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
