Aslaug's Axe Shed

Here we go again…

This post is a result of my reading online-comics. How strange is that. However, a few days ago, when I checked the Ozy & Millie site for updates, I popped by the political cartoons/blog section of that site. I usually do since I find the writer to be eloquent and witty, and since I rarely disagree with her, I figure I might as well.

However, something in the blog from a few days ago struck me, and it’s been tumbling around in my head ever since.

I’ve finally come to the conclusion that it is an understandable, but dangerous, generalization which could use a bit more explanation than what is given.

The blogger likens the Democrats to political debaters and Republicans to Masters of the Universe (the Hasbro toyline…not in a metaphysical sense). Whereas Democrats consider the art of debating essential to finding a solution to a problem, the Republicans, in her version, takes on the mantle of He-Man, trying to defeat Skeletor. While the mental image of John McCain roaring about possessing the power of Grayskull, while wearing a furry loincloth and twin bandoliers is strangely humerous (and rather disturbing), I don’t think it is entirely accurate.

I can hear it now. Gasps going up around the world where people read this. “Oh my, is Aslaug about to defend a Republican?”

Well, stranger things have happened … such as the fish rain in 12th century Burgundy and when the Mayor of Warzaw spontaneously combusted in the mid-1600s (pop quiz…what TV-show do these examples come from?).

My point is, McCain no doubt believes that what he’s doing is right. So does *shudder* Sarah Palin. They honestly believe in the validity of their political beliefs. AND SO DOES EVERY REPUBLICAN VOTING FOR THEM. Now, I’m not willing to write off more than forty percent of American’s population as being childishly incapable of leading a civilized debate. I’ve debated ethical and religious issues with professed Republicans and it has been both pleasant and mutually beneficial. So the aforementioned blogger’s version is a generalization of the kind that many Europeans believe only Republicans make in the first place.

The ‘all or nothing’ version. The ‘it’s us or them’. ‘If you’re not with us, you’re against us’. ‘God is on our side!’ (meaning: He’s not on anyone else’s). These kinds of things would make hairs stand on end for most Europeans, myself included. However, I don’t think that Bushisms necessarily covers the whole gammut of Republican political beliefs.

On the other hand…if one looks objectively at why this European fear of Republicans came into being, a few things spring to mind.

In the early 1950′s, President Eisenhower was quite popular in Europe and for good reason! He had been supreme commander of the western allied forces defeating Nazi Germany. While Western Europeans generally agree that England holds a very significant part of the credit for why this was doable at all (they never caved in and kept resisting Hitler, despite standing alone for a full year for instance) and while all Western Europeans who know the first thing about history flatly reject the notion that the United States defeated Germany (Soviet Russia did), we all agree that the American/British/Canadian forces are to thank for the fact that we didn’t get swept up in the Soviet sphere of influence. So Ike was popular here. After the war, his resistance to the Soviet bear growling in its cave is seen by many as the reason why Berlin…and possibly the rest of Europe…didn’t get run over in a third world war. So…here we have a Republican people in Europe actually tend to view quite favorably. The next Republican president, however, was Nixon. And dear GODS…Tricky Dicky is scorned. The old democracies of Europe see him as little better than a gangster. He’s portrayed as a self-serving opportunist, willing to lie, cheat or outright break the law to gain an advantage. He is generally viewed as the worst president in the history of the United States…before the current one.

His Vice President was … well … heh … he was. And that’s about all that can be said about Gerald Ford. He’s an apostrophy in American politics. But the next Republican in the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan, started out so well. People thought quite highly of him at first. Clips from his speech at the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin is still occasionally shown on TV (‘Mr. Gorbatjov, bring this wall down’) but that came late in his presidency. And it could not completely outweigh the televised speech in which he described the Soviet Union as the Empire of Evil.

