Crenshaw & Ensler on Obama-Clinton
Posted by Stan, from Huffingtonpost:
For many of us, feminism is not separate from the struggle against violence, war, racism and economic injustice. Gender hierarchy and race hierarchy are not separate and parallel dynamics. The empowerment of women is contingent upon all these things. Despite the fact that we know that identity does not equal politics–especially an antiwar, social equity and global justice politics–we are led to believe that having a woman in power is the penultimate accomplishment. And even when the “either/or” feminists back off this claim in general, we are told, it is true in the case of the particular, Hillary Clinton. Experience and judgment go hand in hand, we are told, but one has to wonder how is it that so many ordinary citizens who were outside the beltway instinctively sensed what would come with the war, but the female candidate running for President did not?…
Phil:
As Malcolm X said of African-American elected officials, “It’s not about a black face in a high place.” It’s the system that kills, maims, assaults, and impoverishes us, and there is no bigger defender of the system that Ms. Clinton. Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, and Benazir Bhutto come to mind as particularly nationalistic women leaders in the Hillary mode, none of whose reigns turned out well for the rest of the world, or for their countries. We can expect little more, nor less, than this from her. She is a war-monger from the get go, demanding invasion of Iran since at least 2005, supporting troop expansions in Afghanistan (toward what end?), and serving as one of the most craven supporters of Likud and Israeli apartheid this side of Joseph Lieberman.
But on a different note, there is something hideously ironic about a woman candidate running as a so-called “feminist” who “stood by her man” while he repeatedly lied to her, her daughter, and the American people about not just a sexual dalliance with a young intern, but with dozens of other women. What kind of woman is this, who refused to dump the scoundrel but instead stuck with him to achieve her own personal goals? On what issue won’t she compromise herself if she is willing to endure personal humiliation on this global scale?
6 February 2008, 1:44 pmpeggy:
Just a personal comment here. I am a professional woman about the same age as Hillary Clinton, and I see much of myself in her, and so on an emotional level I identify with her. But that doesn’t mean I will vote for her. In fact, the more I see of her, the more I see through her various masks, the masks she has learned to wear to be successful in a man’s world, where womanhood is a state of relentless self-contradiction. Behind those masks, I see a distortion of a woman, who believes that only by climbing higher and higher will she gain the love and approval of others, and thereby end her own pain. I pity Hillary deeply, because she is trapped. She seems to think that gaining the presidency will free her. She is wrong.
Phil is right: putting a woman in a high place will not change the system or make it more humane. The reason is that inevitably such a woman must kill those parts of herself that enable her to see and think beyond her personal armor. Maybe in a small country a woman with integrity may become head of state. But not in the US as it is, has been, and will be for some time.
It isn’t fair, but men (some men) are able to rise to the top without sacrificing every bit of their personal integrity. Most others, including almost all women, have their free will excised by the very machinery they are trying to master.
I will vote for Obama because, among other reasons, he seems to have a fair degree of vision and personal integrity remaining. He is more intelligent than Hillary, and he may be able to see solutions that elude more boxed-in people. He is still relatively young, and there may yet be some hope for him.
6 February 2008, 10:32 pmDeAnander:
I’ve really got nothing more to say than what’s posted here at MoA…
6 February 2008, 11:54 pmkathy miriam:
Thank goddess a few voices in the wilderness. I’ve been composing a rant– hopefully in collaboration with Nancy Meyer- about this (we are writing a longer piece too)– with an analysis of this “audacity of self-deception” (Paul Street of Z mag one of the few to see through the craziness) engulfing the “progressive/feminist” following/cult of obama/Clinton. (i’m particularly sickened by the bad faith enveloping all the enthusiasm for Obama by the e.g. PDA and “Feminists for Obama”–and there’s a lot to analyze there. Notice that not a soul who supports Obama [or Clinton- but the intoxication of pro-HRC people is not at this intensity--and not really intoxication] engages with a single substantive issue save his “early anti-war vote”.. AFter that it’s all about his following and his charisma, literally). I will send my/our piece as soon as it’s finished–hopefully this weekend. But i will say that it reminds me of all the hype around the first Clinton election- the inauguration with Maya angelou and all…
7 February 2008, 6:54 amThis is the state of progressives and feminism. it’s not pretty.
Stan:
“by rigorous necessity…”
That is about as clear as it gets. That’s why I have some serious doubts that politics-as-elections will get anything done.
Neither Clinton nor Obama nor anyone else can even get in to the [supra-individual] system far enough to contend for these positions until they have been thoroughly vetted by it… and those who are vetted generally share one compound characteristic: blinding personal ambition combined with the ability to perform according to a script.
