Some Thoughts on the U.S. Election

Let's consider the McCain-Palin ticket.

Ah.

As Joseph Biden said in the Vice Presidential debate, 'where do I begin'?

John McCain, the all-American Vietnam war veteran, as he would no doubt like me to refer to him, could not possibly run the United States as well as George 'dubya' Bush has -- and that's saying something. He is so out of touch with real Americans, it is untrue. For 158 years Lehman Brothers traded competitively on Wall Street, and then, one weekend, it went under. It put thousands of employees around the world out of a job, while investors hurried to get shot of shares in banks and the Dow was sent into a downward spiral. John McCain's helpful verdict on the Monday morning? "The fundamentals of the U.S. economy are sound." Does this sounds like a stable economy? All this on the same weekend as the Fed and the Treasury rescuing Fannie and Freddie, with banks hoarding money. And I am yet to mention the thousands of Americans who have had their homes repossessed and the thousands more who probably will. "The fundamentals are sound." Good call, John.

How can U.S. citizens elect a man who could not even give a journalist a straight forward answer to the rather plain question "How many houses do you own"? Now it emerges he has more cars parked on his various driveways than some Americans will own in their entire lifetimes. Does this sound like a man who has any idea what the average American is going through?

His running mate is trying to convince the nation that she does. The problem is, Sarah Palin knows exactly the same amount as the average American. No sound human being would put some Alaskan 'hockey Mom' a heartbeat away from the Oval Office, surely? Her epistemology seems to evolve around geographical location: she knows a lot about foreign policy, she says, because she is from Alaska and that's closer to the Russian Federation than most of the United States. The absurdity of such nonsense was just flatly disregarded by Barack Obama on Face the Nation last week. "I'll let the nation be the judge of that," he told Bob Shieffer. If there was any doubt about Ms. Palin's foreign policy knowledge -- or lack of it -- I think she made it perfectly clear when she called General McKiernan 'McClellan'. She is, without doubt, a huge liability to the security of the United States and the western world.

But let's not forget, the McCain-Palin ticket is a self-styled 'anti-Washington' ticket. Right, okay. John McCain's been in Congress since 1981. That's twenty seven years! And he is leading an anti-Washington ticket? Give me a break. During that time, he voted constantly for deregulation of the financial sector. He doesn't seem to be in a hurry to hold his hand up and accept responsibility for his actions.

The McCain-Palin ticket is also a self-styled maverick ticket. How ludicrous. Out of the Democratic Gore-Liebermann ticket and the G.O.P. Bush-Cheney ticket from the 2000 election, which one would you think to be the maverick one? Yep, me too. And look where we are now, eight years later.

But hang on, McCain supporters say this is an anti-Bush ticket as much as the Obama-Biden ticket is. What nonsense. The G.O.P. could not pick a sane presidential candidate in 2000 and they have not picked one eight years down the line.

But back to Ms. Palin. She was on the BBC's ten o'clock news last night citing the New York Times as suggesting Barack Obama was in contact with a 1960's terrorist in his early days. That might be true. Whilst Barack Obama is a great man, I don't think he can really be held accountable for what every person does once he has come into contact with them. Forty years from now one of my friends I went to school with might be behind bars for one thing or another. I'm sure as hell not going to take responsibility if I haven't seen the guy for almost half a century.

Perhaps Ms. Palin did not make it through to the Op-Ed section of the Times. That is a real shame. She really would have had something to mull over then. Like her complete lack of popularity with the paper's Op-Ed columnists. Intelligent and much-respected critics such as Bob Herbert, David Brooks and Maureen Dowd tear her apart and mock her day after day after day, and she just does not get it. She made, excuse my language, a complete arse of herself in front of Katie Couric, and she still does not realise she has a hell of a lot more in common with George 'dubya' Bush than she realises. What ties them together most explicitly, of course, is the complete butchering of the English language.

America! Please -- please -- spare us (the rest of the world) from more gory slaughtering of our much-loved language! One is not sure quite how much mutilation it can valiantly withstand.

