These past four years, I know that I at least have grown wiser as a person. I’ve completed a professional degree, held the same job for over two years now and observed much human suffering in the course of that job, trying my best to respond with empathy and do what good I can. Above all, I am dedicated to evidence-based medicine and using facts and data to promote health. Yet it sometimes seems that the wider world does not share my love of facts and science and indeed many people are openly hostile to them. In discussing this US election, I shall focus mainly on environmental policy, since this is all that really matters in the end. Concern about economics and deficits and even jobs are all well and good, but I think we will find them to be nothing but smoke and mirrors once there is no food and our homes are under water. I will also take a view of the parties and candidates through the lens of realpolitik; that is, the politics of reality, not ideality. We must work for improvement within the framework of the way things are, not what we imagine they should be. If I had my way, a ticket featuring Bill Maher and Michael Moore would win the White House. But that is not going to happen.

I will start by mentioning how my own perceptions have shifted slightly over the past four years. In that time I read two of the most important books for any student of history and politics: A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn and Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky. The former lays out a narrative of American history from 1492 until a few years ago. It does not tell the story from the point of view of politicians or generals, but rather explains was life was like for regular people. The answer: very bad for a long time, and still difficult for many even to this day. The other take home message of that text is the treacherous nature of the two-party political system. Through pretty much all of American history, there have been two parties; first the Democrats and the Whigs, then the Democrats and Republicans. There was often very little meaningful difference between them; having them both merely provided the illusion of choice. Whether by design or not, everything done by politicians had the effect of maintaining the status quo and the wide gap between rich and poor. Zinn also concluded that real change only occurs through people’s movements (strikes and massive protests) when people threaten outright revolt of either the violent or non-violent kind. Probably the most encouraging political development of the last four years was not brought about by any politician, but was the emergence of Occupy Wall Street, a true people’s movement as evidenced by the fact that the mainstream media ignored them until it was no longer possible to do so. Howard Zinn would be very proud, I think.

Does this ‘illusion of choice’ dynamic still apply to modern Democrats and Republicans? Yes and no. To answer this fully, I’d like to start by going back to the controversial 2000 election. I remember seeing Al Gore on David Letterman, talking about his plan for the environment. It really struck me how this was seemingly the only American with any power who would stand up to polluters and who understood climate science. He also talked to people as if they were reasonable adults, a decidedly rare trait among politicians. The contrast with his opponent could not have been starker. George W. Bush: this rube, this cracker, this “Cowboy from Toy Story” as Bill Maher would later describe him. Yet through a series of unfortunate events Bush became president, to the detriment of all. As a smart guy, it really vexed me that that contest could ever have been close, let alone go the way it did. That election remains as the greatest historical ‘What if,’ of my lifetime and it was what really politicized me as a person in my formative years. What would the world have been like if Gore had claimed the Presidency? It’s easy to throw out utopian scenarios, but the reality would have likely been more complicated. 9/11 may or may not have still happened (Gore was notably fastidious on security and would likely have paid more attention to the memo titled ‘Bin Laden determined to attack inside the US.’ Had the attacks still happened, he certainly wouldn’t have played Bin Laden’s game quite so readily as Bush did and there would have been no Iraq War). Often it is said, however, that you cannot change the system; the system changes you. Could Gore as President have maintained the moral clarity and dedication to reason and evidence-based policy that became the hallmark of his post-political career? As C.S. Lewis wrote, “No one is ever told what would have happened.”

But here we are, over a decade later… a decade of pointless wars, economic collapse and continued environmental degradation. After four years Obama has successfully ended one war and is in the process of ending the other. His progress on the other two areas has been more modest. But back to the original question: is there a significant difference between the two parties? Let’s look at the demographics of the parties. The Democrats are a coalition of large majorities of Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Gays and Secularists, along with Whites ranging from working class to cosmopolitan. The Republican coalition is far more monolithic: simply put, the pale Germanic hordes, ranging from poor to mega-rich. It is fundamentally more difficult, what the Democrats do; their party is far more diverse and as a result they need to serve the values of many different types of people. As a result, Democratic politicians range in views from liberal to moderately conservative. This is why, even when Obama had a super-majority in the senate, it was difficult to make sweeping reforms; he had senators from places like Montana who were not eager to vote with the center of the party. The GOP has no such range to worry about; their extremism on social issues is somewhat variable and may change over time, but they are almost universally dedicated to unreasonable far-right economics, which have resulted in the continued redistribution of wealth upward, through upper-class tax cuts and corporate welfare. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the middle-class is squeezed as well.

