So, I've been hearing a lot of talk recently about 'Obamania' and the 'Obamenom' and other such pithy phrases; that is, of the thousands of people showing up like rock groupies these days to Illinois senator Barak Obama's public appearances, of the growing amount of people who think he could be our next President, much less America's first-ever black President. And I'm hearing a common question being asked a lot in the mainstream media about it -- of how this country of ours, which has seemed like such a divided and polarized one for the last eight years, could have harbored this secret desire for a moderate leader for so long, without it coming to light.

And the answer unfortunately is simple -- that America mostly is a moderate country, has always been one in fact, just that the radicals in both parties have hijacked it all over the last eight years. And look, before I even get into what I mean and why this is so important, I'll even prove my answer with a third-party source. These diagrams below are from the University of Michigan, concerning national results for the 2004 presidential election (Bush versus...um...er, it's...oh yeah, John Kerry, that's right). Now, this first one should be familiar to most of you out there -- it shows which candidate received the plurality (over 50 percent or not) of each county in the US:

And sure, if you look at the election results under this light, it's easy to come up with an 'either/or' interpretation that most of the mainstream media has been doing for the last eight years, as well as the politicians in charge -- that the US is the home of two fiercely opposite schools of thought, with most of the populace stridently conservative and with 'pockets' of liberal thought on the coasts, in the southwest, and along the Mississippi River. And it's this mindset, the 'politics of hate' that Bush and his cronies have gotten so much mileage off of, that have pretty much run the way things work ever since he stole the election in 2000 to begin with.

But, if you recolor the chart -- if you only paint a county red or blue if it overwhelmingly votes in favor of one candidate or another, otherwise assigning it a shade of purple -- the map ends up looking quite different:

And with this diagram, you see what I think is a much fairer portrait of America these days, and a factual argument for why so many people are 'suddenly' responding to a message like Obama's -- that we are in fact mostly a country of "shades of purple" moderates, seeking practical solutions now that even the last of the diehard believers have burned out on empty ideology, forced into voting for one of two jackasses in the last election because the radical minorities of each party have managed to take over complete ideological control.

This is the thing that can be so sneaky about living in a fascist state (or 'crypto-fascist' in the case of the Bush administration, I suppose, since under true fascism I wouldn't even be allowed to post this entry); that for it to work as well as possible, the general populace needs to be kept in a constant state of fear, hate and suspicion, and that the easiest way to do this is to create a monolithic 'enemy' that the populace can focus its hate on. Hey, don't take my word for it -- goddamn Orwell laid down the blueprint for all this in 1948! Just read 1984 sometime in these days, and tell me that it doesn't all start to match up nicely with the stuff that's been going on in the last decade: hypocritical statements presented as fact (that only by waging war in Iraq, for example, do we 'keep the peace'); mysterious statements about 'successes' in a war against an unseen enemy (Orwell's Oceania, our Al-Queda), that can't be confirmed by outside sources, timed conveniently whenever morale about said war is at its lowest (just how many "Al-Queda number two"s are we going to kill, anyway?); and most importantly for fascist states, a propaganda campaign to convince us that we as a society are at a constant and perpetual state of battle, whether against outside forces or traitors within our midst, and that all of these people must ethically be considered an 'enemy' when first encountered, simply for your own cautious sake.

It's been interesting, traveling as an American in Europe during such a period in history; because believe me, while you're there, you're sure to be confronted with tough questions about being an American, and will be expected to justify why you like being from our country to begin with. Long-time readers already know, of course, that I've actually done some research about this subject in the past; I've read through most of the founding fathers' original writings on the subject of democracy and the future of America, and also try to keep up with all the latest political thought on the subject. And what I can honestly say is this -- that the fundamental thing I like most about the US is precisely that we're a moderate, practical society. This is something, after all, that's been baked into our entire system from the get-go, something so important to this nation's founders that they embedded it right into the foundations themselves; the idea of working together, of finding compromises to problems, to building in a powerful system of checks and balances that forces these powers to come up with compromises to begin with.

This is something powerful enough, in fact, to be considered (I think) a national cultural trait, which is something I definitely believe in; and like all other national cultural traits, you can see such things manifested all the way from national policy to the manner a tourist from that country acts at a cocktail party. Hey, it's certainly true for me; whenever I'm in Germany, for example, I tend to be the guy at the party getting the arguing Germans to acknowledge the points they agree on. Let's not forget, America rose as a superpower in the first place because of its diplomatic skills, at the end of World War I when all those European leaders were endlessly bickering with each other; sure, we did a pretty fuckin' lousy job of it in that case, but at least got it better with the Marshall Plan after World War II. It's Americans who have historically led the most productive peace talks in the Middle East; Americans who originally proposed the United Nations, and who still hosts its headquarters; Americans who first found a balance between socialistic issues (public utilities, trade unions) and capitalistic ones (free markets, unregulated growth).

