A mandate for what?

The most astonishing aspect of the 2004 election was not the voter turnout, the troubles at voting stations, nor the bitterly divided electorate. The most astonishing aspect was the roughly 3.5 million vote margin of victory for Bush in the popular vote. Barring any major changes in numbers after the remaining provisional and absentee ballots are counted in Ohio and elsewhere (or any evidence of tampering with the voting machines in his brother’s state of Florida), the number gives Bush a win with a majority (Bush 51% vs Kerry 48%, as of Nov 3 totals.) A Bush electoral win with another popular vote defeat or even a slim margin over Kerry without taking a majority would have been a bit easier to explain, but a majority?

Did the majority of American voters on November 2 go to the polls to openly and willingly support...

• Iraq
  To support an illegal war against Iraq that was drawn up by neo-conservative hawks years before Bush took office. A war that was justified by hyping an irrational fear of an “Iraqi threat” based on faulty and overblown evidence of non-existent weapons of mass destruction. A war that has seen over 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed under American occupation, and over 1,100 American soldiers sent home in body bags with thousands others with missing limbs and bearing psychological scars.
  
  
• Torture and Human Rights
  To support an administration morally and politically responsible for serious violations of the Geneva Convention during its occupation of Iraq. To support the continued tenure of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who bear direct responsibility for the torture of prisoners of war in Iraq. To support administration policy that has thumbed its nose at international conventions and ignored humane obligations in its treatment of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. To support an administration that has excused such action by placing itself outside the purview of domestic and international law.
  
  
• International Treaties and Organizations
  To support further withdrawals from international treaties and organizations, and a unilateralist approach to world affairs. To support obstruction of the International Criminal Court. To support opposition to the Treaty to Ban Land Mines, the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases… To support the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and a promised yet-to-be-realized abrogation of the Treaty for Peaceful Uses of Space… To support obstruction to a functional United Nations. To favor strong-armed tactics for coercing the international body to bend to the will of US might or make it irrelevant…to support the spying on UN Security Council delegates in New York in an attempt to gain a vote for war against Iraq in 2003.
  
  
• Civil Liberties
  To support the egregious dismantlement of civil liberties allowed under the PATRIOT Act, and welcome their continued dismantlement under new laws stemming from the infamous PATRIOT Act II “wish list” drawn up by the administration.
  
  
• Military Empire
  To support the continued isolation of the United States from the world community in favor of a unilateral empire built on fear, intimidation, and brute military force. To continue the withdrawal from international treaties and organizations, including the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Treaty for Peaceful Uses of Space in order to advance its military control over the heavens and further its global military hegemony at the expense of world security and financial security at home. To support an administration that maintains the right to preemptively use nuclear weapons.
  
  
• Budget Deficit
  To support the racking up of the largest budget deficit in history. To support a continued runaway military budget that makes such deficits and the bleeding of domestic programs inevitable. To support a “warfare” state and the dismantlement of basic programs to ensure a vibrant, healthy and secure society through a policy of Military Keynesianism.
  
  
• Wealth Inequality
  To support the redistribution of wealth to the top 1% of society and the continued erosion of wages for the rest. To support an egregious increase in salaries of corporate executives while the minimum wage stagnates. To support profits for drug companies while Americans go without health insurance or access to affordable care and medicine.
  
  
• Environment
  To support the continued favoring of industry over basic protections of our natural heritage. To support short term profits for corporate supporters over clean air and clean water. To support opposition to funding the clean up of environmental disaster sites. To support a continued reliance on fossil fuels and foreign oil, and the wars that drive that habit. To support opposition to significant research monies for alternative energy sources. To support opposition to preserving old growth forests, endangered species and public lands.
  
  
• Social Security
  To support the privatization of social security. To support the continued draining of funds for increasing number of retirees in favor of irresponsible fiscal policy.
  
  
• Health Insurance
  To support opposition to ensuring all Americans are covered. To support drug company profits over affordable medicine. To support a system that has some of the best quality of care, but some of the worst access to that care in the western world if you aren’t in the right income bracket, didn’t grow up in the right neighborhood or weren’t born with the right color of skin.
  
  
• Terror and Fear
  To support a government that manufactures fear, spreads fear and rules by fear…all in the name of protecting the country from “terror.” To support an administration whose policy increases recruits for extremist organizations like al Qaeda. To support an administration that has done little to actually track down and bring those responsible for 9/11 to justice, while instead using the tragedy as an excuse to implement its policy of global empire.
  
  
• Church and State
  To support the erosion of our secular union, the age old separation of church and state that America was founded upon…
  
  
• Intolerance
  To support the state support of intolerance through constitutional amendments…
  
  
• Supreme Court
  To give Bush the opportunity to appoint several new justices to the Supreme Court to continue the erosion of individual liberties in favor of a state based on one group’s religious doctrine…

Did the majority of American voters on November 2 go to the polls to openly and willingly support these policies?

I’d like to think that the majority of voters who gave Bush another four years in control of the world didn’t really think twice about a majority of the policies named above. I’m more inclined to chalk it up to a fundamental lack of knowledge by Bush supporters of administration policy, as indicated in polls; the isolation of Americans who are walled-in and disconnected from the world; Americans’ lack of understanding of the effects of their country’s power in the global community; an increasingly consolidated media that stifles true discussion of issues necessary for citizens to participate in the democratic process…and the mastery of the propaganda of fear that Karl Rove and the Bush team have implemented so well, and convincingly plastered across the television in misleading and emotional thirty-second spots.

Even if those are the reasons, ignorance is bondage. The sad fact remains that while America just thumbed its nose at the world and said yes to unbridled military empire, the voters that just gave Bush his mandate will be the least affected. It is the coming generations of Americans and the rest of the current world that will pay the highest price. If these first four years were the “moderate” governance by the Bush team that lacked a clear “mandate” from the 2000 election, the next four years spell utter chaos… But, as Nixon’s crimes caught up with him during a second term, we must remember that Bush still has yet to answer for all of his. The opposition continues with renewed vigor…