The Y2K Election

Despite all the dire predictions of voter fraud, voter intimidation, malfunctioning machines and a replay of Florida (or worse) all over again, the election seems to have gone off relatively smoothly and resulted in a clear, if not terribly substantial, victory for the President. It reminds me of the hysterical cries of impending Apocalypse on January 1, 2000 that turned out to be so much, well, hysteria.

My fears: That the President will take this election as a mandate to engage in more risky war-making. Though this fear is tempered by the fact that the sheer amount of resources we have committed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, along with the Administration’s depleted political capital on the international front, should constrain the amount of foreign adventurism a 2nd Bush administration will be able to engage in.

My hopes: That the President will continue to hold the line against the cultural forces that want to create new forms of human life for experimentation and commercial exploitation. For my money, the “abolition of man” may well turn out to be the issue of the 21st century, representing the triumph of the technological will to power over any sense of natural limits. Bush has been on the side of the angels as far as this goes.