Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Monday, October 04, 2004
ABB means never having to say you're sorry...
Mickey
Do we get an apology from you when an elected Bush invades Iran?
We do not know what a Kerry Presidency will bring - but we do know what four years of un-restrained Bush Presidncy will bring.
Posted by Zed Ed on from 10/04 at 09:31 AMTheoretically, you are right. Practically, anyone not clouded by hatred and fear for Bush knows what Kerry will do. He’ll do what the others did.
As for my apology, I’m not voting for Bush. However, I do often feel the need to apolgize simply for being a middle class white American male.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from 10/04 at 10:34 AMThe ABB advocacy reminds me of gedanken experiments. The choices are deliberately narrowed and the TINA principle is invoked. I think the ABBers are ripping themselves off and getting sold a lot of hooey.
Working to get the lesser evil elected only guarantees a continuity of bad things. It’s a certainty that the failures of the neoliberal/security state policies will be addressed by enacting more bad legislation.
Clinton offered a continuation of the worst Reagan/Bush policies, with truly awful additions, and Bush the Lesser continues the tradition. There’s no way Kerry will appoint anyone who rejects the neoliberal consensus and the NLG and ACLU are going to be just as busy fighting his security state proposals.
Outside of working to get a maverick elected, presidential politics are a waste of time. What’s worse, they steal money and energy from better efforts. The acrimony every four years poisons discussion space and puts a strain on already shaky alliances.
Posted by harry on from upstate 10/04 at 03:10 PMMaybe we should start a movement on the side and create our our own party in every city and throw the other two parties in the shitcan where they belong. We could just decide ex-officio to no longer recognize our government as having any authority. I have done this in my life, I no longer accept this government or its excremental policies as having anything to do with me, which at the heart of the matter, is quite literaly true, they represent none of us, and I, personally, am embarrassed and ashamed for all of us to have to be represented by such a bunch of bumbling,shrieking baboons, nattering nabobs of noxiousness-Spiro Lives. Okay, I feel better now
Posted by Burnie Metzen on from Bend, Oregon 10/08 at 12:55 PMMickey,
You seem like a good guy and I would guess that we probably share a lot of ideas in common. But it is really frustrating to read your writings sometimes. So please take what I say with all due respect and in the spirit of honest and democratic discussion.It is true that we have two business parties, and it stinks. But its hard to imagine that a smart guy like you cannot see that this administration is beginning to look like something completely unique in American politics.
I don’t understand why “activists” on the left don’t understand that you can’t get a third party to work in a two party winner take all system, in a country that has been so heavily programmed and propagandized that more than half of the voting population happily votes against its own best economic interests. As Chomsky would say, it is an amazing achievement in propaganda.
Let’s say Nader (or any of the other third party candidates) wins. Who does he caucus with? How does he get legislation passed? He doesn’t. He has no party apparatus to help him do the political work. And to believe that he could get any assistance from Democrats when he walks around calling for the destruction of the Democratic party is laughable.
What really frustrates me about the Naderites is that they don’t seem to understand the realities of the political system that they live in. So instead of actually going out and doing something to subvert one of the existing parties that already has a power infrastructure, they complain when Democrats, many of whom are under no illusions about the failures of our two party system and the shortcomings of John Kerry, get together to achieve just one goal--slow the advance of the empire machine under control of some of the most ruthless, criminal, destructive and psychologically warped individuals that have ever run the American government and who’s ultimate goal it is to destroy not just liberalism but liberals themselves should they resist.
Yes Mickey, the fascists are actually at the door. But they can’t be lumped into facile comparisons of Hitler and Nazi Germany as is so often done. They have their own uniquely American form and making fun of people who don’t have the knowledge to categorize and explain why they sense that this isn’t their father’s Republican party doesn’t make the danger any less real.
I was briefly involved in Presidential politics and I have to say that while we were working until 2am or 4am trying to get servers up and running or to get flyers made or any of the thousands of little things that need to be done just to try to convince people that you were a serious contender, I ran into a lot of people who were there because they wanted to be there to make a difference in person. No more talking about it, but working toward something. On my way home, I would run into preachy student socialists who came out for a couple of hours to hand out literature. And every night that I walked home from work, I wondered why none of them were ever in the office with me and my friends doing battle where the actual power is to change the system.
Posted by Allen on from Georgia 10/09 at 04:42 PMThanks for the long comment, but I must clarify:
I am not a “Naderite.”
More importantly, I do not agree that the Bush administration is “something completely unique in American politics.” Review Clinton’s record and tell me where the outrage and Hitler mustaches were during his 8 years.
