How Low Can You Go?
This post was originally published at OpenSalon, a beta-test group blogging project of Salon Media.
I’m going to think out loud, if you don’t mind. I’ve been ruminating on something for a while now and I would like to indulge the openness and apparent civility of this forum to throw some very incompletely formed ideas against the wall to see what sticks. Maybe we’ll end up with a collective Rorschach test that can tell us something about ourselves, or maybe, as with making so much spaghetti back in college, we’ll just end up with strands of uncooked pasta and a mess on the kitchen wall.
The back-story here is that I thought Al Gore was a bit of a chump in 2000. I felt he ran a timid, lifeless campaign against one of the most eminently beatable pretenders ever to aspire to national office. He deserved to lose, even if he did win, really.
I also thought the five Supreme Court justices who decided Bush v. Gore should have been arrested and tried for treason, or at least for failure to defend and protect the constitution.
I agreed, in many respects, with Ralph Nader’s contention that there was very little substantive difference between the two candidates, even less between the two parties they represented, and that we Americans and our media had no stomach for discussing (much less actually tackling) the real issues we face as a nation and a society.
From the current vantage point, I believe George W. Bush has been more of a disaster than even the most pessimistic of us dared imagine eight years ago, and I am afraid my eight year-old son will be struggling to overcome the ill effects of the Bush administration twenty, thirty, perhaps even forty years from now.
In the 2004 election cycle, it was clear to me the only candidate approaching the task with any real combination of intelligence, vision, creativity and promise was Dennis Kucinich. I soon accepted that I was in an elite minority of single digit proportions, but took comfort in the fact that I would have been happy to sit down and have a beer with every single DK supporter I came across that year.
After the first Bush/Kerry debate I thought Kerry was a lock for the presidency. The gulf between the two men’s intellects was so vast and so stark, and we had already suffered such incredible depredations to our body politic, I thought, “how could any thinking person choose to stay the course we are on?”
And yet.
I wrote a song in the wee hours of election night that year, the chorus of which laments, “It’s gonna take a little time / to find some peace of mind / gazing at the great divide.” Listen to a very rudimentary recording of it if you’re interested.
So now we’ve had the four more years, and despite the ‘success’ of the surge, Iraq is no less of a quagmire than it was always predicted to become. There is credible expectation that we’ll begin aerial bombardment of, if not all-out war with Iran before Bush and Cheney leave Washington. The economy is on pins and needles, our stature in the community of nations is that of a laughingstock, and the outgoing chief executive has the lowest public approval rating of any president who was not impeached in our history.
One might think We the People are ready for something different. That we’ve come to our senses. That the indomitable spirit and can-do attitude which are the birthright of every American will step to the plate and by sheer force of will manifest the best and the brightest the world has to offer, that we might lead mankind in this new millennium on wings of invention, ingenuity and a refusal to be trod upon.
But, no. People are tired. People are weary. People want it to be over. People can’t stand the pettiness and the superficiality and the crassness of the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the right to try and define a new way forward.
Well, I hate to put it this way, but maybe we haven’t had enough yet. Maybe it’s got to get even worse before it can get any better. Maybe the dark heart of neoconservatism has to become so glaringly exposed there can be no doubt, even among those who agree on no other thing, that we must finally drive a stake through it to rid ourselves of the fear and greed and cruelty its grip on power engenders.
Maybe John McCain is just the guy to get us there.
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9 Responses to “How Low Can You Go?”
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Lonbud,
The notion that we must hit rock bottom before seeing the collective light may work with substance abusers, but not with the US of A’s voters. Remember, they re-elected Ronald Reagan in a landslide, not to mention the past two sad presidential elections. I too bought into the idea that there was no “real” difference between the corporate candidates and the corporate media and the….but is there any among us who think we would not have been a whole lot better off had Al Gore won? To say there is no difference between him and Dubya is absolute folly. In a word, Iraq. In another word, the environment. Sure, Al Gore will bring us no closer to the end of corporate media, crony capitalism, and many of the other ills that ail us, but imagine a world without the Iraq war. It would have been worth it. Dayenu.
Here we are again–asking ourselves, if Clinton or Obama are only slightly better that McCain, why bother? Why, indeed. Because even on a bad day, a liberal democrat is a whole lot better than a neocon.
Cheers,
Ken
I agree with Ken. We must change course this election. The Dems are not perfect, but they have different agenda than the repubs. Dems as I understand them are for real family values, the ones that hold free public education as necessary to a free society, not to mention staying competitive in a now acknowledged global environment. Dems in general have a better track record on the environment, on labor, on race relations. Repubs by contrast have a great track record on lowering taxes for the well off, cutting out that pesky safety net, transporting jobs overseas and on and on with anythign big business thinks will squeeze out another percentage on the quartely profit statement. I’ve met Al, he’s no great shakes, but even he woudl have been far better for us all than the current resident. As to Hillary or Obama, either one would be a big improvement.