What Mr. Reagan didn’t really seem to grasp was that in making that speech, he placed over a hundred million Europeans DIRECTLY in the path of Soviet SS20 missiles. We were scared out of our minds. One of the most vivid memories I have from my childhood is still newscasters describing deployments of soviet middle- and long range ballistic missiles on the western borders of Warsaw Pact countries. I remember the looks on my parents faces … and mind you, I was quite young then. It made enough of an impact to settle with me for life. Reagan’s speech was seen as dangerously antagonistic, and Europeans were furious that he would gamble with OUR lives, when he was comparatively safe across the Atlantic. I remember how people seriously discussed how a new war would play out. It wouldn’t be fought on Russian or American soil, but right across Europe…again. Republican prestige in Europe suffered a blow from that speech I don’t really think it’s ever recovered from. Even to this day I have yet to hear a single European journalist or historian speak of that speech in positive tones. Most still sound scared when they mention it.

After Reagan, we got Bush Sr.

He, of course, was not seen as particularly dangerous. People supported the first war in Iraq, because everyone agreed that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was horrible and mean and that something should be done. What then ticked people off was that nothing WAS done. Iraq was defeated militarily, but Saddam Hussein was allowed not only to stay in power but to inflict another grotesque bloodbath on his own population which in turn resulted in YET ANOTHER flood of refugees. Refugees that the United States did NOT take off Europe’s hands, mind you. It gave rise to yet more racism in Europe, and it started many Europeans thinking that America hadn’t actually fought for Kuwait…for the small, defenseless, helpless country…but for the oil supplies alone. We started wondering if we had been lied to…

Oh, and of course, we got Dan Quayle in the package. While he was certainly entertaining, most Europeans nodded sagely in understanding when the news broke that Washington motorists were driving around with streamers saying ‘Keep George Healthy’ on the back of their cars. The terror of getting an obvious incompetent (‘If there’s water on Mars, there’s oxygen, and that means we can breathe’, ‘I’m happy to be here in Pogo Pogo’, ‘Potatoe’ etc.) in charge of the most powerful country in the world was just mindnumbing.

The Clinton Administration cemented European antipathy towards Republican rule. Not only had Clinton won convincingly in as fair an election as America will ever have with its current election-system, but he was actually paying attention to the rest of the world in a positive way. And then came the murder-accusations. That he had killed a former advisor (or at least he had someone else do the dirty work). People found it rather implausible, but it never made that much of a headline. Then…of course…came the whole Lewinsky-debacle.

I don’t think I can say this more clearly than this: WE DON’T GIVE A FLYING F*CK WHO THE MAN SLEPT WITH OR WHAT HE’S DOING WITH HIS CIGARS!

What we care about is his politics. Kenneth Starr was considered a flat out villain in most European media. It was seen as an EXCEPTIONALLY cheap way of sniping at a politician, and we felt pretty damned justified in feeling that way. In Denmark, one of our most popular ministers of state was a notorious womanizer and while people felt bad for his wife (just as we felt bad for Hillary Clinton), it had no impact whatsoever on elections because people cared about politics, not a man’s sexual habits. The whole affair was seen as hypocritical and base, and as an exceptionally cheap attempt at mudslinging that really had nothing whatsoever to do with Clinton’s ability to lead his country or make policy.

And then we got Dubya. I remember that election night. I went to bed thinking Gore had won, and I felt a certain amount of relief. I woke up to one of the worst shocks of my life the next morning, and I admit it took me over a month to recover. Since George W. Bush’s election, to many people in Europe, the word ‘Republican’ has become synonymous with ‘religious fanatic’, ‘right wing extremist’, ‘human-rights violator’, ‘wild-west mentality’, ‘irresponsibility’, ‘lack of compassion’, ‘oppression of minorities’ and a number of other similar things.

A very far cry from Ike, the protector and guarantor of democracy and freedom, but it still happened in just a fifty year period.

When Europeans love Democrats, they do so mainly because THEY ARE NOT REPUBLICANS. Most people here don’t know Democratic policies all that well (I for one disagree vehemently on many of them, since the Democrats are a liberal party, and liberalism is a right wing system), but they know that Democrats are not Republicans, and Republicans are dangerous, selfish, condescending people who resort to violence as the first and only solution to most problems.

Now THAT is a dangerous generalization, but it is the way a LOT of people here think.

And I am sad to say…the Republican party brought it in itself.

