Things are getting stranger. The Florida Marlins played two “home” games at the White Sox’ park in Chicago this week against the Montreal Expos. Their stadium in Miami was recovering from Hurricane Frances and fretting over Hurricane Ivan. It was the first time two National League teams had met in an American League park since 1946, when the Boston Braves hosted the Philadelphia Phillies at Fenway. That shift was due to wet paint on the seats in the Braves’ park.
In Toronto, the Blue Jays did not play the Baltimore Orioles Tuesday in deference to that night’s World Cup Hockey final, in which Canada beat Finland, 3-2. It may have been the first time a major-league baseball game has been called on account of hockey. You could look it up. It’s been this way ever since we fell down the rabbit hole (The millennium? The 2000 election? 9-11?) and have been groping in the dark ever since, trying to find our way out. The worst part is, we seem to be getting used to it. Our standards for rational behavior keep getting lower.
A few weeks ago, an article in the New Yorker magazine cited research by Princeton political scientists to the effect that in 2000, Al Gore lost 2.8 million popular votes and the electoral votes of seven states (any one of which would have put him over the top), because it rained too much or too little in those states to please voters. American citizens can be as capricious as the weather and if they don’t like their allotment of precipitation, they take it out on the party in power by voting for the other guy.
This is bad news for George Bush. The 2000 election came down to Florida and Mr. Bush won by just five votes – Rehnquist, O’Connor, Kennedy, Thomas and Scalia. This year’s campaign may hinge on Florida with the deciding votes cast by Charley, Frances, Ivan and perhaps Jeanne and a hurricane to be named later.
At the least, these storms will cause Mr. Bush to spend extra days in Florida, working to keep his numbers steady, while John Kerry has the other battleground states to himself. It will put further pressure on Jeb Bush to come up with more dirty tricks to keep African-American Floridians and other suspected Democrats away from the polls. Ivan’s westward lurch means Mr. Bush may also have to visit Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana – solid red states where he should not have had to stump at all.
Should you feel inclined toward sympathy for Mr. Bush, remember all those computer models that predicted an early symptom of climate change would be an increase in the frequency and severity of storms. Many people will suffer – many people have already suffered – as a result of the disastrous Bush-Cheney energy policies, there is no reason why the principals should not be among them.
Over in Russia, Vladimir Putin is one step ahead of Mr. Bush, announcing the abolition of direct elections for Russia’s 89 regional governors and the lower house of the national legislature. Mr. Putin says dismantling of his nation’s democratic principles and arrogating power to the executive is necessitated by terrorist attacks on civilians. In Chechnya, the occupying soldiers are on edge, the insurgents are rampant, the citizens are miserable, the infrastructure is in ruins and the installed government lacks legitimacy. Sound familiar?
For 50 years, Russia and the U.S., the superpowers, feinted and parried across the planet, each waiting for the other to begin the battle that would kill us all. For people of my generation, it was the only reality we knew. Now we have entered what was supposed to have been an era of peace to find each giant hobbled by people we had long thought to be marginal and insignificant.
This is the new normal – perhaps the new world order Mr. Bush’s father predicted 13 years ago. It’s the era when we learn the lessons of our hubris, whether they took the form of burning too many fossil fuels, overbuilding our barrier islands or thinking we could teach the world democracy at the point of a gun.
The New Normal
Things are getting stranger. The Florida Marlins played two “home” games at the White Sox’ park in Chicago this week against the Montreal Expos. Their stadium in Miami was recovering from Hurricane Frances and fretting over Hurricane Ivan. It was the first time two National League teams had met in an American League park since 1946, when the Boston Braves hosted the Philadelphia Phillies at Fenway. That shift was due to wet paint on the seats in the Braves’ park.
In Toronto, the Blue Jays did not play the Baltimore Orioles Tuesday in deference to that night’s World Cup Hockey final, in which Canada beat Finland, 3-2. It may have been the first time a major-league baseball game has been called on account of hockey. You could look it up. It’s been this way ever since we fell down the rabbit hole (The millennium? The 2000 election? 9-11?) and have been groping in the dark ever since, trying to find our way out. The worst part is, we seem to be getting used to it. Our standards for rational behavior keep getting lower.
A few weeks ago, an article in the New Yorker magazine cited research by Princeton political scientists to the effect that in 2000, Al Gore lost 2.8 million popular votes and the electoral votes of seven states (any one of which would have put him over the top), because it rained too much or too little in those states to please voters. American citizens can be as capricious as the weather and if they don’t like their allotment of precipitation, they take it out on the party in power by voting for the other guy.
This is bad news for George Bush. The 2000 election came down to Florida and Mr. Bush won by just five votes – Rehnquist, O’Connor, Kennedy, Thomas and Scalia. This year’s campaign may hinge on Florida with the deciding votes cast by Charley, Frances, Ivan and perhaps Jeanne and a hurricane to be named later.
At the least, these storms will cause Mr. Bush to spend extra days in Florida, working to keep his numbers steady, while John Kerry has the other battleground states to himself. It will put further pressure on Jeb Bush to come up with more dirty tricks to keep African-American Floridians and other suspected Democrats away from the polls. Ivan’s westward lurch means Mr. Bush may also have to visit Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana – solid red states where he should not have had to stump at all.
Should you feel inclined toward sympathy for Mr. Bush, remember all those computer models that predicted an early symptom of climate change would be an increase in the frequency and severity of storms. Many people will suffer – many people have already suffered – as a result of the disastrous Bush-Cheney energy policies, there is no reason why the principals should not be among them.
Over in Russia, Vladimir Putin is one step ahead of Mr. Bush, announcing the abolition of direct elections for Russia’s 89 regional governors and the lower house of the national legislature. Mr. Putin says dismantling of his nation’s democratic principles and arrogating power to the executive is necessitated by terrorist attacks on civilians. In Chechnya, the occupying soldiers are on edge, the insurgents are rampant, the citizens are miserable, the infrastructure is in ruins and the installed government lacks legitimacy. Sound familiar?
For 50 years, Russia and the U.S., the superpowers, feinted and parried across the planet, each waiting for the other to begin the battle that would kill us all. For people of my generation, it was the only reality we knew. Now we have entered what was supposed to have been an era of peace to find each giant hobbled by people we had long thought to be marginal and insignificant.
This is the new normal – perhaps the new world order Mr. Bush’s father predicted 13 years ago. It’s the era when we learn the lessons of our hubris, whether they took the form of burning too many fossil fuels, overbuilding our barrier islands or thinking we could teach the world democracy at the point of a gun.
(c) Mark Floegel, 2004