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TechnoratiDenver 2008: Hope Is for the Weak
You know you're addicted to a drug when you need it just to feel normal. By that standard, African Americans have been addicted to hope for a long, long time. Nothing wrong with that. As Robert Jensen of the University of Texas, from whom the title of this piece is borrowed points out, hope is seductive, it's attractive, and when times are hard, hope is absolutely necessary. We're all quite naturally attracted to those full of hope, while we pity or shun those without it. But if hope is much like a drug, it's also a lot like capital. Hope can be invested, wisely based on facts and a sober analysis of the forces in play, or it can be squandered foolishly, based on wishful thinking and outright lies. The air in Denver the last week of August will be full of hope. And full of lies.
Since hope is a limited thing, and sometimes all that we have, Jensen suggests that we ought to be realistic and tough-minded about where we invest it and how. The nomination of the Democratic party's first black candidate is an historic occasion, to be sure. But what is there in Denver to invest our hopes in?
The political conventions bill themselves as glittering spectacles of participatory democracy. But those days, if they ever existed, are long gone. Today's political conventions are week-long staged-for-TV marketing spectacles, in which the permanent party of corporations and wealthy individuals publicly crown their champions, frame the issues and present the package to voters.
True to the core marketing principal of avoiding fact-based arguments and comparisons, striving instead to establish powerful, reason-proof emotional connections to their brands, convention planners often choose their dates to coincide with "historical" themes. Thus the 2004 Republican convention was held in New York City on the anniversary of 9-11, to facilitate the kind of fearmongering warlike campaign in which Republicans excel. And this year's Democratic extravaganza is scheduled to conclude with the acceptance speech of Senator Obama at Mile High Stadium on the 45th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and King's "I Have A Dream" speech, a tenuous connection which we confidently predict will be recycled and stressed endlessly.
No less an historical authority than Oprah Winfrey herself has declared Obama's career to be "the fulfillment of Dr. King's Dream," as if the 20th century Freedom Movement was exclusively about overcoming prejudice without challenging America's empire overseas or her inequalities at home. As usual, Oprah has the establishment message dead-on. For more than forty years, the media have taught and sold an eviscerated history of the Freedom Movement which they have branded as "Dr. King's Dream." According to the authorities, "Dr. King's Dream" was about individual worth, about judging people by "the content of their character" and affording an equal opportunity for all to rise.
Even though Dr. King died supporting a black union in the midst of a militant citywide strike, the media-endorsed versions of his life, of the Freedom Movement, and of "the Dream" (probably trademarked) which the election of Barack Obama will supposedly "fulfill" are never about collective action, or democracy in workplaces. They never mention the right - won and held by people in most other nations around the world -- to organize and strike without being fired or penalized. Despite Dr. King's prescient warnings that if we did not swiftly end the war in Vietnam and turn our energies to peace abroad and justice at home we would be marching against US wars here, there and everywhere, we will be told in Denver, on the 45th anniversary of "I Have A Dream" that his legacy is being satisfied by the elevation of a black candidate who celebrates empire, who endorses the so-called worldwide "war on terror," who has assured us he will not end the war in Iraq while he co-signs the Bush threats to Iran and escalates the conflict in Afghanistan, perhaps extending it to nuclear-armed Pakistan.
Despite his African heritage, Obama shows no signs of ending, or even publicly acknowledging the fact that the US has furnished arms and military aid to more than 50 of 54 African nations, making it the most war-torn continent on earth. Thanks in large part to US policies, AK-47s are manufactured nowhere in Africa, but are cheaper there than anywhere else on earth.
The crowning of Barack Obama in Denver, and the linking of his brand to King's "I Have A Dream" speech on its 45th anniversary are the cynical triumphs of this limited, truncated version of anti-racist struggle. The hollowness for ordinary people, and the usefulness, for elites, of anti-racist struggle divorced from any challenges to empire and inequality could have been, and were seen clearly a long way off. But not by anybody on our side.
Vijay Prashad reminds us that when the University of Michigan was litigating its affirmative action lawsuit in the late 90s, DuPont, Steelcase, Abbott Laboratories, Intel, Microsoft, Texaco, Lucent and a raft of other Fortune 500 companies filed a brief in support of affirmative action.
Racial and ethnic diversity in institutions of higher education is vital to amici's efforts to hire and maintain a diverse workforce, and to employ individuals of all backgrounds who have been educated in a diverse environment. Such a talented workforce is important to amici's continued success in the global marketplace.
