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Nov. 4th, 2004 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebelraisingI think countries where politicians regularly and unironically say that "this is the greatest country in the world" are fundamentally different from countries where that doesn't happen. I'm beginning to think this is the root of my Not Getting US Politics to the extent that I don't. This whole "The world is looking to us! We must count every vote!" thing: most of the rest of us on LJ (privileged Westerners that we for the most part are) live in countries where every vote is always counted. The last place we'd look for procedural example is the US. Yes, my country is imperfect and its democracy is a compromise with proceduralism, sentimentality, and the inability of the ruling classes to relax their ultimate grip on power, but we know how to aspire all by ourselves. We don't need your dream. We've got a million of our own.
What we want from a country that's got such huge sway over the world - though less over a rich, Western, capitalist country like mine that over, say, Sudan - is responsible use of power. An understanding from those who rule that, just because you can, doesn't mean that you should, or that in the long term it's even in your own interests to steamroller across the world - particularly when you're talking about polluting an atmosphere that simply isn't going to stay still over those countries that aren't the greatest in the world, but will come and destroy yours too, and mine, though probably not until after the damage has killed millions of people in the developing world. Particularly when your policies kill people who will never be able to vote against them.
And that's what Sudan and Bangladesh need from the voters of the UK next year, as well. What I feel now, looking at the US and realising that Bush's re-election means US missiles at Fylingdales, is going to be what other people feel looking at the way my country lays waste to others, endangers other countries' citizens, kills, exploits, and manipulates. That's the example I'm taking - let's not fuck up like that. Let's dream our own dreams and do a bit better.
What we want from a country that's got such huge sway over the world - though less over a rich, Western, capitalist country like mine that over, say, Sudan - is responsible use of power. An understanding from those who rule that, just because you can, doesn't mean that you should, or that in the long term it's even in your own interests to steamroller across the world - particularly when you're talking about polluting an atmosphere that simply isn't going to stay still over those countries that aren't the greatest in the world, but will come and destroy yours too, and mine, though probably not until after the damage has killed millions of people in the developing world. Particularly when your policies kill people who will never be able to vote against them.
And that's what Sudan and Bangladesh need from the voters of the UK next year, as well. What I feel now, looking at the US and realising that Bush's re-election means US missiles at Fylingdales, is going to be what other people feel looking at the way my country lays waste to others, endangers other countries' citizens, kills, exploits, and manipulates. That's the example I'm taking - let's not fuck up like that. Let's dream our own dreams and do a bit better.
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Date: 2004-11-04 03:29 am (UTC)Yes! And everytime I hear about voting machine mishaps I just wonder why they don't have X-in-the-Box like normal people. :D
This is a great post. Thanks for writing it. It sometimes irks me how Americans- not usually my American friends on LJ, but what I read in papers or on message boards- seem to think that the US is the only country with freedom or rights that are enshrined in anything, the only country that has democracy at all and the only country that has the right to say what *is* democracy. I really get bothered when they talk about how proud they are that they had to fight for their freedom even though they themselves had nothing to do with it, and somehow my being Canadian isn't as valid, even though the loyalists who really funded Canada had to *leave their homes* or face pretty rough persecution if they wanted to continue doing what they believed in. And at the end of the day, neither me or the average American had anything to DO with our nationalities. The only people who had to fight for anything are asylum seekers and immigrants, really.
I think it is important to show the world that not all of the West is like the US, especially when it comes to who we vote for and how they treat the planet. I don't know how people can be happy with a representative government that hurts everyone else just so they can feel a *little* 'safer', or just because they don't want a gay couple moving in next door.
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Date: 2004-11-04 05:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-04 05:40 am (UTC)