More importantly, of course, America's failure to elect Barack Obama would signal a great step backward for the nation. He is, by far and away, the best candidate for the Presidency. Whether or not he gets elected simply depends on whether a lot of white Americans bring themselves to put a cross on a ballot paper next to the name of a black man.

(Yes, yes, I know the U.S. has far more technologically advanced ways for people to vote, but hey, the old cross in a box system here in the United Kingdom has never let to some gun crazy, slack jawed vagabond of a candidate to steal a marginal constituency.)

Okay, let me be honest. I was not sure whether to include this last thought, but here it is. The main reason I dislike John McCain is the fact that he is a Vietnam war veteran, and therefore, in my opinion, encapsulates everything that is wrong with the United States. (Cue the sharp intake of breath.) He initially got elected to the House because of his military background, which culminated in Vietnam. Congratulations, Mr. McCain. You fought in most unjust war waged by the West in the twentieth century, save perhaps the Boer War. Nice going. I know this is getting a little outspoken, but Vietnam war vets enjoy too much respect in U.S. society. Personally I have a hell of a lot more respect for Mohammad Ali, and all the other drafted men and women who refused to go and fight 'the yellaman', and for all the anti-war protesters who marched through the streets chanting 'hell no, we won't go'. The fact is, Mr. McCain, like so many other misguided Americans, did not take the moral high-grounded; he folded, and went anyway. At the very least, this shows a lack of strength in his moral character. There can be no questioning of his physical and mental attributes, which were proved in a P.O.W. camp. But he should never have been anywhere near there.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Personally, I Need To Free Myself

At the moment, I feel I don't quite know where I am or where I'm supposed to be. I know what I did today, but I don't know what I'll be doing tomorrow. It scares me (just a little bit), but I think that's what I want. I don't want to live in anything like a routine -- not just at the moment, anyway. I'm moving to Liverpool soon, and I think that's going to be situation where everyday is different. Everyday will (hopefully) bring with it new challenges and new pleasures, new emotions and new feelings. I want to live closer to the realm of spontaneity than to the realm of routine.

I think this can only be achieved by the acceptance that any coercive lifestyle must have a certain amount of routine to it. I'm a unique person and I'm coming to terms with that by forging a closer perspective with bohemianism. I'm going to try and govern the next few weeks of my life by some famous lyrics:

We're not bad people,
We're not dirty we're not mean,
We love everybody but we do as we please,
We're always happy,
Life's for livin', yeah, that's our philosophy.

Where do I want to be in five years time?

I don't know. I want to have had as many positive, worldly, experiences as possible. If, in five years time I've achieved a good degree, an M.A. (as I want to do) and I have a healthy bank balance, then that's alright. There's nothing wrong with that. But if, in five years time, I've got a degree, and an M.A., but I have less than no money because I went round New York on a budget three week trip and saw baseball in Yankee stadium and a play on Broadway and got absolutely completely lost on the subway system and ended up walking thirty blocks in the pouring New York rain with no coat, then I would prefer the latter of the two.

I'm a free spirit, and this summer I failed my goal of making it back to New York in the warm weather. I paid over £1,000 to have work done on my teeth. This hasn't been a wasted experience. I found out being in debt isn't that bigger problem. Well, not when you're a student. And I suppose that's why I want to make the most of the forthcoming 12 months.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

A Message For Firginia Tech: This WILL Happen Again

What happened today on campus at Virginia Tech will happen again and it will happen again soon. A lone gunman shoots 32 people dead in two and a half hours of madness. I have just watched the ABC coverage of the biggest mass murder on American soil since 9/11, and the focus is simply not broad enough. Americans are not thinking outside the box; the view of the American is morphed too much by being American. The main question posed by the ABC broadcast was why did the shootings begin at approximately 07:15 and not cease until two and a half hours later? The question is not the right question to ask. What Americans should be demanding the answer to is why was this troubled individual in possession of a firearm in the first place.