In other words, without highly placed minority executives they could not hope to penetrate minority markets, or influence the politics of those communities to corporate advantage. The Pentagon filed similar objections in support of affirmative action. With more than 800 military bases around the world in nearly a hundred countries, they argued, the US military also needed a critical number of minority officers to influence the politics of minority communities, and to effectively make war in Africa, Asia and all the places Dr. King predicted decades before.
When the struggle against racism is shorn of its living connections to the fights against American empire abroad and structural inequality at home, it's just a way of promoting a few black faces into high places with no positive effect on the rest of us. The Denver co-branding of Obama with "I Have A Dream Day" (probably trademarked too) is the triumph of America's official and elite movement against racism, which was never a mass movement at all. It was a survival strategy to superficially integrate the elite.
America's structural inequalities, the vast eleven to one wealth gap between white and black families, the staggering imprisonment rate of young African Americans, the dispossession of hundreds of thousands from the Gulf Coast -- all these and other racially disproportionate structural elements of American life will remain as they have been. Parasitic insurance companies will continue to eat a third of every American health care dollar. And the pointless, predatory so-called "war on terror" will continue, as Bush and Cheney intended under a black Democrat, should he be elected, indefinitely.
The air in Denver the last week of August will definitely be full of hope. And full of something else too.
Bruce Dixon managing editor at Black Agenda Report is based in Atlanta and can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.
11 Comments so far
Show Allfreespirit Obama makes a spectacle of Martin L. King's principles and desires and his lack of interest in the poor of all races is obvious to our least advantaged Americans. Until every American can be afforded an attorney, until every American can be afforded the opportunity to find liberty, equality and happiness, then American Democracy will continue to be suffocated under the helms of the neo-cons and wealthy. Obama will not walk on water and he will not be able to free America from the oppressive neo-cons and WAshington graft and the powers that hold Democracy at bay.
I've been trolling the news and the blogs, searching for hope. Haven't found a thing.
Let's see now, the Republicans have chosen a senile old fool who parrots the last thing he's heard, needing someone at his shoulder to prompt him (shades of deja vu). He wants war and more war, and to drill, dig and cut anything that hasn't been pumped, mined or logged before, all in the name of corporate profits. They are all ready for their rubber stamp Republican Convention.
On the other hand, we have the Democrats, who have a bright young man, anointed and chosen. This bright young man stood for principle, for an end to the wars, to cleaning up the DC cesspool. Sounded good!
Now that he is the chosen one, we need a wider war in Afghanistan, which has been swallowing up foreign armies since the time of Alexander. We need to keep troops in Iraq apparently until Hell freezes over, for their own good, of course. We need to drill, dig and cut anything that hasn't been pumped, mined or logged before, all in the name of corporate profits, though clothed in greener terms.
We are shown the protest cages awaiting anyone who gets out of line and exercises their first amendment rights at the Democratic Convention, especially if they get within seven hundred feet of the convention doors.
There is little or no freedom left in the United States, regardless of party. The only thing protected in the United States is corporate profit. As happened in '06, with whomever is elected it will be business as usual; with We the People struggling to survive until the next clone is elected in 2012 and corporate profits and power continue to soar.
Someday, the rulers of the United States Empire will overstep themselves and the world will rise up to smite us, as it did the Axis in the 1940's. Either we will then be brought down and the world will breathe easier, or it will be the end of civilization as both the US and Israel have nuclear weapons and have declared their willingness to use them. Israel has the "Sampson alternative" which is to take the world with them if they are defeated, and we have authorized the use of first strike nuclear weapons against even non-nuclear nations, if deemed expedient.
Having chosen the "lesser of two evils" repeatedly and found that the evil still grows, I have run out of choices.
If I cannot find a candidate who believes in peace and diplomacy, with war as a last, defensive action if attacked, if I cannot find a candidate who believes that the Constitution of the United States is more than a "god-damned piece of paper" and wants to see it restored, intact and functioning, to the halls of government, if I cannot find a candidate who feels that We the People does not mean corporate entities, who feels that government has a contract with the people and that contract is the Constitution and Bill of Rights, then I shall just have to exercise my dwindling right to choose and write in a large, resounding
NO!
How can a half-white guy who grew up in a moneyed and privileged family, who spent much of his childhood overseas, and who attended prestigious private schools possibly be considered "Dr. King's dream" ?? When was Obama's freedom ever compromised ? What difficulties did he ever experience being a half-black man ?? HE ADMITTED publicly that he has BENEFITTED from his color ! That if he weren't (half) black his book wouldn't have sold and he would have been just another white guy candidate.
