Krishna:
A piece that captures a bit of the immense disappointment Obama has
been.
The piece also appeared in yesterday's Star Advertiser. To think that
many of us will troop back next year to vote for this guy because the
other one is worse is too depressing. I really hope Nader or some
other third choice is on the ticket.
Grove:
I have to say I am with Petrice on this one. I am much more hopeful
that there will be a third party on the right to solidify Obama's
position rather than Nader figure to give the election to Romney. Any
risk someone like Mitt Romney could get elected and then play cover
for the new wave of violent and hateful conservatives is a catastrophe
in my book. However I expect very little from presidents and I am most
terrified when they believe they have the power to steer the whole
government. I think I prefer impotence to power when it comes to the
executive branch.
Krishna:
A large part of the reason Obama has been so indifferent to many of
the left-liberal constituencies that helped elect him last time around
is precisely on account of the logic articulated here by many of us:
we will hold our noses and vote for him next time around because we
have no choice. That's the point made by the piece I sent around
regarding civil liberties and made with more panache by Cornel West in
his slamming of Obama on his comments to the Black Congressional
caucus recently (basically, it was "quit whining and complaining and
get on board - this is the only train there is"). If the left-liberal
crowd make it amply clear that we'll vote him for no matter what, I
don't see why he would care a fig for what we think. Unless there's a
threat that it could actually damage his re-election there's no need
to do so. A couple of decades ago Clinton engineered the return of the
Reagan Democrats to the party by moving over the middle-right. A
genuine threat of the progressive left deserting the Democratic party
might be one impetus that will force Obama et al to shift their
orientation.
Of course I agree that genuine change is more likely to come from
below in the US (or elsewhere) than from the top of an ossified
system. That same system however discredits third party choices in all
sorts of ways and prevents any groundswell from ever manifesting
itself on the ticket as a genuine alternative. In these circumstances,
to continue with the logic of "I'll vote for him cuz the other guy is
worse" seems designed to do nothing but prolong the status quo. If
Nader cost Gore the 2000 election, let that be a salutary reminder
that taking the liberal-left for granted can come back to bite you in
the rear.
As for the catastrophic consequences of electing the other guys, from
the viewpoints of those at the receiving end in Iraq or in the Swat
valley or hundreds of other places inside and outside the country -
there seems to be little change and a lot of it for the worse even.
Yes, Supreme Court appointments matter as do lots of things like how
science is taught and stem-cell research etc. But maybe its time to
also think beyond that methodological nationalism and see that R and D
make so little difference to the damaging footprint the USA leaves on
the rest of the world.
Given the tight binary logic of the current system, I am struggling to
see a way around three depressing choices: (a) voting for O; (b)
voting for any remotely viable 3rd party candidate -not as an empty
gesture but as a reminder to D's that my vote has not been bought for
an eternity; (c) not voting.
Grove:
Differences Matter.
I also want to thank Krishna for starting this discussion.
As for Obama I understand there to be 3 argument so far in favor of
voting for a third party.
1. There is no real difference between the candidates (Dator’s
position) and that what difference does exist will be nulified in the
next term by a president free of the fear of re-election. The powerful
variant of this is that while some differences do exist from the
perspective of those outside the United States in particular those on
the receiving end of U.S. military actions things have gotten worse
(Krishna)
2. That voting against Obama will teach the democrats a lesson not to
ignore its leftist constituency.
3. We should punish Obama because there were opportunities for
progressive action that Obama past up at little or no cost to him
politically.
The original article posted by Krishna makes a strong case that Obama
has in fact made things worse for civil liberties in America than
Bush. The article argues first that Obama agreed to not prosecute
members of the Bush administration for violations of human rights.
This is not a very persuasive argument for making things worse. The
making things worse part of the argument hinges on the claim that had
Obama lost the election the horror of John McCain would have coalesced
an unbeatable Civil Liberties movement that would have closed
Guantanamo, repealed the Patriot Act, and put personal freedoms back
on the political agenda. First the majority of Americans before and
after the 2008 election support the use of torture against terrorists
(70 percent if you ask Gallup but if you doubt their sampling methods
the absolute lack of public outcry ought to mostly back of their
numbers). The idea that this lack of popular activism is because
people are afraid to criticize a black president on civil rights is
laughable. If anything is apparent in the current political climate no
one left or right is afraid to criticize Barak Obama. The Obama
honeymoon from left criticism lasted about 60 days into the first
election when he floundered on the reform of Guantanamo.