Lonnie noooooooo - noooo - no don’t be fooled by the media generated “maverick” image that McCain is trading on - in order to get elected he has to court the same people that elected Bush noooo, no, no - his environmental record is awful - skipping votes - not a Maverik but a chameleon. Obama has his liquid coal and nuclear allies - at least the Clinton’s have a good track record with the economy. But to get the kind of progressive changes we need and can almost taste we’ll need a democratic super majority in both the house and senate to hopefully keep the questionable presidential candidates answering to the people. Absentee management by the voters no longer works we have to be involved and on a daily basis. I’m voting for Ralph!
I remember having similar thoughts before Reagan’s second term — that things will get so bad after 4 more years that the People will finally see the light and kick the scoundrels out. It didn’t work out that way then and won’t this time either. Instead our national nightmare will continue for at least 4 more precious years or more. We can’t afford this. By way of example, only one more Supreme Court appointment by these guys will tip the Court irrevocably to the hard right and we will not have to worry about the terrorists hating us for our freedoms any longer — we won’t have any. Furthermore, thanks to our ‘fair and balanced media’ and the fact that the Democrats will likely hold majorities in both houses of Congress, the blame for whatever disasters will occur during a McCain presidency will be hopelessly muddled. Finally, an Obama loss to McCain will give the Clintonistas the ability to say “I told you so,” and give Hillary the inside track for 2012. How is that a change for the better? Obama isn’t perfect, but he is an extraordinary, brilliant, genuine, inspiring person and perhaps the right person for these troubled times. Let’s take a leap of faith — we have no other choice.
Please do not mistake my post for an advocacy piece. It is an observation of the way things are and a contemplation on the direction they might be headed.
If you will recall, things did get bad enough at the end of the Reagan era and the country voted for change in 1992. I was among the happiest, most hopeful people in America when Bill Clinton defeated GHWB, but, as the old joke goes, Clinton turned out to be one of the best Republican presidents we’ve ever had.
I will vote for Obama; I would vote for Hillary if it looked like she needed my vote to win California, otherwise I would have to make a protest vote for perhaps the Green Party candidate. I would never vote for McCain and am not suggesting by the sentiments expressed in the main post that anyone else do so, either.
But then, the majority of the voting public has never listened to me.
When you’re being bludgeoned with a 2″x4″ day in and out for 8 years even the thought of a open handed “bitch slapping” seems like a relief.
Sure, any of the Democrats would be an improvement — but the root cause of the need the ruling class has to continue bludgeoning us will not be abated, even if a super-majority of Democrats emerges in November.
The fact remains it is harder and harder for capital to produce a profit. The need to drive wages down is the main reason the bludgeoning will continue. NAFTA, CAFTA, and all the other “free trade” agreements address the need of capital to move freely across borders in search of cheap labor to meet stockholder demand for quarterly results. In hope of increasing our 401k’s and IRA’s we cheer on the market and identify with the capitalist class even while the lifeblood is sucked out of our economy. The resulting de-industrialization of the “homeland” and the failed promise of the “new economy” is a bust, not initiated by Bush, but handed to us by both parties.
We must demand equity of pay for work done outside the US by companies that flee our shores. The demands of labor internationally to have the right to organize and to a just wage package is rarely mentioned by the leading Democrats and even our unions’ leaderships shy away from their internationalist commitment as they fawn at the feet of the Democratic candidates.
Despite cries for hope and change, there is little the workers of the world can expect from the Democrats except a good “bitch slapping”.
As for Imperial posturing, Mdme. Clinton has shown her teeth, both by supporting the Iraq war funding and in her threats to Iran. And the question remains: who will Obama bomb? Pakistan was his answer. Both promise exit from Iraq but claim right to stay in Afganistan.
As if we have the right to step foot on foreign soil to conduct the mis named “war on terror”. The terror starts at home. Terror is imperial policy.
Need we list the crimes against the people of the world by both Dem’s and Repub’s? Certainly not for the readers of this blog.
But in case there are a few uneducated readers, let us remember the role of the USA in the crushing of the Greek revolution following WWII, the restoratation of the Shah in Iran, the mining of the harbors in Nicaragua, the 3 million dead in Vietnam, the over thow of Allende, the coup against Chavez, there is not enough space here to go on…but just so we remember our peeps here at home….Attica, Jackson State, Kent State, the Ludlow mine massacre…yes terror is our policy. And the chickens do come home to roost.
