The country will certainly not be saved by simply dumping the incumbent immoralist and replacing him with Gore. But it will at least get the unusual political trash off the front pages and TV screens, so that we might begin to confront the more usual economic trash, which is of greater significance. The Asian Miracle has become the Asian Nightmare. Latte consumers of Asia's budding yuppie class are becoming pushcart peddlers, as several nations find their new middle class vanishing overnight. The Russian experiment with fundamentalist capitalism is a total failure, with hunger and poverty becoming the norm for a people once guaranteed material security.
Brazil is at the edge of an economic precipice, and the rest of Latin America is getting dizzy.
The free flow of capital threatens to drown nations in an anti-democratic flood of profits for some and losses for most. We are over-consuming, polluting, wasting and burying ourselves in debt. To maintain a system which only profits a minority investor class, and even then, on a short term basis that guarantees long term disaster for most of humanity. As our one major party indulges a battle between its right wing and its wrong wing, both sides brandish their bibles and prayers, but neither side escapes the hypocrisy and double standards at the root of the system. Our moral breakdown might lead to disaster, but it could also bring an awakening from the mental stupor that calls itself democracy.