Feroz R Khan November 12, 2004

Tags: elections

Opinions on the American election

href="/tag/values">values of the Mid-West and middle America are so different. However, the values of the American heartland have been always more traditional and conservative than the liberalism of its coasts.

I still remember the words of George Washington’s farewell address, in which Washington said that the government in America must be moral and based on morality. I read those words in a class on political philosophy, which I had taken as a graduate student some ten or more years ago. Woodrow Wilson, upon whose political believes, much of the United States’ foreign policy and its idealism is based, was a highly moralistic person. It was Wilson’s concept of right and wrong and his morality, which eroaded the political realism and pragmaticism of Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy. Jimmy Carter brought his own brand of morality into the foreign policy of the United States and shaped the United States’ conduct in the world.

Bush is no different in this regard.

I am reminded of Pakistanis, who come home and say they have lived in United States and know Americans. When they are asked, where did they live, they reply: Boston, New York, California or Virginia. These cities are not America. The real America is the American heartland. The American heartland does not share the liberal and the alternative life styles of the east coast or the west coast.

I have lived in the east coast and I have lived in the mid-west and I can honestly say, there is no similarity. When I used to live in Salt Lake City, I used to joke and tell my American friends that Utah, in its values, is much closer to the states of the Middle East than it is to the rest of the United States.

What my friend, was finding hard to accept was the fact that values espoused by the Democractic party are the values of the minority and do not reflect the views of the majority. Democratic Party is representative of the views of the cultural elites in the United States, if such term can be defined as an application of the west and east coast’s life style choice and views on issues. This could be seen in the manner in which they approached the elections by employing the bright lights of Hollywood.

What did the Democratic Party offer the Americans so that they would vote for it instead of Bush?

It offered the Americans nothing other than the fact that it took pains to position itself as simply an alternative to Bush. It campaign strategy was aimed, flawed as it was, in converting the converts to its cause in the states, which already had a pro-democratic tilt. Opinion polls in the LA Times and the NY Times do not show the real opinions in America.

I had already stated that Kerry was going to lose the elections, because the political message of the Bush campaign was more clear and more easily understandable than Kerry’s. Having lived and travelled in the mid-west and having interacted with different people, due to my work, I learned that there is a quite strong dislike for the intellectualism of, and for, the eastern politicans and a gut hatred for the cultural politics of the west coast in the American heartland.

Kerry and the democrats never understood this sentiment and seemed to ignore it. Worse than ignore, they chose to insult the mid-west and middle America, when they brought their Hollywood donors to convince the heartland of their political message. The people of the American heartland are proud people and they do not condone being lectured and patronized by others.

This was the key distinction between the election campaigns of both parties. While Kerry offered no choice other than he agreed with everything Bush did, but would do better than Bush, he seemed to suggest that he knew what was good for America. Bush simply agreed with the feelings of Americans and seemed to suggest that they both shared similar concerns, which is why they voted overwhemling in his favor.

As I told my friend, by citing the example of Pakistan, that a handful of urban cities and their views do not entirely represent Pakistan or its reality, therefore it is only natural to assume that views of east and west coast do not necessarily mean that it is representive of the entire nation. Just like Cant and DHA do not represent Lahore. Visiting one neighborhood in Karachi, or Rawalpindi or Lahore or Islamabad does not give an accurate picture of the city; opinions in small enclaves seldom mirror main stream opinions.

In many ways, the democrats are shocked into silence, because they had always felt that America thought and acted as they did and they were the true representatives of America and its identity. They were proven wrong and now, their world seems to have turned up-side down and now they are searching for an explantion, as to why they were so out touch with reality. The truth is that they never accepted the reality and instead, always sought to subsitute a sense of fantasy for reality.

Some times, life is not what it seems on the sound stage and not everyone loves Raymond!