By Dennis Loo
Many people regard Obama’s
upcoming nomination for president as a sign that change is underway
and that the nightmare of Bush and Cheney will be over beginning in
late January 2009. New York Times columnist Frank Rich, for example,
sees Obama’s emergence as a changing of the guard. Others have cited Obama’s
campaign as indicative of millennials beginning to take the political
stage. Millions are pleased that finally an African-American is going
to be nominated by one of the two major parties and see this as in and
of itself a step forward.
For the well-meaning people who are feeling
this way, I have this question: How can the same Democratic Party, and
the same specific individuals, who have co-operated in, permitted
and/or legalized the Bush regime’s atrocities – including torture
and war crimes – now tell us that the candidate that they
endorse is the solution to the horrid things that this system
and these individuals have themselves facilitated and colluded in?
This is like the offspring of the Alien
mother in the movie Alien coming out not hellishly grotesque
looking and drenched in saliva but instead a fuzzy Beagle puppy.
This is like George W. Bush delivering
a poetic and surpassingly beautiful two-hour speech extemporaneously.
This is like a worm giving birth to a
full-grown whale.
* * *
If Obama really was a solution, why has
a White House in open defiance of the law been allowed to go on for
eight years unsupervised, unrestricted and unsanctioned?
If Obama really was a solution, then
why have been told to wait while more than a million Iraqis and tens
of thousands of Americans are tragically dead (thousands of Americans
killed in action plus eighteen
per day committing suicide)
in a war based on lies, with no penalty for the perpetrators of these
war crimes whatsoever?
If Obama or McCain really were a solution,
then why have they personally stood by while innocent people have been tortured and
habeas corpus was abrogated? Since when has morality and justice depended
upon whether you have the votes to stop a horrid bill? That’s what
a filibuster is for. Had either Obama or McCain done anything to stop
any of the White House’s crimes for the last eight years, would there
be a need for the change that Obama and McCain say we should
vote for them to carry out?
If Obama really were a solution, then
why should we expect him to have an awakening upon taking office if
he’s been slumbering, morally and legally, all of these years?
If Obama really were a solution, and
did have such an awakening in the White House, why would the same system
and same individuals who cooperated all these years with the monsters
running our country let Obama do an about-face in the White House?
If elections really were a solution,
then why hasn’t the Democratic majority in Congress, ended the war,
the torture, and the massive, warrantless surveillance over all of us
and impeached the sorry excuses for human beings in the White House?
Pelosi and Reid claim that they haven’t had the votes to stop the
war. Nancy and Harry: that’s what your leadership posts are for. You
don’t need the votes. All you have to do is block the
funding bills from coming
out of committee. If you don’t like the telecommunications amnesty
bill or the spy-on-all-Americans bills, then all you have to do is keep
the bills from coming up for a vote. You can kill these bills in
the same way you”ve been killing the impeachment resolutions against Cheney and Bush. But then, Nancy and
Harry already know this.
If elections really were a solution to
these towering, world-historic crimes, how can it be so simple
to fix these horrors as pushing a button and electing a new president
and vice-president?
Why aren’t real collective efforts
and civil resistance by the American people needed in a time when both major parties and the mass
media have betrayed the people,
when lie after lie after lie pass without comment, the liars caught
red-handed are excused, when unjust wars and unspeakable practices are
routine, when reason and science themselves are under attack, and when
the country is in more danger than the conditions that sparked the American
revolution and when the fate of the planet hangs in the balance?
* * *
Many people think that because Obama
is black that his nomination by one of the two major political parties
means that something extraordinary has happened.
It is extraordinary that in a
country with a long history of white supremacy that finally there will be a presidential nominee
who is black.
But what’s most extraordinary here
isn’t his coming nomination.
What’s most extraordinary are the circumstances
giving rise to his nomination.
The Rupture
The Bush regime has been spearheading
an extraordinary rupture from the norm, de jure and de facto,
much of it in the shadows, but increasingly in the open, and the majority
of people of this country are deeply disturbed by it.