It’s okay for us to disagree but no one and I mean no one has made the case that Bush is unique. Saying it over and over won’t make it true.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from 10/09 at 04:48 PMMickey,
Let me clarify. With all due respect, I didn’t call you a Naderite, that said you do have a lot of very pro-Nader information on your site and a lot of anti-Democrat attitude in your posts. And I agree with some of it in the abstract. It would be nice to see a party in the country represent labor instead of capital.Secondly, I didn’t say that the Bush administration is unique. I said that they were beginning to look unique, meaning that we are looking at an evolution of this administration and the party that it represents. And, for the record, I want to state unequivocally that the comparisons to Hitler are completely off base.
Now I apologize if I have implied or insinuated that these people constitute a fully formed fascist movement. They don’t. But the seeds are clearly there. And throwing around the “F” word and making comparisons to Hitler is pointless because it dilutes the accusation. Everytime some bad guy turns up at the head of a government somewhere Hitler gets thrown around like some sort of universal boogeyman.
As far as no one making the case, if you haven’t checked out David Niewert’s blog Orcinus, you should. He appears to have done the most extensive analysis on this topic on the Internet so far. He has authored a fantastic piece called Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An Exigesis which does a great job of analyzing the “Conservative Movement” in this country as a network of extremist groups and think tanks that are pulling the Republican party even further to the right. And if you can find anything that remotely parallels the Conservative Movement with Bill Clinton I would love to see it.
But I don’t think that you can tell me that the Clintons came with connections to Christian Reconstructionists who want to create a theocratic government or White supremacist and militia groups. You can’t tell me that any part of the Clinton/Democrat/Liberal political network preached revisionist history to encourage the internment of ethnic groups (like Michele Malkin is), or eliminationism in an attempt to silence the opposition party (Ann Coulter) or that it had people influencing the policy apparatus (Michael Ledeen) who talk about the benefits of right-wing revolutionary fascists movements. And you can’t tell me that all of these ideas aren’t becoming part of the Republican mainstream. To try to equate the two parties outside of the fact that Clinton and the Democratic party drifted to the right on business issues to regain power,...I just don’t see how you can do it.
For example, there is a bill in Arizona right now called Proposition 200 which is an anti-immigration bill being pushed by the Republican party that requires government workers to turn in immigrants who try to get government services without certain types of id. Failure to turn anyone in who doesn’t have the proper id results in imprisonment for the government employee. It’s likely to pass. Turns out that the front group for the proposition, a “mainstream” organization called Protect Arizona Now is a beard for the White Citizens Council,...a white supremacist group.
Given the examples that I’ve mentioned, could you clarify how you see the Democratic and Republican parties as being the so identical that a vote for Kerry is no different than a vote for Bush?
Posted by Allen on from Georgia 10/09 at 06:08 PMClinton’s record was despicable...without even connecting with the Christian right. Here’s a taste:
During 1993 and 1994, when Clinton had the “advantage” of a Democratically-controlled Congress, Bypass Bill abandoned his pledge to consider offering asylum to Haitian refugees, he reneged on his promise to “take a firm stand” against the armed forces’ ban on gays and lesbians, and he backed away from his most high-profile campaign issue: health care.
While “enjoying” a Democratic House and Senate, Clinton signed NAFTA, increased the Pentagon budget by $25 billion, fired Jocelyn Elders, dumped Lani Guinier, bombed Iraq and the Balkans, renewed the murderous sanctions on Iraq, and passed a crime bill that gave us more cops, more prisons, and 58 more offenses punishable by death.
After presiding over the much-hyped Republican “revolution” in 1994, Slick Willie continued to march in lockstep with his corporate owners. The next two years of foreign policy provided us with more bombs and more sanctions over Iraq; covert support for war criminals in Haiti; a tightening of sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and Libya; and the overt support of a corrupt Boris Yelstin.
Domestically, Clinton continued his assault on the working class by delivering a telecommunications bill that further narrowed the already laughable parameters of public debate.
As a final slap in the face of the “liberal” wing of his party, Clinton signed the welfare repeal bill.
Also during the Clinton/Gore years, the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act was signed into law (April 24, 1996). This USA PATRIOT Act prequel contained provisions that Clinton himself admitted “makes a number of ill-advised changes in our immigration laws, having nothing to do with fighting terrorism.” This unconstitutional salvo severely restricted habeas corpus and expanded the number of federal capital crimes...and the Patriot Act is mostly an extension its legal foundations.
(BTW, John Kerry voted for the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and wrote parts of the PATRIOT Act.)
What about the environment...allegedly Al Gore’s domain? In 1996, David Brower, former president of the Sierra Club, penned a Los Angeles Times op-ed entitled, “Why I Won’t Vote for Clinton.”
In this piece, Brower offered a litany of Clinton-sponsored moves, which utterly smashed the public image of Bill or Al Gore as “pro-environment.” Some of these crimes include:
The passage of the salvage logging rider, the signing of the Panama Declaration, the continuation of the use of methyl bromide, the weakening of the Endangered Species Act, the lowering of grazing fees on land, subsidizing Florida’s sugar industry, weakening the Safe Drinking Water Act, reversing the ban on the production and importation of PCBs, and allowing the export of Alaskan oil.