It is also not true that things have gotten worse under Obama. Obama
is pathetic and gutless when it comes to fighting the Republicans on
National Security and hawkish when it comes to U.S. military
intervention. However Guantanamo is basically frozen. We are not
sending more people there. This may seem like small potatoes but
remember for all of McCain’s blustering on torture he watered down (no
pun intended) his position to the point that he is was only against
torture as a ‘policy’. McCain did not support prosecution of
torturers, he did not oppose outsourcing the torture i.e.
extraordinary rendition, giving people so that our allies such as
Saudi Arabia can do the torturing. (Hard to say that there are things
worse than water boarding but if there are the Saudi’s are sure to use
those methods of pain). Unlike McCain Obama has closed many of the
prisons and sent civilian reviewers to increase the pressure on the
military to release prisoners.
This article also leaves out that Bush cut 100 percent of the budget
for Civil Rights at the Justice Department. 100 percent of the budget
was shifted to the defense of small business and religious persecution
which as instructed by Bush ought to focus on Christians discriminated
against for praying in schools. The Civil Rights division of the
Justice Department was immediately reinstated after the 2008 election.
Obama also renewed the efforts of the FBI and Justice Department to
investigate and monitor hate groups such as the KKK. Under the Bush
administration both division were instructed that the number one
domestic threat were environmental terrorists. Obama ended the policy
of sending government agents to pose as activists to keep tabs on
organizations like Environmental Defense League and the National
Campaign to End the Death Penalty. The end of domestic monitoring of
progressive social movements alone is a reason to prefer the Obama
administration.
Lets add to this the return of funding and enforcement power to the
EPA something else gutted by Bush, the end of health insurance
discrimination for pre-existing conditions, and an executive order
ending drug raids in California, and most importantly drastically
reduced the number of ICE raids undertaken by the INS.
As for Obama’s impact on the rest of the world. This is also where I
am most disappointed. That being said Obama has continued to fight
Republicans and Democrats to zero-out the number of troops in Iraq and
is withdrawing from Afghanistan. Lets remember what McCain supported.
McCain wanted 5 permanent military bases in Iraq, he supported
starting a war with Iran, bombing North Korea, and a ruthless surge in
Afghanistan that relied less on Afghanistan cooperation and more on
the demonstration of military force. Included in this was stepping up
the bombing of civilian poppy farmers to ‘strangle’ the financial
support of AQ. Obama ended ariel bombing and spraying of poppy farms.
McCain also unequivocally supports the use of drones. Also any
increase in drone use from Bush to Obama, again while disappointing,
is not a policy change but the fact that technology has vastly
improved and the size of the drone fleet has more than tripled. This
would have occurred as much or more under McCain. One can only imagine
(or whatever the active verb version of nightmare is) all of these
scenarios under the leadership of Sarah Palin.
What about a second term. Then things get really interesting. A second
term will be characterized by frequent assassinations and the end of
the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. A mixed bag for sure. However lets
look at the possibilities under a Republican president. Not a single
Republican supports an alternative energy or Climate initiative. The
Republican party is still chomping at the bit to attack Iran. Perry
would like to invade Mexico so that U.S. troops can be directly
involved in the now almost civil war going on between the cartels (one
of those cartels being the Mexican government). Mitt Romney has
crusaded against the START treaty and would have the opportunity to
reverse the progress made towards nuclear arms reductions. Also this
is not a hypothetical improvement. Republicans are in support of
nuclear modernization and the restarting of tritium production which
means that Uranium mining and milling on native lands and the eventual
testing of new nuclear devices on those lands will begin again as the
Republican are also opposed to the ban on nuclear testing. Republicans
would also like to 're-surge' Iraq. Republicans are in favor of a new
SOFA agreement with Kuwait as a base of operations and a dramatic
increase in troops. Although Republicans disagree on this finally
number it ranges from 10,000 to 30,000 troops.
All of the Republicans have promised to crack down on illegal
immigration. This makes a huge difference for the daily lives of the
people that do the majority of U.S. agricultural work (amongst other
things). It means harassment at the border and at their workplaces but
it also means increased power of coyotes to extort, rape, and murder
laborers that have to resort to increasingly dangerous measure to get
passed border patrol or fences. It also means strengthening the INS
and Border Patrol. These agencies are their own special form of
governmentality. If you think Guantanamo is the top of the prison
reform agenda you have never been to one of the hundreds of
immigration detention facilities in America. Immigrants under Bush
(much less under Obama) were denied lawyers, appeals, and basic human
rights. Under Bush the increase in the numbers of children put in such
conditions sky rocketed.