This is in spite of the fact that only
a fraction of the people are aware of the magnitude of this rupture because the mass media and the Democratic Party
have been actively minimizing and/or concealing this.
In addition, all too many Americans are
“opting out” of taking responsibility for the barbaric acts being
committed in our names because they themselves are anesthetized by their
material comforts.
The rupture’s dimensions, nonetheless,
are so far-reaching that it is impossible for this country’s leadership
class to conceal entirely the jagged rips and tears going on.
The distress among the people has not
been openly expressed enough – far from it – but the dismay, frustration
and anger, even based on very partial and incomplete knowledge of what’s
going on, are evident just beneath the surface.
It has not only been apparent in the
polls that show this presidency to be the most unpopular since polling
began; it is also evident around the water cooler, on the neighborhood
stoop, at the coffee shop, in the classroom and baseball park, everywhere
you go, in people expressing worry, concern, desperation, grief, and
among tens of millions, fury.
You especially hear it if you say something
– or display something – that opens up the conversation to them and
that shows people that you feel strongly about it.
Then it comes pouring out from folks.
They say: I feel the same way! I can’t
believe they”re still in office. I can’t believe they”ve been
getting away with it all! What’s wrong with America? What’s wrong
with all of us? What can I do?
Some say: I wish I could do something
that would really matter.
Some say: I did something. I marched.
I wrote letters. I voted. But it’s still all going on.
Others, and someTimes the same people
that said the preceding, also say: I can’t do anything. It’s too
big. Why aren’t other people doing something?
And some say, indeed, millions say: Maybe
a new president will change things. Bush and Cheney will be gone soon.
Hopefully, things will change.
* * *
We don’t need hope based on wishful thinking.
We need hope based on cold, hard facts
and cold, clear-eyed realism.
We need hope based on an understanding
of how this system actually works and how political power is actually
exercised.
People have to get over naïve ways of seeing the world.
Just because he’s black, he’s going
to change things?
Just because he’s smart and Bush is
stupid? Just because he’s hipper than Dick Cheney and flatfooted George
Bush? Just because he can write books and Bush needs a coloring book
entitled The Presidency for Dummies?
Is this – true though these things
are – what ultimately, decisively, matters?
If you think so, think again, because
so much is at stake.
The whole world is at stake.
It’s at stake now and over the next
several months, before the November 2008 election.
* * *
We”re talking here about who’s going
to lead the sole remaining imperialist superpower. We”re talking about
the head of state of the most powerful country in a world in which the
richest 451 individuals have more wealth than the bottom half
– more than 3 billion people – of the world’s population combined.
We”re talking about the president of an empire that spans the globe
and that has over 700 military bases abroad. We”re talking about the
commander and chief of a country that spends more on its military than
all of the other countries in the world combined. We”re talking about
an immense bureaucracy that rests upon and exists to protect and expand
that empire. We”re talking about a campaign for president that has
lasted over fifteen months to date and that has required a quarter million
dollars per day per candidate to be sustained.
Thinking Outside the Ballot Box
Some people will allow what I have said
in the preceding but then say: so you”re saying we should elect McCain?
People have to get outside the suffocating confines of electoral politics and see that real political power isn’t exercised
based on it and public policy isn’t made by their votes.
In 1964 the Democratic candidate, Lyndon
Johnson, ran against the Republican nominee, Barry Goldwater. Johnson
defeated Goldwater in a landslide, propelled in particular by the widespread
belief that the GOP candidate was a warmonger and that the Democratic
candidate would keep us out of war. That time, a mushroom cloud threat was also invoked, against the GOP
candidate.
What did LBJ, the peace candidate, then
proceed to do? Escalate inexorably the war in Vietnam, leading to the
deaths of some 2,000,000 Indochinese and over 50,000 Americans. He did
this even though, according to historians, he didn’t even like the
idea or believe that it would ultimately work. But he was hemmed in
by the institutional forces around him and by what the military told
him.
