If
you thought, in the wake of the nightmare of the Bush years, and the
euphoria of the Democratic Convention, that the political pendulum in
the USA was swinging to the “left””
If you
thought that the Bush regime was so widely and bitterly hated that a
repackaged version couldn’t seriously contend for the presidency”
If you thought that the Christian fundamentalist theocrats were passé”
Then you got a shocking wake up call from the Republican National Convention.
As
the RNC opened in St. Paul, it appeared in danger of being a dud, or
even a fiasco. There was the awkward issue of a widely and deeply hated
incumbent president whose name is synonymous with lies, endless war,
and torture. Then there was Hurricane Gustav, threatening to remind the
world of, and perhaps even provoke a rerun of, the hell that the people
of New Orleans and the Gulf region were put through by the arrogant
neglect of the government before and after Hurricane Katrina. On top of
all this, the “Evangelical Community,” (read: fundamentalist Christian
theocrats) were threatening to sit things out, unsatisfied with their
role in a potential John McCain presidency.
But
in a stunning turn-around, the Republicans came out at the RNC with big
guns blasting. The sparkplug was the selection of Sarah Palin as the
vice presidential candidate. But the whole event was a coordinated
barrage of venomous attacks on liberals, crude pandering to and
promotion of “resentment” of the white middle class, and calls for
unquestioned support for endless war. And as a defining subtext, the
convention marked the insertion of the Christian fascists much more
deeply into the ’08 election.
Christian Fascists Pick a V.P.
The
run-up to the convention took a startling turn with the announcement
that Sarah Palin would be McCain’s running mate. The announcement was a
shocker because there had been no indication that Palin was being
seriously considered by McCain. The New York Times wrote that “Ms. Palin had no strong advocates” among McCain’s advisors.
And
there are other clear indications that McCain was not seriously
considering Palin. She did not go through the kind of serious vetting
process and investigation that all the other candidates on McCain’s
list of possible running mates went through. The Washington Post
reported that “Palin was not subjected to a lengthy in-person
background interview with the head of Sen. John McCain’s vice
presidential vetting team until last Wednesday in Arizona, the day before McCain asked her to be his running mate” (our emphasis). And McCain officials told the Washington Post
that they were not even informed of the potential scandal involving
Palin’s pregnant unmarried daughter until that last-second background
interview, even though this is the kind of thing that would normally be
revealed well in advance during the usual protracted vetting process
for a vice presidential candidate.
In fact,
McCain wanted Joseph Lieberman, his co-cheerleader for “staying the
course” in Iraq, or former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge to be his
vice presidential candidate. But the nominally pro-choice Lieberman and
Ridge were deal-breakers for powerful forces of the Christian right.
James Dobson (of Focus on the Family) announced before the convention
that he “cannot and will not vote for Senator John McCain.” And,
speaking after the Palin announcement, Dobson said that if McCain would
have “come up with Lieberman or Tom Ridge or somebody like that, we”d
be back in a hole again.”
Dobson and those he
represents essentially made McCain an offer he couldn’t refuse. While
all the channels are not clear, Richard Land, president of the Southern
Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, told Christianity Today
that he had “recommended” Palin to McCain’s people. And after the
announcement of Palin as the VP candidate, Dobson said in a radio
interview, “If I went into the polling booth today, I would pull the
lever for John McCain.” He added, “When I look at the choices that are
ahead and what the implications are for this country, and now
especially with this selection, with just an outstanding V.P. candidate
as a running mate, I tell you what I am relieved and very excited.”
(Dennis Prager show, 8/29/08)
And so, as it
turned out, Senator “Maverick,” the guy who supposedly listens only to
his independent set of values, had to bow down and take a vice
presidential candidate he had not selected, and hardly knew, in order
to feed the Christian fascists.
Palin herself is both a Christian fundamentalist and a product of the Christian fascist political machine. She aims to ban all
abortion, even in the case of rape or incest. She believes in “young
earth” creationism, a literalist reading of the Bible’s mythology of
the history of the planet that claims the earth is thousands of years
old in opposition to the scientific fact that it is billions of years
old, and has argued that this theocratic dogma should be taught as an
“alternative” in public school science classes. As mayor, she tried to
ban books from the library and fire the librarian when she opposed
that. In a video available at YouTube, Palin tells a youth group at an
Alaska church that not only is the Iraq war “a task that is from God,”
but even declared that a potential gas pipeline she wants built from
Alaska to the lower 48 states is “God’s will.”