As for as Obama's neoliberal tendencies, these are undeniable but not
nearly as destructive as the Republican alternative. Obama has
proposed and will likely win deep cuts to U.S. farm subsidies a
favorite pork barrel of Republicans and many Democrats. U.S. farm
subsidies have devastated the global food market and are responsible
for agriculture sector collapse and starvation through outMexico and
South America as well as Southern and West Africa. Farm subsidies have
also been devastating for the U.S. environment as they have paid for
agribusiness to pollute and subject illegal immigrants to horrifying
toxic environments of disease spreading shit lagoons and dangerous
pesticides directly subsidized by the Department of Agriculture. Obama
has also negotiated and used trade agreements differently. Obama
pushed for Labor representatives and Environmental representative at
CAFTA negotiations and was the first President to file a trade dispute
on behalf of worker treatment as in the case of Guatemala. It is not
'fair trade' but it is a long way from the Bush CAFTA agenda which
contained no worker standards or environmental concerns. Obama has
also pushed through two huge debt forgiveness plans for Haiti and
Egypt both of which were called 'moral hazards' by Republican
opponents.
I would add to this that Obama budget deal has put the Republicans in
devils gambit between making deep cuts to programs such as Defense or
raising taxes. The tax agenda generally disappointing to those of us
that want major changes has stopped an onslaught of Republican
austerity measures. The stimulus package had a lot of problems but it
created almost 3 million jobs. Neoliberal? Yes. However Obama believes
in Keyesian economics and puts it to use even if he squanders billions
on corporate bailouts. The Republican alternative would have been all
bail outs no jobs.
I think that answers the first argument.
As of the second argument that we should teach Democrats a lesson.
Truman overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh creating a precedent for violent
covert and overt regime change by the United States.
The Kennedy administration nearly invented nation building and gave
birth to the developmentalist foreign policy that was seized and
militarized by neoconservatives under the Bush administration.
Johnson vastly expanded the war in Vietnam and began the massive
bombing campaign of Cambodia that the Cambodians are still struggling
to clean up.
Carter actively supported the Shah also was no opponent of
international neoliberalism.
Clinton established a sanction regime that killed more civilians in
Iraq than all of the military occupations under both Bush’s and Obama
combined. He also sabotaged any international effort to respond to the
Rwandan genocide, destroyed the welfare system, and reinstated the
federal death penalty not mention with the Terrorism and Effective
Death Penalty act instituting all of the infrastructure that made the
Patriot act possible. Clinton also vastly expanded the Reagan missile
diplomacy of the 80s. If you want to look for the predecessor to the
Bush Drone program research funding for automated warfare was vastly
expanded under Clinton and in the mean time Clinton used cruise
missiles to do what drones were not yet capable of.
All of these Democratic presidents were committed to what we now call
neoliberalism or third way economics. They were free trade,
international development champions, and oversaw and encouraged some
of the most dangerous military advances on the planet.
So I am not sure what the prospects are of getting a ‘better’
Democratic president are.
Unless you go back to FDR (who was no friend to the Global South)
every Democrat since Truman has watered down or dismantled social
programs and expanded U.S. imperial capability and intervention. This
strengthen’s Krishna’s argument in some ways that the status quo is
too awful to distinguish between Democrats and Republicans but I think
on average Obama has done better than the Democratic average even if
he has been vastly disappointing in comparison to what he promised. It
is also demonstrates that 'teaching the Democrats a lesson' is
unlikely to do much. What is the better Democratic candidate that is
likely secure a nomination. All of the criticisms made by Krishna and
Dator are as true or more true of Hilary Clinton.
The third argument that we should punish Obama is to me just a variant
of the second argument. The exception being I am sure while initially
disappointed Obama would find the time off much more rewarding than
the fight he will face against Tea Party Republicans for four years.
However this is the most important difference for me. The radical wing
of the Republican party is increasingly well organized and already
well armed. The fever pitch of their hatred and their glee for the
suffering of others is likely to produce a legislative agenda that
gives the backlash against Reconstruction a run for its money. The Tea
Party wants more war, more guns, more executions, no social safety
net, more prisons, harsher punishment for non-violent and violent
crimes, legalized discrimination against immigrants and religious
minorities, an end to abortion, a number of terrifying amendments to
the constitution, more protection for corporations as legal
individuals, less privacy for actual individuals, and a total
disregard for the suffering of people abroad not to mention a near
hostility towards the natural environment. Romney will complain about
the more extreme of these proposals, then spin his opposition as being
principled but not sufficient to justify a veto. The worst of these
Obama without worry of reelection will veto, veto, veto. He will also
use the bully pulpit to speak out against such measures. That is a
real difference for people everywhere.
