Dinner with Republican Friends

September 29th, 2004

We went to dinner last night with two couples, former neighbors, with whom we have become very close. They are wonderful people: fun, caring, and ethically strong. And they are Republicans.

Driving to the dinner at one of their houses, my wife warned me to stay away from politics and God knows I tried. But they knew I am opposed to Bush and, anticipating victory in the election, they kidded me about the supposed failings of John Kerry. In the interest of amity, I refused to take the bait. However, I did say that this election had divided the American people more sharply than any election in my memory and I tried to get them to understand what roughly fifty percent of the population—that is, those like me who intend to vote against Bush —are concerned about. I did not argue that our concerns were valid, but merely that they were our concerns.

Basically, I said, we felt that if Bush is reelected it will be the end of democracy in our country. It was not so much that we felt that Bush would lead us into further disasters, although we certainly believed he would. Rather, we believed that given the control of the media by fewer and fewer media barons all allied to Bush the stifling of news and fair comment adverse to the administration would increase. We believe that Bush's power to appoint judges who will increasingly support the erosion of free speech and the right to dissent, as represented by the Patriot Act and John Ashcroft, not to mention fair vote counts and apportionment, will go unchecked. In short, I argued that we felt that Bush's reelection will insure that no opposition candidate may ever be elected again, and that the United States will become a one party state. The analogy I drew was to Russia, where President Valery Putin has now banned free elections and reestablished the old Soviet dictatorship.

Nonsense, they said. But when I asked whether they could anticipate a win by anyone other than Republicans at the 2008 election or any other in their life times, they admitted that they could not.

Driving home, two points stuck in my craw. One, my friend's insistence that Governor McGreevy of New Jersey would not resign as promised if the Democrats win or if he did, he would be appointed to the Senate. That struck me as so nonsensical an idea that I was practically apoplectic. I have a hundred-dollar bet riding on that one. The other was the Dan Rather mess.

I had seen the interview on 60 Minutes with the 86-year old Marian Case Knox, who was the secretary to Lt. Col. John Killian whose alleged documents Rather had cited. She said that she had not typed those documents, but that the documents expressed Killian's actual feelings.

When that subject came up, I said that I did not understand what all the brouhaha was about. It may be that Rather was misled into using false documents, but the point had to do with Bush's service (or lack thereof) in the National Guard, and Ms Knox actually confirmed that he had violated the rules and not performed his duty. “Oh,” they said, “she is so old that she can't remember.” But, I said, if that is the case then how can they credit her memory of whether she had actually typed the documents but not her memory of Killian's belief that Bush was avoiding service and not following the rules due to support from “above?” No answer. And, of course, Bush has never apologized for going to war on the basis of wrong information as to WMD.

This morning I received a copy of Walter Brasch's excellent column, “Applauding Only the ‘Right' Entertainers.” Brasch is a superb columnist and author of numerous books having to do with the media. He is also a Professor at Bloomberg University in Pennsylvania. (If you would like to receive his column by email, write to him at brasch@bloomu.edu. Brasch remarks on the activities of a group calling themselves Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood, or PABAAH. This group, he says, believes that Sean Penn and Janeane Garofalo are traitors and they want to have Ashcroft charge Michael Moore with treason. They also, he says, urge the boycott of pictures starring Gwyneth Paltrow because she worried about “a weird, over-patriotic atmosphere” in the United States. He cites the attack by the Bush campaign on Hollywood, specifically such figures as the “traitorous” Ed Asner, Kevin Bacon, Alex Baldwin, Cher, Matt Damon, Mike Farrell, Paul Newman, Sara Jessica Parker, the Dixie Chicks, Robert Redford, Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, Aaron Sorkin, Meryl Streep, Barbra Streisand, Rob Reiner, Tim Robbins, etc. etc.

Brasch also points out how often the Bush campaign has used Hollywood figures favorable to its point of view, notably Arnold Schwarzeneger and Britney Spears. And he mentions how often those hated (to Republican) Hollywood types have actually served as Republican legislators, not to mention Ronald Reagan.

The point that hit me hardest in Walt's column, and the one that I wish I had thought of in my debate with my Republican friends, is the boycott point. To me, boycotts of the businesses of one's political opponents are the first steps to fascism. I am old enough to remember that in the late 1920s and early 30s, before and after they came to power, the Nazis urged the boycott of Jewish businesses. It had less to do with racial prejudice—although it certainly had a lot to do with that—than it had to do with an attempt (successful in their instance) to eliminate the economic power that might be used to support opposition groups.

Our half of the population, as I said to our friends, believes that Bush's reelection will result in the end of our democracy. At the dinner, I had said that I was not debating whether we were right or wrong, but merely advising them of our point of view. Reading Walt's column, I know that I, and the roughly fifty percent of Americans who think as I do, are right. My hope is that at this coming election we will turn out to be a majority of Americans and that our votes will actually be counted.

 

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By the way, I've done a terrible injustice to Walt Brasch's column. I urge you to read it on line at www.walterbrasch.com. It was posted on Thursday, September 30.