[Peace-discuss] The Presidential Election Did Not Take Place
(comments welcome)
Jenifer Cartwright
jencart13 at yahoo.com
Fri Oct 3 11:36:47 CDT 2008
I think Biden's point was that clueless-as-ever Bush PUSHED for the elections w/o having the foresight to realize he wouldn't be happy -- or able to live with -- the election results. Is any part of this a big deal -- or even a surprise -- to you??
--Jenifer
--- On Fri, 10/3/08, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] The Presidential Election Did Not Take Place (comments welcome)
To: "David Green" <davegreen84 at yahoo.com>
Cc: "Peace Discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Date: Friday, October 3, 2008, 9:59 AM
A point worthy of Chomsky. I'll borrow it and work it in. some general
comments on contempt for democracy might be in order. Thanks. CGE
David Green wrote:
> Biden was amazingly bold in his anti-democratic rhetoric this evening
> when he reprimanded Bush for his support of elections in Palestine,
> which Biden proudly claimed to have correctly predicted would be won by
> Hamas, and therefore unacceptable. With Arafat dead, there's no Boss
> Tweed to control the nominations.
>
> DG
>
> */"C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>/* wrote:
>
> "The people can vote for whoever they want.
> I control the nominations."
> --Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall, ca. 1870
>
>
> The presidential election campaign was primarily a distraction.
> There were
> serious issues presumably at stake, notably the war and the economy,
> and the
> campaign not only ignored them but purposely obscured them.
>
> The reason's not far to seek. As the late Australian social
> scientist Alex
> Carey wrote, "The 20th century was characterized by three
> developments of great
> political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of
> corporate power,
> and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting
> corporate power
> against democracy." A trillion dollars spent every year on
marketing
> in the US
> -- where political candidates are sold like cars or coffee -- has
> some effect.
>
> The issues were important, and for that very reason could not be
> submitted to
> the voters for their consideration. The dirtiest secret of American
> politics --
> or at least the most important one -- may not be the government's
> torture
> policy, filthy as that is, but rather the contradiction between the
> interests of
> the tiny elite of possessors (perhaps less than 1% of the US
> population) and
> those of the large majority of the population. But of course it's
> not *very*
> secret: as Noam Chomsky points out,
>
> "This is a business-run society: you market commodities, you
market
> candidates. The public are the victims and they know it, and that’s
> why 80%
> think, more or less accurately, that the country is run by a few big
> interests
> looking after themselves. So people are not deluded, they just don’t
> really see
> any choices..."
>
> --and, as a result, many ignore the distraction thrown up for them
> by the
> advertising/propaganda industry, the "campaign"
(particularly
> protracted in a
> year when the two major parties are noticeably promoting unpopular
> policies on
> the war and the economy: there's a lot of distraction to be done).
> About half
> of the electorate doesn't vote, in part because they think not
> unreasonably that
> the outcome of the election will make little difference to them and
> polices
> won't change much. Even in the most recent presidential election
> "landslides"
> -- 1972 and 1984 -- three out of four of the eligible voters did
> *not* vote for
> the winning candidate (Nixon and Reagan, respectively).
>
> Most of the media propaganda that passes for politics in the US is
> directed to
> what Gore Vidal calls the "chattering classes" -- about a
quarter of
> the total
> US population that makes up what some have called the "tertiary
> bourgeoisie"
> (cf. "*secondary* school"), i.e., most of those with a
traditional
> college
> education. Given that the actual ruling class in America is that 1%
> (perhaps a
> million people), that leaves three quarters of the US population
> generally
> ignored in the "manufacture of consent" -- and they return
the
> favor, as they
> are meant to.
>
> It has not escaped the attention of our rulers in general that
> people who work
> long hours and are anxious about their circumstances can spend less
> time finding
> out how those circumstances are determined, talking to other people
> about it,
> and doing something about it -- i.e., practicing democracy. The US
> anti-war
> movement of the 1960s arose in part from the greater prosperity and
> relative
> economic equality of that decade in comparison with this one.