Asking this question though, would reveal deep faults in the Constitution of the United States. This document is fundamentally flawed by the Second Amendment. Until this amendment is repealed these killings will happen again. The right to bear arms effectively legalises gun crime. As soon as this is realised the United States will not be the greatest nation on Earth.

It is reported that the police on the Virginia Tech campus treated the original shootings at 07:15 as individual incidents. This is simply laughable here in the United Kingdom. I attend Liverpool John Moores University and if gun shots were heard in my campus then it is likely the whole of the city would grind to a halt. Gun crime does not happen hear in the United Kingdom. We do not have legislation like you second amendment.

The politicians, the political leaders, the social leaders, the cultural leaders, -- they can all express their 'deep sorrow' as much as they want, but it the grand scheme of these things this does not mean anything. This is meaningless. They did not know any of the victims personally. Something they could do is make legally owning a firearm an almost impossible thing. But they will not do this.

Remember the shootings in Texas in 1966? Nothing has changed since then. NOTHING. A gun can still be freely purchased and if someone wanted they could easily conduct another killing spree. I am British. I doubt there is little to stop me getting on a plane to America, buying a gun over the counter, buying some bullets and shooting as many people as I possibly could. While this can still happen, not a single American is free. No one in the United States can be truly free from the fear of being shot. This will happen again.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Wall Street

First, I'd like to begin by saying I had an amazing time in Manhattan! With the exception of my sister's wedding, they were the best five days of my life. There wasn't a single moment I regretted going. Thank you to everyone who went, you are all amazing! Thank you to Ross and Morag, and also to Colin for everything he did organisation-wise in Liverpool. New York is an awesome place and I can't wait to go back -- there's so many things left to do!

I've been trying for days to write a decent blog entry. I've given up. What follows is only a brief description of a scene I witnessed on the Friday. Feel free to draw your own meanings and significances from the scene I describe.

After we had got back from Ellis Island, we went down Wall Street. Most, if not all of us, were there. No district of Manhattan is the same as another, and the financial district is no exception to the rule. I really enjoyed walking down there, among all the tightly built skyscrapers. The blustery wind was threatening to seize control of the umbrella Ruth lent me, but we battled on. I love the architecture of the Trump Building in particular:


Not far past the Trump Building, there was a worn out, scruffy, homeless women. I didn't get a good look at her, but she appeared dazed and confused, lost in her thoughts and her bewilderment, disorientated by her fear and drowning in the skyscrapers all around. She stumbled on by us, struggling to walk.

Did anyone else notice this women?

All the major economies of our world look to Wall Street, to the New York Stock Exchange, to the financial district of Manhattan -- they all look because it's the financial district of the developed world. And there's a broken women there. With no where to go. With nothing to eat. With no home to go to. And no bed to sleep in. Wall Street cannot accommodate for this women.

All I can do is make assumptions based upon what I saw. I don't know that women's background, and I don't know the stories behind every self-made man walking down Wall Street. But I saw a homeless women stumbling down Wall Street. That remains the most important most significant thing I saw in New York.

Everything I saw and experienced in New York has a degree of realism. Everything has a characteristic of some sort which made it 'real' to me. Even this:

What I saw reminded me of what Bob Dylan sang:
There's a-mighty many people all millin' all around,
They'll kick you when you're up and knock you when you're down.
It's hard times in the city,
Livin' down in New York town.
This song is also an absolute choon and everyone should have a listen (it's somewhere in the depths of Blackboard).

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright.

The Second Amendment

I just sent out a quick, basic search on Facebook groups. All I searched for was 'second amendment'. Page after page after page was filled with pro-gun, pro-NRA, pro-second amendment groups. I could not find a single group that wanted to take guns away from Americans.

Firearms, like the second amendment to the United States Constitution, have no place in a civilised, modern society. The United States has more homicides than any other country anywhere in the world. Over 11,000 Americans each year are shot dead. There is concern in Great Britain at the moment as the number of gun-related killings topped 200 a year.