The final argument in favor of Obama is what I would like to call the
flinch factor. If real change from below emerges anywhere in the world
Obama will flinch before he crushes it. I think this played a
significant part in the MENA uprisings. They were, for me, less about
the authoritarians that they overthrew and more about a refusal and
revision of the global system underwritten by U.S. intervention,
security assistance, and security guarantees. I am not claiming that
these uprising were inspired by Obama but that after Obama's Cairo
speech apologizing for the U.S. overthrow of Iran and pledging to
become committed to self determination that many more people were
hopeful about the U.S. simple remaining silent or less proactive than
they have been in the past. In the case of Egypt I do not think this
can be underestimated. Without that shift in the ethos of the United
States (if we want to engage in counter-factuals) I can imagine McCain
calling the uprisings Islamic, the Western Media buying and supporting
that description, and the U.S. directly assisting and even intervening
on behalf of Mubarak and Gaddafi. McCain was until after his defeat a
vocal defender of both when negotiating arms deals and played a
significant role in propping up Musharraf among many other
unforgivable dictators. I think this is also true at home. Under a
Republican administration activist in the U.S. will feel less safe and
will be less safe. Under Bush militias like the Oath Keepers and
Hutaree Militia became military powers that could compete in the
global arena. Bush would have already sent in National Guard to break
up the Wall Street protest. Under Romney the same would occur. Obama's
silence is much valued at a time when the Tea Party says they want to
water the ground of liberty with the blood of liberals .
Krishna:
I read your blog with much interest and learned a great deal from it.
It also brought out the extent to which we differ. The basic framework
of your argument is that Obama is vastly better than many of the real-
world alternatives - mostly McCain, Hillary C and various others.
Further, Obama's track record on a bunch of international and domestic
issues is no better or worse than his many predecessors, especially on
the Democrat side of the ledger,
The whole point of my initial and second posting was to suggest that
this way of framing the issue wins the debate in the short run (who do
we vote for) but leaves us exactly where we are: saddled with a two-
party system and a way of electing presidents that ensures that the US
war machine grinds on relentlessly; continues to work for the benefit
of the rich and against the interests of the poor and the environment
etc. More importantly, if "people like us" (a dangerously loaded and
self-aggrandizing phrase, I know - but I'll use it as short hand
anyway) continue to use this logic every four (or two) years to choose
the lesser of the evils, there is no hope for the future at all.
Demonstrating some ability and desire to step out of that logic has to
begin somewhere and it will definitely entail short-term costs.
Quite frankly, I don't think it made one damn whit of difference for
much of the rest of the world whether McCain or Obama won the last
election. McCain may have wanted to keep 5 bases or whatever in Iraq
but would have been forced to pull out for all the reasons that the US
will be faced with in the years to come anyway: basically a declining
hegemony to put it shortly.
I guess the bottom line for me is that I've seen this logic for voting
D every four years - and have come to regard it as the alibi that the
liberals and progressives in the US peddle to themselves successfully
every time. I'd like to at least begin thinking of some way out of the
predicament. Not much in your blog has made me re-think that. In fact,
it only shows the degree of robustness with which we can convince
ourselves of that alibi.
Grove:
In response I would only say that the premise of Krishna's response is
that those of us on the left that vote democratic and peddle the
necessary alibi to do so are otherwise passive or docile in the 4
years intervening between each lesser of two evils votes.
I think that is in accurate. Despite Jim Spencer's well
warranted cynicism regarding the Wall Street Occupation, the event has
gone on for almost three weeks now (see late but welcomed coverage
index.html ) and has spread to many to cities in the U.S. including
Austin, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and D.C. Also there more
people participating in just the NYC occupation is an order of
magnitude more than turned out for any Tea Party event and the agenda
for the Wall Street Occupation is no less focused than the Tea Party's
was before their 2010 electoral victories. In fact the unifying
message of nearly all the protesters is support for drastic increases
in Taxes for those making over a million dollars. This being of course
a legislative strategy that could gain real traction if these protest
reverse the presumption that American's hate taxes.
