Yes, we can...go to hell, smiling

Not so long ago, maybe 2 weeks ago, I intervened on a French discussion board, the one from the interesting internet-based broadcast called « Arrêt sur Images ». The article was about Barack Obama and the way he waved to the crowd, it was followed by some analysis of how other politicians and personalities wave. There was also talk of some Che Guevara flag found in one of his campaign offices. I intervened to say that the idea Obama could be anywhere close to a revolutionary was plain ridiculous, insulting in the case of Martin-Luther King, and added that Obama had some pretty big and bad surprise coming for the American people, and for the rest of the world. I then challenged several of his promises and basically called him a liar.

This elicited quite a dispute. I spent a few days exchanging jabs with Obama supporters, I should say they were only two and the rest left us alone. And when I finally realised that they either didn’t want to adress the points I was raising, much less recognized them, I decided to simply give up. What’s the point of raising issues and proving someone wrong with facts if that person then decides not to acknowledge his mistake, and actually changes its position ? I step forward you step back, we can walk forever like that.

The discussion was pretty similar to one I had with American liberals on the Crooks and Liars’ website. As you can see, the post talks about Ralph Nader and his intention to run for the White House. Nader is funded by right-wing think tanks and so of course he’s actually secretly working to undermine the Democratic Party.

That he is working against the Democratic Party is no secret and therefore it is to be expected that he would be funded by Republicans. I would also add, this is the wrong phrasing. Since the Democratic Party is made up mostly of imperialists, who believe in interventionism, war, bombing, torture, secret surveillance, and since Nader, as far as I know, opposes all those things, I should rather say the Democratic Party works against Nader. Nader is the good guy here, it is Democrats who spoil his votes and are ultimately responsible for craps like the War in Iraq. More about that later.

The comments are closed but the main idea the Liberals sported was this : Democrats are not Republicans, Democrats are better than Republicans, therefore we must vote for Democrats. And my point was this : Democrats are not Republicans, but they are basically the same, therefore we must not vote for any of them, or vote for Nader. I made the point that even though victory was not immediately at hand, it did not mean we shouldn’t try. Movements don’t crop up in a few years. Fatal mistake. Nader is a spoiler. The bipartition of politics always wins in America. It is at the heart of America’s corruption. Again I’ll tell you why later.

I saw that this issue has been discussed again this week, with Digby’s post on the cynics that we supposedly are :

Democrats have certainly enabled them over the years and will likely continue to. They are politicians, after all, not comic book superheroes. But there should be no doubt to anyone who isn't wrapped up in immature freshman dorm cynicism, that there is a distinct difference between those who believe in the concept of an imperial presidency and those who are simply weak and corrupt. They both undermine freedom, but the first is many orders of magnitude worse than the second.

Perhaps that's not much to work with, but it's all we've got and in the end there will be no one around to acknowledge the intellectual superiority of those who sat on the sidelines, starry eyed and impotent, railing about third parties and revolution, while the world went to hell. (See: Communist Party, Germany, 1932) But hey, everybody has a right to their own kind of therapy and ineffectual whining is as legitimate as anything else. Whatever gets you through the night.

To be honest, this is really what gave me the incentive to write this post.

I will now offer two worthy reactions I encountered:

For the moment, I note that one of the keys to the intellectual rot and moral corruption underlying Digby's pronouncements will be found right here: "[T]here is a distinct difference between those who believe in the concept of an imperial presidency and those who are simply weak and corrupt. They both undermine freedom, but the first is many orders of magnitude worse than the second."

This is profoundly wrong, and exactly backwards. Think about this: as history has demonstrated many times, full actualization of a great evil such as the imperial presidency is only made possible by those who are weak and corrupt. Since Digby was thoughtful enough to bring up Germany in the 1930s, you can get a head start on my new essay by reading or rereading this: "Thus the World Was Lost." Pay special attention to the comments of those Germans who tried to work for change "within the system" and to "bore from within," and about "the problem of the lesser evil," and how bitter were their own later condemnations of their acquiescence to evil.

This was from Arthur Silber.

And here’s IOZ :

The Donk can't do anything; her influence on "policy" is nil; her Congressional majority goes on and votes for the Dictator anyway. Who's the fuckin' nihilists, here? There are certainly precedents for spending an eternity on a task that will never reach fulfilment, but bending eternally to the receding water or pushing forever at the heavy stone are meant for punishing the wicked dead, not that I necessarily object to watching Good Liberals go heaving boulders up a hill.

