[Peace-discuss] [sf-core] What are the chances?

[C. G. Estabrook]

Mike--

I'm certainly not insisting "that Romney is (or Hoover was) the better of the two choices."

I was suggesting that 1932 may be an example of a good (or at least better) outcome - in spite of the express positions of the two candidates. FDR ran on a platform contradictory to the New Deal, but he was forced to reverse it in office. 

I may well want to be on the winning side (or rather want my side to win, which is not the same thing), but I don't suggest that necessarily happens by "heightening the contradictions"; rather by more of us seeing what the situation actually is, against the most effective propaganda system in history. 

Vote away indeed, because it's (successfully) designed not to matter. That's why I disagree with so many of my liberal friends who seem passionately to think it does matter.

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate...

"Voting for reform-minded candidates should take about five minutes, and then we go back to the important work on the ground to change the conditions in which the mostly farcical election process proceeds." [Chomsky]

--Carl

PS - My reference to the child-killer in the White House had nothing to do with abortion, a matter in which Obama's views are hardly important, but with the very real corpses of children - including Americans - whom he's killed with his illegal drone strikes in six countries. Amazingly, he jokes about it - an indication of sociopathology or a guilty conscience? In any case, it's hard to see how one could in good conscience vote for an incumbent president with such a record of murder without in some degree being complicit with those murders. ("I support the Leader, but not the murders he's done"?)  But I suppose some may manage it. 