I think the planning and staging of these occupations demonstrates
that people on the left can walk and chew gum at the same time. Voting
for Obama does not mean sitting on your hands for the next 4 years
waiting for another bad choice. In fact many of the organizers of the
occupations in Chicago, DC, and NYC are former organizers from the
2008 campaign that have used the networks and listserves developed
during the last campaign to circulate the videos and messages that put
the occupation on the national news. (See the first serious Opinion
piece on MSNBC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgr3DiqWYCI)
So while it may appear if the events are chaotic or unfocused I would
point to the fact that more than any public demonstration in at least
a decade its endurance and ability to create an entire media
infrastructure to communicate, broadcast, and coordinate events is
novel and encouraging that many of us (I worked on the Obama campaign
and I am involved in the current protests) did not stop looking for
alternatives once we cast our sour vote for a moderate Democrat from
Illinois that was sure to disappoint us all.
That being said I will never be persuaded that we ought to subject
people to horror in hopes that it will spawn more radical action. That
is the logic of economic sanctions and Trotskyite Marxism. If things
get desperate enough (or we can make them desperate enough) people
will revise the entire system. Neither sanctions nor Vanguard Marxism
have much success in accomplishing that goal. So In the mean time I
say vote for the lesser of two evils (takes 10 minutes at the ballot
box) and spend the next 1459 days, 23 hours, and 50 minutes trying to
create the possibility for a less repulsive choice the next time
around. I dont understand why fighting for radical change and voting
for the best of two bad options are mutual exclusive. 8 years of Bush
certainly did not provoke mass uprising nor did it lead to electoral
reforms.
In fact the only electoral reforms I know of have been those by the
Obama administration to improve the counting of urban populations in
the census so that gerrymandering is more difficult to accomplish.
Look forward to much more discussion.
Krishna:
Three points in response to Jairus's latest riposte.
1: I disagree that the "premise of (my) response is that those on the
left vote democratic ... (and) are otherwise passive or docile in the
4 years intervening between each lesser of two evils votes." Such
inter-election passivity may be a consequence for many who feel
they've done their bit by voting Democratic but its not a premise of
mine. My point is slightly different. Its that the left-liberals often
delink the issue of presidential choice from the engagement with
politics at the grassroots level that often animates much of their
action. For all the radical reimagining of politics, political
choices, futures and ways of being, come election time, all too many
finesse the issue down to "we must turn up in numbers and vote
Democratic because the other guys are worse". Its this refusal or
inability to bridge the gap between the radicalism of the everyday
engagement with the political and the plebiscite held every 4 years
that I find frustrating and intriguing. I think one way of linking the
two realms is to explore the viability of third party candidates as a
way of reminding Democratic candidates that there will a price to pay
for taking the left for granted.
2: I have not pushed the logic that the Commies used during Weimar for
ditching the socialists and enabling the coming to power of the Nazis
- namely that things will get so bad that it will jolt the system into
reality and into a progressive/revolutionary direction. Among many
reasons why I don't buy that logic for the US is that I really don't
think the two parties are that fundamentally different especially
viewed from a worldwide perspective rather than a US-centric one.
3: And this one is really the point I want to push (though I think I
am still searching my way towards it). A sentence from Bourdieu
(working from memory here) that goes something like "every society
produces the naturalization of its own arbitrariness" is useful here.
I think the de-link I referred to in point 1 is crucial to the way in
which the war machine of the US proceeds relentlessly with the
periodic sanctification through elections, including the full and
vigorous participation of left liberals. The "other guys are worse"
along with a politics of deferred redemption ("the Democrats will do
better once they have majorities in both houses," or "Obama will come
into his own in the second term" or "he gets to stack the Supreme
Court for years to come" or other variations on such themes) - I
figure these are the two main means by which the US system produces
the naturalization of its own arbitrariness. Viewed thus, linking the
progressive grassroots movements that Jairus rightly extols to
elections and their outcomes is critical. Delinking them (as the
refusal to step outside the binary logic of "we must vote D since the
other guys are worse" does) perpetuates the problem.
Grove:
I think I see what I missed. I think I conflated Krishna's
dissatisfaction with quietism with the warrant for teaching the
Democrats a lesson and assumed that was the causal mechanism for
fixing quietism. If I understand Krishna's argument now then it is
that the naturalization of a forced choice becomes a habituated
practice that we cannot theorize our way out of in part because our
participation in the habit contributes to the affective economy of
'pointlessness' or worse yet 'necessary pragmatism'. In some sense the
practice or habit of voting sets or is consonant with the agenda of
the structure: a two party system of forced choices.