We keep looking for someone who “shares our views,” generally a checklist within an ideal program, to determine who we wil or won’t “support” in an election (as if this accomplishes more than legitimation of the system and the retrenching self-defense of limited gains by women and oppressed nationalities). The state of “progressives,” the “left,” what-passes-for-feminism, and even the Black freedom movement is one of malaise, that “general feeling of being unwell.” We do what we know, that to which we have been habituated; but like a prisoner housed in the escape-proof cell, our own escape-planning becomes more a way to pass the time as a buffer against madness than anything bearing a realistic hope for “change” — the weasel-word of today’s easy-target, post-Bush politics.
More and more, some form of incremental, networked and pluralized cultural/economic secession — a strategy of withdrawal — seems the only way out, in the hope that, as these crises encroach further into our daily survival patterns, and as the system itself stumbles, we can look up some day and see that we have cultivated a slow-growing general strike.
7 February 2008, 7:57 amLegume Sam:
From Sup Marcos’ “La Sexta Declaracion de la Selva Lacandona”:
Also of course the new diary is up…
7 February 2008, 9:01 amkathy miriam:
hey, i’m sorry if i missed something- where is the piracy, liquidation, etc quote from? It’s a good one! I want to use it for my piece- which is coming!
7 February 2008, 9:43 amDeAnander:
we can look up some day and see that we have cultivated a slow-growing general strike.
yes this is increasingly my own last best hope: that we build in the interstices and unclaimed spaces [of which there are ever fewer, did you note the little sideshow about considering the Presidential debates copyright material and not releasing the footage in the public domain?]… that we build like polyps encrusting a rusting industrial wreck, so that when the iron rusts away the structure of our reef — built by and of living organisms, by biotic processes, with all the complexity and mess that entails — endures.
I’ve been learning Boris Vian’s famous anti-war song, Le Déserteur and it would be hard to improve on its concluding stanza which says in part:
Je mendierai ma vie
sur les routes de France
en Bretagne et Provence
et je dirai aux gens:
Refusez d’obéir!
Refusez de la faire.
N’allez pas à la guerre,
refusez de partir
Which I’ll translate roughly as (taking a few liberties for the sake of scansion and form):
I shall wander out my days
on the roads of France,
in Brittany and Provence,
and to the people I shall say
Refuse to go away,
don’t go to the war:
don’t do what they say,
refuse to obey.
Refusez d’obéir — the heart and soul of rebellion and revolution; what authority — be it kings or corporadoes or mafia hoods or bosses or the john who rents a temporary slave from a pimp — demands is our obedience, that we conform our will to theirs, that we enact their agenda in the world instead of our own. When they tell us to go shopping it is because they pocket our money at the till; when they tell us to go to work it is because they pocket the “added value” our labour creates; when they tell us to “improve” our farming methods it is because they hold the monopoly on the patented chemicals and seeds and equipment that they want us to depend on.
Just say No. It is the last barricade on which the dissident can stand — refusing to go along with the programme. In WWII many US Amishmen did jail time because they would not carry arms and would not go to war. They refused to obey. It seems unheroic, perhaps — unmanly, dare we say? but as Tracy Chapman sang, all that you have is your soul and the measure of our dignity and our courage as human beings is our right, and our determination, to say No when any corrupt authority commands us.
That includes, of course, every woman’s right to say No to male sexual bullying and predation; every child’s right to say No to a father or mother who tries to exact humiliating ritual abjection; every indigenous person’s right to say No to resource-seeking “explorers” and imperialists; the right of the worker to say No to inadequate wages and dangerous conditions, and so on. All the social justice efforts in our history have been, in the end, about assuring this right to say No to bullying and indignity, by ensuring the basics of survival for every person, by sharing rather than hoarding, by approaching consensus rather than rule; so that each individual person has w/in his or her grasp the right and the power to say No, refuser d’obéir.
And every action of Enclosers, corporatists, monarchists, dominionists and other revanchists nostalgic for Authority, is aimed at one and only one outcome; forcing people up against a wall of material deprivation hard enough that they will not be able to say No to bullies. Forcing people to obey or starve, obey or be hurt, obey or die. Those are the stakes of the game whether it’s played on the macro or the micro field.
A general strike is a mass refusal to obey. We think of it as something organised by the trades unions; but even they have an authoritarian face. A true general strike, it seems to me, is a spontaneous mobilisation of the people — not necessarily overnight — to refuse to obey. It could be, as Stan suggests, slow-growing, a gradual attrition of obedience at the margins, spreading slowly into an ever-growing “underground” self-organising around local foodsheds, local currencies, etc.
