I have not heard or seen the new Osama Bin Laden tape, but I have read a little bit about the reaction to it. Apparently he has endorsed the Democratic party in the upcoming US elections! The tape is filled with anti-capitalist sentiments and argues that the state has a very important part to play in religion. He does a little name dropping as well, he suggests that Americans read Noam Chomsky in order to see where he is coming from. The political blogs are having a field day with this. The “right wing” ones are saying, “See, we told you those lefties are no good! They are doing what Osama Bin Laden wants!” The ones on the left are of course trying to distance themselves from his message, but I haven’t heard any of them trying to distance themselves from Noam… I have even seen a serious thought that the Bush administration cooked the whole thing up in order to discredit the Dems. You know things are hitting a little too close when you have to resort to conspiracy theories in order to explain away something…
I do think that there is a close parallel with Osama and vast swaths of the American political system. Osama’s big thing is that the “right” people need to be in power so that they can tell everyone how they should live. He would do it through (his) religious views, both the left and the part of the right that ascribes to this world view would do it through their view of morality. Weather it is the war on terror, the war on drugs, abortion, global warming, universal health care, or whatever other causes there are out there, there are many politicians (and people that vote for them) that want to dictate the decisions we face in many different areas. Granted, political parties here do not try to kill people in order to get their way, but I still worry a bit. Beware of any chosen few that feel the need to impose their view on everyone else, nothing good can come from them…