Regardless of what the 200+ year old document says, no civilian needs a gun. If nobody has a gun, then no one can be shot dead. One argument says that civilised citizens need firearms for protection. If the criminals did not have guns, then the law abiding citizen does not need one either. Another argument states that guns do not kill, people do. Guns do not kill, but they sure do help. The right to bear arms was necessary when the Constitution was drawn up, but this is 2007. The Wild West is no more. It has been tamed and is a completely different place. Utter lawlessness, utter anarchy does not exist with the United States anymore. Towns are no longer run by gangs of criminals. Elected Governments, Sheriffs, and Governors run the show and are held accountable through checks and balances. Guns do not even enter the equation.

So many Americans claim they have a 'right to bear arms'. What lunacy! Americans have the right to walk down the street without fear of being shot. Americans who argue against the NRA and the pro-gun lobbies are branded as liberals. What is liberal about wanting to walk down the street without wondering who is carrying a gun, about who could shoot you dead at any time?

Like a lot of anti-gun campaigners, I feel the need to make the point that I am not a hater of the United States Constitution. I believe a written, entrenched Constitution should govern every country. I wish we had one in Britain. I do, however, loath the second Amendment. It is unnecessary, it causes more problems than it solves and it portrays the United States to be arrogant on the world stage.

An America with guns is not the land of the free and the home of the brave. There is nothing brave about shooting someone dead from 500 yards away. To shoot someone is the most cowardly way to kill them. Some of the twentieth century's most inspirational characters have had a bullet put through them: John F. Kennedy; Martin Luther King, Jr; Malcolm X; Abe Lincoln; John Lennon However, Winston Churchill, Bob Geldof, William Gladstone and Margaret Thatcher have all spent the majority of their time (or all of their time) in the United Kingdom. Not a single one has been shot dead. Think about it.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Global Politics With A Nuclear Twist

The Americans have two warships in the Persian Gulf.

An Iranian website close to the Revolutionary Guard says Iran has drones capable of reaching American warships in the Persian Gulf.

The European Union is downbeat about how much enriched uranium Iran now has. They say Iran probably has enough to make a nuclear bomb.

The European Union also says economic sanctions alone will not resolve what is now a tense stand-off.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tehran would defend itself against any US attack on its nuclear facilities.

George W. Bush insists Iran is not solely concerned with the development of nuclear power, but is trying to develop a nuclear bomb.

The stand-off is tense. Every politician of every Western nation involved is insisting diplomacy will always come before any military action, and military action is, and should always be, a last resort. But over the past few days, everything which has been said, done, and reported, is strikingly similar to the build-up to the war in Iraq. The United States is being stubborn in constantly asserting that a rogue nation under a fearsome dictator is either trying to make, or already has possession of, a nuclear weapon. The rogue nation refutes such a claim, but does not allow the Western world (either in the form of the UN or the United States) unlimited access to its 'nuclear' facilities.

Once again the United Nations seems on the sidelines, watching on, powerless to influence the things that really matter. The report of Hans Blix prior to the war in Iraq was first questioned by Donald Rumsfeld, before it was just ignored. Now, the United Nations has imposed sanctions on the rogue state, but now even the EU says economic sanctions may not be enough.

I think a lot of it comes down to who is scared, and who is scared the most. All the politicians talk tough. That does not help. Yesterday the BBC reported that Iran did not fear a US attack. That might be what Iranian officials say, but I would bet normal Iranian people have fears of a US invasion. They would not be human if they did not fear an American attack. Just across the border Iranians have seen the consequences of an American lead invasion.

Like their Iranian counterparts, the American people are scared. Nuclear bombs in the possession of a nation that is not allies with the White House scares the American people. Their fear is often expressed as an offensive gesture: Vietnam; Afghanistan; Iraq; and now Iran?

