By the time you read this, the longest run-up to an election will be over, thank God, and the usual bores will be pontificating over the results. The irony is that for the first time ever I couldn’t care less who won. Nothing will change in the Land of the Depraved, and Big Business will continue to call the tune in DC. I watched all three debates between Obama and Romney and the word Israel was mentioned 35 times, Iran 42 times, and Canada and Mexico once each. More than 60,000 people have suffered violent deaths in Mexico this year alone, yet the problems of America’s closest neighbour get only a passing mention in a presidential debate. No one dared say a nice word about the Palestinians — it would raise a storm among American Jews and be considered anti-Semitic — and opening a door to Iran would have been seen as Munich 1938, but worse.
So who cares whether a white man or a black man lives in the White House? The white man will wage war, thus further crippling the economy, the black man will not wage war and will further cripple the economy through wild spending. It was not always thus. When I first came to America as an 11-year-old, Uncle Sam was in the midst of saving western Europe with the Marshall Plan, balanced his budget, and tried his best to be fair to both sides in Palestine. Tradition was respected, we pledged allegiance to the flag daily before starting class, men removed their hats when a lady entered a lift, and swear-words were never used in the presence of women.
Later on in Virginia, we were governed by a 19th-century honour code, were members of secret societies, whose old-fashioned ideals of honour and discretion were paramount, and acted towards each other as if Thomas Jefferson himself were ever-present.
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