We would hazard a guess that a lot of Americans who have never paid attention to baseball or who haven't paid attention to the game for years will be tuning in to the World Series over the next week or two. Anything to get away from the maelstrom of "information" now swirling around them as the coundown to November 2 grows ever more intense. The "series" will (unless it is all over in four) be going on throughout the rest of the election campaign, possibly as a dim reminder to many Americans of their great nation as it used to be.
Having recently lived through a (mercifully much shorter) federal election campaign here in Australia, this writer can sympathise. However, the campaign down under, as well as being shorter, was comparatively VERY low key. There was only one debate, and it actually did at least faintly resemble a debate - at least for fleeting instants. The campaign ads did not resemble in ferocity those saturating the US airways, some characterised by more than one commentator as "a political version of civil war." And no where was there the suggestion that a phalanx of lawyers had been gathered by both sides to sue the pants off each other no matter what the outcome.
A major reason for this comparative "civility" is that politicians in Australia don't have to try very hard. Voting is actually compulsory down under, although a comparatively small fine is all that an Aussie who "neglects" to show up on polling day faces. On top of that, there is a system of "preferences" set up whereby a voter MUST (for his or her vote to count) vote for ALL the candidates to the lower house in the electorate, numbering them in order of "preference". One of the great "back room" sports enjoyed by Aussie political parties is the horse trading (which takes place before the ballots are cast) over who gets whose preferences.
Truly, "democracy", Aussie style, is a wonderful thing. EVERYBODY gets a vote and everybody gets to vote.
For Aussies, the ameliorating factor which attends every election is that the outcome doesn't really matter, certainly not to the world and not all that much to Aussies either, since there is now little if any difference between the parties. The thing that makes US elections, especially US Presidential elections, so globally intense is that the whole world knows that they DO matter - profoundly. In fact, we would say that the rest of the world is much more aware of the global significance of US elections than is (most of) the American electorate.
That is why the rest of the world is hoping fervently for a Kerry victory on November 2. They don't care about his policies, or lack of same. They don't care about his background, his comparative wealth, his Congressional voting record, his wife, his children, his pets, or his tailor or barber. They care about only one thing, and that is that John Kerry is NOT George Bush. He is NOT the man who has been President of the US over the last four years. And he is NOT the man who has potentially destroyed the stature of the US, financially, economically, geo-strategically, and even culturally, over that short space of time.
We say "potentially destroyed" in this context because the outcome is not yet cast in stone. Above all other reasons, the rest of the world wants a Kerry victory because it would be a signal (at their first opportunity) sent out by the American PEOPLE that they repudiate the actions of the Bush Administration. Such a signal would earn the immense gratitude of millions of thinking people across the world
Like the US, the vast majority of the rest of the world are "democracies". Like the US, the rest of the world faces no REAL choice when they step into the voting booth since the major contending parties tend to ideological identical twins in all ways which REALLY matter. Like the US, the rest of the world is used to seeing and hearing political campaigns descend quickly into the shallowest of inconsequentialities, while any issue which actually MATTERS is neither debated nor even mentioned.
The major difference between the US and the other "advanced" democracies and most of the rest of the world is that it is comparatively much easier in the US for the public to register their displeasure by getting rid of the incumbents. The rest of the world knows this too. A vote against Mr Mugabe in Zimbabwe is potentially life threatening. A vote against Mr Bush in the US (or, it's true, Mr Howard in Australia) is not.
The potential tragedy (yes, tragedy) of a Bush victory on November 2 lies simply in the fact that it would convey to the rest of the world (and to millions of clear-eyed and honourable Americans too) the message that the American PEOPLE approve of his actions. What other message could be conveyed. Like the rest of the world, Americans don't have a choice about the future direction of their country, there is no "electable" party which does not promise more of the same. But they DO have the opportunity to pass judgement on the actions of the government they have endured since the last election.
The US government today oversees a typical empire in the terminal throes of over-extension. The wealth of its people has long-since been unequal to the "ambitions" of its rulers. Now, the "tribute" of the rest of the world - extracted and tendered by the rest of the world's Central Banks - is inexorably falling short. Just as they always do in the terminal stages of every empire, the tribute states are slowly but surely breaking away. They are doing so as the dangers of breaking away become perceived to be lesser than the dangers of slavishly continuing to send tribute.
The dangers are obvious. The US government has set the standard for a global borrowing orgy which has long since passed all the bounds of fiscal rectitude or even sanity. Any attempt to continue to maintain or even expand the US empire after November 2 would quickly collapse in a niagara of red ink. It is this writer's judgement, shared we hasten to add by MANY other fine analysts on the internet, that the US markets (including a $US Gold price still below highs set earlier this year) are hanging on only because of the election and the attendant political imperative to avoid scaring the "horses" (voters).
Gold is inching towards its highs set earlier this year. The $US is inching towards its lows set earlier this year. The Dow is at new 2004 lows, and on the verge of re-confirming its post January 2000 bear market. The Fed is adding ever bigger dollops of "reserves" to the system on a daily basis. Treasury debt is frozen at the "ceiling". The strain is immense, but it is only just over another week.
What comes AFTER November 2? The "system" doesn't have time to consider that at present, being flat out trying to make sure that everything hangs together until November 2. Suffice it to say that if you who are reading this are not already prepared - minimal debt, minimal exposure to $US denominated paper assets - Gold as insurance - you probably never will be.
We can only hope that the American people will say NO to the American empire as personified in George W Bush. Doing so would be a small but VITAL step on the long road back towards a different age, an age when the "World Series" was more important than the Presidential election. An age when a US President was not a quasi Ceasar, but merely that most rare of modern phenomenon, a STATESMAN. A Statesman is that rare and precious political individual who successfully acts as a custodian for the rights and FREEDOMS of the people he is elected to serve. To open any kind of road back towards statesmen, the repudiation of EMPIRE is the FIRST necessary step. That is the REAL choice facing Americans on November 2.