It appeared in his first big speech on race that Obama was going to stand on principal, but in the end he bowed to the pressure of the polls and thew Pastor Wright to the wolves. Anyone who took the time to read the good pastor’s work would have to agree that his critique of the crimes of the State were accurate and truthful, if not understated.
If one runs away from Pastor Wright he in fact runs away from the likes of Rev. Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Fredrick Douglass, John Brown, Nat Turner, Mother Jones, Emma Goldman, and all the other freedom fighters who took the type of stand needed to promote democratic change.
Of course, abandonment of principle in the name of pragmatism has been the long-standing justification for progressives to abandon the struggle for liberation. But once that struggle is abandoned and one’s lot is cast with the lesser evil, it is near impossible to dig one’s way back out.
Indeed, if significant change is to come it will come from a mass democratic uprising for social justice; it will not be the result of Democratic victory this fall.
Time is long overdue to break with the Democrats! The working class (those of us with nothing to sell but our labor power, either physical or intellectual) need our own political party — not one tied to the corporate economy and its capitalist masters.
The Peace and Freedom Party(PFP) offers a principled socialist alternative platform. Until we can construct a Revolutionary Workers’ Party that can contend for power, a protest vote for PFP is the progressive alternative.
lonbud:
He deserved to lose, even if [Gore] did win, really.
I also thought the five Supreme Court justices who decided Bush v. Gore should have been arrested and tried for treason, or at least for failure to defend and protect the constitution.
As a matter of historical fact, Gore did not win. Really.
Secondly, before you put the US Supreme Court justices on trial for failing to defend and protect the constitution you should do at least a couple things.
First, review the Florida Supreme Court decision that put the case in front of the US Supreme Court in the first place. There are few finer examples of a court tossing established law over the side than you will find in that decision.
Should you care for deep, expert background, read this
I agreed, in many respects, with Ralph Nader’s contention that there was very little substantive difference between the two candidates, even less between the two parties they represented, and that we Americans and our media had no stomach for discussing (much less actually tackling) the real issues we face as a nation and a society.
Nader is good on the what, but not on the why.
There is very little substantive difference between the two parties because there is very broad agreement about what works — free market economies, property rights, equality before the law, etc …
No need for condescension. Just because a great many Americans do not agree with “progressives” does not mean Americans don’t have an appetite for real issues, only that they find “progressive” ideas completely unpersuasive.
I believe George W. Bush has been more of a disaster than even the most pessimistic of us dared imagine eight years ago …
In what respect? This statement reminds me of a discussion we had, where you insisted that income inequality was proof positive of Bush’s disastrous policies.
Yet, when push came to shove, you couldn’t actually identify one such policy.
Just so here: you wax positively vaporous, yet, when it comes down to it, can’t really identify much of anything beyond standard government buffoonery.
And before you start in on Iraq, you need to avoid the standard position of “progressives”, which is to criticize what was done, without going to the bother of providing, and defending, a coherent alternative.
despite the ‘success’ of the surge, Iraq is no less of a quagmire than it was always predicted to become.
Why the scare quotes? I am curious, now that you have brought it up, what you had to say about the surge as it got started. Were you prescient, or not?
There is credible expectation that we’ll begin aerial bombardment of, if not all-out war with Iran before Bush and Cheney leave Washington.
Aside from the ever present problem of completely failing to present an alternative course of action to confronting Iran over its nuclear weapons program, other than in that sentence, where is “credible expectation” taking place?
I’ll bet you dinner, and drinks, that there will be absolutely no US military action against Iran before the end of Bush’s term.
Well, I hate to put it this way, but maybe we haven’t had enough yet. Maybe it’s got to get even worse before it can get any better.
Yeah, like life here in the US is so awful it is a miracle anyone can bear up under the strain.
Sheesh.
Welcome back, Skipper.
Insofar as Gore received the majority of votes cast by the people who voted in the 2000 election, he did, in fact “win.” The process by which the votes in the electoral college were counted was — and remains — so hopelessly corrupt, there is no actual reason to have any faith in the outcome of any election going forward that is not a bona fide landslide.
I will have to get back to you on the Supreme Court issue after I read the volokh piece.
I’m not sure why you feel there is “broad agreement” on “what works.” A minority of eligible voters even bothers (or is permitted) to vote, and among that minority there is widely spread disagreement. Are you intimating that you are in “broad agreement” with the economic policies and property rights positions of the two current Democratic candidates for President and with those of the current Democratic leaders of the House and Senate?
