Hugh Nicoll's Blog

Just past eleven pm (JST) and most of the news from the States is about the election. Mark Bernstein has a wide-ranging series of links in his latest blog posting, including one to Barlow’s “How to Overthrow the Government” which is wondrous for its broadminded honesty, and for the link to Hunter Thompson’s election rant.
Ron Silliman’s post for the first of November is also devoted to the importance of this election. The divide in the United States, commented on almost everywhere in the mainstream press by pundits and editorial writers of many persuasions, does seem truly severe – closing in on the ideological and political gaps last experienced in the lead up to the Civil War, as many have already commented.
After twenty-one years in Japan, I have grown ever more conflicted about the idea of “going home.” Lots of thinking to do, but whatever happens, it may make my work with Japanese students of American Studies more challenging and more exciting.

update Juan Cole describes Bush as a revolutionary (a Robespierre), and calls Kerry a statesman who will navigate the status quo, and thus protect America’s true interests. He also cites a remark by a John Walbridge, claiming that “most Americans may not believe the rest of the world exists.” Once a traveller, or a long-term expatriate, with friends and colleagues everywhere in that wider world, the arrogance of such beliefs must at the very least be questioned. Yanks do not easily shed the habit of comparing their new environments to the the ways things are done in the USA, nor do we lose our faith in America’s best ideals, but we certainly come to question the spinmeisters.