[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Street / Campaign and Debate Reflections / Oct 17

[Morton K.Brussel]

We're all by now weary of long commentaries repeating common themes, 
but I particularly admired this one by the clear headed, passionate and 
compassionate Paul Street. It appears on ZNET, which can use your 
support (http://www.zmag.org) as a subscriber.
MKB

Begin forwarded message:

> From: ZNet Commentaries <sysop at zmag.org>
> Date: October 17, 2004 6:10:01 PM CDT
> To: brussel at uiuc.edu
> Subject: Street / Campaign and Debate Reflections / Oct 17

> http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-10/17street.cfm
>
> ==================================
>
> ZNet Commentary
> Campaign and Debate Reflections October 17, 2004
> By Paul  Street
>
> Like many on the left, I am of a split mind on the now concluded 
> debates and the campaign melodrama, which is a bigger quadrennial 
> extravaganza than usual this time for some good reasons.
>
> I am appalled of course by the vast number of interrelated topics that 
> are simply "off the table" (to use Alexander Cockburn's term in a 
> poignant Nation critique of Kerry a few weeks back) of discussion:
>
> Israel's oppression of the Palestinians, the real reasons that the US 
> is targeted by Islamic terrorists and hated across the Muslim world, 
> the totalitarian power exercised by tyrannical corporations at home 
> and abroad, the pressing need to end the occupation of Iraq NOW and 
> not in 2 or 3 years.
>
> Add to that the devastating impact of planetary 
> corporate-petro-capitalism on world ecology (creating the likelihood 
> of fairly imminent "runaway" global-warming according to recent 
> reports), the fundamental contradiction (noted by Venezualan president 
> Hugo Chavez) between vast socioeconomic inequality and meaningful 
> democracy (a topic of great significance in a nation where the top 1 
> percent owns 40 percent of the wealth...the US that is).
>
> And the need for sweeping overhaul of the nation's authoritarian and 
> plutocratic winner-take-all elections system, the need for 
> media-reform and restructuring, the need for reparations to compensate 
> African-Americans for the living legacy and crime of black chattel 
> slavery and its Jim Crow/ghetto/mass incarceration aftermaths, and the 
> racist and imperial "War on Drugs."  The list goes on.
>
> It is interesting to note Kerry refuses to say anything about 9/11 
> itself (surely one of the greatest security failures in history), 
> which the Bush administration very possibly could have prevented and 
> did nothing to avert.  Bush's security failures were so bad that much 
> of the world thinks he was actually involved in planning the 
> operation.
>
> I am disgusted, of course, by the manipulative sound-bite sloganeering 
> and the constant repetition of the same points (and deletions) over 
> and over again, the obsession with appearance ("body language") and  
> the elevation of superficial corporate-crafted "likeability" over 
> actual policy substance ("message"), itself all-too-corporate-crafted.
>
> It is obscene, of course, that the left Green candidate David Cobb, 
> the liberal populist Ralph Nader, and the Libertarian candidate were 
> excluded from the debates.  Cobb and the Libertarian were carted off 
> to jail after trying to get in.
>
> How many people died Wednesday in occupation-related violence in Iraq 
> (the papers reported six US soldiers killed) as the candidates waxed 
> romantic about the women and the God in their lives? For six US 
> soldiers and however many Iraqis -- Bush's Pentagon doesn't "do body 
> counts" when it comes to Arabs ---  who died on Wednesday, all 
> relationships with  anyone but (if you are religious) God. There were 
> more deaths on Thursday, thanks to an insurgent attack in the 
> government's Green Zone compound.
>
> Bush and Kerry are arguing about who is the better guardian of empire 
> and inequality at home and abroad, with Kerry saying that he is more 
> competent and the other saying he is more righteous.
>
> According to a recent Council on Foreign Relations survey of American 
> public opinion on foreign policy, most Americans reject the US veto 
> power at the United Nations Security Council, think the US should have 
> joined the International Criminal Court, are very guarded and cautious 
> about the use of force overseas (they do not buy the "preventive war" 
> idea), and (get this) think the US "shouldn't take either side" in the 
> Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
>
> This public opinion was largely invisible at the presidential debates, 
> where both participants were unabashed Israel enthusiasts, wanted to 
> portrary themselves as ready to kick overseas butt (kill foreigners) 
> at the drop of a hat (though Kerry, son of a Cold War diplomat, is 
> fairly eloquent on behalf of tactical multilateralism), and were  
> incapable of acknowledging the tens of thousands of Arab victims in 
> the bloody terrorist  "war on terror."  The American people are not 
> the fierce unilateralists and militarists that the candidates seem to 
> think they are.
>
> It is damning but hardly surprising that African-American issues went 
> completely unacknowlegded until there were about 15 minutes left in 