Why would today’s “peace candidate”
Obama be any different? Because he’s black? Because he’s smart?
Many people want to believe Obama when
he says that he’s against the Iraq war. They want to believe that
voting for him will restore sanity in Washington. But people need to
pay closer attention to what Obama is actually saying and to what he has done
as a Senator.
Some people hope that in spite of words
of Obama’s that worry them, he’s really a stealth candidate.
Obama’s a stealth candidate all right,
except that he’s a stealth candidate for a wing of this country’s
leadership class. His political views are carefully crafted, canny,
and consistent. Like John Kerry, Obama’s differences with Bush and
Cheney are over execution, not goals.
Obama claims, as did Kerry, that he can
do a better job than the current White House of accomplishing the same
ends and that what is wrong with Bush and Cheney isn’t that they
have been waging wars (of conquest and domination) but that they”ve
been carrying them out poorly. “I’m not opposed to all wars,”
Obama said
in October 2002 about the Iraq war, “What
I am opposed to is a dumb war.”
Obama took the same line on the Military
Commissions Act. He should have characterized the very idea of legalizing
torture as monstrous and the elimination of habeas corpus – a right
that dates from the Magna Carta, almost 900 hundred years ago – as unthinkable
and he should have blocked its passage by filibuster, a step that the
New York Times called for: “If there was ever a moment for a filibuster,
this was it.” Instead, Obama merely voted against it, allowing it
to pass, and objected to the MCA in his remarks as “sloppy.”
On July 27, 2004, while running for the
Senate, Obama said about Iraq: “There’s not that much
difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage.
The difference, in my mind, is who’s in a position to execute.”
The Chicago Tribune went on to say that Obama, “now believes
US forces must remain to stabilize the war-ravaged nation, a policy
not dissimilar to the current approach of the Bush administration.”
While Obama has since this promised to
draw down troops from Iraq, as one of Obama’s former policy
advisers, Samantha Power, said in April 2008, “Obama would weigh security
conditions in Iraq in implementing a withdrawal. She told a BBC interviewer
Obama “will of course not rely upon some plan that he’s crafted as
a presidential candidate or U.S. senator,” and he would take into
account the advice of generals on the ground.””
Not “rely on some plan
he’s crafted as a presidential candidate.”
As the New York Times reported on May 16, 2008: “Mr.
Obama has likened his foreign policy approach to that of the so-called
pragmatists in the administration of the first President George Bush”
“I have enormous sympathy for the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush,”
he said. “I don’t have a lot of complaints about their handling
of Desert Storm.””
Obama openly admires Ronald Reagan for bringing us together:
“Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory
of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill
Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path ” I think
they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government
had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in
terms of how it was operating”. Ronald Reagan was a very successful
president, even though I did not agree with him on many issues, partly
because at the end of his presidency, people, I think, said, “You
know what? We can regain our greatness. Individual responsibility and
personal responsibility are important.” And they transformed the culture
and not simply promoted one or two particular issues.”
The “excesses of the 1960s and 1970s”
included the civil rights movement, without which a black man, such
as Barack Obama, wouldn’t have had a chance to run for the US Senate
and now have a chance to become the President. It included the women’s
movement, without which Hillary Clinton wouldn’t have had a chance
at the presidency. It included the anti-war movement, without which
– and the other “excesses of the 1960s and 1970s” – this author
would likely not have been able to imagine the idea that there is an
alternative to this hellish nightmare and type these words.
Obama wants to restore “American power
and influence” by which he means pursuing the Empire’s interests,
including waging unjust and illegal wars on other countries. As a very
sharp and recent indication of this, right after securing the nomination
he spoke to AIPAC and dramatically adopted the entirety of the fraudulent rationale being offered by
the Bush gang for a war on Iran, telling them, in off-the-text remarks: “I will do everything in my power to prevent
Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything in my power. Everything.”
Obama opposes impeachment. On June 28, 2007 he said: “I think you reserve impeachment
for grave, grave breaches, and intentional breaches of the President’s
authority.”
