[Peace-discuss] Why Obama has to do that...

[C. G. Estabrook]

Mort continues to find my opinions "vile," "noxious," "vitriolic" and 
"despoiling this list" -- apparently because I state accurately what Obama has 
said and describe what his administration will do, without the misrepresentation 
("framing") that Mort apparently prefers. He's unable to show that I've 
misquoted Obama and continues to claim what I've denied, that I'd prefer a 
McCain administration.

As I've said all along, I think McCain is mad, bad, and dangerous to know; that 
he'd be a "loose cannon" as president (as both Chomsky and I have said, 
explicitly). And I think that he's a war criminal rather than the war hero that 
Obama and the Democrats have called him.  But Mort and others seem so scared of 
him that they're unwilling or unable to see Obama for what he is -- or even have 
anyone else say it.

Mort's intemperate language seems to suggest the "desperation of Democrats": 
they know, perhaps tacitly and to their dismay, how much the pro-war, 
pro-business Obama administration will continue the policies of the incumbent 
administration; they realize (some with satisfaction) that members of the 
vestigial anti-war movement who have promoted Obama into the Senate and the 
presidency will have to admit that they were deluded or willfully ignorant about 
what was going on in American politics. MoveOn et al. won: the anti-war movement 
has been co-opted for war.

It's hardly necessary for me to say that I agree with the comment by Chomsky 
below.  I've said it several times; Mort has even posted this particular passage 
before.  And I've defended "lesser evil" arguments in the abstract and in this 
particular case.  Mort seems to substitute repeating these charges for 
defending Obama's (admittedly indefensible) views. Will he finally be ready to 
talk about those views -- and attack them -- after Tuesday?

(Incidentally, there's a suggestive error in the transcription: the "lessor 
[sic] of two evils" would be someone who provides space [for rent] for two evil 
enterprises -- which could still be Obama, with the evils being pro-war and 
pro-business policies...)  --CGE


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> The desperation of Republicans (e.g., by the local N-G) as the electoral 
> campaign winds down is paralleled by this noxious piece, which ends up 
> expressing no alarm (even hoping for?) at a MaCain-Palin presidency. If 
> only Carl read more carefully what his mentor Chomsky has expressed 
> recently in Z-Magazine, Nov., 2008:
> 
> 
> David Barsamian asks:
> 
> /…So, realistically, whichever candidate is elected, can a president 
> make a difference?/
> 
> NC:  /Oh, yes. Presidents make differences. In fact, over time there are 
> systematic differences between Republicans and Democrats. So, for 
> example, if you look over a long stretch, fairly consistently, when 
> there is a Democratic president, there is a level of benefits for the 
> majority of the population. Wages are a little better, benefits are a 
> little better, for the large majority. When the Republicans are in 
> office, it's the other way around. There are benefits, but for the super 
> rich. The same is true for civil rights and other things. It's a 
> consistent difference, even though they're within a narrow spectrum. /
> / //The same is true in international affairs…  I don't doubt that there 
> would be some difference between an Obama and a McCain presidency. The 
> McCain presidency you can't predict very well because he's a loose 
> cannon. It could be pretty threatening./
> 
> DB: /What do you think of the lessor of two evils argument?/
> 
> NC: /It depends whether you care about human beings and their fate. If 
> you careabout human beings and their fate, you will support the lessor 
> of two evils, not mechanically, because there are other considerations. 
> For example, there could be an argument for a protest vote if it were a 
> step towards building a significant alternative to the choice between 
> two factions of the business party, both of them to the right of the 
> population on most issues. If there were such an alternative, there 
> could be an argument for not voting or for voting for the third 
> alternative. But it's a delicate judgement. On the other hand, there is 
> nothing immoral about voting for the lesser of two evils. In a powerful 
> system like ours, small changes can lead to big consequences./
> …
> 
> If only Carl were as equally nuanced and careful  as his professed 
>  intellectual mentor! He is in my view despoiling this list serve with 
> vitriolic rants. 
> 
> 
> On Nov 2, 2008, at 12:50 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
>> Look, gang, let's get one argument out of the way up front.  As soon 
>> as The One is elected President, there are going to be a lot of 
>> self-styled activists after him NOT to do the things that he's 
>> promised to do -- like killing people in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 
>> continuing the occupation of Iraq, delivering money to Wall Street, 
>> and paying off insurance companies for a health program that won't 
>> even cover everybody (while leaving most people subject to their 
>> employers in order to get it).  The crazy leftist filmmaker Michael 
>> Moore (while not of course really criticizing The One) actually said 
>> that he hoped Obama would break his campaign promises!
>>
>> Now we've gotta understand why Obama can't do that.  First of all, it 
>> would be dishonest.  He's campaigned all along as the anti-war 
>> candidate who would expand the war and the military and kill more 
>> people in the Middle East -- including places where the Bush 
>> administration is just taking baby-steps in killing, like Pakistan.  
>> He's the candidate of "ordinary people" who lobbied for the Wall 
>> Street bailout while explicitly excluding help to people losing their 
>> homes. And he's the advocate for health care who has a plan that will 
>> provide less coverage than the plan that Republican Mitt Romney put in 
>> place when he was governor of Massachusetts.  Obama's got to pay off 
>> (so to speak) on these promises.
>>
>> But the second reason is even more important.  Think about what the 
>> Republicans are going to do in four years.  They're going to nominate 
>> someone for President who will be even WORSE than John McCain -- 
>> someone like Sarah Palin, who's disgusting because she doesn't even 
>> have the right background (the progressives say "class") to be a 
>> government official. (Do you know she barely graduated from any 
>> college at all?!)  Think about how terrible it would be if someone 
>> like THAT became president.
>>
>> So, you see, of course Obama doesn't want to do that killing and 
>> looting that his campaign promises commit him to, but once he gets 
>> into office, he's gotta do that -- TO GET RE-ELECTED!
>>
>> --CGE
>>
>> PS--And please don't bother me with any more talk about how 
>> three-quarters of the population want the Mideast war to end, don't 
>> want the banks to be paid off, and do want real healthcare for 
>> everybody without paying more to insurance companies.  Those are NOT 
>> the people Obama's working for.  They're just the people he promised 
>> that he could bring around to the interests of those whom he is 
>> working for.  And with John McCain's help, he's done it -- a little 
>> bit, for the moment...
>>
>> ###