> the last of the four (3 "presidential" and 1 vice-presidential) 
> debates.  An especially pathetic scene came in the VP debate when both 
> Edwards and Cheney seemed utterly ignorant of the important fact that 
> HIV and AIDS rates have risen significantly in black communities in 
> recent years.
>
> At the same time, I've also been taken by how significantly superior 
> Kerry and how incredibly bad Bush has been.  Kerry has been cleaning 
> Bush's clock, within the sadly restricted parameters, revealing the 
> incumbent as what he really is: a sputtering, mean-spirited C-student 
> creature of campaign dirty tricks, racist black voter 
> disenfranchisement in Florida (a story about to be repeated), illegal 
> Supreme Court intervention, and of course the great event that 
> Repubicans love to pretend to hate: Nine-Eleven.
>
> It's been like watching a battle between two very different centers in 
> an NBA game.   Kerry scores inside, scores outside, and has an elegant 
> hookshot.  He plays with intelligent and measured grace.  He's adept 
> at blocking shots and rarely commits fouls because he doesn't 
> particuarly need to resort to anything much more than his skills. He's 
> slick and effective.
>
> Bush is a lumbering. muscle-bound bully who can barely shoot the ball 
> from more than three feet out and scores only after he manages to 
> muscle the other guy out of the way.  He fouls constantly and is 
> frequently caught out of position.  As he gets more and more "lit up" 
> by his opponent, he becomes more agitated and resorts to baiting his 
> opponent with verbal abuse, calling him a panzy and other nasty names. 
> On the few occasions that he makes anything like a decent shot, he 
> puts on a big stupid grin and parades around the court like a goon.
>
> Nobody's quite sure why he even has a starting position in the big 
> leagues but his team is too embarassed to admit how bad his 
> performance is.
>
> What were the first two words out of George W. Bush's mouth in the 
> 2004 presidential debates? The first word was "September."  The second 
> word was "Eleventh."  As in "September 11th changed everything," 
> making us realize that Saddam Hussein was a great threat and so we had 
> to invade Iraq (telling our troops that they were avenging 9/11 by the 
> way).  This was a total deception, of course. The BushNeocons wanted 
> to invade Iraq all along and saw 9/11 as the Reichstag fire that would 
> let them make their imperial dreams come true.
>
> In the last debate,  Bush looked pathetic and disparate (and 
> McCarthyite) when he responded to Kerry's pointed domestic economy and 
> policy jabs by reaching down into his putrid West Texas "gut" to spit 
> up the dreaded "L word" ("liberal", also sometimes known to Bushcon 
> neo-McCarthyites as "socialist") and also the dreaded K word (as in 
> that well-known Bolshevik Ted Kennedy).  Dubya  tried to paint out 
> Kerry's centrist and barely even corporate-liberal health care plan as 
> some sort of "government run" path down the road to Stalinism.
>
> Just about every single "sentence" (or whatever) Bush almost manages 
> to string together is some kind of monstrous deception. As the New 
> York Times' true-liberal columnist Paul Krugman predicted on Tuesday, 
> Bush shamelessly lied Wednesday night about the tax cuts.  He claimed 
> that "tax relief" had gone equally to everybody when in fact the 
> regressive, defeciti-generating tax reductions went very 
> disproportionately to the very rich, who "need" them the least in a 
> supposed time of "war" that calls for American "sacrifice."
>
> It was great to hear the president speak about his love for a "culture 
> of life" (as in "I will appoint anti-abortion advocates to the Supreme 
> Court in my next term") in light of his deadly record of state 
> executions in Texas and as the US body-count climbed above 1,070.  
> Does anyone remember this Christian "life" enthusiast sneering over 
> evangelical prisoner Carla Fay Tucker's request for a pardon, laughing 
> as he claimed that she said "please don't kill me?" I'd like to give 
> you the exact number of Iraqi dead but Bush's Pentagon doesn't care to 
> gauge Arab deaths and Kerry doesn't ask, though interested readers 
> should keep a regular eye on the excellent research being done at 
> www.iraqbodycount.org.
>
> In the last debate, Bush had a simple answer for almost every social 
> and economic ill that haunts America (with ever greater impact under 
> Bush): "Edge-ooo-Cayshun."  Education.  That's interesting since Bush 
> and his loathsome Uncle Tom Education Secretary Rod Paige (made 
> notorious on page-one of the New York Times for lying about 
> standardized test scores and dropout rates in the Houston Public 
> Schools) have worked to cripple American public education with the 
> vicious so-called "No Child Left Behind Act."
>
> That all-too bipartisan legislation is certainly designed is designed 
> to set the public schools up for private-sector "liberation" 
> (dismantlement) through vouchers and corporate-takeover.  Gee, kind of 
> sounds like Bush FOREIGN policy.  Paige, by the way has referred to a 
> leading US teacher's union --- the National Education Association --- 
> as "terrorists."   I do not know if the FBI and CIA have followed up 