I don’t think many Republicans see themselves as plucky G.I. Joe actionfigures, out to defeat the monstrous Cobra-operatives of the Democratic party. I realize some do…’Gun-toting small-town Christians for McCain’ printed on T-shirts makes me want to curl up in bed and cry myself to sleep with horror…but I choose to believe a majority of Republican voters are convinced that their political system is better, based on personal contemplation. That I can respect, even though I disagree wholeheartedly with the vast majority of Republican policies.

I just don’t think most of them understand why the rest of the world don’t agree with them too.

I’m not American, and my reach is limited in terms of how many people actually read my blog. Nonetheless, I have to add my two cents to the debacle called the American presidential election.

I’ve been concerned whether I should or not, because this is such a loaded issue with so many high flying emotions involved. But I have finally come to the conclusion that I am undoubtedly not going to move any votes, and if against all odds I do, it’s because the people I’ve influenced were open for it anyway. In the interest of free speech and civilized values, however, I should not be afraid to speak up.

My opinion is that the American political system is terribly, even catastrophically, flawed. I have thought so for years. The most glaring example of the problems in the socalled democracy that makes up the United States of America comes in the shape of indirect elections. In the United States, it is not ‘one man, one vote’. It’s ‘one man, possibly an elector’. In a world where it is entirely possible to conduct a direct mano-a-mano election using the latest information technology and computer science, the electors are an anachronistic leftover from a day and age where counting votes by hand meant several weeks of work, just to get them all together in the same place, and then several more weeks of work comparing them to the results of all the other states. Back in the days of the original Thirteen Colonies, electors made sense. After the invention of the telegraph or even the railroad, they started losing their vital importance but at least the system could still be defended as ‘easier’ than a direct election in a country stretching over such vast distances. However, after the invention of the telephone, they became obsolete. Which strictly speaking means that the United States, claiming to be the paragon of Democracy, has had one of the least democratic methods in the entire Western World of electing its head of state for over a hundred years. Nowadays, it’s just frighteningly illogical, and the most obvious example of this was the Gore-W. Bush election where Gore got one and a half million more votes in total, but lost the election nonetheless.

That, ladies and gentlemen, cannot be defended as ‘democracy’ no matter how one tries to reformulate the term to make it fit the lie. That, ladies and gentlemen, was a farce and it was CONSIDERED a farce by most of the civilized world.

Now, eight years later, we are still suffering the consequences of that farce. More so than ever. The United States has sadly lost its moral leadership of the Western World, and many, many populations even in Western Europe, an area allied to the United States and bound to the US by massive trading agreements, consider the United States a greater threat to World Peace than Iran, Syria, North Korea or Russia, let alone stateless terrorist organisations like Al’Qaeda.

In Europe, we look to the United States in abject horror when we learn that in one of the first nations in the world to make a clear and defined distinction between religion and state, religion now plays so prominent a role in politics that no secular legislator would survive if he or she did not openly profess to a form of Christian faith. Where religion is considered so all important that basic human rights to determine the course of one’s own life is considered secondary by many. I am, of course, thinking of such things as the right to abortion (and let me be very direct in saying I am pro-choice, but vehemently against abuse of the system. I believe there are cases where abortion is the best choice. I’m thinking of incest, rape, underage and involuntary pregnancies of any kind, fetuses displaying handicaps so heavy that the quality of life for the parents would suffer dramatically and the child itself would have no quality of life at all and other similar situations). I am also thinking of such things as homosexual rights. If people belonging to a certain religious group don’t want to marry homosexuals in their churches, temples, mosques or whatever…then that’s their choice. But homosexual couples should have the exact same rights as any other married couple and should be allowed a civil, completely secular marriage like any heterosexual couple. Specifically because religion and secular life should remain clearly seperated, in which case the religious reasons for not allowing this are all completely, utterly null and void and irrellevant, serving no purpose except to purposefully and deliberately deny fellow citizens basic rights, based solely on their choice of life partner. If a church, mosque, temple or whatever should WANT to perform marriages of homosexual couples, then fine by me as well. It should be up to them to decide. But as a basic right, marriage should be open to everybody. Heterosexuals cannot claim to monopolize love, nor can they monopolize the word marriage. They can, to some extent, monopolize religious marriages, but not civil rights. If one does so, one contravenes the principle that state and church must remain seperate entities.