I’m well aware of arguments for the importance of government — J R Saul whom I’ve been reading recently makes the case for functional, citizen-controlled government and a healthy public sector, and he’s absolutely right. But when the corporatists have taken over and destroyed as much of the function of government as they currently have, is there enough left to reclaim? or is the only option to let that hulk rust away and build slowly and surreptitiously around its rotting armature something new, more biotic, more functional?
As ants on a vast tablecloth, unable as individuals to see the gargantuan pattern over which we painfully crawl, I suspect all we can do is follow the old adage that if we go in a direction we don’t like, we will inevitably end up in a place we don’t want to be
so at each juncture we can only choose the direction right here and now that seems to lead us further from obedience, further from investment in and entrapment in the liquidators’ system. If we keep choosing, consistently, directions we do like, then there is at least some chance that we may end up in a place where we do want to be…. so in the meantime, Refusez d’obéir!
7 February 2008, 12:19 pmDeAnander:
afterhought: and besides, it’s more fun.
7 February 2008, 12:24 pmDeAnander:
@kathy 0943
I think ’twas I
Stan’s quoting my gloomy prognostication from an email which I posted at MoA (follow link here, or check latest entry on my private blog which contains the same text). glad you liked the prose, even if the sentiment is grim.
7 February 2008, 4:26 pmpeggy:
“that we build in the interstices and unclaimed spaces …” and the rest. Well said, De.
7 February 2008, 5:26 pmpeggy:
But often those interstices and unclaimed spaces exist most abundantly in the midst of warfare. So there we are.
7 February 2008, 5:37 pmCharles:
The above is all the correct analysis of Clinton and Obama.
I do think that there is a very, very slight positive for the struggle against male supremacy in masses of men voting for Clinton. Not so much because Clinton will do great stuff for women in office ( though now that I think of it, she is likely to do somethings liberal pro-woman), but because for her to win, it will take a significant lessening in male supremacy of the masses who vote for her as compared with masses in the past who wouldn’t even consider it. Actually, both in men and women. For her to win, a huge number of people will have a significant reduction in male supremacist consciousness as compared to the past.
I still am not sanguine that she can win because I’m not sure that there will be such a change in consciousness.
7 February 2008, 6:05 pmDeAnander:
Dunno Charles, I wish I shared even that level of cautious optimism. Way I see it, voting for Golda Meir didn’t make Israel any less militaristic and masculinist; voting for Maggie Thatcher didn’t make the UK any less militaristic and masculinist; and so on… Yes it is a “first” and an important baby step on the way to a (projected) society in which gender is no longer a primary caste marker. But if that society is one in which gender and race have simply been obliterated by wads of cash, then it’s still a caste society…
argh. the whole thing just depresses the hell out of me. so much noise and so little substance. such a huge gap between what would do any real lasting good and the feeble “change” that is promised and hoopla’d as if it were something to write home about, when it’s just a tiny click of the dial away from brute fascism and towards mediated corporatism.
also of course, will “masses of men” vote for Clinton? what a choice for white male Democrats this year — vote for a woman or a Black man. I wonder what they will do about that: vote the Party, or succumb to race/gender panic?
7 February 2008, 6:48 pmDeAnander:
This is the state of progressives and feminism. it’s not pretty.
I think it’s Stockholm Syndrome.
7 February 2008, 6:51 pmJames M:
Methinks maybe there’s an essay worth writing here — if it hasn’t been done already — with a title along the lines of “Things That Will Not Change if a Democrat Is Elected President.” Because I seem to keep having to enumerate these things — which are the issues I really care about — to friends who can’t understand my disinclination to leap for joy over either of these candidates. Where they see a Huge Stride Forward, I just see Same Old, Same Old.
Problem is, every item on this list I’m proposing is a direct challenge to the foundational beliefs of what De aptly calls the Church of Infinite Growth, which makes me apostate and my concerns subject to automatic disregard.
7 February 2008, 7:25 pmMs Kitty:
I have to say, that although I don’t agree with everything that either Ms. Clinton or Mr. Obama say or do, we have made progress. We have made some progress, because it was not long ago that it was unthinkable for a woman or a person of color to be seriously considered for the office of president of the United States. Now we are debating their policies, connections etc. and … the content of their character.
7 February 2008, 9:28 pmEither one is MOST LIKELY to win. (unless the voting machine and caging lists etc. etc. get in the way of the real vote). It’s a huge step! Celebrate! Then debate.
Either one will be a massive improvement over what we have now. At least neither one is insane, stupid or a fanatic.
Stan:
Vote vote vote.
A spectacle of narcissism that legitimates our worst lunacies.
…arghing with Deanander… long day, rough week
7 February 2008, 9:41 pmDeAnander:
At least neither one is insane, stupid or a fanatic.