(FYI: The ANNUAL logging cut under Clinton was three to four times the TOTAL cut under Bush for his first three years)
These, and other proud Clinton/Gore accomplishments, led Brower to declare that the dynamic Democratic duo had “done more harm to the environment in three years than Presidents Bush and Reagan did in 12 years.”
Posted by Mickey Z. on from 10/09 at 06:19 PMMickey,
I could go to the Internet and cherry pick anyone’s political record and call it a disaster. Politics is politics and there are structural constraints on many elected offices (particularly that of the President) that prevent them from doing or force them to do things that they might not do as people. And a political system that has kareened so far out of balance like ours with both parties drifting to the right will present even more constraints.I could talk about the stuff that I hated about Bill Clinton to some length as well, he and the conservative leaning DLC are a part of the reason that we’re in the mess that we’re in today. That and the very effective gravitational pull of the Republicans on the system. But I wouldn’t suggest that going back on your word to Hatian refugees or having a mixed record on the environment
(at least Clinton appointed real environmentalists to head the EPA and the Department of Interior instead of the corporatists who write the legislation they want, and protected 3 million acres of land under the Antiquities Act of 1906 and ordered one-third of national forest land off-limits to road building, logging, and oil and gas exploration and cleaned up 515 SuperFund sites)
Or rolling over on a couple of political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the President is even remotely the same as what is going on in the Republican party right now. The past may be prologue to the present, but I just don’t get why the anti-Democrats can’t see that the Republican party is in the process of subverting the constitution and that we don’t have time to elect our non-corporate controlled government that’s going to do everything that we want and make us perfectly happy before the Repubs accomplish their goal and shut us all out of the game. Just last night Bush said that he would appoint STRICT CONSTRUCTIONISTS to the Supreme Court meaning that we would lose our right to privacy.
You haven’t addressed at all any of my points about how you intend to fix the busted two party system when one party has been so effective at dragging the other to the right and propagandizing the public to make it forget that it was previously progressive.
Who is Nader or any other candidate going to create legislation with when they don’t have anyone in congress to work with? Why does it make more sense to create a brand new party with almost no practical support or legislative capability in a winner take all system and then criticize the “anybody but Bush” voters who, although they may not be able to articulate it exactly, have a very clear sense that this administration is a danger to their civil liberties and the values that they believe in.
My answer to the problem: Stop demonizing the Democratic party and infiltrate it. And use its existing power infrastructure to make change instead of going on the fool’s errand of thinking that the two party system is going to legislate itself out of existence. Because they aren’t going to do that. And as long as the vote on the left is split, Republicans will dismantle everything and replace it with a nightmare that will ensure our children live in an even more screwed up country.
Mickey, I’m not trying to pick an endless fight with you. I’m just seriously and honestly trying to understand what you would have us do in the face of an administration that clearly has an agenda to roll back every gain, no matter how small, that the Democratic party has made in the past forty or fifty years. Are you saying that we shouldn’t vote? Should we not care? Should we vote for Nader and cross our fingers when Bush puts 3 or 4 judges on the supreme court and eliminate any hope whatsoever of overturning corporate personhood for generations? Should women lose the right to make their own reproductive choices over a protest vote?
I’m really wanting to understand the theory behind how we’re supposed to fight back.
Posted by Allen on from Georgia 10/09 at 08:21 PMI tried to e-mail you and ended up losing my longer reply. But, in the interest of a closing statement, here is some of what I sent you:
It’s hardly “cherry picking” when my evidence is several paragraphs long. You offer a few things you like about Clinton. That’s cherry picking.
Clinton signed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act upon which the USA PATRIOT Act is based. Kerry wrote parts of the PATRIOT Act. Does that make me “anti-Democrat” to point that out?
Why do I have to be the one to figure out how to “fix” the system? Right now,
what’s needed is a critique of the ABB theology. Also, when exactly was
the Democratic Party progressive on a presidential level?Electing Nader is not really the point of my
writing. I write to encourage readers to see past the lies and spin. To me,
that is the first step.Review the record. Both parties are nightmares. I’m not demonizing...I’m
observing.Kerry is not opopsed to appointing anti-abortion judges and he has voted
for almost all of Bush’s (and Clinton’s) destructive policies. Why is that
so hard to see? He will be Clinton without the charisma.I don’t pretend to have THE theory but I’m 1000% sure that it doesn’t
have anything to do with trusting corporate-owned politicians.Posted by Mickey Z. on from 10/10 at 07:55 AMWe have the Patriot Act potentially being expanded, Supreme Court justices ready to retire, a terrible international reputation and tax cuts running our federal deficit to astronomical levels. This is why critique without postulating a plan or plans of action is not helpful to me. I can’t tell you how many times in how many different jobs I’ve heard people describe a problem that needs fixing without a potential solution, and how many times the entire concern has been dismissed until they come up with a plan of action.