When Obama was asked about holding the
Bush gang responsible for torture – certainly a “grave, grave breach”
if there ever was one – on the very day that Bush finally admitted that he had approved waterboarding – i.e.,
torture – of a detainee, Obama said
this:
“[O]ne of the things we’ve got to figure
out in our political culture generally is distinguishing between really
dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity.
You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings
and I’ve said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue
because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved
for exceptional circumstances.”
Thus, according to Obama, what’s wrong
with torture isn’t that it’s barbaric and against the law, and on
top of which, as any intelligence officer and anyone who has survived
torture will tell you, it doesn’t work in getting you good
information. What’s wrong with torture, according to the man who wants
to be our president, is that it’s “dumb.”
As I wrote in my blog:
“What country has Obama been living in? What presidential actions
has he been following? What is more grave a breach of authority than
torturing people and making this policy? Launching an immoral, illegal,
unjust war based on lies? Refusing Congressional subpoenas, issuing
hundreds of signing statements that negate Congressional acts, spying
on hundreds of millions of Americans without warrant and without cause?
Savaging FEMA, undermining New Orleans’ levee system by slashing funds
for repairs, allowing private interests to destroy necessary marshlands
that are natural protectors against storms, allowing a fabled and storied
city to be ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and not coming to people’s aid
in a timely fashion, then lying about what you did and knew? Military
threats based on lies against Iran? Censoring science, breaching the
Church/State divide? What more do you need?”
Yesterday’s GOP
vs. Today’s GOP
The choice the two major parties are
offering us is between the proto-fascist GOP candidate or the GOP-lite,
late 1980s, early 1990s, GOP president. The choice on the ballot says
“Democrat” v. “Republican.” But the choice is between present-day
GOP v. latter-day GOP. This is what this system, left to itself, is
giving us.
That’s all this system, left to itself,
is capable of giving us.
You can either go back to the old, old
model – McCain, who is old in more than one way – or you can have
the slightly less old model, in brand new packaging.
The whole question of Obama or McCain,
Ron Paul or Obama/McCain or even Nader or Obama, misses the main point.
All too many people are wrapped up debating
whether there are enough lifeboats on the Titanic while the Titanic
hurtles towards an immense iceberg visible to the naked eye. One candidate/captain
is offering us a few more lifeboats. That’s the difference. Both candidates
are, moreover, telling us that that iceberg is Iran and the ship is
strong enough to slice into that iceberg, so we”re headed straight
for it.
The point isn’t who gets elected. What
happens in the next four to eight years isn’t going to be principally determined by who is in the White House.
If there is anything else to come from
the horrors that have come to characterize Washington, a mass movement
among the people that is independent of the plans of both major parties
and that drastically alters the overall political atmosphere must arise.
If the social and political atmosphere
is changed, then who is in the White House actually doesn’t matter
very much. It would, in fact, be better to have a mass movement in the
society and in the streets and a Republican in the White House than
a Democrat in the White House and no mass movement. I’m not advocating
that McCain be elected. I’m pointing out that what really matters
here is whether or not there’s a mass movement of the people, independent
of electoral campaigns and electoral politics.
Some people say, well, then, the situation’s
hopeless because there aren’t going to be millions doing that.
Well, why not?
IF a black man can get the Democratic
Party nomination for president because he’s skillful at parlaying
the thirst of tens of millions for a “change” from that brought
to us by the government,
IF there is enough of a groundswell of
desire for something so different that the powers-that-be had
to put forward and actively and intensively promote a black man this
time for the first time in history in
order to divert people’s attention from the fact that Bush and
Cheney are still in office and their policies are still being
carried out and getting more extreme by the day,
IF they had to start the presidential
race much earlier than ever in order to distract people
from that fact,
IF there is that much dissatisfaction
that even in the Party of the Plutocrats that the “maverick” GOP
candidate got the nomination,
IF, for the first time in history, not
only a black man but a woman stood a chance of becoming a major party
presidential candidate because “change” is so much the desire for
a majority of Americans,
IF this government is on the verge of
yet another invasion of another country – Iran – and the possibility
of a convulsive, possibly apocalyptic, storm that rebounds from the Middle East to
the U.S. to Pakistan and beyond is staring us pointblank in the face,
THEN why can’t something else emerge
from this than a recycling of the same old monstrousness?
