A post-election E-mail to friends in the USA

I sat in front of my computer screen for 14 hours yesterday 
looking at the CNN figures, and had CBS and NBC on television. As 
the day went on I turned to comfort food — so much so that I'm 
gonna have to do some serious exercise to rescue my waist-line 
from the amount of junk I ate...

This makes the second election defeat within a month for the 
Australian people. (Well not according to Rupert Murdoch — his 
Sydney paper today had a headline screaming "VICTORY IS OURS".)

The government Australia voted in three weeks ago is pro-war, 
anti-environment, pro-free-trade-no-matter-what-the-consequences 
and anti-everything progressive.

However, the election of Kerry would have made the world of 
difference to us — it was our "second chance draw". If Kerry 
withdrew America's troops from Iraq (not that that was a sure 
bet), Australia would withdraw its troops. Kerry signs the Kyoto 
protocol, Australia signs the Kyoto protocol. Kerry reneges on 
the US/Oz free trade agreement, Australia pulls back too.

The importance of this election to us is underscored by the fact 
that I could watch the election live, all day, on two different 
channels. We only have five channels here in Oz, and the two top-
rating channels cancelled all their usual programming to show 
all-day election coverage.

(Ok, we do have cable as well, but only in a fraction of the 
homes in the capital cities. It never took off here — we were 
all thinking, "we have five TV channels of crap, why the hell do 
we want 50??" Rupert Murdoch wasted a fortune rolling it all out 
though... ha ha ha.)

So, what was the point of all this?

I've heard in commentary on this US election, and on the previous 
one also, "Well, like it or not he's been elected President now, 
so we all have to get behind him and work together for the good 
of the country".

George W Bush and the extreme right have won again but that 
doesn't make their evil policies correct or worthy of uniting 
behind.

Those of you who do not now lie down and roll over will at first 
be called "spoilers", then "un-American", then "traitors" and 
eventually "enemies".

The US now has the "patriot act" specifically to deal with such 
people! Just like similar "laws" were enacted in fascist Germany 
and Italy — where those who stood firm by their conscience, 
denounced the government and continued the fight for morality and 
justice mostly ended up swinging in the wind or disappearing in 
the dead of night...

But then people say, "Oh, that could never happen HERE, this is 
America, this is a democracy". Well, I haven't seen a lot of 
democracy or justice coming out of the USA in the last four 
years. People barred for life from voting, names disappearing off 
electoral roles, road-blocks, broken voting machines, lost ballot 
papers, four-hour queues not to mention Guantanamo and the 
100,000 Iraqi civilians killed as the US brings "democracy".

Oh, yes, and people paid by the dominant political party to 
harass and intimidate voters IN THE POLLING OFFICE WHILE THEY ARE 
VOTING! LEGALLY!! Shit, even Hitler would have been proud of that 
gig!

As for me, here in Australia: I've spent the last nine years 
fighting against our slow slide to fascism. Oh, they don't call 
it that, and it wasn't fascism when it started. At first they 
were "centre-right", then "right", now "hard right". And with the 
most recent election: in come the extremists and the religious 
fundamentalists!

Nine years of fight though, and it has gotten me abso-bloody-
lutely nowhere.

There is just such a huge temptation to give in.

I could stop watching the news and reading the papers. Stop 
wasting my time writing articles and letters to the editor, quit 
handing out pamphlets, give up organising and marching in 
rallies. I could just keep my mouth shut when I hear people 
presenting Fox-News-fiction as fact.

I could save a fortune if I stopped donating money to overseas 
aid organisations who spend it on children in third world 
countries who have no future anyway, because even if I save them 
from dying of hunger of disease this year, they might next year, 
or chances are the US and Australia will declare war on their 
country and so the person I've just spend five years feeding will 
be blown to smithereens in an instant by a bomb dropped from a 
100-million-dollar fighter plane from 30,000 feet...

Instead, I could buy enough DVD box sets of Startrek, Simpson's 
and X-files to last me three years 'til the next election. I 
could get a job at a cinema chain and see endless free movies — 
I could get a job in a bank and get a discount on my mortgage.

I could relive my misspent youth — work out at the gym, bum 
around at the beach, go out to nightclubs five nights a week and 
get trashed.

And as for the creeping fascism all around me... As Max Detweiler 
says in The Sound of Music: "What's going to happen, is going to 
happen. Just make sure it doesn't happen to you."

But that's the scary thing: it will happen to me.

Many years ago, at a dinner party, my friends and I had an odd 
conversation: "If you lived in Hitler's Germany, how many reasons 
would they have to send you to the gas chamber?"

People around the table scored points for various personal 
attributes: gay, Jewish, Basque, Slavic, anarchist, former 
Jehovah's Witness, Esperanto speaker, trade unionist, socialist. 
I won though, I scored four: gay, socialist, unionist with 
congenital deafness.

If this country I'm living in keeps hurtling towards the right, 
if more and more extremists come to the forefront in government, 
if the "morality" and "patriot" and "anti-terrorist" and 
"security" laws squeeze tighter and tighter.

They will come for me — and one by one my comrades, friends, 
family and anyone else who dares stand in their way.

Do I sit back and wait? Do I go to the beach, slap on some 
sunscreen, lie back and hope that in three year's time everything 
will be different because a progressive government will magically 
come to power?

Do I risk it?

Or do I continue fighting? Fight harder. Work longer. Give up 
more time. Donate more money. And every single time they try to 
strip away one of my civil rights I make sure I'm standing right 
in their path screaming "NO!"

As a person of good conscience, as believer in justice — I 
really don't have a choice at all.

So that's it. No more sitting around being depressed wallowing in 
self-pity — four weeks (since Howard was re-elected) is waaaay 
long enough.

No more staring out the window. No more hitting the "refresh" 
button on the ABC News Updates site hoping I'm going to read the 
headline "John Howard dies of heart attack" or "George Bush meets 
his maker".

And no more chocolate.

I've got work to do.

As one of your own great freedom fighters, Paul Robeson, once 
said: "I just keeps on fightin'".

In solidarity across the ocean

Andrew Sydney, NSW