Marcus's Musings

Tuesday was a sad day not just for America, but the entire world. Bush has done pretty good job of making the world a worse place to live in over the last few years, and if he carries on at this rate, who knows what'll happen.

Michael Moore has published a list of 17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists and I'm hoping that no.15 comes true, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

On Christopher H Laco's blog I found a link to the first instance of vote machine malfunction that i've seen, and it's sure not to be the last.

Us Brits can't relate to the American electoral system at all. At best, it's simply not democratic - states are "called" before the votes have actually finished being counted, some votes aren't counted at all because of faulty voting machines, etc - and at worst it appears to be downright corrupt and open to manipulation.

In Britain, every vote counts and has the right to be counted. If they weren't, it would be a national scandal!

Also, the way in which the parties launched a media war against each other - spending an astonishing **$2bn** in the process - is absolutely unbelievable! BBC's Panorama had an excellent documentary on the run-up to the elections, and snippets of various Bush (and Kerry) adverts were featured - I just couldn't take them seriously at all! They were almost parodies of themselves, especially the Mexican one that Bush ran! It just beggars belief that this is how the world's biggest "democracy" conducts its elections.

Just saying that it's a "different culture" is a cop-out, although to a certain extent - there's certainly a well-cultivated culture of fear out there, and fear is a powerful political tool. I'm told that the BBC's "The Power Of Nightmares" three-part documentary series was excellent, but sadly I missed it. However, summaries of each of the episodes are online and they are well worth a read:
The Power of Nightmares: Baby It's Cold Outside
The Power of Nightmares: The Phantom Victory
The Power of Nightmares: The Shadows In The Cave

Ok, rant over (for now anyway). Is any of the above news to you?