AMERICA HAS VOTED
I had the opportunity of observing the Presidential elections of the USA. However, I do not have to mention that I was not there as an official observer financed by one of the NGO's or some governmental organization. I was able to be in USA during the time of the presidential elections thanks to my wife and the sabbatical leave she had earned. Officially I was there to give a seminar at the University of Cincinnati on "The Accelerating Universe" where I was able to present the work we had carried out at the University of Kelaniya in connection with some recent observations on Supernovae by a group in USA and by a group in Australia. The independent observations by the two groups had led to the conclusion that the universe has been expanding with an acceleration after a period of expansion with deceleration. We had come out with a model of a universe that oscillates with epochs of acceleration and deceleration. However, unofficially I was an observer of the presidential election. A former student of mine had taken the trouble to organize a tour covering the state of Illinois the land of Abraham Lincoln, on the day of the elections. The voters apparently were more enthusiastic this time, the turn out being sixty percent of the registered voters, though somewhat low from a Sri Lankan point of view.
It was a foregone conclusion that Mr. Bush was the winner of the elections as I mentioned in these columns last week. As another former student of mine remarked the Republican Party represents the "American Jathika Chinthanaya", and as it was a very crucial time for the citizens of the USA in respect of the security of the country they had to vote for Mr. Bush. Of course the media played its role in getting Mr. Bush elected by overplaying the Iraq issue. Some of the media in USA were worse than the private media in Sri Lanka that support the UNP and the state media that campaign for the government party, during the elections.
According to the surveys conducted by the media the three important issues at the elections were morals, Iraq and terrorism in that order. These words have no absolute meanings and what they meant by morals were American Christian morals, and certainly not morals according to Islam. Iraq for the citizens of USA was the country of Saddam Hussein as presented by the media. Finally by terrorism they mean the activities of Muslim terrorist organizations and not those of Prabhakaran and his gang. As far as the USA media are concerned there is only one band of terrorism and it is nothing but Muslim terrorism. The USA proscribed the LTTE in that country not because Prabhakaran and the LTTE has killed so many innocent people in Sri Lanka, but due to the fact that the LTTE has connections with some of the Muslim organizations. People who forget this important fact are bound to take wrong decisions with respect to terrorism in Sri Lanka.
It could be said that even American Christian morals became the single most important issue at the elections mainly because of the Muslim factor. However, since both Iraq and terrorism stem from the Muslim "aggression" as far as the USA is concerned, it could be said that it was the Muslim factor that determined the outcome of the elections. In a country where forty percent of the people do not have a health insurance coverage the health of the poor did not become an issue at the elections. Whether it is in conformity with the morals that Mr. Bush wants to uphold he is billed to come down heavily on social investments and make concessions to the big tax payers.
Iraq and Muslim terrorism are no more external problems as far as USA is concerned. They have been internalized even more than the health of the poor, and the health of Arafat has become more important than the health of their fellow citizens to the well to do citizens of USA. "America votes" proclaimed the media before the election. Certainly "America" has voted and they have voted for the candidate who they thought, had the better credentials to defeat Muslim "aggression". The Democratic candidate Mr. Kerry did not speak the mind of the majority of the voters and he was unable to take a firm stand against what the "Americans" call terrorism. Only in the big cities where the "true" "American" cannot be found, Mr. Kerry was able to get a majority. In the country where the "American Jathika Chinthanaya" prevails, the Republicans scored. Mr. Bush, as the winning candidate was able to poll more than fifty one percent of the popular vote for the first time since 1988. The "War for Iraq", as the CNN has dubbed, has already begun.
The role played by media has been already mentioned. There were five candidates for the Presidency but only the two big names were given prominence. A third candidate Mr. Nader who received about one percent of the popular vote was able to draw the attention of the media occasionally. However, the voters did not know anything about the other two candidates. Ironically one of them Mr. Van, the candidate of the so-called international working class was canvassing in Sri Lanka during the time before the elections, and he was given more publicity in the Sri Lankan press than he was given the USA media. His posters appeared in Colombo and Kandy and I have no doubt that more Sinhala people than the "Americans" knew of him.
The USA as we mentioned last week is the most modern country in the world. It means that the USA is the flag bearer of the Anglo Saxon Christian culture. As such it has to uphold the Christian morals which they call the morals in the abstract. The Christian moral values are in a crisis today in the western world. The day modernity gave preference to the individual against the society the morals entered into a crisis situation, and since then the crisis has been developing.
Modernity, in the final analysis is all about the freedom of the individual. In modernity it is expected that the individual is freed from the society, the nature, the religion, the state etc., and that he/she is given the liberty to fulfill the sensual pleasures without any restrictions imposed from the external factors that include the society and the nature. (It can be shown that western science and later capitalism developed based on these attitudes combined with abstractions and generalizations based on Aristotelian logic) However, this is something that cannot be achieved completely for two reasons. Firstly even the decision to give freedom to the individual is not an individual decision. It is a decision of the society in the sense that those who control the affairs of the society take the decision. Secondly as we mentioned last week it is not the concrete individual who is given the freedom but an abstract individual who is at different times called the human being, the individual, the man etc.
The concrete individual in the shape of a Tom or Dick or Anne is given the illusion of a freedom that only the abstract individual is supposed to enjoy. The concrete individual thinks that he/she has a choice in buying goods, but the McDonald culture does not produce different hamburgers for at least the non Europeans. All are given the same hamburger and there is no choice for the customer. The mass productions, that resulted from the industrial revolution which itself was a product of modernity, instead of freeing the concrete individual from the society made him/her a prisoner of the society. We are forced to wear shoes, slippers, shirts, blouses, trousers etc., that are made according to various sizes of the abstract individual, and we have no choice now in having made them to fit us according to our measures. They fit an abstract man of size seven or eight, and not the concrete individual. Though people think that they have sexual freedom now, they or parts of their bodies have become prisoners of condoms produced on a mass scale.
The media, again on a mass scale, create an impression of a choice and a freedom that is not found, and the concrete individual is forced to live in an illusion. However, this illusion has made the concrete individual to go berserk and even Modern USA, also as a reaction against Muslim aggression, has been forced to contemplate on the "American" Christian moral values. It has reached a situation where the Catholics who in general vote for the Democrats have been influenced by the defender of morals Mr. Bush to vote Republican at the Presidential elections.
The USA Presidential elections was fought between a candidate who gave the impression that he was determined and committed to maintain the supremacy of the western Christian culture and a candidate who could not make up his mind on this important issue. Modern "America" that has failed to "free" the concrete individual has given freedom to an abstract individual who in the final analysis is not so modern. America has voted the only way it could have voted.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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