That's really been the most troubling and frustrating aspect of America to me in the last six or so years; is that all of this, all of these things that are the best aspects of being an American, have been put to the side so as to embrace a much simpler, fascistic point of view. In America 2006, there is no room for the middle ground, no time on the scream-heavy cable news networks for someone not screaming themselves. On every issue, you're now either 'for us' or 'against us,' no matter what side you fall on, or how heavily or lightly you fall on that side. Judging from the diagrams above, I think you'll find that there are a lot of people in the US who are really sick of it by now, even the ones who first embraced it when Bush got into office, because they too now see that that path leads nowhere but to endless bloodshed, perpetual war, and unchecked power at the top level.

Obama's a pretty smart guy; even he admitted to reporters in New Hampshire last week that he himself is not the main cause for all the 'Obamania,' something I agree with. He like me sees it more as a sign of a way of thinking that Americans are suddenly clamoring for; a profoundly strong desire these days to see people put in charge who actually know what they're doing, and will meet their adversaries halfway to try to get some things actually accomplished. He and I both agree that it's the broad middle ground where most things actually get done, a place where most Americans comfortably sit; and that it's time to reclaim this space and get it back in the media, and informing both parties' platforms. That's why people are going all fucking nutso at Obama appearances these days; not for the man himself, but for the principles he stands for, things that apparently a whole lot of Americans have been waiting a long time for a charismatic national politician to say.

As for myself, I'm afraid the last eight years have rather soured me; between Clinton's blowjob and Bush's Big Brother routine, I'm at a point where I think both parties are a bunch of asses, and politics a thing to be feared rather than fascinated by. Yeah, this from a guy who was a political-science major his first four years as an undergraduate, who used to throw election-night blowout parties in college and everything. I do like Obama's message, because it's the same as my own, and love the fact that he's from Chicago; I also love the idea that America's first black President in history would be this cool laid-back moderate liberal, roughly my age (eight years older), who's spent time actually living in third-world countries, and that it was George W. Bush who directly put him there. Hey, how's that for lasting legacies, motherfucker? Mission accomplished, bee-atch! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

That's ultimately why you can't call the US a fascist state, even though we have picked up some disturbing traits of such a system over the last half a decade; because ultimately, as we're suddenly starting to see, if enough citizens simply have their fill, they can always rise up as an unstoppable liquid mass and crush the fascists' plans at the very top level. And this of course gets into what's probably the most important thing about politics my dad has ever taught me: that implementing the will of the masses is a deliberately slow process, was designed to be a slow process, only works if it's a slow process, and is always a disaster if sped up into a fast process. The unstoppable snowball these days which is the Bush Backlash is being done the right way: it's taken six years to create, ponderously slow by most liberals' standards, with things in this country pretty much having to had go all the way to hell to get the last doubters in there. This creates an atmosphere, one would argue, for a much more solid and longer-lasting set of changes, than for example the way the Bush administration themselves have been doing it; say, for example, the way they ramrodded through passing the Patriot Act right after September 11th, deliberately by preying on people's temporary fears and sorrows.

It's most likely, I think, that in the next few years we're going to see the most heinous parts of the Patriot Act repealed by Congress, and especially if Obama or another moderate takes the White House in 2008; and this, like I said, is just a natural by-product of pushing through national legislation on a whim, that it just ultimately doesn't hold up in the long run. It's a shame, all us liberal thinkers believe, that things had to get so bad here, before the last of the middle-grounders finally understood what an unbelievably dangerous and evil (yes, evil) person Bush is -- but really, ultimately it's healthy in the long run, in that the time was taken to conclusively prove what a bad man he is, versus scapegoating him during a particularly bad downturn in public perception. That's what I believe is fueling a lot of Obamania these days; a pressing desire for something beyond the Bush model from our leaders, a willingness to sit down and actually get real things accomplished. Just because a President doesn't talk about the domestic economy in public, doesn't mean that the domestic economy has disappeared; we are all fucking aware that in the last six years we've lived in one of the worst American economic states since the Great Depression itself. The public is clamoring for administrators who will go in and actually address this stuff, actually fix it, instead of refusing to mention it out loud and hoping that it will eventually go away. ("Voldemort!" "Don't say that word!")

Okay, that's enough of the view from my high horse for now. See you later.