> on alleged links between the NEA, Saddam and al Qaeda.
>
> Isn't Bush himself proof of the limits of what educational 
> institutions can do for people who can't or don't want to learn?  This 
> guy had access to the the best schools the nation's "elite" have to 
> offer --- Andover, Yale (which he entered under the protection of a 
> venerable "elite" Affirmative Action program called the Legacy System) 
> and Harvard...and this debate performance was the best he could muster 
> when given an opportunity to outline his vision for America and the 
> world?   Pathetic.
>
> Kerry is nowhere near the actual opposition candidate we need and 
> deserve.  Still, he's noticeably better than Bush and not just in the 
> sense of being smarter and more competent, and it's scandalous and a 
> little bit unintentionally (I hope) racist  for the "Dime's 
> Difference" crowd of hyper-alienated left critics not to notice the 
> degree of domestic policy variation  on health care, on tax policy, on 
> the minimum wage, union rights, welfare policy, Social Security (which 
> Bush very much wants to privatize),  on civil rights (which Bush wants 
> to gut) and race (whose persistently great significance Bush denies) 
> and other "homeland" (lovely term, that) issues.
>
> One of the strongest parts of Kerry's presentation Wednesday night 
> came when he acknowledged the unfinished nature of the struggle for 
> black equality, the persistent existence of "two separate school 
> systems" for blacks and whites in the United States  (a decent and 
> accurate thing to note in the year of the 50th anniversary of the 
> Brown v. Board decision) and the continuing need for affirmative 
> action (which Bush opposes).
>
> When it was Bush's turn to talk about race and racial inequality, all 
> he could do was spout his pathetic twaddle about "Education," which 
> for him means the glorious shame- and test-based beating and drilling 
> down of young minds (especially those of black and brown kids) in 
> advance of corporate takeover through the fiscal starvation and 
> corporate privatization of the public school commons.   Surprisingly 
> enough, Bush spared us his usual list of black race-traitors he has 
> appointed to numerous key White House positions.  The top two names on 
> that list --- the despicable Colin Powell and the vile Condaleeza Rice 
> ---  helped design and promote a vicious racist war that the great 
> majority of African-Americans strongly oppose.
>
> The notion of this guy coming back for a second term is obscene.
>
> And the notion of some people on the left not caring if he returns is 
> beneath contempt. I recently read one my fellow radicals saying that 
> "things will be bad under Kerry and things will be bad under Bush." 
> Ho-hum.  Oh well. Whatever.  I know what the radical means, of course: 
> capitalism sucks but take that message to the black community and see 
> what kind of response you get, comrade.   An African-American leftist 
> recently wrote me to mention the "calllous indifference" of some of 
> "the Nader crowd"  to "a significant constituency that they hope to 
> appeal to:" Blacks.  This cold disregard, this leftist feels, 
> "denote[s] a racial problem that these people are gonna have to deal 
> with at some point. Non-leftist black, brown, asian, etc. folk ain't 
> impressed with such disregard."  Good point.
>
> I've been approached by Kerry campaign workers in two battleground 
> states so far ---- Iowa and Wisconsin.  They came up with clipboards 
> and asked me and others to "help fire Bush."  Not to help elect Kerry 
> so much as "fire Bush."  We spoke about the problems with Kerry.  They 
> agreed that Kerry has big issues and is too conservative and should be 
> saying more - much more - than he says on the campaign trail and in 
> the debates. They have no illusions about Kerry and they have no 
> illusions about American "democracy" and the need to change the rules. 
>  Neither do I.  They agree with me we have roll up our sleeves and 
> fight the new boss and indeed the boss's system the minute we get rid 
> of the old boss.
>
> Yes, the debates have been too restricted, yes we need a new electoral 
> systsem, one that encourages and enables the rise of real opposition 
> parties, yes the Demcoratic Party has traveled way too far to the 
> corporate center and needs to be significantly challenged and perhaps 
> displaced by something to its left...all of that...yes, yes, yes.  But 
> no the differences between Kerry and Bush are not irrelevant.  The 
> major party candidates are not simply "the same."  "Coke versus Pepsi" 
> just doesn't cut it.
>
> If you want to know why I suggest that you start by talking to a 
> politically attentive African-American.  If you find one who is like 8 
> or 9 out of 10 such black Americans, they will be happy to tell you 
> why Kerry is Coke but Bush is Crack and how your dime's worth of 
> difference is worth a dolllar or more to them.
>
> Paul Street (pstreet99 at sbcglobal.net) is an urban social policy 
> researcher on the South Side of Chicago. His book Empire and 
> Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 has been released by 
> Paradigm Publishers and can be ordered at www.paradigmpublishers.com.
>
>
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