If tens upon tens of millions of people
are going to vote and millions are contributing money and time and energy
to back their favored candidate, in other words, crossing their fingers,
hoping that this will make a difference, that their votes will be counted
this time and not be stolen like the last two presidential elections,
then why can’t three or four million do something that will make a
difference?
Why can’t 1%
of the American people, three million, do something that actually means something?
In the 1960s, as Henry Kissinger, who
served under Nixon, said in his memoirs, SDS (Students for a Democratic
Society) exercised influence far exceeding its actual (and relatively
small) numbers because there was a credibility gap: most of America
didn’t believe what the government was saying. LBJ would say something
in a national address and most people would say: he’s lying. Nixon
would say something in a national address and most people would say:
he’s lying.
It’s deeply immoral for the Democratic
Party and the mass media to countenance torture and “pre-emptive”
wars based on fraudulent premises. Obama and Pelosi and McCain are fully
aware of this. They want us to follow their lead and get us to act as
if this isn’t the present reality – that we should ignore their
collusion in crimes against humanity and support them as fellow colluders.
That is what these elections are really
about: herding people into supporting crimes against humanity and declaring
that it’s the people’s will.
Is that what you want? Is that the kind of person
you are?
Is this the legacy we want for our children and future generations –
that we stood by and let tyrants and monsters ravage the planet?
Even if you now think that Obama should
be “given some slack” for what he’s saying, do you think it is
proper to put your faith in one person and faith in the same party that
has betrayed us all? Even if you plan to vote for him, do you think
that simply voting discharges your responsibility to protest, everyday
from now until it is no longer necessary, the moral outrages being committed
by our government?
The Moral High Ground
Why can’t a relatively small group
of people take the moral high ground and by so doing, spark the actions
of much larger numbers of people, beginning at this point, in relatively
small numbers and then growing on the basis of their stand, determination,
the facts and the truth – so outstandingly lacking from the other
side – into eventually much larger numbers, thereby creating a similar
situation to that which was so distressing and worrisome to Kissinger?
Why can’t 1% of the people, beginning
from a much smaller number now, but spreading, wear or display orange
daily to show their solidarity with those being tortured in our names,
and as a public statement of their repudiation of our government’s policies?
Why can’t and why shouldn’t people be giving their money and/or
their time to groups such as World Can’t Wait that seek to hold torturers such as John Yoo
and the Bush gang accountable, to expose military recruiters for their
lies to young people, and to build mass mobilization against both the
war on Iraq and the pending war on Iran?
If this happens, if a movement of a few
million, representing the desires of the majority, comes into being,
then anything and everything is possible.
If such a movement does not materialize,
then nothing but terrors await.
Ask yourself: what is the moral –
and realistic – choice to be made here? Has closing one’s eyes
to truths too terrible to tolerate ever led to a good outcome? Hasn’t
such a strategy always resulted in people being engulfed in horrors beyond their imagination?
Every single person who reads this and
who steps forward does so in the name of millions of others and creates
the conditions for many, many others to step forward.
Don’t we as individuals have a personal
responsibility to take a stand against grave injustice and not pass
that responsibility on to others to take care of it for us? The
people who many people think are supposed to take care of things are
obviously not doing it.
So what are you waiting for? Yes, you.