> Americans had the
> leisure to do politics, as the Trilateral Commission described in
> dismay in "The
> Crisis of Democracy: On the Governability of Democracies" (1976).
> The crisis was
> that there was too much democracy: that had to be stopped, by the
> counter-policies of neoliberalism. American politics in the last
> thirty years
> shows that it was.
>
> Of course that 25% of the population who are the especial concern of
> the
> propaganda system show the effects as well. It is a surprising fact
> that,
> throughout the Vietnam War, support for the US government's
position
> was
> directly (not inversely) proportional to years of formal education;
> that is, in
> spite of the myth that the anti-war movement of those days was
> confined to the
> colleges, in fact the college-educated were more likely to support
> administration policy than those without a bachelor's degree. The
> ideological
> institutions -- the universities and the media -- were doing their
> job, even
> though by the end of the 1960s, 70% of Americans came to say that
> the Vietnam
> War was "fundamentally wrong and immoral," not "a
mistake,"
> according to
> longitudinal studies by the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations.
>
> It is quite remarkable that, prescinding from the enthusiasms of the
> moment
> (Obama v. McCain et al.), polls show that Americans hold political
> opinions of a
> general social-democratic/New Deal sort -- opinions, it need hardly
> be said,
> that they do not hear in the media or from Obama, McCain et al. The
> result is
> that the two business parties, for all their struggle at
> product-differentiation, like Coke and Pepsi, support largely
> similar policies
> that are generally to the Right of those favored by a majority of the
> population. Medical care is just the most obvious example, and is
> has been for
> decades.
>
> In an important article ("If Obama Loses," August 18, 2008),
Paul
> Street writes
> about "Thomas Frank's widely mentioned but commonly
misunderstood
> book on why so
> many white working class Americans vote for regressive Republicans
> instead of
> following their supposed natural 'pocketbook' interests by
backing
> Democrats.
> Released just before Bush defeated Kerry with no small help from
> working class
> whites, Frank's 'What's the Matter With Kansas? How
Conservatives
> Won the Heart
> of America' (New York: 2004) has generally been taken to have
argued
> that the
> GOP distracts stupid 'heartland' (white working-class) voters
away
> from their
> real economic interests with diversionary issues like abortion,
> guns, and gay
> rights. Insofar as Democrats bear responsibility for the loss of
> their former
> working class constituency, Frank is often said to have argued that
> this was due
> to their excessive liberalism on these and other 'cultural
issues'.
>
> "But Frank's argument was more complex or perhaps more
simple. At
> the end of his
> book, in a passage that very few leading commentators seem to have
> read (a
> shining exception is New York Times columnist Paul Krugman), Frank
> clearly and
> (in my opinion) correctly blamed the long corporatist shift of the
> Democratic
> Party to the business-friendly right and away from honest discussion
> of -- and
> opposition to -- economic and class inequality for much of whatever
> success the
> GOP achieved in winning over working-class whites."
>
> Street quotes Larry M. Bartels, director of the Center for the Study
of
> Democratic Politics at Princeton: "Frank exaggerated white
> working-class voters'
> susceptibility to cultural diversion: 'In recent presidential
> elections,'
> [Bartels] notes, 'affluent voters, who tend to be liberal on
> cultural matters,
> are about twice as likely as middle-class and poor voters to make
their
> decisions on the basis of their cultural concerns.' In other
words,
> working
> class white voters don't especially privilege 'cultural
issues'
> (God, guns,
> gays, gender, and abortion) over pocketbook concerns and actually do
> that less
> than wealthier voters."
>
> Bartels summarizes an effect of the propaganda system.
