[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Dowd / On The Election / Jun 17

[Morton K.Brussel]

I apologize to you all for sending this, but I just can't help sending 
something to which I fervently agree, and which I think cannot be 
overly emphasized. MKB.

> From: ZNet Commentaries <sysop at zmag.org>
> Date: June 17, 2004 7:33:24 PM CDT
> To: brussel at uiuc.edu
> Subject: Dowd / On The Election / Jun 17
>
> ==================================
>
> ZNet Commentary
> On The Election June 17, 2004
> By Doug Dowd
>
> It is now clear that the presidential election will be very close. 
> Much can happen for better and for worse between now and then at home 
> and, especially, in Iraq; so much that no firm prediction can be made. 
> But this can be said: If the election were to be held today, Bush 
> would win it by a narrow margin; but that if Nader were not running, 
> the result would be in favor of Kerry. In these times that try our 
> souls, that should cause all of us to think twice before jumping.
>
> Many among those left of center would be horrified by Bush's 
> re-election and say "anybody but Bush"; but a significant number of 
> others say that it doesn't that, after all, Kerry is as bad as Bush -- 
> even, in some sense, worse: Bush at least believes in what he says; 
> Kerry waffles on virtually everything; Gore and Clinton all over 
> again.
>
> Such arguments already rage among lib/lefties, and will deepen and 
> spread as November approaches. Much of the disagreement will be among 
> those who, until recently, have been allies and often worked together. 
> Here is my position.
>
> I yield to nobody in crititisms of Kerry: Despite whatever he may say 
> about "jobs," "health care," and the like, he is a centrist, a 
> Clinton, looking always to the conservative wing of the Democratic 
> Party for his stand. But we need not speculate; his long record in the 
> Senate has been that of a centrist, with never even an argument in the 
> Senate in favor of meeting basic needs, by whatever name.
>
> He has been and remains worse on foreign policy; he is more interested 
> in showing that he voted in favor of the war than against it; hedging 
> this way and that about the UN or the $87 billion in an attempt to 
> satisfy "both sides" and, like Gore, alienating both in the process. 
> But his most disgraceful -- and disgusting -- performance has been 
> that regarding Vietnam.
>
> He not only volunteered in what was being seen as a dirty war by many 
> of us, but stuck around long enough to know that it was unwinnable 
> without nukes. OK; maybe. But now? Now he says he's sorry that as a 
> Vietnam Vets Against the war he said we (and he) had committed 
> atrocities there. Note that he didn't say we hadn't committed them -- 
> that has been abundantly documented -- he said he was sorry he had 
> said so. Why? Guess.
>
> So, to oversimplify but not too much: he's more responsive to war 
> lovers than to war haters; put differently, like Clinton and Gore, he 
> assumes he can take the war haters and social softies for granted. 
> He's wrong; which is why I am writing this.
>
> So we should vote for Nader, or not at all? No. Despite the above 
> criticisms, and more of the same that could easily be added, I am firm 
> in the belief that all who seek a sane and decent and peaceful world 
> must vote for Kerry. And not only because he is the lesser of evils, 
> and less odious than Bush (as who is not?).
>
> No, there is something larger at stake than "the next four years." We 
> have already seen what the Bush gang will do even after an election in 
> which they lost the popular -- and probably, the electoral -- vote. If 
> Bush wins, that will be used as a mandate by the neocons, preempters, 
> fanatic Christians, and anti-civil rights coalition to give new 
> meaning to the term "run amok." With nothing and nobody to stop them 
> -- in or out of Congress or the Supreme Court.
>
> Led by a group whose arrogance assures their ignorance on the 
> realities of other countries, whether one-time or chosen-to-be foe; a 
> group fully-committed domestically to making the rich richer as the 
> rest pay for it in small and large ways. With them in power, and their 
> bought and paid for Congress and a Supreme Court in their pocket, the 
> USA will enter its most perilous era ever -- perilous to ourselves, 
> our designated enemies, and Mother Nature.
>
> This is no time for a third party vote in a presidential election. 
> That time would/will/must come if and when those left of center have 
> gotten their act together on the local and state levels as human 
> beings and as wage-earners, going beyond intermittent demonstrations 
> in order to constitute a movement,
>
> The USA is unique in never having more than mere whispers of such a 
> movement, one that works toward the solidarity required to fight for 
> and win over the whole range of badly-needed social policies; a 
> movement that would be able, as a third party, to get trustworthy 
> people into office and policies into practice on those levels; able to 
> make progress everywhere but in the White House. Then, and only then, 
> can we seriously think of centering in on a presidential election.
>
> For too long we have allowed ourselves to be drawn into the political 
> game of choices between Tweedledee and Tweedledum on the local and 
> state levels and, inevitably, on the national level as well. We have 
> been suckered in, or remained lazy, in a rotten and dangerous society 
> that needs us to be just that to satisfy the lusts of those now in 
> power -- and to become even more so.
>
> I do not speak as a perennial opponent of third parties. As a very few 
> of you might remember, in 1968 I was the reluctant running mate of 
> Eldridge Cleaver on the Peace & Freedom ticket in New York State. Low 
> comedy became farce when Cleaver was kept off the ballot because he 
> was "too young"; that he had also skipped the country they did not 
> know. And in 1948 I had been a main organizer of the Wallace IPP 
> campaign in Berkeley and also managed a state legislative campaign for 
> a third party candidate.
>
> It should be clear that I am not against third parties; in fact, I see 
> no other way for us ever to move toward genuine democracy. I am 
> against make-believe third parties whose main effect in a national 
> election is to play Santa Claus to the worse of two evils.
>
> In what has been a long life in a century of the deepest crises ever 
> in history, the present period is in my opinion surely the most 
> dangerous, most threatening of all. At home the weakening or 
> destruction of always barely adequate socioeconomic policies in 
> health, education, jobs, wages, housing, welfare, civil liberties, and 
> the environment will take an enormous and lengthy effort to reverse.
>
> For such a reversal there must must be a national movement. Such a 
> movement will be almost impossible to construct if, as, and when we 
> shift further to the Right, further toward and then into what Bertram 
> Gross presciently foresaw as "friendly fascism" in 1980.
>
> This is no time for venting our spleen. It is very much the time to 
> preserve what Howard Zinn has recently seen as "a ledge" from which we 
> can hold on and climb toward what we need and want. That ledge that 
> will be obliterated by a second Bush II administration.
>
>
>
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