I am in the UK, the land of neat accents, as Tuesday would have it, and this afternoon hung around a favorite bookshop. This particular place is more well known for its weighty academic tomes than anything remotely political, so I was a bit surprised by their rather substantial show of what might best be described as Anti- Bush material - everything from scholarly books to a cartoon comic of Bush's best verbal gaffes, to a set of playing cards depicting Bush and his cronies in a way that the White House might not quite approve.
So, I accosted the chap who was staffing the display and asked him about it. A nice portly, jovial Brit he was, but he stunned me - not just with his facts and figures - but with sharp rhetorical jabs at the US establishment and indeed the US press. "Did you notice that they under-reported last week's demonstrations?" he enquired. "More than 200 000 people showed up in London - and that too on a working day. If I had time off I'd have taken the train and gone!" I asked him about the playing cards. "We sell them like hot cakes," he remarks. "People here hate Bush."
This reminded me of the short quote I heard on Savage Nation the night before I flew out here. Michael, with his tried and tested savagery, dug into the British newsman who asked George why so many people hated him. According to Savage, this "lowlife" had no business demeaning our president - and ignoring Bush's own response - that he believes in free speech, implored his audience to actually deport US liberals - even if they were citizens - if they did not go along with his point of view. I wonder now about the demonstrations in Miami. Would the likes of Savage throw all these people out? If they do, where is their argument about intervention in Iraq - which was ostensibly to deliver democracy to those unfortunates? If, for some reason, they don't - and just use police force to suppress the demonstrators, what does it say about our democracy? What does it say about the state of our democracy when so many millions of people disagree so vehemently with the views of the administration - and are just not being heard - or allowed to engage - or plain shut out by the mainstream media which does not even provide balanced reporting. (It is extra-ordinary to compare the British coverage of Miami with that in the US).
The view from this end of the pond - at least among the many ordinary folks that I have talked to, is that American democracy is dead. Personally, I disagree with this view quite strongly. But sometimes I hope I am not wrong, that I am not just hallucinating.
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