If Bush keeps tripping over his own feet, it should be hard for the Democrats not to win the election.
I'm Jill Walker Rettberg, author and professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen in Norway. I co-direct the Center for Digital Narrative, a 10-year Norwegian Centre of Research Excellence, and I lead the ERC project Machine Vision in Everyday Life. This site started as my blog in October 2000.
fivecats
You’d think, wouldn’t you? Unfortunately, Americans are cursed with an amazingly short memory. This, too, will be forgotten soon enough.
Analyists I’ve listened to (on both sides of the fence) say that this year’s election in the US is likely to come down to only a few key states. Much of the country, despite what’s happened to jobs, the economy and with the war, are expected to vote exactly the same way they did in 2000.
This just stuns me.
I have a theory about America. European countries, Asian countries, Middle East countries, etc., have all been around for centuries. As such, the people there have a sense of time and place, a sense of their place in the long history of time that they are a a continuing part of. America has only been around for roughly 225 years. While the rest of the world is made up of older, more “mature” nations, the US is still in the Terrible Twos, throwing fits, rocks and sticks after having learned the power of being able to say “NO!”
We’d be much better off if an adult came by, took our big toys away from us and slapped us on the wrist with a “Bad Country!” and sent us to the corner for a Time Out.
…
Norman
Hate to rain on your picnic “fivecats”, but the U.S. was a nation before many of the countries you see as having been nations for a long time. There’s no shortage of historical atlases which will show what I mean.
As for Kerry defeating Bush, let’s hope there aren’t too many more revelations about discussions at meetings Kerry can’t “remember” attending, where the assassination of U.S. Senators was topic of the day?
achilleas
Though I don’t quite agree with “fivecats”, Norman’s response looks like an excelent example of a t.v. argument : officially correct, essentially irrelevant, and the kind of bonfire that avoids the issue and drives attention elsewhere (where ?).
Incidentally the notions of nation and state are different.
deena
I hate to say this, but…Americans will believe whoever spends the most on advertising. We are a pretty brainwashed bunch. And Bush has a war chest of over 150 million, whereas Kerry has very little to spend…
Any suggestions on political actions would be appreciated. I’m about to buy
50 Ways to Love Your Country
http://www.moveon.org/r?490
deena
I hate to say this, but…Americans will believe whoever spends the most on advertising. We are a pretty brainwashed bunch. And Bush has a war chest of over 150 million, whereas Kerry has very little to spend…
Any suggestions on political actions would be appreciated. I’m about to buy
50 Ways to Love Your Country
http://www.moveon.org/r?490
Norman
Sorry, Achilleas, for merely implying that perhaps it isn’t all over yet, instead of stating it more clearly. My use of “nation” rather than “country”, by the way, was because I felt that with its stronger connotations, it was more appropriate for discussions about how a group of inhabitants feel re the geographical locale in which they happen to live.
by all means use the less powerful word, “country” and diminish the strength of any bond; but the same reference to an historical atlas stands. few of the “ancient” countries you imply exist have any long established sense of identity which bound them together pre 1776, or whatever other date from which you choose to start.