D_Raay
10-22-2004, 03:18 PM
Every four years, liberals unhitch the cart and put it in front of the horse, arguing that the only way to a better tomorrow is to vote for the Democratic nominee. But unless the nominee and Congress are pushed forward by social currents too strong for them to ignore or defy, nothing will alter the default path chosen by the country’s supreme commanders and their respective parties. In the American Empire of today, that path is never towards the good. Our task is not to dither in distraction over the lesser of two evil prospects, which will only turn out to be a detour along the same highway.
As now constituted, presidential contests, focused almost exclusively on the candidates of the two major parties, are worse than useless in furnishing any opportunity for national debate. Consider the number of issues on which there is tacit agreement between the Democratic and Republican parties, either as a matter of principle or with an expedient nod-and-wink that, beyond pro forma sloganeering, these are not matters suitable to be discussed in any public forum: the role of the Federal Reserve; trade policy; economic redistribution; the role and budget of the CIA and other intelligence agencies (almost all military); nuclear disarmament; reduction of the military budget and the allocation of military procurement; roles and policies of the World Bank, IMF, WTO; crime, punishment and the prison explosion; the war on drugs; corporate welfare; energy policy; forest policy; the destruction of small farmers and ranchers; Israel; the corruption of the political system; the occupation of Iraq. The most significant outcome of the electoral process is usually imposed on prospective voters weeks or months ahead of polling day—namely, the consensus between the supposed adversaries as to what is off the agenda.
To be sure, there are the two parties who vituperate against each other in great style, but mostly this is only for show, for purposes of assuaging blocs of voters in the home district while honoring the mandate of those paying for the carousel. In the House, on issues like dumping the us Constitution in the trash can of the Patriot Act, there are perhaps thirty representatives from both sides of the aisle prepared to deviate from establishment policy. The low water mark came on September 14, 2002, when a joint resolution of Congress authorizing the president to ‘use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001’ drew only one No, from Barbara Lee, the Democratic congresswoman from Oakland. A stentorian July 2004 endorsement of Bush’s support for Sharon’s ‘peace plan’ by the House of Representatives elicited 407 ayes and 9 lonely noes.
There is no need to labor the details of Bush’s ghastly incumbency. His performance and personality have been etched well past caricature by dozens of furious assailants, culminating in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit9/11, the Democrats’ prime campaign offering. He came by his fortune and his presidency dishonestly. Official rebirth in Christ led him not to compassion but to vindictiveness. Genes and education turned into a Mendelian stew of all that is worst and most vulgar in the anthropology of the Northeastern and Texan elites. But despite his unalluring personality and severe limitations Bush does not merit the weight of those hysterical comminations heaped on his head on a daily basis. Reagan was much worse. So, in some significant ways, was Clinton. Bush stands accused of killing some 3,500–4,000 Afghan civilians, and 12,000–14,000 Iraqis. On conservative estimates, Clinton supervised the slaughter, by direct military assault or by sanctions, of nearly ten times that number; many more if you throw in those who died in the Rwandan genocide, in part because Clinton wanted to keep the international spotlight on Yugoslavia.
The obsessive ‘Anyone but Bush’ posture across the liberal-progressive spectrum has ensured that Kerry has not had his feet held to the fire by any faction of the Democratic Party. This has been the year of surrendering quietly. Dean’s candidacy expired in Iowa, its prime consequence having been to lure a large chunk of the anti-war movement into the Democratic fold—which, as Dean imploded, then agreed that abb was the bleach of choice and committed to the support of a pro-war candidate. Looking for evidence of active protests against Kerry on the liberal-left in America in the late summer of 2004 was like trudging through the grey ash around Mount St. Helens, after the eruption.
Progressives who have touted the ‘Anyone but Bush’ standard (which reached its comical nadir with furious defenses of Kerry’s record as an accredited war hero and winner of medals in Vietnam, accompanied by denunciations of Bush as a draft dodger) claim that the minute Kerry is sworn in as president they will be out on the streets, attacking from the left. One only has to look at the surrenders of the Clinton years, to predict with some confidence that these pledges of resistance are vacuous.
There are plenty of campaigns here in the USA that pit idealism and the zeal for justice against the cruelties and oppressions of the system. They do not rise and fall in tune with the political cycle and have faced bipartisan obloquy from Democrats and Republicans. The struggle for Palestinian justice has grown from near invisibility in the early 1970s to a substantial movement active across the entire United States, notably in church and community groups and on campuses. Ralph Nader’s fierce denunciations of AIPAC, of the Anti-Defamation League and of the overall malign power of the Israeli lobby would have been inconceivable even a decade ago. The fact that Nader, a Palestinian, felt emboldened to break a lifetime’s public silence on the topic is testimony to the change wrought by thirty years of organizing.
Many attest to a slack political tempo this campaign season. A simple refusal to vote at all on the presidential candidate could see the turnout drop below 50 per cent, as bleak a register of popular cynicism about the realities of the democratic mandate in the us today as the Venezuelan turnout was exhilarating. The next us president could even be denied a majority ‘mandate’ from the sliver of those voters going to the polls. By the same token, the shape of resistance in the coming years will not derive from a vote for Kerry, or even one for Nader, but from the harnessing of those vital, idealistic energies that always move through the American firmament, awaiting release.
