american slumber

Have you ever seen “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers”? (It’s a great film. If you haven’t seen it, you should.) In it, the main characters, a man and a woman, discover that their fellow townspeople are being replaced by imposters. These imposters are exactly the same as the originals in every way, except for the fact that they’re just a little less animated, a little less human. They speak without emotion and lumber along without any sign of joy. These imposters, we find out, are grown, in giant seed pods, while their victims sleep nearby. As the pods themselves aren’t really aggressive, the looming threat that our protagonists try to stave off throughout the film isn’t them, or even the pod people, but sleep. After trying to avoid sleep for a few days, the woman finally gives in and allows herself to close her eyes, thus giving her pod-grown twin a chance to take over… Well, today, my dad, who isn’t a religious nut by any stretch of the imagination, sent me an email chain letter about Jesus Christ. I can’t remember the details, but it was a story about a man and his son and their love for one another, and it ended with a paragraph about “another father that loved his son” very much, and how that son died on a cross for our sins. I just sat there for a moment, staring at my computer screen, and wondering if my dad had let his guard down long enough for his pod to reach maturity… I suspect that I’m not the only one who has thought on occasion that life would be significantly easier if I were just to buy into the whole evangelical mindset. Times like these, when reality is so disturbing, it’s a seductive thought. I suspect that many of us will opt to “just close our eyes for a few moments and rest” over the course of the next few years. My hope is that I can stay awake.

Here, for those of you who are still up and around, is a clip from an article written by a brit about the choice we as a nation made on Tuesday.

…But the Republican revolution will not stop there. A subplot to this week’s drama has been playing out at the supreme court, where the 80-year old Chief Justice, William Rehnquist, has been incapacitated by thyroid cancer. Few expect him to serve for much longer, giving President Bush the chance to appoint a successor. A social conservative, such as White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, is a likely nominee.

Other vacancies on the bench are imminent. Once filled, Bush will have overturned the court’s wafer-thin moderate majority. The court could set to work unravelling a 50-year settlement that has asserted the rights of women, black Americans and, more recently, homosexuals. Opposition to affirmative action or abortion rights has, until now, been a minority position in America’s highest court. That could change. And the conservative takeover of all three branches of the American government (executive, legislative and judiciary) would be complete….

Those values can be boiled down to (three) issues – abortion, guns, gays – but they represent a larger, cultural difference. One Republican analyst asks people four questions. Do you have a friend or relative serving in the military? Do you have any personal ties to rural America? Do you attend religious services on a weekly basis? Do you own a gun? Answer yes to most or all of those, and you are “a cultural conservative” and most likely vote Republican. Answer no, and the chances are you live on the east or west coast and vote Democrat.

In 2000 this cultural split was dead-even: 50-50 America. This time it was 51-49 America, with the conservatives in the majority.

Put plainly, the US is moving steadily and solidly to the right. That poses a problem for Democrats, who have to learn to speak to the people of those red states if they are ever to hold power again.

But it also poses a problem for America, which has somehow to house two radically diverging cultures in one nation. And it may even pose a problem for the rest of the world’s peoples, as they watch the sole superpower, the indispensable nation, chart a course they fear – and barely understand.