America’s Anti-Election

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney paint an ever gloomier picture of how America and the American people will come to ruin if their opponent wins the election in November. What they neglect to say, however, is exactly where they want to lead the nation — and how they intend to guide a deeply insecure global power now in its fifth year of crisis.

America is burning. It will burn another 75 days until election day, when Americans either choose a new president or decide to keep the current one. The nation is burning once again, but this fire is different than the one that burned four years ago. In 2008, the nation was burning with the desire for a new beginning; an enthusiastic people chose Barack Obama, the bringer of “hope” and “change.”

Now, America burns once more but it burns for — nothing. Republicans and Democrats both throw money around and scream their lungs out like never before. But they generate only heat, not light. Instead of bright visions, both camps offer only programmatic darkness and gloom.

The Propaganda Slaughter Escalates

America’s presidential election is degenerating into an anti-election. Both candidates only predict daily what horrors await America and Americans if their opponent is elected. Yet they don’t say why — or, above all, in which direction they intend to lead the deeply troubled global power if they are victorious.

The world’s oldest democracy and biggest economy has been plagued with a lasting crisis for five years now. But neither of the gladiators in the arena proposes the necessary remedies, as bitter as they may be, for the future. It looks as if Obama intends to continue muddling along; Romney gives the impression he wants to take the nation back to the 1950s, America’s most blessed era. Both men offer the same dumb argument: The other guy would be worse.

And so the propaganda slaughter continues. Both camps call the coming election “the most important election since 1860.” That is to say, the year just prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War that resulted in devastation and fratricide. The comparison with the Civil War is, of course, nonsense, but both parties understand the politics of strife, hatred and incitement.

Loud Voices and Tepid Content

The Republicans have the advantage of more experience since they have been berating Obama for three years already. He’s alternatively labeled a socialist or even a fascist, and always “un-American.” But Obama plays just as rough. The president’s agitprop forces paint Romney as a tax evading plutocrat and vulture capitalist, with Obama’s vice president even saying the Republicans want to put people back in chains as in the days of slavery.

Loud voices but tepid content. Nothing will change if both sides do little more than preach to their choirs at party gatherings. Neither Romney nor Obama are angling for the uncommitted voters, a group that only amounts to five percent of registered voters in this election. America’s political polarization — fired by both parties, with the pot stirred by party faithful cable news channels and ideological websites — necessarily results in warring factions. The battles waged are remarkably reminiscent of the motto used in America’s war on terror: “Are you with us or against us?”

That leads to absurd aberrations, as evidenced by Missouri. There, an arch-conservative Republican talks drivel about “legitimate” and “forcible” rape (as if there were phony or non-violent varieties) and rails against abortion. The Republican establishment had to quickly rediscover disgust.

But the party activists want to hang on to their “fundy”; according to surveys, there’s even a good chance he might win his race for a Senate seat. The Republican radical right may not agree with the sentiments of its candidate, but the hatred they have for his Democratic opponent far outpaces common sense.

Such forces rule the roost everywhere in American politics. If we were talking about a theater group or a marksmanship club, there would be nothing to worry about. But what’s at stake is the entire future of a nation that is, or at least wants to continue to be, a global superpower.

Nobody expects politicians in the midst of an election campaign to drop everything just to attend to every problem, like slowing the rate of debt growth, fixing crumbling roads and bridges or doing anything about the miserable shape of their education system. But a few suggestions or ideas addressing these problems wouldn’t be unwelcome. The clock is ticking and a mountain of decisions has to be made. The budget impasse has to be solved by year’s end or the country again faces a new crisis, including possible bankruptcy plus recession.

That’s the worst part of this culture war: Both camps pursue a scorched earth policy, burning ground they desperately need for bipartisan compromise. That tears the nation apart. But Republicans and Democrats are united on one point: The other side is to blame.