Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Lesser of Evils Still Pandora-Level of Evil

A bunch of good folks I sincerely like and respect will take part in the farcical, biennial public relations competition that masquerades as representative democracy in this country. Most of the people I happen to know will vote for candidates of the Democratic Party. I think they are making a big mistake. If these people, like me, believe in things like that the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and its bombings and/or targeted assassinations - either way, war crimes - in Pakistan and Yemen are illegal and, more importantly, immoral; that the public should not subsidize business costs while corporations privatize profit; that the short-term interests of corporate shareholders in the US should not be placed above the long term interests of the larger community, especially with respect to climate change and the survival of the species; and that the "international community" is more than just Washington and whoever happens to agree with it, see, e.g., Iran's enriching of uranium and Israel's occupation of Palestine, etc. etc.; then they are voting for a party that holds fundamentally inconsistent views and goals. I don't understand the desire to do such a thing. Perhaps it's a desire to not feel small and inconsequential in the world, to not feel like you've been lied to your whole life, or worse, that you believed the lie. Maybe it's the desperate grab of the lever that retains some symbolic meaning in the face of increasing atomization and alienation, a silent cry that whispers, "things are not that bad, we're just a ways off from justice and egality, this act absolves me while at the same time keeping me safe from the consequences of real action." I don't know what the reasons are at this point, and I don't really care. I do know that there is one business party in the US, with two factions that are more different in personality than substance, and that this business party is fanatically committed to a highly sophisticated class war at home and a brutally violent imperial empire abroad (where corporations have replaced viceroys). And I think that the sooner the educated, white, liberal professional class that is my peer group comes to realize this, the sooner the cannibalization of the Democratic Party can occur and a new, legitimate opposition movement will foment. The only time I'm voting soon is for Palin/Beck 2014.

13 comments:

K. Ron Silkwood said...

I've reached the gag point. When I am expected to accept the evil done by this country, by both "parties," in my name, for my safety, and with my money, it's time for me to just walk away from the shell game.

dk said...

i agree re one business party and 2 factions etc but i also believe that no voice being heard - for however far it can carry - will be of no help. no action won't really make a statement unless everyone everywhere participates and great good luck with that!

i guess all u can do is what ur doing - make yourself heard and see if others come and join you. i can only join you in spirit as i hold onto to the notion that something is better than nothing.

odo said...

for a day, my cynicism for the process and general longing for the grave took a backseat to childlike wonder at the fact that, in this farcical theatre of ahistorical hogwash, i was yet able to cast a vote to legalize it.

imbroglioh said...

yea, luckily you didnt space on the date. i know there were some hard core heads out there who were actually campaigning against prop 19, not sure what the exact reasons were (i remember someone saying something about how the experimenting with different strains etc. would be compromised), but i dunno, my relationship with it is pretty comfortable as is. and isnt my comfort all that matters.

odo said...

give me convenience or give me ballsack fungus. local growers and others happy with aka cashing in on (any other happiness being elitist propaganda) the current arrangement were against 19, which i suppose includes some of my social circles. it's the same old bong.

Renan said...

While I agree that the difference in parties is more of a difference in degree than kind, I don't really see how your proposed solution would affect the kind of change that you propose. When the Bush administration was in power, the so-called liberals were as up in arms as they are likely to get and united as a single mass behind Obama's platform of "change." Unfortunately, partly due to his own shortcomings and partly due to the nature of the political system/economic environment he inherited, the wholesale change he promised/implied has not really come to pass. But I don't think putting the Republican party in charge and/or refusing to vote is going to foster any meaningful change. Instead, I think people have to become more outspoken in both their individual beliefs and political views so as to shift the tenor of the conversation. I mean, if you look at the whole tea party movement, it is a basically just a vocal minority of super passionate, ultra conservatives that have co-opted a large portion of one of the two major political parties and had their views heard and acknowledged. There is no real reason that the left should not have an analogue. The real problem is that the left either lacks the passion or infrastructure to do something similar. And until that ceases being the case, the kind of change you are looking for is going to be a long time coming.

imbroglioh said...

yea, i think i was being more glib than serious in suggesting that i hope the republicans take control of the government. i think that would be terrible, not because it would become more or less difficult to effectuate real meaningful change under the repubs or dems - i think there's a negligible effect either way; real change is based on something completely separate from electoral politics - but because the repubs are slightly but meaningfully more fond of enacting policies that are absolutely disastrous to the general population. so for that reason alone, a non-insignificant consideration for sure, it's important that repubs are not elected, and in our country, that means dems should be elected.