I'm so sick of this crap I could scream.
Does it bother any Democrats that the 'democracy' of their party is a fraud?
Two points. One is the way the candidates lied to the party members during the campaign. Obama clearly misrepresented himself to the Dem party members to get the nomination. And he has since reversed himself on almost every progressive thing he uttered to get the nomination.
Now, we also see that the party convention has been completely neutered and turned into TV infomercial. This used to be the times when the party members, the 4000 or so delegates from around the country, could get together and debate the policies of the party. Debates and votes over platform planks was the party behaving in a democratic fashion. And this has been discarded so the lies of the party leaders can be delivered clearly, without contradiction and on schedule for the TV networks.
To me, both clearly point to the need for the people to abandon a Democratic party that has clearly shut them out of the process, and which seems to view its members only as people to lie to and to manipulate to reach the goal the party leaders desire.
"It is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be" - Dr. MLK Jr.
"The political conventions bill themselves as glittering spectacles of participatory democracy."
I'm planning on trying to 'participate'. I expect it to be quite revealing, as I expect to be met with riot police, fences, razor wire, helicopters, snipers on the roof tops and 'Gitmo on the Platte.'
If nothing else, this, plus the spectacle of the rich who've given tens and hundreds of thousands to the Democrats being ushered into their luxury suites and private parties, all to be quite revealing about just how much 'democracy' we really have these days.
"It is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be" - Dr. MLK Jr.
The conventions demonstrate how to stage-manage the republic and create the illusion of democracy through scripted spectacle. Outside, there will be the protest pens, riot-clad police, agent provocateurs and warehouses with chain-link fences to deal with the people and their demands.
I think the author truly unmasks Obama. This article is a clear-eyed analysis of Obama's actual public positions. It should cause great pain to loyalist Democrats that bothered to read it, but it's important to stay focused, despite the awful truth.
Expect many superficial slogans and feel-good messages to be trotted out before the vote. Thus far, Obama's militarist campaign platform and support for the corporate status quo have remained firm, like immovable rocks, nearly indistinguishable from McCain's.
The point of these scripted conventions is that there must be no interference with the agenda. It's a plutocratic agenda that doesn't include you. Do you accept that? Will you ride the wave of joy?
The two-party machine narrows the debate and limits democracy. It's like herding cattle. You have alternatives to them. There is no other way for your voice to be heard but to vote third party.
-TIA
Excellent article, especially the last 2 paragraphs.
John ("Reporting for Duty") Kerry's '04 convention was intensely militarized, with saluting, uniforms, old war buddies, & generals all over the place. Meanwhile, all the protestors were kept outside in pens surrounded by razor wire. The few that got inside the hall were dragged out by guards for "offenses" like wearing an antiwar T-shirt. (Remember the video of 5'3" Medea Benjamin being hauled off the floor by a couple of big tough cops?)
No doubt, next week's spectacle will be even more disgusting. More surveillance cameras, more organized & coordinated police roundups, bigger pens for "dissent." They'll doubtless have all the very latest in "counter-terrorism" technology.
Coming from the podium will be pure unadulterated bullsh*t. During the spring, everyone wondered what was behind Obama's vague fluffy talk about "change and hope." Now we see what was behind it -- and it's far worse than anyone dared imagine.
When Obama starts yapping about how "essential" it is, that we fight onwards for "victory" in Afghanistan ("the real front in the War on Terror," doncha know), I wonder if the delegates will applaud (out of a sense of obligation), or throw up.
Let's turn to EQUAL OPPORTUNITY for all and make ourselves color/gender/class blind for a change. Besides, it's not as if the conservatives are going to do away with AA given that they MISUSE it for promoting the wealthy elite into IVY League schools which even the smartest middle class family students are unable to get into. And what about economics and foreign policy? Why do we "excuse" Democrats for doing everything the GOP does yet cry "foul" when the GOP does it? Bad actions are bad actions regardless of which party does them. By the way, why do Asian American students and professionals make it in this god-forsaken country despite the fact that AA doesn't apply to them? AA is an albatross and it's time to ABOLISH it.
I totally agree, except I don't believe conservatives are stopping the demise of affirmative action. They hate it and rightfully so at this point. AA was needed in its time, but its far outlived its usefullness and is even hurtful to those that "supposedly" benefit from it.
I had never heard the "conservatives" support AA comment before.
Soooo right, let's call all Americans what they are and that would be AMERICANS!
This article hits the nail on the head in so many ways.
These conventions have become sickening spectacles.