By  Dr. Mahjabeen Islam

December 24, 2004

What Moral Values?


Most post-election analyses attribute Bush’s victory to the electorate responding to his moral values pitch. If that is indeed the case then his election in 2000 and Clinton’s peccadilloes while in office really started this tide of quiet conservatism that has spread across America.

O.J. Simpson’s wife murder trial paled in significance in comparison to the television draw that the Clinton-Lewinsky affair had created. Clinton till today can rivet an audience, but there was a palpable sense of violation of the nation’s honor when all his escapades were unabashedly splashed across print media and recycled ad nauseam on television. On the heels of this fiasco came George W. Bush, a happily married man with a sort of not-very-clever, boy-next-door-charm.

Prior to 9/11, America was an intellectual and economic island, at least as far as its citizens went. There was no need to know details of geography or history beyond what was in the land or had occurred in it for America was insulated and almost intoxicated by it. The neighborhood football game was much greater priority than what was happening in Haiti and as far as the Asian continent was concerned it might as well have been Mars.

This ignorance and xenophobia were the poorest imaginable foundations for an intellectual confrontation with the fallout of 9/11. Immediately after, the Bush administration called on all media, especially television, to ensure that nothing “unpatriotic” was broadcast or printed. Christiana Amanpour did an uneasy expose when she said that post-9/11 the press was muzzled. With the invasion of Iraq based on faulty information, the stage for manipulating the minds of Americans had been set.

During electioneering certain themes were played upon and successfully. Fear of the unknown and fear in and of itself were orchestrated with the underlying theme of not changing the Commander-in-Chief midstream. Some whiz kid coined the term “flip-flop” and try as he did Kerry was unable to unstick that leech.

The tabulations in the New York Times in “How Americans Voted: A Political Portrait” make for interesting reading. Ages 18-29 voted Democrat and as age grew so did the chance that the person would vote Republican. Married folks and those with children under 18 voted Republican and the unattached or gay voted for Kerry. Protestants and Catholics largely voted Republican in contrast to Jews that voted 74 % Democrat and Muslims that voted 90% Democrat. CAIR or the Council of American-Islamic Relations provided information on how Muslims voted in 2004.

If you lived in a city with an over 500,000 population you were likely to vote Democrat and the smaller towns, suburbs and rural areas were overwhelmingly Republican. Income groups of less than $29,000 voted largely Democrat and at the other end the richer the more Republican. Educational status was also interesting. College graduates and less literate voted Republican and those with a post-graduate education primarily voted Democrat.

It appears that the issues of gay marriage and abortion got a large number of the conservatives out so that consciences could be calmed, and on the side of course a vote was cast for Bush. We all have our own frame of reference and as far as moral values go the dichotomy on a personal level versus the national level is difficult to digest. The evangelists would have their co-religionists base all of Christianity on a staunch opposition to abortion. They would have it seem that the religion begins and ends with love for the unborn child. And yet what premium should one place on the born children, read American Marines, and the occupied, read 100,000 Iraqi civilians that have died? How moral is it to protect the fetus but to needlessly kill the poverty squad; American men and women that joined the Marines during peace times for want of a good job with benefits. How principled is it to allow the murder of civilians for 4 out of 5 air strikes on supposed insurgent positions missed their targets and civilians massacred.

The Goebbels modus operandi has been employed, for the killing of Iraqi civilians since the beginning of this war has been minimally mentioned to the average American but the horror of abortion, abortion and more abortion has been picturesquely presented to the American public. In the sole super-power of this planet reliable news can only be gotten from alternative media. The average voting American is however influenced primarily by the political ads and the patriotic press. Myth manipulation thrives in the still insulated little world that rural Americans live in. Globalization seems to apply only to the outsourcing of jobs; it is not just AT&T and Microsoft that have entire cities pulsating in India, even X-rays taken in America are now read across the seven seas.

Kerry and Edwards did not promote the legislation of gay unions. But no one seemed to be listening. Though personally against abortion, they advocated separation of church and state and a woman’s right to choose for all American women are not Christian and how far fair is it to force one’s personal belief down an atheistic throat? But the cacophony of the pro-lifers drowned out the drone of reason.

American society promotes hedonism, aesthetic surgery, anything for longevity and limitless unmarried sex, as proven by the way Hollywood moulds its values, the premium that it places on youth and beauty and the breathless parental send offs to strapless, cleavage-revealing teens for senior proms and high school dances.

“What do you mean she’s pregnant?” screams the single parent about her teenage daughter when the test for the unborn child comes back positive. “How did that happen?” I’d die to say, “It was that senior prom and the satin dress and the strobe lit hall and then the …” but refrain, recognizing the rhetorical question.

Recently America sneered at Turkey when its parliament started debate on making adultery illegal, with much of the commentary underscoring Turkey’s poor fit in the European Union for such an intrusion into its citizens’ private lives. Besides the nuclear police, the terrorist police, the human rights police amongst a plethora of other self-anointed elevations, America is now getting comfortable with exporting its newfound conservative mores. Never mind the fact that in Deuteronomy and Leviticus in the Old Testament, fornication is a sin, straight and simple.

My issue is not about the merit of Bush versus Kerry, the nation has spoken and its choice is democracy in action. It is the dichotomy and the hypocrisy that is in question.
Mahjabeen Islam is a physician practicing in Toledo Ohio. Her email is mahjabeenislam@hotmail.com

 

 

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