My Take On American Politics

An open letter from Iranian intelligence. Note the subtle satire of the editorial & the latest release of the NIE report on Iran has reinforced that the intelligence (and ground reality) is hopelessly out of sync with the perceptions of the administration. This is a silent political earthquake that has been delivered to the neo-con lobby led by Dick Cheney that has fully disturbed the pawns on the Great chessboard. This is not new, not now not after that Iraqi disaster. There is a certain air of cynicism that has gripped the American mainstream media since the Bush's second term. Everybody on TV talks of the nation that has lost its way, even though you don't feel it that way when you talk to people or interact with them. Maybe I was never with people that really mattered. After spending a decent time in American liberal heartland, I have realized that Bush has neither the support of liberals nor conservatives. He is like a whipping post that everybody likes to whip religiously. But there is the catch, I don't he is the main problem, he may be a polarizing figure in the centre at best, but he is not dictating the American politics.

Instead it is that the conservatives & liberals are tied around there extremes so tightly that there is no middle ground, & neither any hope of it. Nobody talks of sub-prime or health care or immigration, instead the whole energy is being spend on creation, evolution, abortion & debating who is the biggest tax liberal. I used to think earlier who are these people who have such utter faith in creationism or anti-choice or anti-stem cell research, but having lived there I have come to know that an average white American living in rural America is church going, does not seem to like gays, republican, creationist, pro-life & fiscally conservative & is against immigrants or American jobs being outsourced. And with such a large population feeling marginalized by successive liberal regimes & the democratic penchant for big business & outsourcing, its payback time. Therefore even with so much knee jerk reaction to Bush's presidency, it won't be easy for democrats to take the Oval office back. But in all this confusion & stalemate one thing is clear, that conservatism is in & on TV it is big business. Every evening on CNN there is a conservative show - Lou Dobbs Show, even though I don't like the fear-mongering tone of the show or the anchor, but the show whole raison d'etre is to provoke fear about everything & anything, about oil money buying US ports/NASDAQ/highways, about outsourcing, about immigration, about Chinese imports, about Iran. He seems to have lot of audience though. I guess conservatism is a safe bet, always, at least the onus of change is no longer there.