America

I know quite a few Americans. Unfortunately, the other 800 million appear to have one brain cell and they share it. Now, I can't say for sure what the politics of the Americans I do know is, but I do know that they're all pretty intelligent people and have gone a long way to preventing me from just having a complete and irrational dislike of inhabitants of their country.

American politics has always fascinated me. In many ways, I find it far more interesting than British politics. I also find it ironic that the two homes of democracy - the USA and the UK are both tied to an electoral system that stretches the literal definition of democracy very thin.

On Tuesday, the USA goes to the polls for the midterms - they're a bit like our council elections, except in the USA they have far more impact on the central government. A massive swing away from the politics of the President and his work becomes increasingly more difficult, if not almost impossible, because the senate and congress have to ratify any idea he has and if he's democrat and they're republican, they simply won't endorse any of his ideas, even if they're good ones. US politics is so disparate, the other side invariably votes against the side in power even if they have a good idea. It makes you wonder how anything ever happens in the world's most powerful country (and I am aware that I am over simplifying it, but this is a punchy, pithy blog and not a politics lesson).

Listening to the coverage from the forthcoming midterms has reminded me that so many citizens of the US of A are basically morons. Barrack Obama inherited a country that had been royally butt-f*cked by George W. Bush Jr was a president who had so little idea of how to run a country that it almost fell apart. Obama has spent best part of his 20 months in office trying to sort the mess left by the previous administration; he has been stymied by Republicans (who themselves are in their own form of turmoil) and the world recession and on Tuesday is likely to be stymied even more as supposedly loyal democrats switch sides because they think the republicans can do better. Well, the republicans had 8 years before Obama and they didn't do anything for the people of America, unless they owned oil wells or munitions factories.

What annoys me most about these flip-flop Yanks is that they are quite happy to have a warmonger in charge who employs people that know as much about the economy as I do about the inside of a famous film star's anus, yet aren't prepared to give the man currently in charge a few years to try and sort the mess out. I recall Jimmy Carter saving the USA's bacon - economically - only for Ronald Reagan to be elected and take all the credit for it. An astute businessman was given 4 years in power and ousted and a man who played sidekick to a chimpanzee got 8 years (and he couldn't even remember the name of one of the members of the British royal family and famously joked about bombing Russia off the face of the planet) but that's the kind of thing a nation more preoccupied with their stomachs seem to like!

And now we have this almost offensive Tea Party movement, led by ultra right wing republicans. Which is a bit like our Conservatives being run by the BNP. The thing is, because the US press is run by ultra right wing fascists, this movement is gaining support and the chances are that come 2012, there will be an uber-fascist US president (please God not that Palin woman) and then we'll really see what a mess this world will be in.

I love melodrama - as anyone who reads this blog will no doubt agree with - but if the ultra right get in power in the USA, then there really will be a 3rd world war. We'll see Muslims treated like the Japanese were in 1940; we'll see more and more money directed towards war as the USA returns to its position of world's policeman and as a result, the UK, always keen to be seen as the USA's lapdog will face an even greater security threat - no, let me quantify that statement - the UK will become a legitimate terrorist target, rather than a fictional one. Because most of the world is not at risk from the largely made up (as in fictional) Al-Qaeda at the moment, but give Palin or any of the Tea Party madmen the reigns of that country and Al-Qaeda will be the least of our worries.