"Small-town
> people of
> modest means and limited education are not fixated on cultural
> issues. Rather,
> it is affluent, college-educated people living in cities and suburbs
> who are
> most exercised by guns and religion. In contemporary American
> politics, social
> issues are the opiate of the elites." It's the tertiary
bourgeoisie
> who are
> (taught to be) distracted by these issues.
>
> Like the presidential election in which they figure, these issues
> are meant to
> be a distraction -- and they are safe issues from our rulers'
point
> of view,
> because decisions on them do not much affect central governmental
> responsibilities like war and the economy. In our America, policy is
> well-insulated from politics: we have at best a simulacrum of
> democracy.
> Passionately preferring a candidate who's within the allowable
> limits of debate
> is a recipe for irrelevance, as it's meant to be. The show must go
> on; ignore
> the little man (many men, actually) behind the curtain.
>
>
> THE WAR WAS NOT A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN ISSUE
>
> With two-thirds of Americans saying since the beginning of the
> campaign that the
> war in Iraq was a mistake, one might ask why it was removed as an
> issue. Why
> didn't one candidate put himself in opposition to the war and
> promise a real
> withdrawal from Iraq (which Obama didn't promise)? That one could
> even have
> been McCain, once Obama's scenery-chewing over Afghanistan and
Pakistan
> ("AfPak," in DC-speak) made it clear to all (except those
liberals
> who assumed
> that he would change in office) that he was not an anti-war
> candidate. McCain
> could have protected himself from the charge of flip-flopping by
> off-loading the
> responsibility to the "commanders on the ground' (as they
both did
> anyway) and
> claim that conditions had changed (either for the better or the
> worse -- it
> wouldn't matter).
>
> The answer reveals the nature of the presidential candidacy. Far
> from being
> driven by the polls, presidential candidates are auditioning for a
role
> essentially in the gift of the elite. (The media, owned almost
> entirely by the
> largest corporations -- there are brave exceptions like
> *CommonSense* -- are the
> necessary enforcers.) When the contrast between the views of the
> elite and those
> of the majority becomes clear, the candidates know to take up those
> of the
> elite. (In 1992 Clinton was barely elected with a vague promise of
> providing
> health care as all other industrialized states do. But when it
> became clear
> that Americans favored that plan -- "single-payer health
care" --
> when it was
> explained to them -- the Clinton administration replied that it
"was
> not
> politically possible": i.e., the elite did not support it.)
>
> Obama was never for the ending of the war and the withdrawal of the
> U.S. from
> Iraq. He was never opposed to the war in principle, just tactically:
> it was
> "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," he
said. But
> "removing
> the troops now," he said three years ago, "would result in a
massive
> bloodbath
> for both countries," and so couldn't be done. He criticized
the hash
> the Bush
> administration had made of the war, and well-funded Democratic party
> front
> groups like MoveOn and Americans Against Escalation in Iraq [sic]
> worked to
> co-opt the antiwar movement for he Democratic party, but Obama could
> not adopt a
> principled opposition to the war.
>
> The reason was that, for all the effort to use the war against the
> Republicans,
> the Democrats like the Republicans support the general US government
> policy of
> which the war in Iraq is a part. With Israel as its "local cop on
> the beat," as
> the Nixon administration put it, the US has conducted a
> generation-long war for
> the control of energy resources in a 1500-mile radius around the
> Persian Gulf --
> from the Mediterranean to the Indus valley, from the Horn of Africa
> to Central
> Asia. That war will continue in the coming administration. And not
> because the
> US is dependent on Middle East oil: less than 10% of the oil the US
> imports for
> domestic consumption comes for the Middle East.
>
> Rather, the US goal in every administration for half a century has
> been to
> secure by means of the control of Middle East oil and gas what Obama
> foreign
> policy advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski calls "indirect but
politically
> critical
> leverage on the European and Asian economies that are also dependent
> on energy
> exports from the region." Those economies in Europe and northeast
> Asia (China,
> Japan and South Korea) are the real rivals to US economic hegemony,
> and the
> control of energy resources gives the US the whip-hand. We will not
> give it up
> in the new administration, so the war was not an issue.
