Dear Jason,

    Here are some of the central differences I see between Bush and Kerry:

   As an independent, I was continually fascinated by how the
differences between the two candidates were framed.  Palestinians, of
course, see no difference between them.  On the other hand, the millions
of voters could see the difference between providing healthcare coverage
for an additional two or three million [Bush-Cheney] versus providing
such coverage for an additional 27 million [Kerry].  To seek to provide
27 million more Americans with the same health coverage as US Senators
have
is laudatory.  That's one a real difference in my eyes.

   Reframing irresponsible pollution policy as a 'Clear Skies'
initiative or irresponsible logging as 'Healthy Forests' or a boondoggle
for the wealthy elite as 'tax relief' is another such difference.  This
extreme Orwellian reframing in the Bush-Cheney campaign is
breath-taking.  Orwellian framing of issues always expose the lie of a
claimed mandate.
I found no such Orwellian tendencies, of corresponding magnitude, in the
Kerry-Edwards campaign.  Kerry's policy record on legislation designed
to promote sound environmental stewardship is out in the open and is
simply terrific.

   Kerry's 1980s Senate investigation of the Reagan administration
murderous Contra-Cocaine abuses were finally vindicated in the 1990s.
That tells me that Kerry has the guts to go after big game without
batting an eye.  [We would have pushed him to do the same in Israel.]
He put is political career directly on the line by going after Reagan at
the height of his 'popularity'.  Those abuses brought cocaine into
minority nighborhoods [in order to pay for weapons for the CIA-backed
Contra murders of Nicaraguans] in the 1980s at orders of magnitude
heretofore unknown.  By contrast, George Bush has shown no such guts.

   Kerry's willingness to stare down the Bush tax cuts is another such
difference.  That difference comes to rest on the principle that those
who are fortunate to have more have a strict obligation to help those
who have less.  That's both a principled Republican, Conservative,
Democratic, and Liberal value.  Bush seems to hold the converse
principle: those who have less have a strict obligation to help those
who have more.  If Bush swears allegiance to neoclassical economics,
then he must believe in the principle of diminishing marginal utility of
income: for each additional dollar of income, less satisfaction is had
and so there is less 'suffering' when that addition to income is taxed
away.  It hurts less to be taxed more.  His tax policies put him at odds
with the economics he professes to believe in.

   Kerry's perception of the absolute need to sustain and nourish
international cooperative alliances in order to work for global peace,
justice, and prosperity simply must be set alongside the utterly blind
Bush-Cheney disdain for such cooperative alliances.  The very dreams of
empire coming out of the White House actually require the existence and
good functioning such alliances to attempt to clean up the terrible
crises such empire begets in the first place.

   Finally, the Kerry-Edwards vision of a global community is a vision
of doing the works of justice with compassion and mercy, with the
exception of Israel.  It bothers me that he didn't have the guts to take
that on like Howard Dean did.  Dean, you'll remember, told an audience
that we must be 'even-handed' in Israel.  Many Jews in the audience got
right up and walked out.

   For those of us who've followed the Bush-Cheney policy record over
the past 46 months, it was clear that they needed ousting for the good
of all.  Did some fifty-eight million voters pull the lever to give the
extreme policies of a first Bush-Cheney administration another four
years?  I don't believe that at all.  They were sold a bill of goods.
And the US media are so complicit in that.  But! A millions of Americans
have gotten the democratic process all over them in the past year and
they tell us they love and won't stop!  If anything can help to
transform the democratic party its surely that energy.  And yet we also
need to work for a progressive party with an international base in order
that we come to hold ourselves and others strictly accountable for doing
the works of justice with compassion and mercy.

Best,

Mark Wenzel















  Sisters and brothers under the skin.

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