—
Dennis Loo, Ph.D., is a Professor of
Sociology at Cal Poly Pomona and co-editor/author of Impeach the
President: the Case Against Bush and Cheney. Like Obama, he went
to Punahou School and Harvard. That’s where the similarity ends. He
can be reached at http://dennisloo.blogspot.com
When I mentioned that there seemed to be so few people who possess the moral courage to lead, such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, I was thinking about the way these people (as well as others in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s) were able to galvanize the masses to stop thinking of themselves as poor, helpless, inadequate and victimized. These leaders were able to empower Americans in a mass movement based on morality and principle, and in the process, they encouraged these Americans to see themselves as people who could, quite literally, shape and change world history for the better.
Today, there doesn’t seem to be the desire among our fellow Americans to become world-historical people; individuals who have the potential to change present conditions for the better, and in so doing, create a better future for their own (or someone else’s) children and grandchildren. Our culture has become too bound up in material factors and material conditions which have exerted a negative effect on the nation’s culture asnd citizens, and has promoted taking the “easy way out” from personal responsibility and personal commitment to the principles of justice, peace and equality.
Another thing which struck me about the people whom you mentioned, Professor Loo, is this — these people possess no sense of fear; they didn’t compromise or bow down to the powers-that-be in order to gain some semblance of personal safety and security for themselves; they had their eyes firmly focused on the prize, and that “prize” was to leave future generations a better world than the one they were currently living in. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Huey Newton were so convinced of the moral necessity of taking a principled stand against injustice that they were willing to risk everything they had — including laying down their lives — for the principle of “justice for all”. And that’s the point I’m making here. We’ve become a people who’ve gone out of their way to avoid taking any sort of risk, and if the occasion calls for us to take a stand on anything which might be deemed to be “risky”, such as taking a principled stand against grave injustice by demanding the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney, we demand a guarantee of success before we’ll even take the risk. We’ve got to break this mind-set of “not getting involved” before any positive action can take place, and it means being willing to risk everything you have, as the Founders did, to stand on the principles of justice, peace and equality, and to fight to make those principles a reality.
Stephi: Well expressed, again. Is the problem that there are too few Americans with sufficient moral courage, as you say? Is the problem that there are no MLK, Jrs. or Malcolm X’s today?
There’s an interpenetration between leaders and the movements they lead. Malcolm X and MLK might have been alive in some other epoch, and in fact, I’m sure that their equivalents were alive in other epochs, but the character of their times didn’t allow them (speaking of past epochs) to express and become the tremendous leaders that they were, expressing and concentrating broader mass sentiments and speaking sharply to the issues of the time.
Would, for instance, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, have emerged as the leaders of the Panthers if there wasn’t the fertile soil there that they tapped into so brilliantly when they decided, just the two of them, to stand and witness cops harassing blacks in Oakland? Would the 1960s have been the same without Newton, Seale, and others?
Do we have such figures in our time now? I believe that we do. Cindy Sheehan comes to mind, for instance. Debra Sweet. Sunsara Taylor. There are others, some known somewhat now, some not yet known, some others yet to come.
Leaders become who they eventually become in the course of the events of their times. They and the movements they lead are in dialectical relationship to each other.
Is the fault in the culture of America? Is the fault among Americans themselves? To some degree there is a problem here in the culture. But culture doesn’t exist separate and apart from material factors and material conditions. There is a specific historical development to be considered and there are the material factors and subjective factors at play today to consider.
I do not believe that cultural factors are the primary problem here. It’s a problem, but it’s not the principle one. There is an essay that I wrote a while ago on my blog that speaks to this question entitled “Our Kitty Genovese Moment” at my blog.
Part of the problem which so many of us have in failing to take constructive mass political action is that too often, we tend to accept the lie that our own moral, intellectual and spiritual strength isn’t adequare enough for us to do courageous things, like wearing orange to remind ourselves and others that terrible crimes are being committed in our name, and that we have a personal responsibility and moral obligation to stand up and fight against the grave injustices which are being committed against our fellow human beings with our full knowledge and silent consent.
