from the hip

I have been following the campaigns for the presidential election in the US for a while. While I find much to appreciate and much good, it is also somewhat sad to follow it. The sad part, to my mind, concerns the missing half or so of the American population.

There is much talk about the rich, both from Barack Obama and from John McCain. Their viewpoints differ considerably. But they do talk about the rich.

And both candidates talk about the middle class. A lot. About how the solution to the current crisis in the US resides with the well being of the American middle class. About how the middle class must be strong enough economically to be able to afford to give their children education. And so on and so forth.

But neither of the candidates spends much time discussing the poor in the US. They don’t talk about their numbers. They don’t discuss their living conditions. The houses they loose in foreclosures. They don’t discuss what they will do for them. They don’t even disagree about them - because they simply don’t discuss them.

And this is what I think is sad. Very sad.

I have discussed this with people. The most rational explanation I am able to get is that the poor don’t count in the election. So the candidates don’t bother spending time discussing them. And then, when I hear that, it is easy to think that they probably will not count in the next election either, so there is no reason to do anything for them between elections or talk about them in the next campaign either. I guess.

So, effectively, half or so (we can always fight over the exact percentage, but that is not my point here) of the population in the US don’t count, from a political perspective. They don’t matter, because they hardly ever vote. The don’t get to be visible. They don’t get to be the target of reforms aimed to improve their conditions. Indeed, it is easy to think that to the extent their chances,  as opposed to the chances of the middle class, improves, it is simply a result of a drip down or spillover effect of changes instituted for the benefit of others.

What a terrible waste of human resources this is! What a waste of talent! What a waste of happiness! How sad. For the United States of America.

How long can the United States continue like this in a knowledge and competence economy? Why the concern with energy saving and recycling of resources when such a large proportion of the greatest resource of all is hardly maintained and definitely not used efficiently?

Some time ago, after the election in Zimbabwe, I wrote that anything could happen there. And a lot has happened. Terror with beatings, arrests, and police raids of the oppositions’ headquarters, and so on. And alongside that, everything is slowed down and postponed. Elected results took ages to make official, then recounts took even more time, and so on.

Robert Mugabe has turned into a despot. He is very bad for the country, as we all know. But he is also very, very smart. He ignores the UN. He knows he can use the forces of government to slowly wear the opposition down. He knows he can terrorize voters and make many of them either vote for him or at least not vote. He knows guns are stronger than pens, and that he controls the guns.

By conducting the coup d’état in slow motion and surrounding parts of what he is doing with clouds of legalese, he also know that he is making it difficult for the rest of the world to react in the only way that matters to him – by military intervention. There have already been boycotts. I don’t think he cares too much, one way or the other, about a new one. Protests? Sure, and so what?

It is hard to see how a military intervention can be justified. And it is hard to see who would want to do it and finance it. But at the same time, seeing the Western world sitting there, watching, doing nothing, taking the role of the voyeur, also feels wrong. Human rights are being ignored, people’s votes are being ignored, freedom of speech is suppressed, ordinary people in Zimbabwe suffer and the sea of poverty widens.

It is an ugly picture for the moment. It may get even worse.

See also:

• Zimbabwe’s opposition leader to leave Dutch protection
• Mugabes dager er talte
• Zimbabwe: More beatings, more abductions
• Zimbabwe: Military intervention could be justified
• FN ber Mugabe avlyse valget
• Mandela: Vil ikke kritisere Mugabe

The Danish newspaper Politiken has an article today that is a character analysis of the candidates for the post of Mayor in the great city of London. The next mayor will be either “Red-Ken” Livingstone, the current mayor, or the challenger, Boris Johnson.

Boris Johnson is described by Politiken as a popular, conservative party clown with a pronounced upper class accent. Johnson likes to participate in comedy programs on TV, and makes lots of statements that he later has to apologize for. Like the one about the population of Papua New Guinea being cannibals. According to the polls, he seems to be leading the race for the moment.

The other challenger, supported by Elton John, is a homosexual ex-police boss, Brian Paddick. Polls, unfortunately, indicate that he has no chances of winning.