Maybe. At the same stage before the Iraq war, everybody knew the US was going to invade Saddam's country, regardless of whatever 'caution talk' was coming out of the Pentagon. I'm not so sure the United States is as gun happy as it was then for a number of reasons. Since then, one hopes that they will have learnt that overthrowing the country's leadership is only part of the problem. Rebuilding the country is far harder.

An American presence In Iraq will probably be necessary until at least 2010. More and more suicide bombings, car bombings and random shootings are occurring In Baghdad every day. Not a day goes by without innocent civilians dying at the hands of the insurgency. Killings happen so often, most news networks do not bother giving them more than a few seconds of coverage.

What is more of an issue, though, is troop numbers. The United States still has a big presence in Afghanistan. The Americans are still needed there. In January, George W. Bush announced a sharp increase in troop numbers in Iraq (because of the worsening violence). The United States of America is a big country, but it does not have an endless supply of soldiers. Thousands have died in Iraq. Thousands have died in Afghanistan. Tens of thousands still remain. Whisper this next statement quietly: they might need the draft.

Not since the Vietnam War has the draft been popular. Calling up ordinary civilians for compulsory military service is a crime against humanity. Forcing citizens to fight against their will is wrong.

How scared are the American public? How much more scared can they get? Can the White House scare them enough as so they support the reintroduction of the draft? Roughly two years ago now, one senator introduced a Bill into the US Senate which would have brought back the draft. 99 Senators, including the gentleman who introduced it, voted the Bill down. (One of the Senators was ill on the day of the vote.) This was done solely to convince Americans that bringing back the draft was not an option.

But two years is a long time. The United States has seen a lot of troops killed in Iraq since that vote. They have had to send more to troops. They have seen President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rise to power in Iran. To invade Iran, I think the White House would need to scare the American public into thinking the draft was necessary to protect American values. Undoubtedly, the region would be a safer place with a democratic regime in charge of Iran, but as we have witnessed in Iraq, a swift change is impossible. Democracy is not instantaneous, as it was sold to the Americans before the invasion of Iraq. Tell me war is not going to happen, and I will call you a liar.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright.

The Race For The White House

One of these two people will become the 44th President of the United States of America. Both are Democrats. One is a women, and the other is an African-American. One of them will be the next President. They are two very contrasting characters, both of whom would do the United States a great deal of good.

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Barack Obama, as he indicated in his speech in Springfield, IL, Saturday, does not have much experience of Washington. To me, that is not much of a concern. Many former Presidents of the United States had little experience of Washington prior to entering the Oval Office.

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Nevertheless, Hilary Clinton's eight years as the First Lady to the 42nd President Bill Clinton are still an important asset. No previous candidate has ever had such first-hand experience of what it takes to be the Commander in Chief of the West's only superpower, as well as manage the world's biggest economy.

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Both candidates appeal to me. I like what I have so far seen of both Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton. I would certainly vote for one of them in the Democrat primaries. It would depend on policy. Whomever gets the Democrat nomination will have a lot of work to do. Something the United States seriously needs is the next President to be a Democrat. The US needs a Democrat to bring stability to the country (ergo the rest of the world) and to sort out the Republican quagmire which will be left by the outgoing President, George W. Bush.

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It is not 'American' to criticise the President. But I am not American. I am an English socialist who has seen the Special Relationship manipulated by the current President. I have watched as George W. Bush has forced our Prime Minister to stand side by side with him on issues which have done the United Kingdom and the Labour Party no favours whatsoever. The Republican Party of the 1980's allied itself with the Iron Lady. It took Bill Clinton and the New Democrats to bring stability to the United States and prosperity to areas neglected by Reagan. Tony Blair has spent his time in office trying to help the working classes get back on their feet after Thatcher's Tories knocked them down and kicked them to keep them down.

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The same tasks await either Barack Obama or Hilary Clinton. Because George Walker Bush is a disgrace to the United States of America, the Constitution of the United States of America and, most importantly, he is a disgrace to the people of the United States of America.

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http://www.barackobama.com

http://www.hillaryclinton.com

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Yours, wherever you may be,

Daniel C. Wright