As a result, I blame America’s problems on a combination of extremist Republicans and the nature of the system itself. To hear them talk, the two parties (and especially their voters) have never been more different. And to a great extent, it isn’t even a matter of Left and Right, but one of Reality versus Insanity. Simply put, the GOP is now dominated by the views of its most irrational constituents. Racist conspiracy theories abound; everything President Obama attempts to do is resisted without regard to merit. This behavior is most obviously exemplified by the Tea Party, which may have started in earnest as a grassroots movement, but has long since become “Astroturf” a pseudo-people’s movement; a cadre of useful idiots, lobbying for the interests of the 1%. Unlike Occupy Wall Street, they were fawned over by the mainstream media almost since the beginning. With all the wealth and hate of the powers that be set against him, President Obama has found it difficult to get legislation passed. The US system, with it’s multiple branches and ‘checks and balances’ is very useful for stopping nefarious leaders from going too far, but it also slows the progress that can be made under decent ones to a crawl. I think Obama’s biggest mistake, especially early in his term, was continually bending over backwards trying to ‘reach across the aisle’ to people who hate him and will never support him on anything. He should instead “welcome their contempt,” (as Franklin Roosevelt put it) as a sign that he is doing his job. As a result of this stagnation, there has been a return to the ‘Plague on both your houses”’ political apathy that was felt before 9/11. Some people have sworn off the two parties in favor of equally toxic (albeit in a different way) so-called “Libertarians” (they are nothing of the sort). On a side note, I do think that it is a very interesting debate as to whether a Mitt Romney or a Ron Paul presidency would be a bigger disaster – one that I hope remains purely theoretical forever and ever.

Some criticisms of President Obama, from both detractors and supporters:
1. He has tried to use the death of Osama bin Laden for political gain… a little bit, yes, but a laughable accusation coming from the GOP. If it had been Bush in 2004 he would have dismembered the corpse and sent a chunk to every swing state.
2. His Affordable Care Act is a “government takeover of health care” – It is nothing of the sort; it involved continued use of private insurance and didn’t even include the much sought-after public option.
3. Foreign policy: He has been criticized (absurdly) by the Right for being weak… He has also been criticized by the Left for continuing violent actions similar to Republican administrations. This criticism is not without merit. He has conducted drone strikes against perceived threats and there are probably all kinds of bad things that we don’t even hear about. He is not Gandhi, but remember that if we are to think in terms of realpolitik, we know that the US will not elect a Gandhi anytime soon. There are only two possibilities as to who will be president and Obama is the best they will ever do for the foreseeable future. It is also morally imbecilic to equate the relatively surgical strikes and covert operations under Obama, with the Republicans who started a war without provocation: bombed and occupied a country and killed upwards of half a million people according to some estimates.

Now to the main crux of my discussion. The summer of 2012 may well be viewed historically as the beginning of the end for sustainable human civilization as we know it. Heat records were smashed all over North America and the world and Arctic ice cover reached its lowest level in recorded history. This year will conclude as the hottest year ever, something I have experienced an unnatural number of times in my lifetime. Here’s a typical CNN article on the heat wave. http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/20/us/us.....her/index.html Notice that while the article comments on the unusual nature of the weather, it makes no specific reference to the root cause: greenhouse gases produced mostly by human activity. This is an extremely obvious connection for anyone who doesn’t have their head in the sand (or up their own ass). Yet even as evidence builds and builds, talk about it the mainstream press seems to have decreased steadily over the past few years, “a conspiracy of silence” as Al Gore called it. There has been depressingly little talk of it on the campaign (it got a few sentences in Obama’s acceptance speech, but not a single specific mention in either of the first two debates). The media is often accused of having a ‘liberal bias’ (read Manufacturing Consent to understand what a Big Lie that is). It seems the real problem nowadays is the media’s lack of bias, or rather, lack of discernment. They utterly fail in their job of making judgments and explaining them. In the interest of ‘fairness’ they create all manner of false equivalencies in their narrative, giving equal time to scientists and every madman on the street corner. They also have a tendency to avoid creating discomfort by calling a spade a spade. Case in point, there have been at least three domestic terrorist attacks by conservative Caucasians in the United States in the last four years, but you’ll seldom hear them referred to as such. I could go on and on about the media, but this is getting long and I want to summarize.