It’s truly tragic there are so few people in our nation who have the spiritual strength, moral courage and maturity to be genuine leaders of a mass political movement, like Dr. Martin Luther King, who was able to build a mass movement around the powerful idea of securing basic human rights for all people. More often than not, the current crop of “leaders” — like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain — who are battling for our attention are either intent on fueling their own personal ambitions, or they use the guise of “leadership” to manipulate people’s emotions and feelings so they’ll “feel good” about themselves, rather than boldly challenging them to stop letting feelings and emotions do the thinking for them and to break the addiction to “magical” thinking. None of these Presidential candidates have challenged us to look at our current political/economic crisis with clear eyes and unclouded reasoning in order to come up with real ideas to solve the crisis. Instead, they attempt to push all the right emotional buttons in order to obtain that all-important “popular vote”, by ignoring ideas althogether, or choosing those “ideas” which will provoke an strong emotional response from the American citizenry.
Do Americans want “change”? You bet, but when it comes to the kind of change they want to see in Washington, none of them have a clue as to how they can bring the change they desire to fruition. Very few are able to clearly express the kind of change they’d like to see, except in terms of muddled generalities, and those who are able to articulate the kind of “change” they want to see seem to lack the sufficient motivation to create “change” by taking constructive mass political action. They sit and wait for someone else to do it for them.
Today’s American is disconnected from a strong sense of history which links them not only to the Founding Fathers, who sacrificed everything they had in order to create a functioning republican government, but also to a profound moral obligation to spend their mortal lives doing those things which lay the foundation for a better society, nation and world for their children and grandchildren (or someone else’s children and grandchildren) to live in. It’s that estrangement from a sense of historical connectedness to the past and the future, along with a lack of confidence and trust in one’s self and in their life’s mission, which is absolutely necessary in order to effectively shape history for the better, that keeps so many of our fellow Americans sitting on the sidelines as spectators of history, rather than active participants in it.
Am I putting all of the blame for our population’s failure to step forward and take constructive political action? No, I’m not, but even though there is a “virtuous victim” mentality among many of our citizens, it’s a symptom of a much deeper tragedy; the tragedy of our estrangement and disconnection from the past and the future, which lives inside each of us, even though we may be unaware of it.
Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to my comment. I truly appreciate it, and I’ll be sure to check out those ‘blog entries you suggested.
Thanks for writing! There is, of course, truth to what you say so well here. Apathy and complacency are certainly attributes of all too many Americans today. This is something that infuriates anyone who has even a modicum of understanding about what’s going on. It is much harder to get Americans to take to the streets in protest and to challenge authority than you find among Europeans or Africans or South Americans or Asians et al. Americans are also more strongly imbued with exceedingly narrow notions of what it means to do one’s political or civic duty. For all too many people, voting is the alpha and omega.
But what you say here isn’t, I would argue, the principle aspect of what’s going on.
The main reason why impeachment and conviction haven’t happened can’t mainly be blamed on the public. A majority of them, after all, for three years at least, have told pollsters that they want Bush and Cheney gone. Sentiment is against Bush and Cheney. The problem is that that sentiment hasn’t been getting expressed in an organized enough or massive enough or determined enough of a way yet.
While you can blame the people for this, and the people are certainly partly to blame, the main reason is that for mass sentiment to be expressed there must be leadership for it to coalesce around. The collusion among the GOP and Democrats and the mass media, with precious few individual exceptions such as Kucinich and a handful of journalists/media people, has robbed the people of that leadership. In the absence of that leadership, the mass sentiment cannot be expressed unless and until a competing, alternative leadership comes forward and is embraced by enough people.
Why else is someone like Obama being embraced so blindly by so many people who should know better? Because they’re desperate for something that gives them a way to feel that “change” is underway. Now you can say that the people who are enthused by Obama are naive or ignorant or anything else, but I know some of these people, and one thing about them is that they do hate what’s going on. They just can’t see past their wishful thinking and they don’t really fully grasp what it would mean for a mass movement to come forth. They don’t really understand how politics actually work in this country.