Coming on the heels of the pilgrimage by McCain and Barack Obama to Christian fundamentalist Rick Warren’s church
for what was essentially the first debate between the two, the vetting
and selection of the vice presidential candidate by religious
fundamentalists-in a manner not that different from the way the Islamic
theocrats in Iran approve political candidates-was a chilling exercise
of, and strengthening of, the power of Christian theocrats in the
United States. And the promotion of Palin to the status of “political
superstar”-by the same media that the Republicans accuse of being
biased against them(!)-alone amounts to a major advance for these
fundamentalist fascists.
Giuliani and Palin’s One-Two Sucker Punch
While
the insertion of Palin pumped energy into the RNC, the whole event was
a synchronized and bellicose call for unquestioning loyalty to
aggressive, endless war, to hyper-chauvinism, and for the social base
of the Republicans, a call to prepare to tough out hard times. All
accompanied by incessant bashing of Hollywood liberals, “the mainstream
media,” and others who are served up to the angry middle class as
scapegoats for their problems.
That message was delivered as a one-two punch from Rudoph Giuliani and Palin.
“Senator
McCain was the candidate most associated with the surge,” declared
Giuliani, who attacked the Democrats for having “given up on Iraq.”
And, Giuliani continued, “ladies and gentlemen, when they gave up on
Iraq, they had given up on America.”
Giuliani,
who invokes 9/11 every time he speaks, lashed out at “the left-wing
media” and the “Hollywood celebrities.” He skewered Obama for his “Ivy
League education” (never mind that Bush went to Yale) and his
background as a community organizer. And the former Mayor of New York
City lashed out at those who think the small Alaska town that Sarah
Palin came from “isn’t cosmopolitan enough.”
Palin
saluted McCain as the man who “refused to break faith with those troops
in Iraq who now have brought victory within sight.” And she derided
Obama as someone who “can give an entire speech about the wars America
is fighting and never use the word “victory,” except when he’s talking
about his own campaign.”
The angry “hockey mom,” the self-described “pit bull with lipstick,” also
lashed out at the very idea that being a “community organizer” was a
legitimate thing. She pandered to and promoted small-town
narrow-mindedness, and resentment of any enlightened ideas: “[I]n small
towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes
praise on working people when they”re listening and then talks about
how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people
aren’t listening. No, we tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about
us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.”
Both
speeches had the smug, bullying tone of an episode of the O”Reilly
Factor on Fox-lashing out at the “cosmopolitans,” the “Hollywood
liberals,” those who are concerned about whether detainees get
“read”their rights.”
When Adolf Hitler rallied
the angry “volk”-the “common people” in Germany-against the
“cosmopolitans”-(which in Germany, at that time, took extreme
concentration in his attacks on the Jews)-it was called fascism.
What do you call it in the USA?
McCain’s Message of Sacrifice for Empire
While
Palin and Giuliani provided the drama and dynamism at the RNC, McCain’s
speech concentrated a key element of the Republicans’ message. It might
have appeared that the finale of McCain’s speech was simply one more
self-serving installment of his endlessly invoked experience as a
prisoner of war (McCain was shot down while flying high above Vietnam,
part of an air war that contributed to killing millions of Vietnamese
people in the Vietnam war). But there was a specific message here,
concentrated in McCain’s self-described evolution from someone who
“didn’t think there was a cause that was more important than me,” to
someone who learned to “fight again for my country”.” Someone who “fell
in love with my country”-and, he pointedly added, “not just for the
many comforts of life here.”
McCain’s speech was
a call to rally around and fight for traditional American values, even
through hard times, military challenges, and personal sacrifice. And it
converged with the elevated role of the Christian fascists, who provide
a coherent morality and organization for just such mobilization.
Bushism without Bush
Barack
Obama has positioned himself as the candidate to “bring us together.”
And there are ruling class voices arguing that Obama would be the best
possible “face” on all the things that will have to be done in the
service of American empire. As Revolution analyzed last week:
“Obama would not rule in precisely the same way as McCain. That is not
our point. What IS essential is that he would serve the same
fundamental interests, and obey the same fundamental imperatives, as
McCain. In line with that, Obama is also making the case to these
rulers that his particular mix of aggression and negotiations, combined
with his ability to “appeal to” people internationally and pacify the
political scene at home, would be more effective than that of McCain in
serving those interests and imperatives.”