It would be one thing to argue that reactionary nut jobs like yours truly are wrong in our diagnoses and prescriptions, but arguing instead that we are impotent sophists, all the while standing atop the vast, steaming pile of Netrootsian inefficaciousness--incapacity being the principle characteristic of blog--now that takes a pair of brass ones, as my grandmother likes to say. The people that Digby et al. claim as representatives of their political aspirations won't do a goddamn thing that Digby et al. request.

Arthur Silber will soon release an essay titled « Notes on the Enablers of Evil » . And that is what the Democrats do. They enable the Republicans. This is also what Digby says. So what Digby calls for is not a solution, it is, at best, a momentary relief. Relief for four or eight years. It is « all we’ve got. »

And now for how the Weak and Corrupt are responsible for craps like the war in Iraq, even when they win the presidency. Consider this : who was in the Oval office before George Bush ? Bill Clinton, Democrat, « the first Black president », the guy who brought « peace and prosperity » (ask the Iraqis about peace in the 90s). Bill Clinton had eight years all for himself. My question to Digby is this : what obstacles did Bush find on his way, when he arrived ? What obstacles to his policy ? The answer is simple : none. In fact, many of the things Bush did and relied upon were first laid by…Bill Clinton ! You think combating terrorism is the invention of the Republican party alone ? Nah-ah. Bill Clinton used that excuse for war-waging and secret surveillance too.

Even though the American people voted twice for Bill Clinton, it didn’t stop George Bush from doing the damage he did. In other words, Digby’s momentary relief does not even get in the way of her enemies. It is more momentary than relief, if you allow me to treat this noun like an adjective. The point I am trying to get to is this: if you do not even place hurdles in the way of your enemies, if in fact you enable your enemies, by using their rhetoric, by voting for their wars, bills, budgets, and your enemies kill hundreds of thousands of innocents once in power, then what the fuck are you worth ? Why do you get all the love in the world ?!

Another preconceived bullshit may also lie at the heart of Digby’s comment. I must warn that I’m not completely sure of this, but I’ll throw the idea anyway. What is sure is that there is a belief among liberals that Conservatism may die soon and then there will be some kind of golden age. This would explain why Digby considers the 2%-Less-Shitty argument to be good enough for a vote.

But that belief is stupid and naive. Conservatism will never die, so long as there’s a Liberal movement. Both feed off of each other. If such a thing as Conservatism dying happened, it would not be a lone and distinct process. It would most probably happen in the midst of a very long, general, and enormous – I should say gigantic -- shift to the left in America. That is, the death of Conservatism would also mean the end of Liberalism, as we know it. Liberals think they might win over the hearts of all, at least most, Americans if only they get things right and they have the right President. Naive, but what do you expect from political activists ? And so it may be that this one victory could be The One. Will you spoil The One Victory ?

The logical conclusion from all this is that Democrats always have to be elected, and also that they won’t get better unless they get elected often. Democrats can only get better when they have power. When they don’t, they have to be pragmatic and speak foul language, like when they say Iran is a danger to the Middle-East. It’s a must if they want to get elected.

Well what would happen, if it really was true ? We would get a political party that, no matter what happens, always get power. I know that Democrats are impervious to the saying “Power corrupts”, but it is really true and it doesn't concern only the Republicans. Sorry. I’ll be getting to the reason why bipartition is at the heart of America’s corruption in a moment. But first, a newsflash from France. Don't get a dictionary. I'm summing it up just below.

You see, in France, we have three major telecom companies. SFR, Bouyghes, and Orange. Don’t bother trying to pronounce them, especially the second one. Cell-phones were a major market like, 10 years ago. And so they were only three, and guess what they did ? Well, simple. Since free trade actually lowers the prices and thus the benefits, they got together, and made a deal not to change the prices. We got fu***d in the A for such a long time, but the fuc***s got busted and justice has been rendered. Neat. How does it feel to see major telecom companies punished ? You won’t see any of that in America, I can guarantee you, whether there is a bill against it or not.