>
> And it should by now be clear that, whether we call them al-Qaida,
> Taliban,
> insurgents, terrorists or militants, the people whom we're trying
to
> kill in the
> Middle East are those who want us out of their countries and off of
> their
> resources. In order to convince Americans to kill and die and suffer
> in this
> cause, the Bush administration has repeatedly lied about the
> situation, from
> trumpeting the non-existent weapons of mass destruction to,
> apparently, forging
> incriminating letters. But the new administration will continue with
> the
> biggest lie, that the US is fighting a "war on terror" -- as
they
> expand the war
> to Pakistan, which the Realists believe is the center of armed
> opposition to US
> control of he Middle East.
>
> There are in fact presidential candidates who -- unlike McCain and
> Obama -- have
> serious things to say about the US government's war policy. The
> following is
> from a statement presented to the media on September 10 by Rep. Ron
> Paul, former
> Republican presidential candidate, joined by Cynthia McKinney, Green
> Party
> presidential candidate, Chuck Baldwin, Constitution Party presidential
> candidate, and Ralph Nader, independent presidential candidate;
> former Rep. Bob
> Barr, the Libertarian Party presidential candidate, said he also
> agreed with the
> statement:
>
> "The Iraq War must end as quickly as possible with removal of all
our
> soldiers from the region. We must initiate the return of our
> soldiers from
> around the world, including Korea, Japan, Europe and the entire
> Middle East. We
> must cease the war propaganda, threats of a blockade and plans for
> attacks on
> Iran, nor should we reignite the cold war with Russia over Georgia.
> We must be
> willing to talk to all countries and offer friendship and trade and
> travel to
> all who are willing. We must take off the table the threat of a
> nuclear first
> strike against all nations.
>
> "We must protect the privacy and civil liberties of all persons
> under US
> jurisdiction. We must repeal or radically change the Patriot Act,
> the Military
> Commissions Act, and the FISA legislation. We must reject the notion
> and
> practice of torture, eliminations of habeas corpus, secret
> tribunals, and secret
> prisons. We must deny immunity for corporations that spy willingly
> on the people
> for the benefit of the government. We must reject the unitary
> presidency, the
> illegal use of signing statements and excessive use of executive
> orders."
>
>
> THE ECONOMY WAS NOT A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN ISSUE
>
> Similarly, the other great issue of the day, represented in the Wall
> Street
> bailout, saw no real difference between the candidates. On the
> economy, as on
> the war, McCain could have employed a rhetorical flanking maneuver
> and taken the
> popular position in opposition to the bailout, along with the House
> Republicans,
> painting Obama as a tool of Wall Street (which he clearly was: the
> Obama
> campaign even received more contributions from Wall Street than
> McCain's did).
> It would however have taken more guts than McCain had to attack
> Obama on the
> bailout, as on the war. More importantly, the elite position favored
> the
> bailout, despite the fact that constituents' calls to
congressional
> representatives were overwhelmingly in opposition.
>
> The joint statement of the third-party candidates did however depart
> form elite
> demands on economic issues:
>
> "We believe that there should be no increase in the national
debt. The
> burden of debt placed on the next generation is unjust and already
> threatening
> our economy and the value of our dollar. We must pay our bills as we
> go along
> and not unfairly place this burden on a future generation.
>
> "We seek a thorough investigation, evaluation and audit of the
Federal
> Reserve System and its cozy relationships with the banking,
> corporate, and other
> financial institutions. The arbitrary power to create money and
> credit out of
> thin air behind closed doors for the benefit of commercial interests
> must be
> ended. There should be no taxpayer bailouts of corporations and no
> corporate
> subsidies. Corporations should be aggressively prosecuted for their
> crimes and
> frauds."