As now constituted, presidential contests, focused almost exclusively on the candidates of the two major parties, are worse than useless in furnishing any opportunity for national debate. Consider the number of issues on which there is tacit agreement between the Democratic and Republican parties, either as a matter of principle or with an expedient nod-and-wink that, beyond pro forma sloganeering, these are not matters suitable to be discussed in any public forum: the role of the Federal Reserve; trade policy; economic redistribution; the role and budget of the CIA and other intelligence agencies (almost all military); nuclear disarmament; reduction of the military budget and the allocation of military procurement; roles and policies of the World Bank, IMF, WTO; crime, punishment and the prison explosion; the war on drugs; corporate welfare; energy policy; forest policy; the destruction of small farmers and ranchers; Israel; the corruption of the political system; the occupation of Iraq. The most significant outcome of the electoral process is usually imposed on prospective voters weeks or months ahead of polling day—namely, the consensus between the supposed adversaries as to what is off the agenda.
To be sure, there are the two parties who vituperate against each other in great style, but mostly this is only for show, for purposes of assuaging blocs of voters in the home district while honoring the mandate of those paying for the carousel. In the House, on issues like dumping the us Constitution in the trash can of the Patriot Act, there are perhaps thirty representatives from both sides of the aisle prepared to deviate from establishment policy. The low water mark came on September 14, 2002, when a joint resolution of Congress authorizing the president to ‘use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001’ drew only one No, from Barbara Lee, the Democratic congresswoman from Oakland. A stentorian July 2004 endorsement of Bush’s support for Sharon’s ‘peace plan’ by the House of Representatives elicited 407 ayes and 9 lonely noes.
There is no need to labor the details of Bush’s ghastly incumbency. His performance and personality have been etched well past caricature by dozens of furious assailants, culminating in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit9/11, the Democrats’ prime campaign offering. He came by his fortune and his presidency dishonestly. Official rebirth in Christ led him not to compassion but to vindictiveness. Genes and education turned into a Mendelian stew of all that is worst and most vulgar in the anthropology of the Northeastern and Texan elites. But despite his unalluring personality and severe limitations Bush does not merit the weight of those hysterical comminations heaped on his head on a daily basis. Reagan was much worse. So, in some significant ways, was Clinton. Bush stands accused of killing some 3,500–4,000 Afghan civilians, and 12,000–14,000 Iraqis. On conservative estimates, Clinton supervised the slaughter, by direct military assault or by sanctions, of nearly ten times that number; many more if you throw in those who died in the Rwandan genocide, in part because Clinton wanted to keep the international spotlight on Yugoslavia.
The obsessive ‘Anyone but Bush’ posture across the liberal-progressive spectrum has ensured that Kerry has not had his feet held to the fire by any faction of the Democratic Party. This has been the year of surrendering quietly. Dean’s candidacy expired in Iowa, its prime consequence having been to lure a large chunk of the anti-war movement into the Democratic fold—which, as Dean imploded, then agreed that abb was the bleach of choice and committed to the support of a pro-war candidate. Looking for evidence of active protests against Kerry on the liberal-left in America in the late summer of 2004 was like trudging through the grey ash around Mount St. Helens, after the eruption.
Progressives who have touted the ‘Anyone but Bush’ standard (which reached its comical nadir with furious defenses of Kerry’s record as an accredited war hero and winner of medals in Vietnam, accompanied by denunciations of Bush as a draft dodger) claim that the minute Kerry is sworn in as president they will be out on the streets, attacking from the left. One only has to look at the surrenders of the Clinton years, to predict with some confidence that these pledges of resistance are vacuous.
There are plenty of campaigns here in the USA that pit idealism and the zeal for justice against the cruelties and oppressions of the system. They do not rise and fall in tune with the political cycle and have faced bipartisan obloquy from Democrats and Republicans. The struggle for Palestinian justice has grown from near invisibility in the early 1970s to a substantial movement active across the entire United States, notably in church and community groups and on campuses. Ralph Nader’s fierce denunciations of AIPAC, of the Anti-Defamation League and of the overall malign power of the Israeli lobby would have been inconceivable even a decade ago. The fact that Nader, a Palestinian, felt emboldened to break a lifetime’s public silence on the topic is testimony to the change wrought by thirty years of organizing.
Many attest to a slack political tempo this campaign season. A simple refusal to vote at all on the presidential candidate could see the turnout drop below 50 per cent, as bleak a register of popular cynicism about the realities of the democratic mandate in the us today as the Venezuelan turnout was exhilarating. The next us president could even be denied a majority ‘mandate’ from the sliver of those voters going to the polls. By the same token, the shape of resistance in the coming years will not derive from a vote for Kerry, or even one for Nader, but from the harnessing of those vital, idealistic energies that always move through the American firmament, awaiting release.