Four More Years? What We Can Expect if Bush is Re-elected

Sunday, 10 October 2004

If Bush is re-elected on November 2, what can we expect the next four years to hold? Based on the results of the previous four years, I predict the following:

Bush will invade at least one, and probably two new countries, most likely Syria and Iran. Thousands more Americans and tens of thousands of Syrians and Iranians will die.
As members of the National Guard and the Reserves fight successfully in the courts to overturn government stop-loss programs, the Bush administrations will "reluctantly" support a draft "in the interest of national security." The draft will once again include loopholes that allow the rich and powerful to avoid service in dangerous locations, if they serve at all. The Bush daughters will not serve, nor will the children of 95% of the members of Congress who "reluctantly" vote for the bill.
Additional draconian measures will be added to the USA Patriot Act, further restricting the average American's civil rights. Some of the provisions of the law will be secret, so the average citizen won't know if he's doing something wrong until he's arrested, held without bail in a secret cell, and tried without a lawyer in a secret court. Kafka anyone?
One additional feature of the new and improved Patriot Act will become public knowledge. Not content with knowing what books Jane Q. Citizen checks out from the library or buys from the bookstore, or what Web pages she reads, or what her e-mail says, the government will assume the right to secretly read our snail mail, tap our phones, see what magazines we subscribe to (or can they do that already?), plant listening devices in our homes and cars, and use parabolic microphones to eavesdrop on our no-longer private conversations, all without the need of a warrant issued by a court (at least a non-secret court).
Reversing a pre-9/11 trend, Congress will legalize racial and religious profiling by law enforcement officials, surprisingly leading to the detention and harassment of a disproportionate number of Arabs, South Asians, Middle Easterners, and blacks on the one hand, and Muslims on the other. The government will dismiss the statistics the critics cite to prove discrimination as "mere coincidence."
Oil will reach $75 per barrel.
Saudi money will be laundered through multinational corporations to support Jeb Bush's election campaign in 2008.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average will climb all the way to 12,000, an anemic rise of 20% in eight years, or an average of 2% per year. Bush will claim his second term a great success, since the Dow in the second four years seriously outperformed the Dow in the first four years.
Unemployment nationwide will average about 6.5%. Unemployment among African Americans will average about 12%. Unemployment among Native Americans will top 50%. The president will seek to reduce these percentages not by sponsoring an aggressive jobs bill but by dropping large numbers of people from the list of unemployed.
The minimum wage will remain at $5.15 an hour. Coupled with inflation, the minimum wage in real dollars will reach a 65-year low (it's already at a 50-year low).
Toward the end of Bush's second term, the U.S. will once again slide toward recession.
The dollar will slide to $2.00 per euro. "Old Europe" will thumb their noses at the U.S.
The U.S. will refuse to sign any new international treaties that do not guarantee the U.S. the right to refuse to abide by any provision it does not like.
Palestinians will kill hundreds of Israeli citizens in suicide bombings and mortar and rocket attacks. The U.S. will watch the Israeli army kill thousands more Palestinian civilians in its attempts to kill the Palestinian militants. The U.S. will veto any U.N. resolution even slightly critical of Israel.
The budget deficit will grow to $750 billion per year because of slower than predicted growth in the economy. Bush's economic advisors will predict that they can cut the deficit in half by 2012.
Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi, Bush's biggest supporters in Europe, will be ousted from office by the voters in their own countries.
Alarmed at recent surges in support for left-leaning candidates in Latin America, the White House will instruct the CIA to secretly interfere in the political processes of selected countries, especially Brazil and Venezuela.
The White House will continue to claim that scientific opinion about global warming is divided and the data is inconclusive. The North Pole will be ice-free for four months of the year. The Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica will be reduced to half its present size. Salt water will encroach more and more on the brackish water in the Everglades, threatening the fragile ecosystem.
The White House will appoint two Scalia-clones to seats on the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court will overturn Roe v. Wade, will declare the Americans with Disabilities Act unconstitutional, and will further erode the idea of separation of church and state.
Emboldened by changes in the Supreme Court, local school boards in seventeen southern and midwestern states will outlaw the teaching of evolution in science classrooms, replacing it with some variant of creation science. Student test scores in those states will plummet in comparison to the rest of the states, which will only decline slightly every year.
Afghanistan and Iraq will still be chaotic no-go zones for Americans.
As the 2008 campaign approaches, Democrats will reject two fiery, progressive candidates in favor of a candidate with deep pockets and broad political connections, who is associated with the Democratic Leadership Council. This candidate will be pro-war (only not as much as Bush), pro-big-business (only with an emphasis on different businesses), pro-capital punishment (only with slightly more compassion), and pro-Israel (with no more pretense of even-handedness than Bush). He or she will lose a close election to Jeb Bush.

Progressive Theology