This story illustrates how major powers can get together and conclude deals to secure their influence/money. Now, I’m not saying Democrats and Republicans actually have a written and secret agreement to f*** the American people in the A. I don’t have any fact that supports this theory, other than the friendliness between many Democrat and Republican politicians, the words that they both use, the arguments, how close they are ideologically (remember that as a European, I consider the Left to be socialistic and the Right to be capitalistic, and therefore I find the difference between Wild and Not-so-Wild capitalism to be very slight), etc.

But still, think about this. You now have a great majority of People. PEOPLE. Who want to get out of Iraq. The People of your country, according to the Democratic calculus, want out. How many politicians propose this ? Uh…hello ? Government for the People ? You here ? Nah ? Well okay, uh… guess I’ll vote for Barack while you’re away. Come back soon ! We miss you !

Why am I not surprised that politicians do whatever the fuck they want ? Easy. They always get elected. Always. Think about this now. There’s always a good percentage of people who will vote Democrat/Republican. And that percentage is usually of at least 40%. That represents a whole lot of freaking money and a whole lot of freaking power. So you’re a Democrat/Republican, you know that whatever happens, people will vote for you. No matter what happens, there’s power and money for you. Now, what is it Reps say about accountability ?

Your 2 political parties are never punished in any way that truly matters. Losing a presidential election is no problem for your political parties. You lose the White House, you have the Congress, you lose the Congress, you get the White House, etc. And here I’m only focusing on the choice seats in the executive and the legislative branches. Just because you’re in the minority, doesn’t mean you’re starving. Doesn’t mean you don’t get favors from lobbyists. Then there’s the states, the cities, the presidential runs, and all the “jobs” they can give you in case you fall from grace. And shit, I don’t even know that much about corruption in America, there’s probably more shadowy crap like this.

The Democratic party will not change, the Republican party will not change.

Your politicians will not listen to you. You always vote for them. They always win.

Finally, the last point I give to Chris Floyd, who corrects Digby’s mention of the Communists from Germany as being responsible for Hitler’s rise:

Digby seems to think that it was stay-at-home, stick-in-the-mud German Communists who somehow let Hitler obtain power in 1932. She also seems to think that the German Reds were some sort of starry-eyed, impotent "third party" sitting on the sidelines twiddling their thumbs while the Nazis strutted into office. In fact, the Communists were the second largest party in the country in the 1932 Reichstag elections. And in the last free election that year (or relatively free; a succession of right-wing governments had already introduced many of the authoritarian measures that the Nazis later extended), the Communists were gaining support, while the Nazis were losing voters. The Reds were also in the streets, battling it out with Brownshirts, putting their bodies on the line, and paying a heavy price – both then and later. Of course, this kind of thing is not real activism, not like, say, blogging, or clicking a "donate" button at barackobama.com. Still, "ineffectual whining" or even "starry-eyed impotence" might not be the best descriptors for people who were beaten, stabbed, shot and later put into concentration camps for fighting fascism.

Just priceless.

I would also add that this is quite typical. Don’t you find a similarity with the Liberals’ overall foreign policy ? And with their condemnation of Ralph Nader as responsible for Bush ? The error illustrated by these positions was treated by Chomsky a long time ago, back when the US condemned Pol Pot for killing hundreds of thousands, while helping elsewhere in the massacre of…hundreds of thousands.

Chomsky’s point was this : you are not responsible for the actions of others, you’re responsible for your own actions. It is pathetic to blame Nader for Bush, because Nader fought against Bush every step of the way, and while he may have drawn some votes from the Democrats, he didn’t vote for each and every one of Bush’s wars, he didn’t vote for the patriot act, he didn’t vote for a whole host of other craps that I don’t know about.

The real line of thinking in Digby’s comment is this: Commies couldn’t stop Hitler, therefore they are responsible for what he did. Very similar are: If we don’t stop the Talibans from ruling Afghanistan, we’re responsible for every woman stoned to death there. If we don’t bring Saddam’s dictatorship to an end, we’re responsible for its torture rooms. And today, if we don’t vote for the Democrats, we’re responsible for all the shit the Republicans will unleash on America. The imperialist will also say in general: If I don’t control everything and everyone on the planet, I’m responsible for all the shit that goes wrong on the planet.

Well sorry, but no. It is as Chomsky says. Only the Republicans and those who vote with them are responsible for what the Republicans do. Unfortunately for Digby, the “those who vote with them” category includes almost all the Democratic Party, Obama included, and so Chomsky’s principle can’t save her from damnation.