Obama and McCain do not
differ over the basic direction of society. Nor do their differences
arise in any fundamental way from competing “interest groups” that tend
to be aligned with the Republicans or the Democrats. The sharply
contending programs they are bringing forward both start from the overall
interests of U.S. imperialism. They both agree on the terms set by the
so-called “war on terror,” with all the terrible suffering and death
that is bringing to the world. But the differences they do have
represent contending forces and agendas within the ruling class over how
to navigate through the minefield of contradictions confronting the
U.S. rulers. Through the RNC, the Republicans, with their slogan
“Country First,” put forward their solution to reforging national unity and charging forward globally in troubled times.
Bush
himself was hardly mentioned and only spoke to the convention by video,
where he himself promoted McCain as an “independent” agent of change.
The fact that the RNC had to go to great lengths to distance the
Republican Party and McCain (who, after all, are the dominant
force in the “status quo” right now) from Bush reveals the sense among
the ruling class of how deep and wide is the anger at Bush and the
sharpness of the challenges they face in the period ahead.
In
the face of real centrifugal pulls tearing U.S. society apart, and real
global challenges to the U.S. empire, the message from the RNC was an
unapologetic appeal to traditional “small-town” American
values-ignorant arrogance, intolerance, hyperpatriotism, and old time
religion. The Republicans maneuvered to trump Obama’s calls for
“change” with their own version of “change”: a reactionary populist
rebellion against the “elite,” the “Washington insiders,” and the
“mainstream media,” led by a supposed maverick senator and a crusading,
anti-insider hockey mom from Alaska. Representative Marsha Blackburn
pretty much summed it up when she told the crowd, “We are the gun
totin”, God fearin,” flag wavin” Americans who are excited to see two
crack shots on the ticket with the status quo in their sights.”
This
message from the RNC was ominous. It was a call to the faithful to
rally behind, and be ready to sacrifice for, the USA in its global wars
for empire. It whipped up a section of society to support domestic
repression and tough out and blame people with less for economic hard
times already here and down the road. And the undertones and overtones
in all this represented a continuation of the outlook of the Bushites:
that they represent the only legitimate path for this country, and that
any opposition to what they are doing, and how they are doing it-even
from other ruling class forces who share their basic outlook but differ
on approaches-is unacceptable and illegitimate.
The
RNC presented a message of Bushism without Bush. Still here was the
openly aggressive, “go it alone” if necessary foreign policy in service
of empire; heavy on force, and at least publicly disdainful of
diplomacy. And still here but ramped up, a promise of a powerful place
at the White House table and throughout society for Christian fascists.
What was new was the populist edge, foreshadowed by the Huckabee
candidacy, and a call to “suck it up,” like McCain did in a Vietnamese
prison, and put the country ahead of personal comforts.
In
addition to what happened inside the convention, the extreme, fascistic
repression against dissenters and the attacks on independent and even
mainstream reporters unleashed in St. Paul in the period up to and
outside the convention, were another dimension to the message from the
RNC-the intolerance of opposition, dissent, or even uncomfortable
questions (see “The
RNC’s Outrageous Assault on Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, and
Alternative Media…This is What Imperialist Democracy Looks Like” at revcom.us.
The Challenges Facing Them”and Us
A
sober look at the RNC should be a wakeup call. But it should not be
cause for passivity or despair, including in the form of adapting
oneself to the “politics of the possible.” The so-called “alternative”
posed by Obama is one of “conciliation” with these bloodthirsty,
uber-chauvinistic, dark ages, self-proclaimed pit bulls (with or
without lipstick), who are politely referred to by the mainstream media
as the “neocons” and the “Christian right.” Obama’s calls to “bring us
all together” are, in essence, calls for capitulation to the
reactionary agenda that has been brought forward by Bush and
revitalized and updated at the RNC.
Instead of
accepting the “politics of the possible,” what is very urgently needed
is a completely different polarization of society, based not on
accommodation to or acceptance of the current terms of “acceptable
debate,” but on the basis of bringing forward and fighting for the real
needs and aims of the great majority of people in this country, and
around the world. That is the standard by which every person of
conscience should judge who and what they support, and by which they
should judge their own actions. There is a great need, now, for
political resistance that is not bound to, and is independent of, the
terms of “choosing” between the fascistic agenda of the RNC and
conciliation to that represented by Obama.
In
tumultuous and politically charged times like this, people look for
answers. Even if they enter into political life on the terms of one or
another ruling class agenda, they can be open to radical
solutions-solutions that get to the root of the problem. Through all
the confusion and challenges of the election season, and through
whatever path events take, Revolution newspaper will continue to expose those roots. And Revolution will connect people with Bob Avakian’s re-envisioning of communist revolution-a source of real hope and daring for all who refuse to accept the “choices” this system offers.