What If?...

NY Times magazine has an interesting interview in its 8/15/04 issue. They talked with Ray Fair. He is an economics prof at Yale who has written a book called "Predicting Presidential Elections and Other Things," Using an econometric model he has said that Bush will win with 57.5% of the vote. Fair states his model has performed well in the past and that the average error is only 2.5%. The model takes into account the war, social issues, etc. And it still predicts W winning. I had heard this forecast before but when it is in the NY Times, more and more will hear about it, and hopefully talk about it. I stopped, after reading it, to wonder what will happen if W does pull it off and win:

1. Invasion of Iran, Syria and eventually Lebanon
2. Re-institution of the draft
3. Increased civil rights violations with an increasingly powerful Patriot Act
4. Further polarization of this nation into three camps - those that love W because they are benefitting from his policies, those that despise the man, and those that don't give a hoot about anything just their Starbucks coffe in the A.M., the Big Mac in the afternoon, and their ballgame on TV in the evening.

W has called himself a War President in the past. If he somehow pulls off another four years, he just may be the Civil War President. Just think - anyone who disagrees with his policies may be arrested, copies of Farenheit 911 DVDs will be burned in public, Air America will be taken off the air for espousing un-American ideas, and on and on.

For the third faction of individuals, as long as they have their TVs and Starbucks, WalMart, McDonalds ... they'll sit back and live with the injustice.

Wow, Orwell was only 20 years off. It may just be 2004 rather than "1984". Something to think about.