While I do agree that the fascination with presidential politics in
particular comes at the expense of much more important elections such
as school boards, municipal, and state elections that dictate things
like what our schools teach or how the federal welfare money that does
exist gets distributed I am not sure that the argument is reverse
causal. By this I mean if a jerk wins the election or the Democratic
party is punished than people will wake up and notice the vast array
of political options i.e. school boards etc. that are more important
I think the direction of causality or its reversability is even more
tenuous when discussing party politics and what might be called meta-
party politics. First political parties are more often than not very
good at outflanking 3rd parties. From the Bull Moose party to the
Populist party it is very easy to pick and choose the right words and
promises to steal or co-opt the best 3rd party issues in order to
prevent a third party from becoming a positive threat that is a real
force for candidacy. This is part of the reason I believe third
parties while contributing some substantive issues more often have a
negative effect that is splitting votes. They cause a party to lose
rather than another party to win.
The second reason is what I would call Meta-Party politics. This is
closer to what Gramsci would call hegemony. That is the two parties
for all of their differences have a mutual incentive not to reform the
election process. This explains why campaign finance reform, census
reform, the electoral college and the two party system's funding bias
towards established parties. While punishing a party may cause the
party to adopt an issue or two or wiggle slightly to the left or the
right (but still solidly in the useless category by Krishna's
standards and most of the time mine) punishment of one part would
never create a bipartisan incentive or really any incentive to change
the rules of the game. In particular because the punished party is
punished even further if they do support reforms that benefit breaking
the two party hegemony. In this sense or the Gramscian sense there is
only one party i.e. the interest of continuing the system that
benefits democrats and republicans.
The system needing dissent, good voting leftist, to metabolize for
legitimacy is a very interesting and necessarily speculative question.
This is what Slavoj Zizek calls the obscene supplement of Liberal-
Democratic politics. That in some sense what keeps such polities from
being political at all is how mutual independent and therefore
tolerant liberal-democratic politics are of all political positions.
What Butler has called democratic control. It is an interesting
question. Can the U.S. war machine work without the dissent that makes
it appear different than the bald faced totalitarian war machines that
ultimately collapsed? I dont know but I think finding out the answer
to that may require venturing into the land of crisis provocation that
Krishna wishes to avoid. It is also not my reading of history that
many national war machines collapsed under the weight of illegitimacy.
Most spent their way into oblivion or were destroyed by rival war
machines. 'Real' democratic control does not minimize violence either.
If the 20th century U.S. and post-revolutionary France are any
indicator militaries are most destructive when more people are
included. So more inclusion, a fairer more open process may just
created a broader consensus rather than the desired progressive
result.
Lastly I did not mean to overgeneralize that Krishna's argument was
Trotskist. Instead it is to say that from our privileged position a
lot of things 'look' the same. Much like people all look the same from
a couple of hundred feet above. However slight differences, 'better
and worse police orders' often mean a great deal to those at the
bottom. I think I would rather fight an invading army than watch my
child starve to death because of a sanction regime I can fight. I
think I would rather organize and fight an unjust government whose
resolve for violent counter-revolution is less determined.
For that reason if there is to be a third party that would satisfy
Krishna and I think Dator's concern it is not a green party with a
broad progressive agenda it is a single issue third party that looks
something like McCain/Feingold where two strange bedfellows run on a
ticket of changing the rules of the American political system at a
time when disgust is at an all time high on both sides of the
political spectrum. However this would still require that this third
party actually win. As I dont see any reason why either party would
give up their monopoly simply to one election as it would disadvantage
them in every subsequent election. The building of such a party is
more likely to have success in house and senate elections or in
reinvigorating a constitutional amendment than it is in producing a
presidential victory.
However I would still rather vote for the lesser of two evils while
building that reform party. As I believe a little less horror is good
and I have full faith in the 'lesser evil' being plenty evil enough to
continue racking of the necessary distaste for the political process.
But I am open to suggestions because nothing has worked yet.
Krishna:
Firstly, if politics is at least in part about re-partitioning the
sensible, the speed and robustness with which all too many of us
justify the move to "we have to vote Democrat because the others are
worse" should give us pause. Does the fluency of that move suggest
something to worry about? Is there any effort there to reconceptualize
the obvious, the sensible, the commonsensical?
Second, although Jairus may not have intended it (or I am misreading
him), to equate the disastrous German communist party actions during
the Weimar interregnum with a Trotskyite line seems to me to be both
reductionist and unfair. Call me a nostalgist, but Lev Davidovich
stood (and still stands) for an internationalism that was worth
fighting for - and its a position that I choose to call 'postcolonial'
in today's lexicon.