>
>
> POLICY IS INSULATED FROM POLITICS
>
> In the last days of the lesser Bush, it seems that US government
> policy is being
> made almost entirely within the executive branch, in the clash of
> two factions
> -- the Neocons, who gained control after the 9/11/01 attacks and
> produced the
> invasion of Iraq, and the "Realists" (for lack of a better
name), the
> foreign-policy establishment that continues as administrations come
> and go.
> There's no real opposition to the policies that issue from their
> rivalry. Both
> the legislative and judicial branches are irrelevant. Congress has
> resigned to
> the administration its authority to make war, to make appropriations
> (in the
> bailout of Wall Street) -- and even to make criminal law (in the
> PATRIOT Act,
> FISA, and MCA); the Supreme Court has made decisions on torture and
> false
> imprisonment, but ineffectually: the torture regime and the secret
> prisons still
> exist, and the courts have not released prisoners from Guantanamo,
> originally
> and openly designed designed to be outside the scope of the US courts..
>
> Nothing characterizes the last year of the Bush administration more
> than the
> break with the Neocon dominance and the reassertion of control by
> the Realists.
> The result of incapacity? (Was Bush in fact publicly drunk at the
> Olympics, as
> rumored on the net?) Or pique? (The split between the White House
> and the
> Neocons in the office of the Vice-President may already be in place
> at the time
> of the Libby affair.)
>
> In any case, Cheney's easy use of Bush as an instrument (seen in
the
> investigation the Washington Post had done but wouldn't publish
> before the 2006
> election) is no more. That means that the US government is largely
> back in the
> hands of a foreign policy establishment that brought us wars from
> Kennedy to
> Clinton. And their drive for "full spectrum dominance" --
hegemony, not
> survival -- may finally make them more dangerous than the murderous
> Neocons.
> What some psychologists call splitting should be avoided ("Since
the
> Neocons are
> bad, the foreign policy establishment must be good") --
noticeable
> as it may be
> in the presidential campaign...
>
> There seems to have been a debate within the Bush administration on
> how best to
> construct the enemy that justifies the continuing US military
> presence in the
> Middle East: the Neocons wanted to make a bete noire out of a
> pacific and indeed
> helpful (to US regional interests) Iran, while the Realists wanted
> to do the
> same with terrorists in Pakistan -- and they seem to have the upper
> hand in both
> the old and new administration.
>
> Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was perhaps the senior member of
> the foreign
> policy establishment in the Bush administration, and it seemed clear
> that his
> people would have charge of the ongoing Middle East War, regardless
> of who the
> new president was. Obama even suggested that he would like Gates to
> remain at
> the Pentagon (and Paulson at the Treasury). In 2004, Gates
> co-chaired, along
> with Obama advisor Brzezinski, a Council on Foreign Relations task
> force report
> entitled, "Iran: Time for a New Approach," the main point of
which
> was to
> advocate a policy of "limited or selective engagement with the
> current Iranian
> government."
>
> Military action against Pakistan -- which Obama called for more
> urgently than
> McCain -- was already underway, and Obama's intention was to
improve
> upon the
> "baby steps" (as his adviser said) already taken by the
Realists in
> the Bush
> administration in killing Pakistanis (many of them apparently
> Pushtun babies who
> would take no more steps). But it was also clear that McCain in
> office would
> give way to the Realist consensus in the Pentagon and State
> Department. (Both
> McCain and Obama said that they will be guided by the "commanders
on
> the
> ground"). The Neocons -- holed up in the OVP and concentrating on
> avoiding
> prosecution (that's what the Military Commissions Act was about)
--
> have been
> largely brushed aside.
>
> If one means the consideration of possible policy changes, the
> presidential
> election did not take place, and the new administration will present
> a strategic
> continuity with the old, both domestically and in the matter of
killing
> foreigners. God help us.
>
> ###
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
_______________________________________________
Peace-discuss mailing list
Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20081003/9516ea42/attachment-0001.html
More information about the Peace-discuss
mailing list