Oh man, we're fucked.

I was raised a Republican and consider myself rather politically apathetic (give me a break, I'm from Orange County). In the last few years, however, I have increasingly become a supporter of the Democratic party, and in recent months become more concerned with the state of affairs in the U.S. And while some people would probably say that the influence of college is making me more liberal, I would have to disagree; it is rather the hyper-conservative and quite frankly dangerous policy of the current government that has made me liberal.

I hate to simplify things in criticizing, but this is just a blog so I will. As a lot of Bush's detractors have pointed out, he refuses to admit that it is possible that with the his attack on Iraq and the "war on terror" that they might be going about things the wrong way. He assumes that just because the terrorists and people like Saddam Hussein can be classified as wrong, anything the U.S. does is automatically right. And we can see the result of that logic - thousands of people dying in an increasingly intractable situation in Iraq that had little to do with terror, but does now since we've pissed everyone off. He cut taxes and then rang up the bills paying for his war, which is completely irrational. Imagine if you were running a household. How many of you would deliberately take a paycut and then go on a spending spree? Thought so. Meanwhile, the environment is getting shittier (no matter what Bush says) and the supreme court is in grave danger of becoming heavily conservative. And remember that whole separation of church and state thing that is part of our government's foundation? Yeah, because it seems like Bush has been increasingly forgetting it.

With this election, a few things come to mind. First, man, Americans are stupid. They are currently allowing every decision they make to be controlled by fear (which has been carefully cultivated by the White House and the press mind you). They are so easily baited into believing whatever a pundit or politician says about their safety or their future without independent thought. Bush twists and spins words into positives even when he has to cover up bald-faced truth. And Americans eat it all up (did I mention Americans are also morbidly obese?). Americans so fully concentrate on their own safety and their own interest, that I think they are making things worse for themselves. I can't blame the American people for being afraid, but they have to start acting more like a part of the rest of the world rather than everyone's self-righteous big brother. I read on the internet one American's belief that we need to fear the rest of the world because "so many countries do not have America's best interest a heart" and that "an offense is the best defense". Aside from the fact that it is obvious and natural that the rest of the world doesn't necessarily put America's interests first, this is precisely the kind of jingoistic, xenophobic, war/fear-mongering rhetoric the the American people don't need but are drowning in. Drop the attitude already. Seriously, living abroad you meet so many people who aren't afraid to tell you how much America sucks (and their reasoning is usually spot on), and those are just like South Koreans and Chinese and Australians and Europeans, people who I'm pretty sure aren't going to strap a bomb to their chest anytime soon and run into a busy Manhattan train. I mean, I live in a country right now who LOVES the U.S. and is one of the few significant nations helping out in Iraq (only a little though, since the U.S. wrote into the Japanese constitution that Japan couldn't have a military ever again), and yet the people here are still pissed at Bush and his administration. So just imagine how much other people must hate the U.S. - and in increasing amounts! So we have learned that looking at the U.S. from the inside and outside, it looks increasingly silly, pompous, and hateable. And somehow Bush still got elected back home.

It really makes me worried about the future. The planet is being increasingly controlled by a few guys - Bush, Blair, to some extent Koizumi - while a bunch of other people suffer. I'm worried about my own future - I mean, just wonder if there is a draft because of this nutso war we're fighting? I won't have to fight, right? I'm worried about my parents' future - where is the social security money going to come from now that we are so stretched by deficit and debt? I'm worried about my children's future - how horrible is the environment going to get? How hated can Americans get? How weak and debt-burdened can America get? I'm worried about the entire nation - how many more terrorists are going to spring up from the U.S.'s unilateral and unthinking foreign policies? Now that we're tied up in Iraq, are we ever going to catch Bin Laden? Now that we pissed everyone off, when and where is the next attack going to be? Because I want to make sure I'm out of town on that day.

Really, just thinking about moving back makes me scared. I'll be moving to a big city, so of course I worry about terrorist strikes (you know, just like all those small-town Christian mid-Westerners who voted for Bush and are at huge risk of a terrorist attack at their .. um .. hardware store). And if the terrorist strikes don't get me, then I can always fear being killed by a psycho American on my way home from work or on my way to the grocery store (can you believe that I can't remember seeing one story on the nightly news here about someone being murdered? I still don't understand why Americans kill each other in droves). I guess fear is just the default setting for Americans. Oh well. At least I get to stay out of the country until next June.