by

John Wright

The election for president was conceded yesterday by John Kerry. Between 110 and 116 million people voted in this election and of those George W. Bush won the popular vote by 3 million votes. This means approximately 56 million people voted for John Kerry and approximately 59 million people voted for George W. Bush. Ralph Nader’s numbers were a poor joke. This time around most of us believe Bush won the election fairly, unlike the year 2000 election, which was loaded with voting irregularities in the state of Florida.

The news media treats this event as a resounding win for the Republicans. Well, they did win, but a nation divided with comparative percentages of 48 and 51 certainly does not constitute a mandate. It was a close election. Additional Republican gains in the House of Representatives and in the Senate have given the Republicans a solid ability to control all legislation for the next few years. This is, de facto, a mandate, and the next congressional election does not happen for two years. Much legislation will be passed that will follow right wing evangelistic religious interests, which does not separate church and state, and thus is wrong.

One must be realistic, however. There is no mechanism in place for damage control. Decisions relating to the war in Iraq, terrorism in general, and the economy are now entirely in the hands of the Republicans, who are in turn in the hands of the wealthy and the extreme religious conservatives. I think of them as ignorant religious fanatics, similar to the nutcases who kill under the name of Islam.

Pundits have commented at length about what the Democrats did wrong and what the Republicans did right, before the election. Alas, the pundits miss a major point, which is that the majority of Bush supporters are among the least educated people in the USA. High population cities tended to support Kerry. The educated technology states supported Kerry. The states of highest intellectual content supported Kerry. This is a real change from historical voting thirty to sixty years ago, where the Democrats typically had the votes of the poor and uneducated when they were pushing a liberal entitlements platform. One might wonder why the Democrats didn’t stand up to be counted by taking strong stands regarding the Middle East and stem cell research and job retention in the USA. Such things as we did hear were namby-pamby weak.

Republicans, starting with Ronald Reagan, changed from being fiscally responsible (the historical Republican Party) to being spendthrifts on military programs and wars. Democrats, i.e. Bill Clinton, became the fiscally responsible people. How confusing! We wiped out the federal deficit under the presidency of a Democrat? Hmmm …. We have now ballooned it under a Republican?

The impact of the evangelical Christian right wing on the Republican Party has been enormous. We are literally looking at a near future of anti-science behaviors from the Congress and the Supreme Court. Creationism may unseat evolution in our schools. Roe vs. Wade is about to become history. Stem cell research will be happening primarily outside the USA. The same will be true with other aspects of genetic engineering. We are entering a black period of anti-intellectual government that will dwarf Bush’s actions during his first four years.

My wife and I were so dismayed that a president with such a poor record of performance could be re-elected that we have seriously considered emigration from the USA. The root problem is one of long term effects on the population when educational systems become inferior and media content becomes useless. Only the stupid could have voted for Bush, or those wealthy folks who will directly profit from his abdication from protecting the middle class jobs and from his destructive tax policies and high deficit spending. You might remember a passage from my book, Destiny, in which I said, "The surest way to defeat the goals of democracy is to undereducate the citizens."

This then seems to me to be the largest mistake of the Democrats … they assumed an electorate with sufficient intelligence and knowledge to make the re-election of Bush highly unlikely. They (we) were wrong. We now have a plurality of stupid, or at least ignorant to the point of being non-functional thinkers, in the good old USA! The proof was seen through the election, for an administration that should by now be running from the law has become the law.

This reality is very hard to accept. It means that my compatriots and I have to discard essentially all of the beliefs that were taught to us as children about our country. Granted, we have been devolving for many decades, but this election result elevates any concerns we might have had to the crisis level. Why? Because we may never get America back in time to stop it from disappearing into history as one more fallen culture.

So, what about emigration? We were taught as children that many of the people who left Europe for the New World did so because of religious persecution. How odd! Those folks were not permitted to worship their God in their chosen way, so they opted to leave their homelands. That was not a small or lightly made decision. I see a parallel today that is alarming, except that the seat of narrow-minded persecution is in the USA.

There are those of us who seek our God through science, and we believe that evolving Humanity to a higher form is the highest form of gratitude for opportunity to live that we can show to our creator. It means we have honored our creator for giving us the gift of life and the ability to grow ourselves beyond living in the darkness of caves or ignorance or intellectual suppression.

If you are a student of history you will note that within a few hundred years the colonists and their descendants grew this country to become the most forward and powerful nation the world has ever seen. Backward Europe became second rate compared to the USA. Well folks, it looks like we are by our own stupidity becoming like the old Europe, with all new opportunities opening up in Europe and especially the Far East. Isn’t that a sick turnabout?

Why the title given to this article? Well, it comes from an old joke that goes as follows: Ques: How can you tell who the Pollack is at a cockfight? Ans: He is the one who brings the duck. Ques: How can you tell the Mafia controls the cockfight? Ans: Because the duck wins! So it is that the duck won the presidential election … and you best be asking if the game we are playing is fixed and therefore unproductive for most of us, even those too ignorant to know how to play?