Matter of degree… both iirc support hardline Zionism (insane, stupid, and fanatical); both are card carrying members of the Growth Fantasy Cult (insane, stupid, and fanatical); both are flag-waving American-supremacist exceptionalists (insane, stupid and fanatical)… neither has stated any clear intention of getting the hell out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and all the other countries occupied by US forces and bases (insane, stupid, and fanatical); neither, at least in my hearing, has acknowledged the real urgency of peak oil or climate change (insane, stupid, and fanatical)…
But this is perhaps what James M means by being apostate… many things that seem to me insane, stupid, fanatical and indeed mass-suicidal are considered quite normal by the culture at large. Yes, the Dems seem less mentally unbalanced and less overtly, swaggeringly thuggish than the present regime; but the underlying assumptions are the same, all that differs is the public face put on the agenda. Clinton — a Democrat — did not refrain from bombing “unimportant” people, in the Balkans and in Somalia and Sudan. Johnson — a Democrat — refused to stop the US war on Viet Nam. And so on. Whether Tweedledum or Tweedledee is in power makes a difference on the domestic front, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference to the arms sales and the invasions.
US aggression overseas is structurally necessary to keep US-style corporatism intact, and no president indebted to the corporate investor/rentiers, whether Demo or Repub, can afford to stop it. Only a complete break with corporatism, a complete re-think of production and import/export, financial policy, national posture, etc., could end the routine succession of one invasion and occupation after another. Americans are 4 or 5 percent of the world population and they consume about 25 to 30 percent of world resources; that one statistic guarantees that America will invade and occupy territory after territory to extract those resources by force and by fraud.
George Kennan said it on the record in 1948:
That simple, “rational” description has explained the US foreign policy agenda ever since: to maintain that “position of disparity”. The tension between “our national security” and that “position of disparity” is now becoming acute, as all those “little brown people” are getting uppity, adopting Western technologies, competing in the industrial arena, etc. — which makes them more able to throw a rock at the 800 lb gorilla. But the “position of disparity” is essential to the well-being of US (and international) elites; without the now-habitual luxuries and privileges of imperial power, the US public could become unmanageable.
So what we have, alas, from where I sit, appears to be a choice between crazy heavily-armed people who are coolly rational in the pursuit of their psychotic fantasies of world domination and infinite wealth, and crazy heavily-armed people who are wild and unpredictable in the pursuit of their psychotic fantasies of world domination and infinite wealth. The first crew is preferable to the second, but only by a thin margin. Both are dedicated to an ideological/policy programme which can only fail, and fail messily, and in the process generate (more) enormous crimes and unspeakable human suffering, not to mention the possible sabotage of the entire biosphere.
And this is not limited to the US. The growth-cultists are in control worldwide. I am not sure what it will take to stop them: perhaps they will have to crash their civilisation. That’s what it has taken on several occasions in the past, when elites become fuddled by personal greed and completely divorced from reality.
7 February 2008, 10:47 pmpeggy:
Found an article today by the arch-conservative columnist George Friedman, who makes about the same argument that Stan and De have been making here: at least in terms of foreign policy (i.e. what to do about the war in Iraq) it matters almost nothing who gets elected president because whoever gets elected will be subject to the same pressures and constraints, which they will have to obey in order to stay in office. Friedman further suggests that Bush, in invading Iraq after 9-11, was doing just what any other elected official would have done in the same situation. Or in other words, Bush was not to blame for what happened, because he had to do what the system made him do.
Any thoughts about this?
8 February 2008, 12:04 amkathy miriam:
re one of De’s comments
I think teh Stockholm syndrome idea needs to be pursued!. It’s the kind of thing I’m thinking about.. in different words.
and wow- there’s a lot to add to this conversation- i’ve got to teach today- I’ll try to join in tonight or tomorrow.
and DE — I’M SO EXCITED ABOUT YOUR NEW HOME. I hope you’re doing wonderfully.
8 February 2008, 7:08 amStan:
“Sweep it all up… related and not.”
This memo from Rumsfeld’s office on or about September 12, 2001, began the differentiation in style from the rest of the ruling class, re US military operations in Southwest Asia.
These differences serve to cover the much larger areas of consensus: (1) The United States cannot secure it preeminence in the world without the dual weapon of dollar-hegemony and strategically situated military supremacy. (2) When the USSR collapsed, all the US military forces in the world were deployed in support of a doctrine that stressed Soviet containment as its prime directive. Since 1990, then, the disposition of this one arm of US international power (upon which the US lifestyle depends absolutely) was an anachronism. (3) The US had to find a way to position itself for the future containment of China AND Russia, as well as India — the big competitors for resources and regional influence — as well
as Western Europe.
(1) (2) (3)… (4) Look at a map of the world, then plot out the countries that have the largest remaining deposits of sweet crude and natural gas.