But as Bill Clinton said, ‘It’s the economy, Stupid’. That’s what this entire election is about by now. It’s not about terrorism, about to hit the United States. That may still happen, we all know that, but I personally do not believe George W. Bush has in any way decreased the likelihood of that happening. His policies have diminished Al’Qaeda’s operational capacity…although it looks like the organization is regaining its strength these days…but it has instead created an even deeper resentment, distrust and outright hatred of the United States than ever existed before. Even in countries allied to the United States, newspapers and television debates focus on the increase in moderate criticism of United States policies or even outright Anti-Americanism. Instead of containing THE threat, Bush has managed to subdue ONE threat…while alienating a great many people who formerly thought quite highly of his country. That is bad policy.

I myself had a good friend of mine ask me, only this morning: “I wonder what will happen to us all when the United States decides that Freedom of Religion is against human rights”. I told him that it was a prepostrous notion, seeing how many religions are present in the United States at the moment, and I honestly think that is the case. However, the look he sent me was one speaking volumes.

It said ‘Well…don’t say I didn’t warn you’. The point isn’t that I think that it will happen. The point is that people even in Denmark, where the Prime Minister’s face seems to be planted firmly between Dubja’s bumcheeks, a significant segment of the population is frightened by the United States. My friend from this morning is only one of many, many people expressing that kind of fear.

But again, it’s the economy, stupid. The world is facing the biggest recession since the 1930s. We’re looking at the POTENTIAL for mass unemployment, widespread poverty, starvation even in industrialized countries and the collapse of social systems if things live up to the most pessimistic estimates. Even if we go by the most optimistic ones, a small country such as Denmark, with five and a half million inhabitants, fifty thousand families are in danger of losing their homes.

Fifty thousand families. The average Danish family consisted of 4,3 people, last I checked. That means between a fifth and a quarter of a million people may lose their homes. Unemployment rates are expected to at least double over the next twelve months, and while our unemployment rates are historically low now, the Government’s answer to the rising number of people without a job is to tighten the noose further around our necks and demand that we find a job in half the time we had to do so before or lose unemployment benefits. Rising unemployment and doubling the demands on the unemployed at the same time is an inhumane combination.

And mind you, ours is a rich society, where a certain social order is well ingrained, where the wellfare state is considered of such paramount importance that even the conservatives consider it inviolable. They just interpret it differently than the social democrats…

Ours is a rich society … and we are better able to face the problems than many other nations. The United States of America, however, may be facing social and economic disaster.

And yet, the Republicans…responsible for turning the surplus of the Clinton Administration into a deficit so massive that unless it is halted, the United States of America will be officially bankrupt as a nation within one and a half decades…refuse to acknowledge that the problem is there. Instead of helping ordinary Americans, they are pointing fingers and shouting ‘socialists’. It’s MacCarthy all over again for crying out loud.

People at certain Republican rallies are now reported to be shouting for the assassination of Barack Obama, calling him a socialist and claiming that this is reason enough to kill him. While such maniacs are a tiny minority, as a colleague of mine pointed out, it shows how the entire American nation has adopted an ideological stance from the 1950s and refused to let it evolve significantly since then.

The whole world is bleeding. Financially as well as literally. People are dying in Darfur, in Lebanon, in Gaza and the West Bank, in Iraq, in Afghanistan…in dozens of other places around the world. Financially, the Western Economies, so long bound to the value of the US Dollar, are reeling. The Icelanding currency Kronur has lost 70 percent of its value in six months and the country has been forced to turn to RUSSIA of all places for a massive loan to avoid national bankruptcy. Iceland … until last year … was so rich that banks and funds from yonder island bought up real estate and businesses in Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia at a rate so alarming that people were wondering if the Icelanders were taking over. Now they are barely able to buy necessary materials for their own use because no one trusts their currency anymore. In other European countries, the stock markets have seen the biggest drops EVER. Larger and faster than the crash of 1929. Fortunes have been lost. Retirement savings are lost for millions of people, who now have to look to their old age with a certain amount of dread and apprehension.