I have been arguing for some time now that in the face of this abdication of leadership by the customary leaders, that we have to bring forth that competing, legitimate authority from the ranks of the people and from elements within communities such as intellectuals, artists, lawyers, and religious leaders. I have written extensively about this and the different dimensions to it. I would recommend to start with these three pieces by me at my blog: “On the relationship between media/political leaders and the public,” “Creating a scene that can be seen by all,” and “A Competing Legitimate Leadership.”
But to put this as cogently as possible: the basis exists right now for millions to step forward if individuals in much, much smaller numbers – that is, actual single individuals – were to step forward and wear orange ribbons, and were to begin to stand forth publicly with all of the courage and determination that they can muster, for a different way.
The danger of blaming the “virtuous victims” is that it can become an excuse to not do anything or to just go through the motions or to fail to see where the key thread lies in unraveling this conundrum. If we want others to be strong, we must ourselves be strong. The stronger we are individually, the more others will come forward and expand the ranks. The other side, our adversaries, have no leg to stand on – no law, no moral principle, no fact, no justice. We, on the other hand, have truth, science, morality and justice on our side.
The reason why so many Americans have manifested the kind of irrational political behavior which those who fought for the nation’s sovereignty during the Revolutionary War would have found totally unacceptable — such as failing to rise up in mass protest while government officials, political party leaders and the mass media continue to betray them by lying to them — is becoming more obvious and equally painful to witness.
Our once-proud American citizenry has been reduced, through a fifty-year program of political, economic, educational/cultural and religious indoctrination, to the status of “virtuous victims”; those perpetually trod-upon, deeply insecure, fearful, paranoid, long-suffering souls for whom suffering is both the price and “spice” of life, and the victim finds that life has no meaning unless they throw themselves a “poor-me-baby” pity party where they gather to express worry, concern, desperation, grief and fury about what’s going on, but do nothing else.
The “virtuous victim” sees betrayal and victimization as part of the cost of living in a “mean world”, and whenever the victim is betrayed, the betrayal isn’t greeted with a fury which galvanizes the victim to take action against the betrayer; instead, the victim makes excuses the betrayer’s lies by either refusing to believe he/she was lied to or “rationalizing” the lie by making it less than it actually was. If there are feelings of anger, dismay or frustration within the “victim”, it’s rarely, if ever, expressed with constructive action. Instead, those feelings are buried under a mountain of insecurity, crippling self-doubt and the ever present fear of losing what they hold dear, whether it’s the loss of love or approval from family, loved ones, friends, co-workers and neighbors, or the loss of those material comforts which they’ve become addicted to.
The “virtuous victim” lives in the constant pursuit of escaping reality, and the unpleasant chores which come with it, such as taking personal responsibility for the welfare of their fellow human beings by doing something which will have great meaning to society and future generations. Instead, the “victim” attempts to absolve himself/herself from exercising responsibility by churning out shop-worn excuses to justify their failure to act, such as “Oh, nothing will change”, “There’s nothing Ican do about it”, “That’s the way things are” and “So? It’s not my problem”.
A culture of “cultivated ignorance” permeates our nation, and the millions of Americans who see themselves as “virtuous victims” willingly participate in the culture of ignorance by eagerly embracing all sorts of diversions in order to avoid dealing with political and economic realities which they’re either uncomfortable with or hope will go away if they’re ignored. Also, the “virtuous victim” is so intent on “suffering” in the name of some higher “religious” purpose, he/she fails to recognize the existence of history, and they will have a place in that history, whether good or bad. Unfortunately, the “virtuous victim” doesn’t see it that way; the “victim” professes to be so weak, helpless, inadequate and “powerless” that he/she shouldn’t be obligated to take on the personal responsibility to take a stand and fight against grave injustice because of all sorts of perceived insecurities, inadequacies, doubts and weaknesses which render them “unfit” to take a stand. The “victim” doesn’t care about history and their place in it — the primary concern is getting through another day with their material comforts intact, and enduring the most humiliating political betrayals with stoic detachment; choosing to vote for the “lesser evil” in order to avoid losing whatever’s left, and totally unconcerned about how history and future generations will see them.