Unlikely Aristotle

The whole world should vote on the next US President | August 29, 2009

I was talking to a few people, who all had incredibly varying opinions on the past (and future) elections in the States. While the previous electoral circus was playing itself out, of course the papers and magazines were lined with webs and webs of intricately drawn graphs and charts, detailing every kind of statistic you can imagine on the current state. You had to try pretty damn hard not to be kept up to speed on everything.

I was an Obama supporter, but looking back, my reasoning seems shaky. I’m a person easily blown away by flowing rhetoric and grand speeches, so of course he seemed like a hero to me. Although people saw him as inexperienced and basically too young to take on this task, I felt his youth would be a positive thing; he was too young to be tainted by the dirtiness of politics; at least not that much. Also, I approved very much of his foreign policies, his willingness to open honest debates and negotiations with no ridiculous preconditions with countries like Palestine, etc.

One view I got from a lot of people, was that Obama was being too vague and shady about his foreign policies; there was a lot of talk about peace and getting along etc, but there were no firm plans that people could latch on to. That’s why some people I knew favored McCain, who had a much clearer idea of what he wanted to do with the Middle East: bomb it. Fair enough. I didn’t expect anything else  from him, it was completely predictable, especially considering the fact that he came from a military background himself; I would imagine that his first response to everything would be more fighting. Also, I know people say the fact that he withstood torture for 5 years in Vietnam was a thing worthy of being nominated, but I just can’t see the logic in that. FIVE YEARS of torture. That’s got to fuck with your brain. He should be honored greatly (although the war was pointless but I guess that doesn’t lessen his sacrifice) and maybe be given a position somewhere in the MOD – MAYBE. But hello? If I was tortured for five years and then given crazy power, even 30 years later… what would I do about it? I’d love to say that my bad experiences would motivate me to create peace and eradicate torture and other such practices around the world, but I’m not that beatific. Nor is 99% of the world.

Back to Obama. People said that one candidate was better than the other because of their foreign policies. I thought, why would the American people give a crap about what their government does to the rest of the world? Clearly, they don’t care. Well, maybe they do, but their government sure as hell don’t. For the past hundred years they have been involved in sanguinary wars around the world without pause. Despite the fact that this constant war-mongering is a gigantic drain on their resources, they continue to perpetuate this myth that armed forces are necessary to provide ‘democracy’.

Then someone else came up with a particularly intriguing  notion. “The American elections shouldn’t be eligible to Americans alone. The only way it would ever be democratic would be if the whole world could vote on the next US President.”

What an interesting theory! At first, my few paltry years of legal thinking caused every fiber of my being to expel this idea as unacceptable. Why should non-citizens vote for someone who is not going to preside over their own country? But then I did a double take. Is it truly just the way things are being done NOW? The whole world sat by for 8 years and watched in disbelief as Americans went and voted for the worst president in history not once, but twice (allegedly). The world sat by and tried to keep up with his crazy antics around the world. The world sat by as he drove his country deeper into ruin, thereby furthering the economic crisis around the rest of the world, an irreparable damage. America always prides itself as being the world’s superpower, so shouldn’t the world have a say in who’s next?

Many countries rely on America’s supremacy more than on their own government. Or, if argued that this is not the case, there is an undoubted effect, at best impactful and at most completely dominating. Is it fair, then, that the next president should be elected only by the American people, when the rest of the world suffers or benefits along with it?

I must say the idea of a global election intrigued me a great deal, and appealed to my more humanitarian side. This would be a utopian solution for sure, and for this reason alone it will probably never happen. I’ve never participated in an election before, but I would definitely vote in that case.

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