Red-Ken is an admirer of Venezuela’s president Chavez and Cub’s Fidel Castro. He is known, according to Politiken, for having stated that President Bush is the greatest known threat to humankind.

Tony Travis, a professor at the London School of Economics, says that as people in the UK are so concerned with celebrity and personality, Boris Johnson has a good chance of winning.

What an election! Seem to me like the good folks of London will have to exercise their democratic powers by choosing among bad and worse.

Alternatively, if Politiken is wrong, the next mayor of London, whoever he may be, seems to have a slight image problem in Denmark.

Something is seriously wrong in a country when a vast majority of its population say that the country is headed in the wrong direction:

81% in Poll Say Nation Is Headed on the Wrong Track

Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll.

In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

This poll was reported by the New York Times. These are numbers, frankly, that would not have surprised me if they had been from a poll conducted in the Soviet Union before glasnost and democratization. But numbers like this, in a democracy, is astonishing, to say the least!

A majority of nearly every demographic and political group — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school — say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off.

There is still considerable uncertainty concerning the results from the election in Zimbabwe. To my knowledge, official resultats have still not been released.

However, the Danish newspaper Politiken cites two prominent members of Mugabe’s ruling party (names withheld), who give the following results:

Tsvangirai’s MDC: 48.3%
Mugabe’s ZANU-PF: 43%

According to Politiken, there will be a new election within three weeks. However, New York Times writes that there are negotiations about Mugabe’s retirement under way:

Negotiations May Lead to Mugabe’s Exit in Zimbabwe

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

HARARE, Zimbabwe — The opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is in talks with advisers to President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe, amid signs that some of those close to Mr. Mugabe may encourage him to resign, a Western diplomat and a prominent Zimbabwe political analyst said Tuesday. The negotiations about a possible transfer of power away from Mr. Mugabe began after he apparently concluded that a runoff election would be demeaning, a diplomat said.

The Times, BBC-News, and Dagbladet also bring reports about negotiations. This is what Times writes:

Intensive diplomatic efforts were under way tonight to secure a face-saving exit for Robert Mugabe after 28 years as President of Zimbabwe.

His closest cohorts informed him last night that he had failed to win an outright victory in the country’s weekend presidential poll.

Despite tampering with the results from the countrywide elections, the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission was set to announce that the main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, had taken 48 per cent of the vote, against 42 per cent for the 84-year-old incumbent.

So, in conclusion, there is considerable uncertainty, but strong indications that Mugabe has lost. Whether he will retire in a peaceful manner or not is still not clear. According to BBC-News a deal is “close”.

Bhutan, a tiny country between China and India, in the Himalayan Mountains, has joined the ranks of the world’s democracies. According to Guardian:

Despite apathy among the 318,000 voters on becoming enfranchised, the 28-year-old Oxford-educated King Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wanghuk pushed ahead with the polls to “modernise” Bhutan, exhorting people to vote. In the end turnout topped 70%, although yesterday many voters admitted they preferred monarchy to democracy. “His Majesty is like our father. We all prefer our father,” Karma Tsheweng, a 35-year-old mechanic, told reporters in the capital, Thimphu.

This is an interesting story. A process of democratization initiated by a ruling King, not because he is forced to do it, but because he thinks it is right to do it. A King educated in the West, and inspired by the political ideas dominant in the West. In actually working actively to convince a people that didn’t want democracy about the virtues of it.

Even the old king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, have traveled around in the country advocating democracy. It is hard to say whether the King and ex-King were pleased with the result:

The first parliamentary election in the history of the last independent Himalayan kingdom, Bhutan, produced a landslide with voters decisively rejecting the party led by the king’s uncle.

In a shock result the Druk Phuensum Tshogpa (DPT) or Bhutan United party led by Jigmi Thinley, a former prime minister and canny diplomat close to the country’s bureaucracy, won more than 40 out of the 47 seats in the new national assembly. Thinley is credited with provided the intellectual framework for “Gross National Happiness”, rooted in the Buddhist idea that economic growth alone does not bring contentment.

But the important thing, whether the result was pleasing or not to the royal faimily, is that they accept it. And it seems they have.

This is an incredible interesting story. Bhutan deserves all the support it can get from the West in this experiment. A new path to democracy, no less!