On Sep 3, 2012, at 1:22 PM, Mike Lehman <rebelmike at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Carl,
> I'm well aware of the fact that FDR saved capitalism from itself. And 
> has gotten about zero credit from Republicans ever since and far too 
> much credit from those on the left. Sounds a lot like Obama to me, but 
> if you're insisting that Romney is (or Hoover was) the better of the two 
> choices, well, we've all got opinions...
> 
> I catch a faint whiff of you somehow wanting to be on the "winning" 
> side, when there really isn't any in this election. I'm uncertain what 
> alternatives you're proposing for those who feel they should vote for 
> O/B vs R/R, but a discussion of that would seem to be far more 
> productive than throwing the usual slimeballs at the carnie freaks of 
> American politics. I don't really have a dog in this fight, but I'm 
> uncertain what your goal here is other than, what is it they used to say 
> back in the day, "heightening the contradictions"?
> 
> Whatever one thinks of Obama, and I don't think much, I rather hope that 
> Romney doesn't win this election. I haven't put much energy into 
> politics recently, got a diss to finish this year. But there's nothing 
> special about this election and the choice between the 19th century and 
> the 20th century in our ruling class that it presents than there has 
> been since WWII. Sure, O could appoint another ringer to the Supremes, 
> in fact, most likely will if given the chance -- I'm sure you're 
> relieved to know he's no FDR or even Ike when it comes to appointments. 
> Who would Romney appoint? I don't know, but I'm pretty certain it would 
> be worse, far worse for many of us.
> 
> And Scalia? Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I do give him 
> credit for having his feet firmly fixed in concrete.
> 
> So vote away. It gets more like the lotto every year. Most of us have 
> nothing but a dollar to throw away and I won't begrudge anyone from 
> their brief moment of pleasure in hope before they read what's actually 
> been pulled from the spinning drum. Then if you care about real chnage, 
> it's time to get to work, because changes happens in the streets, not in 
> the polling booth, as Obama proved so well. But I tend to believe if you 
> bet on O, you're more likely to get a few crumbs back from dropping off 
> the table of the wealthy than you would with Romney's butlers working 
> the crumb tray, just to keep things tidy, you know?
> 
> It might be worth exploring the issues with Iran or even women's rights, 
> which is about a lot more than abortion nowadays, however uncomfortable 
> you may feel about discussing it beyond "child-killer!" before this 
> audience. I get the sense you cherry pick things pretty well in working 
> Obama over and there are lots of things where being marginally better 
> off with your nose just above the water is better than you would be with 
> Romney belly-flopping into the pathetic American electoral gene pool 
> next to you, which counts for something. Not much, but something.
> Mike
> 
> On 9/3/2012 10:50 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> > Mike--
> >
> > Historians (and others) should pay attention to the dean of American revisionist historians, William Appleman Williams, who pointed out that the liberal account of the 1932 election (do-nothing Hoover supplanted by activist FDR) was a myth. The principal planks of the Democrats' 1932 platform were a call for a balanced budget and a condemnation of the incumbent administration's excessive spending. (Sound familiar?) It was the popular outcry and the extremity of the situation that reversed the course of the quite plastic Roosevelt. In 1933, certainly, politics were in the street, not the ballot box.
> >
> > In fact, in an interesting example of the rule that the poets often get there first, the late Gore Vidal paints a far more accurate picture of that election in his novel "The Golden Age" than we learnt from American consensus-historians.
> >
> > On the argument, "We must support the child-killer in the White House, or else Romney will appoint a bad judge to the Supreme Court!" - it should be unnecessary to note that these things are rather unpredictable: the liberal Warren court was the result of Republican appointments; the neoliberal business court that brought us deregulation was the result of Democratic appointments; and the liberals' bete noire Justice Scalia is the one SC member who has said unequivocally (anent Obama's unconstitutional assertion of the right to indefinite imprisonment without trial), "The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the executive."
> >
> > On the record, Scalia is more likely to keep whistle-blowers and thought-criminals out of Obama's jails than Stephen Breyer is.
> >
> > In general, American historians have a lot to apologize for, in the years since the dean of the Harvard history department, Arthur Schlesinger, became the court jester of the Kennedy administration. (Some, like Appleman Williams, whom Schlesinger called a Communist in McCarthy time, did a much better job.)
> >
> > Chomsky, who's not a mathematician, had to learn some math (recursion theory) to accomplish his revolution in linguistics, and at the same time he was puncturing these American ideological illusions (e.g., "On the Backgrounds of the Pacific War," 1967). His memory of that time is that academic mathematicians asked if he got the right answer; academic historians asked where he got his history degree...
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Carl
> >
> > On Sep 2, 2012, at 11:26 PM, Mike Lehman <rebelmike at earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> >> As a historian, in my opinion I think you're drawing the wrong analogy
> >> from 1932. If Romney wins, it will be as if Hoover won in 1932 -- and
> >> then you can hope all you want about the people having any impact on his
> >> greed and lust for power.
> >>
> >> Frankly, I wouldn't take much in the way of political advice from the NY
> >> Times anyway. I read it regularly, just as I listen to what the
> >> president has to say from time to time. Do I invest in either? Are you
> >> kidding?!?
> >>
> >> Douthat's puppy love for Ryan, the "policy entrepreneur" kind of makes
> >> me want to puke. Serial greed freak, maybe. Policy presumes it at least
> >> benefits the public and nothing I've seen from Romney is anything more
> >> than the Pig of Greed wearing Sarah Palin's lipstick.
> >>
> >> Two bad choices? Don't presume that they're equally bad, which seems to
> >> be the point of the argument that it's no skin off anyone's knee if
> >> Romney happens to manage to buy the presidency this time around. Give
> >> those jerks another shot at packing the Supremes and Carl will likely be
> >> scratching out marks on a prison wall along with other thought
> >> criminals, even though he and Romney probably do agree on abortion. I've
> >> yet to figure out how folks that claim to believe in small government
> >> want it to be just the size to forcibly fit in the womb. The present
> >> situation, while it may gall some, at least leaves these decisions to a
> >> woman's conscience, where it should be. I have yet to figure out how
> >> some people seem to talk to god enough to claim to know what s/he thinks
> >> on this matter, which is likely to be a lot more complicated than a
> >> Republican platform plank.
> >>
> >> Not that I trust Obama more than a cup of warm spit on much of anything.
> >> But there are two possibilities of who wins in November and I know which
> >> one I'd prefer to have to put up with given that bad hand, even though I
> >> won't be voting for him.
> >> Mike Lehman
> >>
> >> On 9/2/2012 7:02 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> >>> Ross Douthat has a column in the NYT today in which he too draws a comparison with 1932:
> >>> <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/opinion/sunday/douthat-franklin-delano-romney.html>.
> >>>
> >>>> On Sep 2, 2012, at 3:52 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> >>>>> Although I won't vote for either one of them, it's not at all clear to me whether a Romney or an Obama presidency would add more to the sum of human happiness, since they both profess the same murderous economic and military policies (for all their efforts at product differentiation).
> >>>>> Obama's re-election cannot avoid being interpreted as approval of those policies (cf. Little Bush's "political capital" in 2004), while Romney's election might be seen as their rejection, despite his protestations.
> >>>>> Perhaps, like FDR in 1932, a victorious Romney may be driven to reverse his professed positions, if the popular demand is strong enough. Politics is in the streets, not the ballot box.
> >>>>>