Hans van der Kamp

It seems that on all historical days in my lifetime I am either redecorating or moving. I was redecorating my apartment when the great Dutch Peace Demonstration (1981) took place in the streets around me. I was moving my belongings to a new apartment when Theo van Gogh was stabbed to death a few years ago. I could give you more examples like that. Today, November 4th very early in the morning I am preparing for yet another day of mixing cement, sanding and painting wooden beams etc. to expand and redecorate my new photo studio.

The Americans are still sound asleep, although I picture Barack Obama sitting up drinking hot coco. The man looked really tired in the last interview I saw tonight, but in a few hours America will wake up to face a historical election day. Whatever the outcome; this day will go down into history much like the moon landing or the day JFK got shot. One of those ‘where were you when it happened’ days.

Well, I do not very well recall the landing on the moon, but I think I can safely assume that my father was redecorating the house — Yes, he too was always redecorating.

Outside there is a thick early morning fog and I have a tremendous head ache of the paint fumes I slept in and I am a little dizzy because the dust circling me really does not help my COPD. A Leonard Cohen song is on repeat in my head.

Now you can say that I’ve grown bitter
but of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in
the bedrooms of the poor
And there’s a mighty judgment coming, but I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices
In the Tower of Song — [ Complete lyrics here ]

I have been following the American Elections on Twitter, which I found was the quickest way to learn about the sense and nonsense of this election. I have heard the words ‘hero’ and ‘socialist’ way too often and I have learned that the Dutch and the Americans are more alike than I thought. Both countries, not to be compared in scale or impact, have vast areas of land inhabited by hicks who are scared to death of Muslims and they cling to their phobia like flies on a turd.

It is often said modern societies are two class societies, where the middle class is slowly evaporating, leaving us with the rich and the poor. Actually I think we have passed that point, we now have a two class society based on information and disinformation. Those who are connected to the information stream and those who are not. McCain who does not know how to send an e-mail also ran a campaign that was not taking advantage of contemporary news outlets. With joker Palin on his side those same media crushed most of what he was trying to build and he was left with an audience of hicks, gun fetishists and racists. If there are enough of them in the US to give him the victory he wants still remains to be seen. Obama is in the lead of course, we all know that, but the US elections with their four to five hour waiting lines and legions of lawyers guarding against fraud and malfunction make this election into an event that reminds us of UN supervised elections in Third World countries.

Hopefully Obama’s Change Ideology will be put into effect in a country that seems to be run down by paper shredder bureaucrats and with a little luck we will see an America with less fear, less school shoot outs and most of all less war crimes, but despite the hope I sincerely feel — I still do not see how Obama, who wants more military forces in Afghanistan with an option of policing Pakistan’s borders, will truly better the position of the US globally.

As tough as it is to admit for Europeans that we were responsible for the Holocaust and by doing so indirectly caused instability in the Middle East decades ago, true peace in that region can only be reached through solving the Palestinian problem and this unfortunately cannot be done by supporting Israel as a military super power — blind to international conventions and human rights — just because one is focused on charming Jewish lobbyists in the US.

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