GWB has been an absolute disaster in view of the environment and our stature among the community of nations, with respect to the constitutionally mandated balance of powers and respect for the rule of law; the long-term damage caused by his administration’s policies and lack of stewardship and oversight of the economy and the US Treasury has only begun to surface, and his population of the judicial branch with lifetime appointments to third-rate legal minds and hacks will haunt efforts to undo his malfeasance for a generation or more.
With respect to Iraq, had we done nothing more than maintain the sanctions that were working just fine against Saddam, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and tens of thousands of Americans would be better off today, Iraq would have a more complete and better-functioning infrastructure, and the virulence of Islamic terrorism would be significantly attenuated from present levels.
I use quote marks in referring to the ’success’ of the surge because it is a fiction, a propagandistic description of something that has never and will not soon exist in Iraq.
Whether or not there is military action against Iran before Bush leaves office is of no consequence. The fact of the matter is that Dick Cheney and a host of neocon warmongers are engaged in unapologetic saber-rattling on that score, and there is ‘credible expectation’ in quite a few foreign policy circles that some action will be taken against Iran before the year is out. You speak as if an Iranian nuclear weapons program is a fait accomplis, just as, I feel certain, you did about Saddam’s WMD.
The US is a big place, my friend, and yes, for not a small number of people here, life is so awful it’s a miracle they can bear up under the strain.
lonbud:
Insofar as Gore received the majority of votes cast by the people who voted in the 2000 election, he did, in fact “win.”
Not according to the Constitution, he didn’t. That is the only fact that matters. And before you make accusations of hopeless corruption, you really should back that up with some actual facts.
A minority of eligible voters even bothers (or is permitted) to vote, and among that minority there is widely spread disagreement.
The vast majority of American adult citizens are permitted to vote, whether a minority chooses to do so is not only beside the point, it also directly contradicts your assertion there is widespread disagreement among the electorate.
If there was, the major parties would advocate substantially different policies, which they don’t. Because they do not, many otherwise eligible voters do not bother because they will be equally satisfied with either outcome.
Does that mean I am in broad agreement with the Democratic leadership? No. Democrats routinely display astonishing economic ignorance, and routinely fall prey to equality of outcome vs. equality of opportunity.
Never mind that. History has greatly narrowed the definition of “what works.” Positions the Left used to strongly advocate — nationalizing means of production, anyone? — are now wholly discredited.
GWB has been an absolute disaster in view of the environment …
Specifics please.
With respect to Iraq, had we done nothing more than maintain the sanctions that were working just fine against Saddam, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and tens of thousands of Americans would be better off today …
That is simultaneously dismissive of what was actually going on, astonishingly amoral, and deprives Iraqis of their own human agency.
France and Russia were actively undermining the sanctions. Oil for Food corruption was making a mockery of the UN — no mean feat, that. The sanctions were not working fine, they were on the verge of collapse.
The invasion itself was a masterpiece; we rid the world of a viciously brutal dictator, responsible for the deaths of millions, at an astonishingly small cost to both the Iraqis and ourselves.
In the aftermath, the Iraqis could have chosen to create a civil society rather than engage in nihilistic sectarian slaughter. That they chose slaughter is on them, not on us, and would have happened sooner or later in any event.
And it never fails to astonish me how much the Left prefers Saddam be left in place, despite his predations.
In today’s NY Times, there is a story about how the Iraqi army has transformed Basra. The Sadrite militias are taking a beating in Sadr city. A friend of mine recently returned from Iraq, and was astonished at how positive both Iraqis and American soldiers are.
Now, please describe to me how the surge is a fiction, a propagandistic description (of what?). You keep tossing these invectives on the table without substantiating them, and nearly always in contradiction of readily available evidence.
The fact of the matter is that Dick Cheney and a host of neocon warmongers are engaged in unapologetic saber-rattling on that score …
Refresh my memory. What have the Democratic candidates had to say on that score?
Once again, you say there is credible expectation, but provide none.
The Iranians do intend to acquire nuclear weapons, and will do so unless they are convinced the harm to their national interests will exceed whatever they hope to gain from possessing nuclear weapons.
Part of dissuading the Iranians from pursuing nuclear weapons is saber rattling; that is standard state craft, in which the next US president, no matter who it may be, will engage.
What is your alternative?
… just as, I feel certain, you did about Saddam’s WMD.
Saddam engaged in a concerted campaign to convince others he possessed WMD. He succeeded, and in so doing became the Grand Prize winner in the Be Careful What You Ask For contest.
So much the worse for him.
Of course, there is no denying that he desired to obtain whatever WMD he could get away with.
That said, of all the reasons to rid Iraq of Saddam, WMD was the least of them.