that said, i think my point is/was that people that hold similar beliefs as me (social democratic, believe the gov caters to special interests and not citizens, believe too great disparity btwn rich and poor, believe in social net for old and poor, believe health care is universal right, believe us should respect international law, believe in two-state settlement using the 1967 borders, etc.), which, coincidentally, most of the us public believes those things despite the blue/red partisan dichotomy that those in power have an interest in maintaining, i think it makes much more sense to put our energies into more meaningful acts of opposition and protest against the corporate/state concentrations of power rather than using our energies to campaign for and support a party whose goals are explicitly inconsistent with the beliefs i've enumerated. while i'll agree that voting for dems is a lesser of two evils that has to happen, to the extent pursuing that lesser of two evils inhibits pursuing an actual good - meaningful opposition and direct action - then that is a huge evil in and of itself. and i think that the democratic party's holding itself out to be a true opposition party is a major crime that mandates its destruction, not just reformation.

Bell said...

I basically agree with your contention that the Democrats suck. But I'm just not sure you're engaging enough with the details of how the Democrats come to suck. And in this post-Nader 2000 America, it's incumbent on leftist critics of the Democrats angry with one-party-two-faction government to explain carefully the mechanics of the "true left" winning the country back after the loss that teaches the Dems their lesson. Last time we tried it Dick Cheney laid the groundwork for all sorts of new abuses by the military-security powers in the government that will be with us for decades, and he got two wars started, and he paid himself and his friends billions upon billions for the trouble. Granted, the Dems also turned into nutjob Neo-Cons who would believe any piece of bullshit about an Arab country that some flunkie from AEI could scribble out during the commercial break. But the fact that the left-wing of the party hated them and said they were no better than the GOP was a contributing factor in their behavior. Nevermind the mechanics of how the left will keep its newer, betterer party that will replace the Dems from sucking just as much sooner or later.

There were myriad opportunities over the last two years for things to get much, much better. It was possible to accelerate the end of the U.S. war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was very possible to change the tax code, expand public health insurance, end the current de facto apartheid state of our immigration laws, use federal spending to fight unemployment and expand the oversight and legislative regime protecting the environment. The reason why these things did not change had to do with specific figures who are in the Democratic ruling class, and their ability to appeal to the media, wealthy special interests, and certain manipulations of public opinion. Most Democrats wanted to be more aggressive and to move things further in the right direction. Your analysis paints them all with the same brush. The left needs to get to the point where we know that Bob Rubin is the bad guy, Rahm Emanuel is the bad guy, Mary Landrieu is the bad gal, and Obama is the bad guy because he listened to those shitheads, rather than just blame "the Democrats."

Bell said...

I basically agree with your contention that the Democrats suck. But I'm just not sure you're engaging enough with the details of how the Democrats come to suck. And in this post-Nader 2000 America, it's necessary for leftist critics of the Democrats who are angry with one-party-two-faction government to explain carefully the mechanics of the "true left" winning the country back after the loss that teaches the Dems their lesson. Last time we tried it Dick Cheney laid the groundwork for all sorts of new abuses by the military-security powers in the government that will be with us for decades, and he got two wars started, and he paid himself and his friends billions upon billions for the trouble. Granted, the Dems also turned into nutjob Neo-Cons who would believe any piece of bullshit about an Arab country that some flunkie from AEI could scribble out during the commercial break. But the fact that the left-wing of the party hated them and said they were no better than the GOP was a contributing factor in their behavior. Nevermind the mechanics of how the left will keep its newer, betterer party that will replace the Dems from sucking just as much sooner or later.

There were myriad opportunities over the last two years for things to get much, much better. It was possible to accelerate the end of the U.S. war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was very possible to change the tax code, expand public health insurance, end the current de facto apartheid state of our immigration laws, use federal spending to fight unemployment and expand the oversight and legislative regime protecting the environment. The reason why these things did not change had to do with specific figures who are in the Democratic ruling class, and their ability to appeal to the media, wealthy special interests, and certain manipulations of public opinion. Most Democrats wanted to be more aggressive. The left needs to get to the point where we know that Bob Rubin is the bad guy, Rahm Emanuel is the bad guy, Mary Landrieu is the bad gal, and Obama is the bad guy because he listened to those shitheads, rather than just blame "the Democrats."

Bell said...

It lied and said the request was "too large" the first time. As if. Damn you, blogger.

imbroglioh said...

Bell,

Thanks for commenting, I was hoping you would.