Third, and following from the above, such a internationalist
standpoint would hold the US system far more accountable for its
actions than the glib move allows. Sometimes, we need a perspective
that is radically other to see what is blind to us because its hidden
in plain sight. A moment like that occurred for me when I read the
following quote from Ayman Al Zawahiri - the second-in-command to
Osama bin Ladin. Commenting on US actions in Iraq, where we killed
tens of thousands in order to depose a leader that they had not
elected (and whom we had supported over the years), Zawahiri notes:
"It also transpires that in playing this role, the western countries
were backed by their peoples, who were free in their decisions. It is
true that they may be largely influenced by the media decision and
distortion, but in the end they cast their votes in the elections to
choose the governments that they want, pay taxes to fund their policy,
and hold them accountable about how this money was spent. Regardless
of method by which these governments obtain the votes of the people,
voters in western countries ultimately cast their votes willingly."
In his analysis of Zawhiri's quote here, the author Faisal Devji (see
his "Landscapes of the Jihad" Cornell, 2005) makes a point worth
underlining and very much in consonance with what I am trying to get
across here. Devji notes that Zawahiri is here advocating "the
responsibilities of democracy in the most full-blooded way. It is
because the United States is a functioning democracy that its citizens
can be held responsible for the actions of their government, something
that might not apply to people living under dictatorships. Such
holding responsible of the US people to the implications of their
democracy puts the jihad in the curious position of taking this
democracy more seriously than Americans themselves."
It was no doubt a small consolation to the Iraqis in the 1990s that
the Americans had elected the "lesser evil" (Bill Clinton) - because
under his dispensation about half a million Iraqi infants were killed
due to the embargo and sanctions. Ultimately, I guess what frustrates
me is the utter provinciality of most discussions about American
electoral politics - as if the consequences of our choices are
confined to our nation. They are not - and its others who are able to
see things in the facility, fluency and glibness of our choices
between lesser and worse evils that we aren't able to.
If there is a way of interrupting the smooth flow of (a) the other guy
is worse, and (b) eventually we'll get this right and for now this is
the only choice anyway, that will amount to at least an effort at
repartitioning the sensible. I guess that is in some ways what I am
trying to do here..
Grove:
Response to Dator:
I think your proposal for electoral reform is a fine place to start
and I would sign on immediately. However if I can restate my critique
of Krishna vis-a-vis these recommendations it is that the desire for
and agenda of electoral reform is incredible difficult to generate
because of ideological and structural constraints and at some point
the participation in 'choiceless' elections may have contributed to
what I would call habituated practices of pragmatism (I don't like
ideology as a term as it under represents the role that inter-
subjective and bodily practices both below or outside the jurisdiction
of ideas plays in the determination of consistent collective outcomes
what Simondon called 'logics of individuation'. That is practices that
hold collectivities together often highly contradictory with
ideologies or the interest's of structure but consistent nonetheless.)
That being said and this the point I am trying to push, not voting
even extraordinarily low voter turn out is unlikely to undo that
damage. I think it is as likely that such actions increase the
nihilistic stupor that effects so many Americans. The U.S. have very
low levels of political participation both in terms of micropolitics
and party participation as well as voter registration and registered
voter turn out in comparison to other democracies. In fact I would
argue (without data here to support it) that election of Barak Obama
(the lesser of the two evils) lead to rising expectation for the
political system. Expectations that Obama failed to meet but also that
the system failed to meet. I think the increasing spread of the Wall
Street Occupations demonstrates that even if Obama was cynical about
hope and change its inspirational effects (what people on the campaign
called Hopium addiction or the Hope Hangover both common phrases on
the Obama alum listserves which rather than towing the party line were
filled with frustration and anger towards the administration).
I also strongly agree with Dator that the world as we know it is
coming to an end and the planet that will emerge from that apocalypse
could be unrecognizable even if it is teeming with life. The question
is will we (humans even broadly defined i.e. whether partially or
wholly silicon)? Spaceship earth is certainly going to crash and the
collective action problem necessary to alter that trajectory are well
beyond even the difficulty of getting everyone to the negotiating
table of something like Kyoto much less coordinating planetary solar
shields or altering global consumption or the maldistribution of
social justice. But that to me is a given.
