Four More Years

While Ohio is still undecided, things aren't exactly looking good, and several media outlets have called the election for Bush. It's looking as if we'll be facing four more years. Four more years in which Bush will further isolate the world's most powerful nation from the international community. Four more years in which Bush will continue to undermine human rights and international law. And four more years in which America will continue its transformation from a shining beacon of freedom into a shitty little despotism which condones (if not practices) torture and disappearances.

A recent New Statesman editorial commented that having watched one great beacon of hope - the Soviet Union - collapse into a nightmare, the world could hardly bear it if the other one - the United States - fell as well. But that seems to be what is happening. There's not a fuck of a lot separating Osama bin Laden's Islamofascists and Dubya's Christian fundamentalists - they even follow the same god. The only real difference lies in who they want to kill. There's nothing there worth believing in, and nothing to hope for, except maybe that they'll all kill each other so that we members of the reality-based community can get on with our lives in peace.