Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
Why aren’t more people worried about terrorism tomorrow at some polling place? The “they hate us because we are free” crowd should be having a field day but a search for "terrorism" "elections” on news.google.com suggests that such concerns aren’t making their way into news stories if they exist at all.
There are several plausible explanations for this. It could be that people in the United States have given up believing that a terrorist attack will always be just around the corner and it could be that voting is such an infrequent activity that –high school civics classes be damned- it just isn’t widely seen as an activity that defines the U.S. (The latter of which might explain why some who study voting trends expect a very low turnout tomorrow.)
But the most likely explanation is probably just that the Bush Administration has not pushed awareness of the possibility of terrorists attacking tomorrow and (please excuse my cynicism) a public that accepts the unending “war on terror” as justified and logical isn’t going to think of this stuff on their own. If this is the case, it is interesting that Bush has not warned the public and told people that they should vote in order to defy the terrorists. “If you don’t vote, Osama and Saddam win,” the slogan could go. If such a gambit worked, and I’d be surprise if it didn’t, it would do wonders for the Republicans since they are usually seen as tougher on defense matters whereas the party of JFK, LBJ and Clinton is oddly seen as rarely if ever having been a part of the U.S. military actions. posted by micah holmquist at 11/04/2002 09:49:00 PM