The redispostion of US forces into this region — with permanent US bases — was almost a mathematical certainty. The “how” was always the question. Al Gore would have invaded Iraq just as George W. Bush did, imho.
The differentiation in method came via Rumsfeld’s “sweep it all up” opportunism and the sense of urgency that accompanied it… the refusal of the Turks to allow a northern invasion front, and Rumsfeld’s Napoleon-complex crackpot doctrine began the accelerated slide into disaster (the insurgency would have come, but much later had the 4th Infantry Div been allowed to pass through Turkey).
Opposition to the war has grown; but much has been based on the now-apparent inability to secure some kind of “victory” over those bad Arabs. In any case, the Democrats — who are utterly committed to the overarching monetary-military imperatives of American power (Clinton & Obama are both “free-traders” and supporters of the US diktat that carries it) have not the slightest intention of withdrawing from the region; and not even Iraq until they can find alternative bases in the same region. So they have to find every way possible to take the war off the table as an issue for the US voting public.
The system, and the complex contingent realities that provide its context, are overwhelmingly determinative… as are the variables that escape US control, ie, Iraqi resistance, the emerging Russian-Chinese condominium, the rising influence of Iran, the possibility of civil war in nuclear armed Pakistan, the reaction to the most recent US betrayal of the Kurds (in allowing serial Turkish air strikes in Iraqi Kurdistan)…. and beyond the view of our media, the rising popularity and efficacy of Hamas and Hezbollah.. . as regional models of resistance.
Meanwhile, the radiation from the liquidity/credit crisis surges like one expanding ring after another through the world economy; agitating away and threatening to wake things up.
Of course, Bush was to blame. He was “the decider.”
I don’t think this is either-or. It’s both-and. (:
8 February 2008, 7:33 amCharles:
Election of Clinton would not be the women’s revolution. It would be a significant women’s reform, a reform on the level of Roe v Wade or the advances in divorce, child custody and support law, and sexual harrassment law of the last 40 years, or so.
I’m thinking not so much that a majority voting for Clinton would make or cause the US to be less male supremacist, but that it would be an indicator that compared to the past the mass consciousness, especially of men, is less male supremacist. It would be not a leading but a “trailing” indicator, in analogy to economic terminology ( “trailing” is not the right economic term; I can’t think of the term they use when something follows what it indicates rather than precedes it). A sign. A woman President thirty-five years ago would be almost unthinkable except for supporters of Shirley Chisholm.
Masses and millions of men _would_ vote for Clinton, if she gets the nomination. I’m not sure that enough will vote for her to win; or few enough of them will vote against her for her to win, assuming majority of women vote for her.
8 February 2008, 11:24 amCharles:
Friedman further suggests that Bush, in invading Iraq after 9-11, was doing just what any other elected official would have done in the same situation.
^^^^^
8 February 2008, 11:43 amCB: US invaded Iraq in 1990. I don’t see that any other elected official had to invade Iraq after 9/11. Could have just invaded Afghanistan.
DeAnander:
That our behaviour is conditioned by our circumstances and the structures around us is axiomatic, i.e. yes, the behaviour of politicians and others in hierarchical structues is conditioned by the hierarchy, the behaviour of the wealthy is conditioned by their wealth and that of the poor by their poverty etc.
However within those structures we have options as to how to position ourselves: passive go-along, active cheerleading, wily opportunism without belief, passionate belief, covert opposition, overt opposition, secret sabotage, and so on. Within the current structures of world resource and population, the US has options as to how to position itself: imperial hegemon is not the only possible role. Imperial war president is not the only possible role for a US president.
A president can — barely — get away with tempering the agenda of the finance capitalists and liquidators, as FDR did (the planned coup didn’t quite come off that time). A president can get away with appealing to the general public which, as a famous Nazi politician once remarked, doesn’t really want war. It is possible to play the power of the voting masses against the agenda of the liquidators, the generals, the financiers; it is possible to play the generals against the liquidators and financiers; and so on. And then there is always the church. But what we seem to see in our time is an attempt to bring the public, the financiers, the church, the liquidators, and the generals all into line in one imperial/corporatist consensus … forget what pretty words they hang on it, Stan’s analysis of the geopolitics above fits the facts far better than any maundering about “democracy” and “nation building” — what they are clearly about is puppet governments and nation-destroying.
So yes, the foreign policy agenda of the US was set a long time ago and successive presidents have conformed to it, at great cost in (other people’s) lives. But any individual president or independent politician could have positioned him or herself against it, or attempted to modify it, in various ways, even without putting him or herself entirely outside the political game; Kucinich is still an elected official. If we call Clinton a wily opportunist and a go-along, that is still a slightly different position from active cheerleader and zealot (Cheney/Bush). Carter was hardly a People’s Hero but he did break ranks long enough to tell the truth (some of it) about energy consumption. It was the death of his political career, of course, but he did use the presidential pulpit to try to tell a part of the truth instead of repeating soothing lies. It can be done.
