[Peace-discuss] Norman Solomon's thoughts

[Morton K. Brussel]

I believe this piece comes close to describing our present situation,  
not as some have distorted it.  --mkb


  Published on Thursday, September 4, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
Beyond the Conventions

by Norman Solomon

With varying degrees of confidence or even complacency, many people  
have assumed that the jig is almost up for the horrendous political  
era that began when George W. Bush became president. Always dubious,  
the assumption is now on very shaky ground.

The Bush-Cheney regime may be on its last legs, but a new incarnation  
of right-wing populism is shadowing the near horizon.

Much as modern capitalism is always driven to promote new products in  
the marketplace, the corporate-fundamentalist partnership must  
reinvent and remarket itself. We're now seeing the rollout of a  
hybrid product under the McCain-Palin brand.

Last night, after watching Sarah Palin's acceptance speech and the  
laudatory responses from many TV journalists, I remembered wandering  
around the floor of the Democratic National Convention a week ago. At  
the base, the two major parties are even more different than the  
speeches are apt to indicate.

Under the roof of the Democratic Party, notwithstanding its shades of  
corporatism and militarism and numerous other grave faults, there's a  
lot of longstanding and ongoing involvement from key progressive  
constituencies -- including labor unions, African Americans, gay  
rights activists, human rights defenders, environmentalists, fair- 
trade advocates, healthcare-for-all organizers, feminists, and on and  
on.

In contrast, the Republican Party is a political institution that  
views all such constituencies and activists (including last night's  
new target of derision, "community organizers") as enemies to be  
smothered and crushed. The party's latest "populist" packaging is  
another wrinkle in a timeworn pattern; the most avid political  
servants of corporate elites are eager to keep generating the anti- 
elites rhetoric and imagery of down-home regular folks.

At the Democratic convention last week, some of the speeches ran  
counter to basic progressive tenets of peace and social justice. But  
none came close to the zeal for social Darwinism, jingoism and  
militarism routinely spewing from the Republican convention's podium.

In ways too numerous to count and in realms too profound to truly  
evoke, this decade has grimly underscored that -- notwithstanding  
theoretical claims to the contrary -- it matters greatly who is  
president. From the Supreme Court to thousands of subcabinet  
positions to executive orders to a vast array of foreign-policy  
decisions including the potential use of nuclear weapons, the  
president is able to wield state power with consequences huge enough  
to be unfathomable.

A popular strand of analysis on the left has downplayed the  
importance of the president. The story goes that corporate forces  
rule, and the person in the Oval Office is little more than a  
figurehead for those rulers. There's some validity to that  
assessment, but in the face of experience it has tended to calcify  
into a form of denial.

With right-wing Republicans running the White House for 20 of the  
last 28 years, maybe the downplaying of the importance of the  
presidency has become a kind of coping mechanism for some  
progressives. Accustomed to a status quo that grows increasingly  
dire, we've settled into an uncomfortable "comfort zone" as familiar  
as it is macabre. At the same time, the cascading effects of right- 
wing control over most of the federal government have been cumulative  
and devastating.

Of course progressives should always keep organizing, educating,  
protesting and agitating. But the potential for achieving progressive  
changes in government policies is severely limited while the right  
wing is entrenched in the White House. The changes we need can only  
be propelled from the grassroots, but the possibilities are badly  
circumscribed when the far right maintains a grip on state power.

The election will happen in 60 days. After that, it'll be President  
McCain or President Obama.

We'll never pass this way again.

* * *

To see Norman Solomon's posts from the Democratic National  
Convention, go here.
Norman Solomon, a national co-chair of the Healthcare NOT Warfare  
campaign, is the author of "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits  
Keep Spinning Us to Death." A documentary film of the same name,  
based on the book, has been released on home video. For information,  
go to: www.normansolomon.com

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