I will most definitely acknowledge that I am not being particularly nuanced in my critique of the Dems and that you are obviously, and some would say admirably, far more engaged and knowledgeable about the specifics of tactical failures and political compromises. But I'm not sure that my general point requires any such specificity or detail.

The point is not that the Democrats have "come to" suck; it's that they have always sucked. And that inherently, fundamentally, they can only always suck because they represent the same or very similar corporate interests, or other interests of concentrated wealth and power, that the Repubs do. It is not that they are misguided or that they've made tactical mistakes or that certain factions in the party have taken greater control or whatever other practical and potentially redeemable problem may exist within the party, it is that they are fundamentally an organization seeking to maximize interests and power for a narrow group of polity participants, and those interests are antithetical to true lovers of democracy, freedom, justice et. al. This is manifested in a lot of policies supported broadly Dems:

- public subsidization of technology costs that are then given to corporations to privatize profit (through military spending (containerization, the internet) and "free" "trade" agreements like NAFTA)

- straight up public subsidy of big business (bailout)

- financialization of the economy through deregulation (Clinton's repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act) aka large banks act to maximize profit and dont consider externalities e.g. the effects on non-parties to a transaction e.g. the community, environment, etc.

- contempt for democracy at home and abroad (just one example would be the massive, partisan propaganda campaign leading up to the invasion of Iraq that created public sentiment for it; another example would be a similar propaganda campaign re Iran and uranium; obviously Israel is a joke and an extreme, sustained example)

- contempt for organized labor (Clinton's denouncement of organized labor's criticism of NAFTA, which was basically a gift to large corporations).

I don't list the above merely to get off in a perverse "look at how terrible the US" fetishism, but rather just to show that this but tiny sample of inherently and consistently Democratic party aims are fundamentally terrible. They are terrible for a large group of people that the Dems solely because Dems are not really interested in representing in those people. I don't think it has anything to do with specific figures in the Democratic party. I think it has to do with the purpose of the party itself. I think the behavior of Mafia families approximates those of nation states well, but I'd guess you could extend the analogy to political parties: The Gambino family doesn't do a good job of protecting the interests of Korean immigrants in Queens not because the leaders have ineffectively ran the family; it doesn't do a good job because that has nothing to do with the goals of the family. Or something like that.

imbroglioh said...

it's necessary for leftist critics of the Democrats who are angry with one-party-two-faction government to explain carefully the mechanics of the "true left" winning the country back after the loss that teaches the Dems their lesson.

I think the true mechanics of winning are hard to identify. But I think it starts with activism and organization. There are obviously a lot of people in this country with real legitimate grievances. The whole tea party movement basically. They've done everything right, worked hard, god-fearing, followed the rules. Yet, their pensions are gone and they are relatively more impoverished than their parents and parents' parents. It's up to the lefts job to turn those real grievances into opposition for state/business duopoly that actively exploits them. It's how the civil rights/antiwar movements of the 60's won important, meaningful gains (gains which are slowly being whittled away); they did it through activism, organization, and protest. No state has ever just given away rights, and I don't think we're going to win the class war by pulling a lever every couple years or so, it's a daily struggle involving making our voices heard and our opposition known. There were fairly large protests against the Iraq invasion before it ever started (something that has never really happened before in this country) and I think it'd be fair to say that action limited what the gov was willing/able to do in terms of military brutality (though they obviously did alot). Those protests did a lot more to frustrate the aims of the US military than any election of a Democratic politician did. Boycotting those companies that directly profit from the occupation of Palestine is another possible tactic. Specific aims are hard to identify, but I think there's room for our class of educated, wealthy, liberal professionals for greater action than casting a vote for Barbara Boxer.

Bell said...

Haha. Glad to have taken the bait. I'm your monkey. My full response will test your patience, attention span and the upper bound character limit of the comment section on your blog. And it may take a while. So, yeah, world of pain, Smokey, and I might be replying via facebook message or gmail.

The short answer is that the story about the surrender of power in the 60s via activism and protest is, at best, incomplete. The completely atypical economic supremacy of the U.S. in the 50s and 60s has to enter into your analysis somewhere, as does the actual course of events of the Vietnam War and the protests in response that supposedly achieved whatever gains the Baby Boomers like to tell themselves they achieved. Let alone the change in economic circumstances as of the OPEC embargo. And the Iraq War protests were perhaps the greatest proof of the impotence of such tactics in today's media environment where Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin can kill the public option through sheer volume of disseminated nonsense. Another huge element in this debate is the ideological orientation and power of the news media in, e.g., 1964 v. today, and whether you/Chomsky are blaming Democrats for that phenomenon and its effects. But, yeah, to be continued...