Whether anyone could actually get as far as the White House without at least appearing to support the corporatocracy and the arms industry [and under "arms industry" always read "the Israel lobby" as Israel is one of the premier reliable customers for US armaments, and an enormous amount of money is laundered every year via the special relationship]… is dubious. I guess aside from a complete breakdown of the political system, our second best hope is a candidate who manages to fool the corporate backers, pretending conformity, and then once in office attempts a position of covert or overt resistance to the imperial grand plan. Which would probably result in assassination w/in a year of such subversive tendencies becoming evident, but it would still be encouraging.
Actually mho is that we need a multiparty parliamentary system with coalition government, which would mitigate the Stockholm Syndrome or fear-factor inherent in the WTA system we now have. People would be freer to vote their conscience, third and fourth and fifth parties would emerge, and government in general would be livelier, slower to enact catastrophic actions like wars (because there would be genuine, rather than token, opposition from genuine opposition parties), and represent a wider political spectrum (as opposed to “Radical Right to Centre Right” — which we’re now stuck with apparently in perpetuity, as any nudge left of Centre Right immediately results in howls of “Unelectable” and a shuddering stampede back to “safe” rightwing territory).
Argh. I don’t have answers. My answer was to jump ship, but with Harper in office here in Canuckistan the same problems are all around. The “Anglo Disease” (phrase from the folks at European Tribune) is not quite so far advanced and is moving more slowly, that’s all.
8 February 2008, 11:59 amMs Kitty:
Good grief folks! All I said was, the halibut was good enough for Jehovah!*
But seriously, what are you going to do about it? Sit in front of the computer for three hours a night every night (and day for some) just getting more pissed off?
I think a multi-party system is a great idea. Go support Cynthia McKinney in her bid for the nomination of the Green Party. Or start your own party. Actively go out and work to change the restrictive ballot access restrictions. They have to be unconstitutional.
Remind conservatives that the first true liberals in the birth of this country fought for some pretty radical ideas in their time, and the conservatives supported the King. (They hate that) Later the liberals supported emancipation and the conservatives supported slavery. The weapon sellers really don’t care who they sell the guns to. They always hide behind the flag and the church, but they really worship the dollar.
And yes, our election system is a total sham now, but it can be fixed. There are a lot of dedicated people fighting very hard to make voting rights and the voting process protected, and the counting process transparent. They may or may not succeed, but at least they are doing something.
You too can pester your elected representatives to get rid of unaccountable touch screen voting machines and to bring back paper ballots. (They will at least have to send out a form letter response, stating how much they care and love to listen, but…) As a matter of fact there are so many things you can email or write them about you could save all of the form reponses and ship them back to them for recycling after you get several hundred, thousand? (One of my senators always sends me two form letters in case I misunderstood how much she cared the first time)
Volunteer to watch or video the process at the polling places. Follow the chain of custody of the machines. Video protests and post them on You-tube and send them to your local and national media. If for no other reason than having the pleasure of annoying the hell out of them.
Bottom line is they don’t read these well researched, insightful blogs.
*Quote from Monty Python movie, “Life of Brian”. -when you get totally depressed and want to jump out the window, watch this. Its still funny. Its good for your health.
8 February 2008, 11:04 pmStan:
I, for one, don’t have three hours a night to sit in front of a computer. I work full-time. We have errands and chores to do. We watch grandchildren. I garden. Nowadays, I also go to a local church, and serve on the community partnerships committee.
I have been involved twice with trying to build left political parties (sectarian nightmare that involves enormous amounts of time trying to convince a handful of people that your ideas are more correct than others — and that changing a few people’s ideas can shift whole systems… it can’t), and worked for five years full time with a non-profit committed almost exclusively to electoral reform. If the electoral system can be “fixed,” I’m all ears. Thousands of people have committed their time, energy, and money to just this, and the system blows them off like a gnat.
Sometimes this kind of kvetching online is all we got as public space where we can talk about something other than our relation with consumerism or our daily humiliations at something we call “jobs.”
These are all good ideas, and I don’t mean to trivialize them, but this shared space to have conversations is a critical part of whatever can get done. While we are reviewing some version of US history, a reminder: righteous anger is part of and a precondition of change.
9 February 2008, 6:56 amkathy miriam:
“this shared space to have conversations is a critical part of whatever can get done.”