There are occasional exceptions to the rule of an ineffective media, like this excellent article by Bill McKibben in the Rolling Stone this past summer. http://www.rollingstone.com/politic.....-math-20120719 He explained the situation very clearly: to avoid a disastrous and irreversible 2’C increase in global temperatures we must limit the amount of fossil fuels we burn to less than 20% of what is currently estimated to exist. In my estimation, it will take a World War II level of mobilization to accomplish this and we are fast running out of time. Has President Obama made progress on this front? He has made some, which is admirable, but predictably also inadequate. He has invested $90 Billion (mostly successfully) in renewable energy. He had mandated vast improvement fuel efficiency for new automobiles. He has set limits to carbon pollution that new power plants can create. He has set new standards for mercury emissions from coal-fired plants. All of this would have been very helpful 25 years ago; as it is, it may be too little too late. What does the future hold? You can bet that a Romney presidency would do little and less on the issue; his policy states as much (though he does admit that global warming is theoretically real, which is more than most Republicans will). Romney has also been shown to be a callous animal abuser, so it seems unlikely that any of this wiould be a priotiy for him. Can Obama turn things around in a second term? Impossible to say for sure, but he has shown a knack for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. He beat presumptive nominee Hilary Clinton in the Democratic primary. He passed health care reform when many thought he couldn’t. He resisted tremendous pressure to approve the doomsday Keystone XL pipeline, which will hopefully kill the project altogether. That decision gives me some confidence that he understands the reality of the situation and has a plan of some sort. So Obama represents our only hope, the hope against hope and without his reelection, all may be lost. I’m reminded of Lando Calrissian’s words about Han Solo’s mission on the Endor: “We’ve got to give him more time!”

George Orwell wrote that, “if there is hope it is with the proles.” In the US, I say that if there is hope it is with the Latinos. The electoral landscape has shifted in the last 8-12 years from fundamentally favoring Republicans to fundamentally favoring Democrats. This is mainly due to growing Hispanic populations, especially in the southwest. New Mexico seems solidly blue and even Arizona had Obama leading by 2 points in one recent poll. At the Democratic Convention, they were even talking about turning Texas purple and then blue over the next few election cycles. So unless the GOP drastically changes their attitude toward Hispanics, every given election will be harder for them in the future. Still, this election is incredibly important as the world, both economically and environmentally, simply cannot afford four years of GOP rule at this point.

I reread The Fellowship of the Ring this past summer, an incredibly elegant book, full of excellent quotes. One lesser known one struck a chord with me. After the apparent death of Gandalf, Aragorn says, “We must do without hope… At least we may yet be avenged.” One more reason to support or root for the President – just to spite his most fanatical, hysterical enemies! Namely, the ones with Confederate flags and more guns than teeth. I can’t imagine anything that would drive them more insane than another four years of Obama. Should I have more sympathy of these people? After all, they are manipulated by the 1% and the corporate media to vote against their own interests. “Only a pawn in their game,” if you will. We may all be pawns, but that doesn’t mean that certain pawns aren’t more greedy, ignorant and cruel than others. Through policy, I would treat them better than they would ever treat me; that is allowance enough.

So there are two possible endings. To use literary metaphors, there is the JRR Tolkien ending in which Obama prevails and with the power of hope and free will and maybe a little deus ex machina the world is maybe (a big maybe) saved. Or there’s the George R.R. Martin ending, in which Obama loses all and the plot goes off in another unknown, and likely tragic, direction. It is debatable which constitutes more interesting literature, but for real life, I’d like to stick with the former.