A follow-up on yesterday’s post, which I ended with this great line by Vast Left: “No status quo was harmed in this election.” Another summary statement from Vast Left: “It’s not pragmatic or politically feasible for me to pretend both big parties aren’t crap.”
The arguments are familiar. That doesn’t make them meaningless. It is, however, another indication of how stuck we are. Examples: this is not a practical time to talk about alternatives, not during the 2012 version of the most important election of our life! You want perfection! Supreme Court!
Back during the 2008 version of the most important election of our lifetime, Eric Stoner wrote Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils. It’s still relevant. Almost certainly it will be, still, in 2016.
Every four years we are told that we face the most important election of our lifetimes, and that voting for anyone but a Democrat only increases the likelihood of a Republican victory that the country just cannot bear. Anyone who buys this argument must ask themselves: when will the situation in this country and the world not be desperate? … If not now, when should we demand fundamental change for our vote? For the Democratic faithful that day will never come. The lesser of two evils logic will always apply.
How to break this lesser to greater evil deadlock? Debra Sweet, at OpEdNews:
12 Steps to Overcoming Addiction to Voting for the ‘Lesser of 2 Evils’ …
Were you opposed to the policies of the Bush regime? Did you used to think critically and attend anti- war protests but now find yourself justifying Barack Obama’s wars in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan?
Are you unsatisfied with Obama but stay with him out of fear of Mitt Romney becoming president? If you answered yes to more than one of these questions, you are probably in a self-destructive relationship with the Democratic Party.
The “12 step program” Sweet offers concludes:
12. Come to grips with this: The only thing scarier than the Republican Party ( a party full of climate-change deniers, fundamentalist woman-haters and gay-bashers, election stealers and racists ) is a party who continually moves to the right to accommodate them and gets Americans to go along in that direction.
Holding ourselves accountable (which means different things to different people) needs to happen before we’re ready to hold Electeds accountable. Writing at Information Clearinghouse, John Cusack focuses as much on voters as on Electeds and Wannabes.
This is not an exercise in bemoaning regrettable policy choices or cheering favorable ones but to ask fundamentally: Who are we? What are we voting for? And what does it mean?
Cusack provides the transcript of an interview with Jonathan Turley. Snippets:
TURLEY: The Republican and Democratic parties have accomplished an amazing feat with the red state/blue state paradigm. They’ve convinced everyone that regardless of how bad they are, the other guy is worse. … They have so structured and defined the question that people no longer look at the actual principles and instead vote on this false dichotomy. …
The question for people to struggle with is how we ever hope to regain our moral standing … unless citizens are prepared to say, ‘Enough. … We’re not going to … be played anymore according to this blue state/red state paradigm. …
CUSACK: … If you want to make a protest vote against Romney, go ahead, but I would think we’d be better putting our energies into local and state politics — occupy Wall Street and organizations and movements outside the system, not national politics, not personalities. … Not brands. … What would you say?
TURLEY: Well, the question … that people have got to ask themselves … is not what Obama has become, but what have we become? … I think that people have to accept that they … can walk away. I realize that this is a tough decision for people but maybe, if enough people walked away, we could finally galvanize people into action to make serious changes.
Similarly, from Chris Hedges at TruthOut:
Our political system … is one of legalized bribery. … We cannot use the word ‘hope’ if we do not fight back. … We can expect only mounting hostility from the corporate state. Its internal and external security apparatus … will seek to silence and crush all dissidents.
Any doubts about that latter assertion should be removed with how heavy-handedly Occupy and related efforts are restricted, if not shut down.
At Dissident Voice, Linh Dinh writes:
… if you want more of the same … then vote D or R this November, but I have another proposal. As a first step in a radically new direction, we must boycott this coming election and deny it of all legitimacy, and we shouldn’t do this passively, by staying at home. Instead, we should turn out in massive, unprecedented numbers on election day … not to vote but to announce … that these elections are mere charades masking the fact that America no longer has a representative democracy. Before we can say yes to anything else, we must say no to this ongoing madness.
I know, that sounds so unrealistic, so impractical. And obviously it’s a huge undertaking, one in which millions are actively involved, but are yet very much in the minority. But then, if there were never any people, however small in numbers at the beginnings, who were willing to say “enough,” we might be the United States of Great Britain; or women might still be barred from voting; or maybe we’d still have “separate but equal” schools and water fountains.
(American Extremists comic via Vast Left)
heh-heh… I had to laugh when reading Diane Sweet above, Joyce.
you are probably in a self-destructive relationship with the Democratic Party.
I’m cured of this, that’s for certain.
I do disagree, however, believing people do have righteous reasons for choosing not to disengage, but also refusing to let Romney win, which assures they have no chance to have a voice for their coalition in the room. Though I also realize these people also believe the answer is inside the Democratic Party.
There are many, including in the activist community, who are moving to convinced that this is no longer possible. The union situation is one element, but so is Simpson-Bowles, as well as the austerity coming even with a Democratic president.
I write this as a liberal political analyst & writer who is now on the outside listening to all sides.
Obviously it isn’t where I am, but I do think there’s much needed work to do from within, as well as from without. I consistently get in trouble with people from the “inside,” who say I’m unrealistic to think anything can be accomplished from the “outside,” and from people on the “outside,” who say I’m unrealistic to think anything can be accomplished from the “inside.”
I read somewhere, a long time ago, that Marx never intended communism to be an ideology to be experimented with in a place like the old Soviet Union. Rather than a country full of peasants, who could easily be taken advantage of, he saw it as something a capitalist, educated, industrialized country would turn to as they became disillusioned with the market economy. His warnings about the race to the bottom have for the most part come true, and although I don’t see this country becoming communist anytime soon, it would be nice if there was a ” tipping point ” where people woke up and realized, like the teachers in Chicago, that the two party system and electoral college just doesn’t work anymore.
It’s a bit of a concern, wondering what it might mean for us, but I definitely agree that we need a “tipping point.” I recently read about, again, the idea that such a “point” will culminate with a big, “fall of the Berlin Wall” kind of moment. I also keep reading about the idea that the decline will simply continue, at varying paces but consistently, and most people will think “that’s just the way it is,” in a sort of apathy or exhaustion.
Hopefully the “tipping point” will come before either of those scenarios. Hopefully …
I liked that Turley interview, too. That’s the question we really need to be asking ourselves – where do we want to go? Conservatives have been quite clear about where they want to go, and they’ve punished their politicians when they haven’t followed. Progressives keep on electing theirs, no matter what.
Asking the “where do we want to go” question might help break the “you have no where else to go” declarations.
That one’s usually countered with the plea to change the party from inside.
The trouble with that plea, of course, is that heirarchical organizations never change unless their bosses want them to. The only way that’s likely to happen is if the organization feels like it’s no longer succeeding. The Democrats are in power and will probably stay there through this election. They have no reason to change.
That’s not to say having people in the party willing to change is of no value. Once it’s necessary, they can make the change easier. But the impetus isn’t going to come from within. It will only come when the bosses realize they can’t win doing what they’re doing now.
Without the push from the outside, I doubt things will ever change. But with help from the inside, it has a better chance of happening. I hope.