Everything hinges on whether the United States is able to regain its footing, or the rest of us will get dragged down in the fall.

The future does not seem like a particularly nice place to be right now. But we all have to try to change that…in our own way…together.

We have to CHANGE how things are done now.

Not continue how they’ve been done so far.

We have to realize that God (in whatever guise we each choose to represent divinity) will not save the day. That there are far more important things right now than whether a lesbian couple in Rhode Island or two gay men in Oregon are allowed to marry. That there are infinitely more important things than trying to get Darwin’s teachings banned from classrooms in favor of biblical, escatological timelines and teachings. That there are vastly more serious issues at stake here than ‘In God we Trust’.

Trusting in God in this case will accomplish nothing whatsoever.

We have to rebuild something strong enough for us to trust in ourselves first and foremost. For our own sakes. For the sake of those too old to take care of themselves.

And for our children.

We need change.

We need it now.

…and my employers at the museum where I work have already told me that they are sending off an application to higher authorities, to get funding for hiring me for a four-month project. I am very, very happy with this, since it will mean I will get four months of regular wages, and because it means they already now feel that I have shown myself to be a solid, dependable and trustworthy worker who is worth hiring for something like that. I mean, I’ve got eight months left on my supported contract before this project is even kicked off, and yet they are already sending the application off early next week.

I take it as a big pat on the back.

That being said, I’m going to have a hectic schedule for a while. However, for this next part, I suggest non-danes get out a map of Denmark with city names on it, so you can follow the travel itenerary. Anyway…I had last week off, taking some time to simply stress off and put my feet up. Monday I was in ??rhus, the second largest city in Denmark (located right under the nose of Jutland), to give my first university lecture. It went well, and I enjoyed the experience quite thoroughly. The next day, I had to go back north to Randers, then get in a car with a colleague and go across Jutland (to the neck of the peninsula) to Ribe where I sat and listened to a highly interesting colloquium regarding medieval smithies. I was the only historian amongst a lot of archeologists, but it went very well as well, and I had no problem following what they were saying. However, I’m not done traveling yet. Today, we open our new, state-of-the-art, modern magasine facility, built by a joint group of eight museums in the area in and around Randers (but with the museum I work at as the prime mover and shaker in the process *brag brag*). The minister of culture will be there to give a little speech and then there will be a nice buffet to parttake in. Even I, despite being employed in a state-supported job, am invited. Then on Sunday I get on a train and go to Nyborg on the east coast of Funen, where I will stay overnight with my parents. Monday morning I continue on to Copenhagen for a two day seminar on how to use the database that I primarily work with. I know how to, but I can always learn more and this will actually land me a diploma in the use of this thing…and since all Danish museums are bound to use it, it makes it easier to find a steady job later. Wednesday to Friday I’m back at the museum, doing my regular work, and then Friday afternoon, I go back to Funen, to Svendborg…south of Nyborg…to visit two friends I haven’t seen in ages.

I’ll definitely get to see some of Denmark through a train window these next few weeks *Groans*

Anyway, I’d best get ready to leave. I have to stand there and listen to the Minister of Culture giving her speech later today and I need to catch my bus.

Cheers all, and sorry for the long absense from my blog…I’ll try to get back in the habit of writing more often.

Well, for anyone interested, you may or may not have noticed certain problems with this site lately. First of all, the Gallery seems to be broken. Secondly, Transitions 1 seems to simply have vanished without a trace and the one chapter I left on this site from AVC as a teaser is gone as well…

This is because those chapters were all linked to my old, original planetfurry-site, and that site has been taken down as I haven’t used it in years (and it was broken too, incidentally).

I’ve spoken to Bastion about this just a few moments ago, and we agreed that what we needed was to get all the old chapters fixed up anyway, and put up on this site independently of the Planetfurry-URL. Ergo, that’s what will happen. HOWEVER, that means a lot of work for me and a lot of work for Bastion and it will take some time. I promise I will work on it as fast as I am able, but please bear with me until this is complete. I have a day-job as well to take care of after all…

Sorry for the mess…