts freedom of speech.
Theo van Gogh, 47, a provocateur and enfant terrible of Dutch cinema, was ambushed by a bearded man in Arab clothing as he cycled through the heart of Amsterdam.
The Dutch media immediately linked the attack to the director’s latest film, Submission, which highlights the repression of women in some Islamic cultures.
Well, after a fashion.
To deny one’s own basic nature is an act of futility I find. Being a political animal, I have been up for the entire night watching the results of the US Presidential Election unfold on the BBC whose coverage, I must admit, had been admirably comprehensive.
As I type, it is now just past 7.00am in the UK and it appears (and I use that word advisedly) that George Bush has been returned to the Whitehouse.
Anything I have to say in response to this will be drowned out by the weeks, and possibly months, of wailing, whining and teeth-gnashing that is going to be emanating from this side of the Atlantic but I do think that it might interest Bush-supporters in the USA to know that every single BBC reporter looks like they have just swallowed a wasp.
The night is young and the election is totally in the air. One of the more notable things I see thus far is how far behind BBC is running. At least fifteen minutes I would say. I have read things on the net like the Maine vote split long before the Beeb mentioned it.
There is also the question of the exit polling looking a bit shaky. The fact that so many Eastern states are still up in the air is quite unusual. One wonders if the Amish vote turn out might put Pennsylvania in the Bush column despite the solid Democratic machine controlled areas of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. That would truly be an interesting political event.
We will just have to wait awhile. If the exit polls are as badly off as some are saying, the election could suddenly shift to Bush and end early; if they are not, we could have a very long night ahead of us.
Particularly for those of us in the UK…
0350. Looks like the Beeb is now running real time on the Electoral counts, although they are a bit slow to pick up on some stories like the exit poll problems. As in, they have not brought it up at all. Hours to go no doubt, and here’s me with no more munchies…
Medienkritik has some food for for thought which I would recommend reading on this election day:
Democracy is something that members of free societies should never take for granted. It has been dearly paid for in the past and continues to be dearly paid for around the world today in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. We at Medienkritik therefore humbly encourage all our American readers to participate in the political process and the upcoming election. Whether you are a Republican, Democrat or Independent, exercise that simple and basic right that signifies our freedom: Vote.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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