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My old aunts, who went to Boston from Western Nova Scotia in the 1920s along with many of their generation, became lifelong Democrats, first under FDR then the Kennedys.
They were OK with the Eisenhower Republicans of the 1950s, but the Richard Nixon caper confirmed their worst suspicions about Republicans. They were leery of Reagan. They gave up the ghost under Clinton, when things were raunchy but still more or less intact.
What I hear now from many old friends of my generation and younger who return to these woods from the U.S. is less uplifting. ?Somebody?s going to take a shot at that guy (Obama).? ?He?s a Muslim, dammit. He?s a Muslim.? ?That stuff about Rupert Murdoch in Britain. It?s a plot to bring down Fox News? (also owned by Murdoch).
Suggesting that the Bush/Cheney calamity is a big part of the problem can send some into apoplexy. And so on.
At least they?ve lost that American superciliousness that my aunts? generation had picked up. Except for one old friend who raised an eyebrow and said, ?You don?t get Fox News here, do you?? Poor us.
International polls show that the rest of us in the world favour Obama by as much as nearly 90 per cent over Romney, including in Canada.
We have reason to fret. Romneyism promises an acceleration of that twin scourge of societies on the skids: militarism and class division. And he might well win, if only for the advantage granted by electoral fraud in Republican states, notably Florida. As in Canada with our robo-calls scandal, electoral manipulation is a pastime of the neo-conservative right.
The militarism should perk us up in Canada. After this country refused to go to either Vietnam or Iraq on principle, any Romney adventure will find the Harper government, which is full of military fantasies, sending us trotting behind.
Meanwhile, a Romney victory would send the American international reputation, lifted by Obama after Bush and Cheney wrecked it, back in the dumpster along with that of Harper?s Canada.
Romney?s got a slick speech going, but he?s back to voodoo economics that have one aim: make sure the rich don?t pay. Last year?s Occupy movement was a signal of things to come, which Romney?s stiff-the-poor economics will accelerate.
Last spring Warren Buffett, occasionally the world?s richest man, who frets about this stuff, was quoted as saying this at a gathering of billionaire philanthropists: ?It is amazing to me the degree of inequality that exists without people getting really upset.?
Studies have shown that many poor Americans are against raising taxes for the rich on the strange grounds that they?ll be rich themselves someday and won?t want to pay taxes. The same studies show that if you?re poor in America, your chances of staying poor are far higher than in any other industrial country, including Canada. At some point, the contradiction will crack. Romneyism will help it crack.
Finally, there?s what should be the biggest issue of all, that has reared its head at the last minute with New York under water: climate change. True, Obama did nothing on this front because the right-wing denial juggernaut keeps the issue from arising. Romney will make sure it stays that way: more drilling, more coal burning, more pipelines and, along with his new bosom buddy Harper, more tar sands development.
Meanwhile, society is arguably already paying more than the value of any of these future developments through the cost of extreme weather events. The $50 billion and up now cited for Hurricane Sandy is one thing. In 2011, there were 11 extreme events counted in the U.S. that cost a billion or more.
And now, thanks to superdroughts and superfloods, the world?s food supply is in an increasingly perilous state. The cost is incalculable, as will be the future cost of securing low-lying areas like New York and New Jersey. How long can this contradiction, too, remain muted?
Since only about half the U.S. electorate votes and that is split, about a quarter of the U.S. electrorate sees what a good three-quarters of the outside world would like to see: that for the good of the world, the U.S. and the Republican Party itself, the best thing that could happen is for this party to spend the next four years in the wilderness where it can get rid of its extremists and regain the integrity it arguably hasn?t had since Eisenhower.
Thinking of my old aunts, I note that, despite it all, Obama is running some 20 points ahead of Romney in the polls in Massachusetts where he was governor for four years (he?s behind in Michigan, too, where he was brought up and where his father was governor). The rap against him is that he?s disowned his entire legacy in pleasing the Tea Party and other extremists. What does that tell you?
Ralph Surette is a veteran freelance journalist living in Yarmouth County.
(rsurette@herald.ca)
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