You have a blog and an audience. Anyone can complain about the problems of the two party, corporate-driven system (as we’ve seen in large numbers of articles, books and interviews)—why not show how much you care about the problem by offering some solutions? Most of those who will take the time to read your blog already understand that the system has issues. We could then discuss the merits of your critiques AND solutions, instead of sitting around, agreeing how frustrated we are with the current status quo. Or how about running for local office? Or also using your blog to help find and show us local and state candidates with progressive goals and how we can support them?
I read about and agree that there are many huge problems with the two-party, corporate-driven system in America. I agree that it’s terrible that a winner-takes-all setup forces people to choose between only two points of view. But now I say: so what? So what, Mickey?
Posted by Cheryl R. on from 10/10 at 02:56 PMWell since you seem to want to close the discussion, I’ll close as well.
It is cherry picking to go through the record of a President who served for eight years and pull out a handful of his failures and compromises, completely ignore all of his accomplishments then call it a despicable record. I don’t care if you do it in a few paragraphs or a book.
Mickey, the reason that you have a responsibility to figure out how to “fix” the problem is because you’re unhappy with it. You write these books and maintain this blog and you seem to have a following of some sort, which means that you have people’s attention and they listen to what you say. And to only engage them in some clever postmodern dissection of the government without actively engaging them in possible solutions is pointless right now. We don’t need any more critiques of the system. We’ve got plenty and they don’t vary that much. And we’re mostly smart enough to see that our political system is broken, particularly the people you’re being so critical of.
The fact of the matter is, without getting too personal, that activists seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how political systems work that borders on the naive.
In a nutshell, no one is going to represent ALL of your interests. The very essense of politics is the struggle between competing interests, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. And sometimes you have to make really crappy compromises to get something better for the greatest segment of your constituancy. The only way that your interests will be met all the time is if you run for office yourself and you are your only constituancy.
What you have to choose from in any political system is the person who can BEST represent and implement your interests. The ABB people intuitively understand that. And they understand that the only way to make progress toward meeting more of those interests is to extend the time in power of those people so that they can build on previous successes.
Bill Clinton was the first Democrat to have control of the executive in 12 years. And even with his limited political power (remember how the system killed health care?) he was able to dramatically improve the lives of most Americans. And had Al Gore won, he would have had even more opportunities to build on Clinton’s successes and to undo some of his failures. But now the Republicans have set us back decades. People have lost their jobs, their insurance, the deficit threatens to destroy the middle class,...I could go on.
So, you can slam Democrats all day long but you can’t prove the assertion that the Democratic and Republican parties are identical.
And no matter what John Kerry’s shortcomings or future failures, no one will owe you or anyone else an apology, because they made a decision between the only two viable Presidential candidates on the ballot, that John Kerry could represent them better than George Bush.
Regards.
Posted by Allen on from Georgia 10/10 at 03:05 PMLet me also make a quick point or two about the Clinton-Bush-Kerry issue. (Sorry, forgot when I last posted that I wanted to say this.) You can see a major difference in the two parties by the accomplishments they laud. When Clinton ran for reelection, he emphasized: creating almost 6 million new jobs in two years, reducing the deficit, waiting periods on handguns, FMLA, the Direct Student Loan Program, AmeriCorps and nuclear cleanup in the former Soviet Union. George W. Bush is running on: an underfunded No Child Left Behind Act, preemptive war in Iraq, electing strict constructionist judges, and passing a discriminatory amendment to the Constitution to ban gay marriage. There are many more differences between the two that I could enumerate, but the point is that you can see a difference just by looking at what makes each party proud.
This isn’t to say we shouldn’t have third and fourth and fifth parties. It’s to say that calling Bush and Kerry alike is, in my opinion, like calling Jekyll and Hyde the same just because they share the same body. So let’s start at our local and state levels getting green party and independent candidates into office, so that the nuances between each of the positions can be something we value and discuss. Let’s get men like Ralph Nader a progressive base in offices across the nation so that when they run, they run with powerful support. And let’s discuss how we can help our politicians to compromise with each other in our best interest by playing a vocal role in politics through letters, marches, grassroots coalitions and running our own candidates for office.
Posted by Cheryl R. on from 10/10 at 03:13 PMMany people imply that unless a critic expounds a specific strategy for change, the critique is worthless or too negative. The problem with this understandable retort is that it misses the crucial role critical analysis plays in a society where problems are so cleverly disguised. When discussing the future, the first step is often an identification and demystification of the past and present. In order to hit prvoke change, we must first all agree that we got it wrong the first time.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from 10/10 at 04:15 PM
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