I absolutely agree, Stan. One of the manifestations of the general sickness surrounding the election is the shutting down of real analysis and discourse–and substituting for example a pseudo-religiosity, what Glenn Ford of Black Agenda Report calls the “cheap shot of grace” that people are getting from following Obama. (I’ve seen this shutting down happen in a variety of contexts from ‘alternative” media to party conversations). It’s fallacious to think that we ought to just “get out and do something” to change a situation without understanding the situation to be changed. The very notion that the problems we’re discussing in this forum can be boiled down to a problem of an electoral system that just needs “fixing” begs a universe of questions. This is not only, if at all, about expressing righteous anger but (more) about trying to think clearly and critically about a horrendous situation.
9 February 2008, 9:27 amStan:
This Liliana Segura article from Alternet on Hillorama spotlights exactly how the US electoral system ratchets us all toward obtuse as it rubber stamps one outrage after another.
Here and elsewhere, we have talked about this pachyderm in the parlor – the Global War on Terror (GWOT) – and how the ruling class, its politicians, and its media have managed to build widespread acquiescence to what is an astonishingly audacious and thoroughly outrageous legal redifinition of the entire frigging planet as a battlefield.
Our electoral system is but one aspect, one particular expression, of the utter, insane, horrifying cruelty that is required to sustain precisely the larger “growth” system that De alludes to above. Our way-of-elections are inseparable from this in the same way my foot wouldn’t thrive on its own if it were amputated from my body.
If it were penetrable by some popular will, we would have an anti-war candidate running, no? But we can’t even get one successful candidate to say that, our own invasion of other peoples notwithstanding, the United States is not under attack.
9 February 2008, 7:05 pmStan:
Just an add-on about the ridiculous and dangerous notion that the world is a “battlespace” … a notion implicitly accepted by Obama and Clinton.
FULL
10 February 2008, 8:25 amLegume Sam:
I’m not looking forward to a President with the last name of Clinton… the last Clinton in the White House, remember, practically invented the pretext of “humanitarian warfare” which, when mixed in with a few debatable reports of atrocities in Kosovo, gave us the gratuitous bombing of Belgrade. And then, of course, the second Bush used the earlier Clinton’s pretext to line up the Democrats for war against Iraq… my guess, though, is that she’ll win…
10 February 2008, 12:09 pmLegume Sam:
As a response to the notion that the world is a battlespace under the “war on terror” — in conventional notions of war, war is fought against offending nations (with respect to their leaders) without reference to the civilians of such nations as “enemy combatants” to be wiped out, although in conventional war the concept of “collateral damage” is frequently applied in reference to civilians unintentionally killed by combat operations. Thus the US war against Germany and Japan was essentially a war against Hitler, Tojo, and their governments, and mass death in Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki was “collateral damage.” With the “war on terror,” anyone can be classified an “enemy combatant,” thus the status of “civilian” can be revoked at will…
10 February 2008, 2:25 pmalexis viera:
post- moderm femenist critique by reducing the critically profound centrality of woman’s emancipation to the struggle for social emancipation to a question of gender politics and of integration into the socio/political structures of post fordist capitalism seem to betray a cultivated ignorance of the deep historical links between the fetichistic commodity producing system and the patriarchal organization of the relations between men and women. (see the work of klaus theweleit in “male fantasies” and “caliban and the witch” by silvia federici).
in a recent e-mail to a woman who was announcing her intention to run for president in some alternative ticket or other i wrote the following: first in atenco in 2006 and the in oxaca in 2007 the repression by the mexican neo-liberal state against grass roots opposition included prominently the widespread rape of women activists, young and old (also men were raped). this criminal act by the patriarchal neo-liberal state was widely reported by the world press and widely disseminated throughout the internet, however to its shame not a single word of condemnation or solidarity by the so-called women”s movement in the us. it is perhaps possible to conclude looking at the present state of the woman’s movement (or better said its absence) how the struggle for human emancipation and the struggle against patriarchy so destructive to women, men and the planet (an element so fundamental to the women’s struggle) has been abandoned in favor of advocacy for partial issues. can women become part of the political class? and share in the privileged position of the white, male and western subject, even in a subaltern position?
this shameful silence towards atenco, oxaca.etc. only points to the nullity of its “critique” and essential collaboration with the patriarchal organization by a woman’s perspective centered exclusively on the notions of empowerment etc. for what is the nature of this empowerment which wants full participation in the capitalist/patriarchal institutions and not in the creation of a truly free society which fulfills human needs and desires and is anti-patriarchal.
hillary/obama represent today the result of how two elements which had been overlooked by the traditional marxist critique, gender/race, elements fundamental to the anti-capitalist critique
have become as isolated partial critiques emissaries of the totalitarian project of 21st century capitalism.
best wishes
10 February 2008, 3:05 pmalexis viera
kathy miriam:
You are absolutely right, Alexis, that Hillary/Obama and esp. the “feminist” and anti-racist supporters prove the integration into, rather than opposition to the neopatriarchal/neo-liberal world order. The notion of “empowerment” is articulated completely within the paradigm of individualist, consumerist free choice and preferences. This exists on the most pop-feminist: “thong feminist” level to the elitist po-mo academic.. to the more “traditional” electoral-political elite–and all these elements coming together in many instances including this dem. primary.