I do not believe in God much less providence and I have to say
underlying both Dator and Krishna's desire/gamble to hold out for
something better is a metaphysical commitment to a just world. That is
the idea that the world is just not the normative commitment to
justice. To put it another way holding out for something better is
based on the presumption that there is a better to hold out for. I
hold a tragic metaphysics that believes the earth is and its 'is' is
neither good nor bad. Therefore there is no reason to believe that
there is a particular way things are supposed to work out. An asteroid
or a toxic event could wipe us all out or an encounter with aliens
(hostile or advanced) could unify the planet. I doubt Sagan's blue dot
planetary humanism seems unlikely to me. So the political rather than
metaphysical question is to what degree and at what scale are humans
navigators or even participants in their collective fate. I assess
this at fairly conservative levels both in terms of intentionality and
agency. So we participate but we are not so good at global or ever
national revolutions. Revolutions happen, thats a fact but they are
not centrally or even institutionally planned. (Therefore I am not a
big fan of Ranciere as the partitioning of the sensible while an
interesting description of aesthetics is rarely under the sole
dominion of humans I believe we are partitioned too. Ranciere's
account of this process is not materialist enough for me.)
Why go to metaphysics when answering Krishna. Well because if you
don't believe there is a particular way things are supposed to work
out and you think the political as expression of human behavior is
limited in its transformative capability than the you believe the
perfect ought never be the enemy of the good. In this case I would say
Krishna is not so theological as to be holding out for the perfect but
he and Dator seem to be holding out for at least 'the great.'
This is for me the ultimate ruse of marxism and free market capitalism
both aspirational faiths metaphysically before they become the are
operationalized as systems or worse yet analytics. This is why brought
up Trotsky's 'economism' which Gramsci actually compares to early 20th
century free market theorists (think Hayek). They both share an
economism which is to say that each presumes a natural order beneath
the false order of in the case of Trotsky capitalism and in the case
of Hayek statism and socialism. Both thinkers not surprisingly were
big fans of economic collapse because they believed that it would
expose the limitations of the false order and produces the necessary
conditions of the 'real' order. This is why Gramsci and Foucault break
with both thinkers as they doubt the economic conditions are
sufficient to explain change and in Foucault's case he is doubtful of
the metaphysics that there is a particular way the world is 'supposed
to turn out.
I think that his belief in a just world in either fantasy versions
pure market or no market has mobilized some of the most destructive
vanguard movements of the 20th and 21st century. This I should be
clear is not me accusing anyone of repeating the errors of the Weimar
republic. I will let Manfred H. defend that position. Rather I would
say that what history has demonstrated is that there is no necessary
outcome or response and that the world we live in is fragile. So while
I appreciate Krishna's desire to see U.S. hegemony reach its
conclusion there are many different ways to go out on the historical
stage and I would prefer a whimper to a bang.
P.S. Clinton was not my lesser of the two evils. He was the eviler of
the two evils. As I said in my second post sanctions were vastly more
cruel and destructive than either Gulf War 1 or Gulf War 2. Sorry if
this is riddled with typos I have to teach and did not want to wait to
send.
Sent from my iPad
Krishna:
First off, I think Jairus misunderstands and misrepresents my position
greatly below. I am neither one who holds onto some notion that the
world is just, or that there is some "particular way things are
supposed to work out." I too have a fundamentally tragic view of where
we are headed - as a species and as a planet. Where I differ is that
having accepted that as our likely fate, I think we should resist
injustice when we see it. It is out of that sense of commitment that I
find the quick resolution of complex ethical issues into "we have to
vote for the lesser of two evils" so unsatisfactory. My position on
these comes close to the sort of resigned fatalism + steadfast
commitment to resist injustice that characterized a lot of Edward
Said's politics. In a rough paraphrase it might be summarized as:
I'll fight for a Palestinian state because its wrong to rob a people
of their land and their existence. And once a Palestinian state is
established, I will be a vociferous critic of the multiple injustices
such a state will undoubtedly visit upon its citizens and residents".
In other words, there's nothing to do but relentlessly politicize from
the perspective of a secular wet-blanket - and do so from positions
that claim neither authenticity nor some superior vantage.
There's a second point I want to make but can't think my way to it
very clearly. Its roughly something like this: the position that
argues in favor of voting for the lesser of the two evils is an
inverse twist of the logic that argues that the "best is the enemy of
the good". If the latter is an accurate characterization of the
politics of brinksmanship by the German communists who contributed to
the destruction of the Weimar republic, the very swift and uncritical
acceptance of the bad over the potentially catastrophic sanitizes and
normalizes the bad even as it approximates and then goes beyond what
had been thought of catastrophic.
Finally, I have never argued in favor of "the best being the enemy of
the good" - or, to put it differently, resisted the idea of pragmatic
compromise in favor of a puritanical adherence to transcendent
principle. I have never been sure that my understanding of anything is
that close to perfect as to allow me the luxury of the latter
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