11 February 2008, 6:57 pmStan:
“thong feminists”
That’s quotable.
11 February 2008, 8:09 pmkathy miriam:
My former feminist students in New Hampshire came up with “thong feminist” -based on the Manifesta type feminism.
12 February 2008, 8:00 amaudrey:
One of my friends sent me a piece she wrote explaining why she had decided to support Obama over Clinton, which consisted mainly of the litany of offenses by Clinton. She cited among other things Clinton’s yes vote on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment. Obama wasn’t present for that. He spoke against it, but I’ve seen so many senators speak eloquently against a thing as they are pressing the yes button for it that the words aren’t carrying much weight for me anymore. I’ve got the same faith in them that I have in myself when I am thinking I should really drink less coffee, as I pour my fourth cup.
What he said was that declaring the Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization was a step toward war. That’s not what he said when he signed a similar letter trying to coerce the EU in to declaring Hezbollah a terrorist organization. (The EU refused.) I’ve been trying to make sense of what the difference is. The explanation I got from one person: Hezbollah is a terrorist organization because they kill way more civilians than soldiers, and they do things like sending suicide bombers out on civilian buses. That’s an awkward explanation. I look at the war Obama and Clinton have been funding and we’ve been killing a lot more civilians than soldiers ourselves. And I suspect if they’d voted to give Hezbollah a $300 billion budget, Hezbollah would quit using suicide bombers and kill people the civilized way, like we do.
12 February 2008, 11:44 pmStan:
Thank you. (:
13 February 2008, 6:45 amCharles:
The Democrats’ Class War
By David Sirota
CREDO action
…Obama hasn’t touched any of this for two reasons. First, his campaign relies on corporate donations. Though Obama certainly is less industry-owned than Clinton, the Washington Post noted last spring that he was the top recipient of Wall Street contributions. That cash is hush money, contingent on candidates silencing their populist rhetoric.
But while this pressure to keep quiet affects all politicians, it is especially intense against Black leaders.
“If Obama started talking like John Edwards and tapped into working-class, blue-collar proletarian rage, suddenly all of those white voters who are viewing him within the lens of transcendence would start seeing him differently,” says Charles Ellison of the University of Denver’s Center for African American Policy.
That’s because once Obama parroted Edwards’ attacks on greed and inequality, he would “be stigmatized as a candidate mobilizing race,” says Manning Marable, a Columbia University history professor. That is, the media would immediately portray him as another Jesse Jackson -a figure whose progressivism has been (unfairly) depicted as racial politics anathema to white swing voters.
Remember, this is always how power-challenging African-Americans are marginalized. The establishment cites a Black leader’s race- and class-unifying populism as supposed proof of his or her radical, race-centric views. An extreme example of this came from the FBI, which labeled Martin Luther King Jr. “the most dangerous man in America” for talking about poverty.
More typical is the attitude exemplified by Joe Klein’s 2006 Time magazine column. He called progressive Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., “an African American of a certain age and ideology, easily stereotyped” and “one of the ancient band of left-liberals who grew up in the angry hothouse of inner-city, racial-preference politics.”
Full:
21 February 2008, 1:28 pmhttp://www.michigancitizen.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=76&twindow=Default&mad=No&sdetail=5663&wpage=1&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=&pform=&sc=1070&hn=michigancitizen&he=.com
Charles:
De writes:
Whether anyone could actually get as far as the White House without at least appearing to support the corporatocracy and the arms industry [and under “arms industry” always read “the Israel lobby” as Israel is one of the premier reliable customers for US armaments, and an enormous amount of money is laundered every year via the special relationship]… is dubious. I guess aside from a complete breakdown of the political system, our second best hope is a candidate who manages to fool the corporate backers, pretending conformity, and then once in office attempts a position of covert or overt resistance to the imperial grand plan. Which would probably result in assassination w/in a year of such subversive tendencies becoming evident, but it would still be encouraging.
^^^
CB: Karl Rove seems to think that O is pretending conformity. Rove uses the word “pretense” twice in this article.
Wall Street Journal – February 21, 2008
Obama’s New Vulnerability
21 February 2008, 1:41 pmBy KARL ROVE
February 21, 2008; Page A17