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Ralph Nader: ‘The Left Has Nowhere to Go’
Ralph Nader in a CNN poll a few days before the 2008 presidential election had an estimated 3 percent of the electorate, or about 4 million people, behind his candidacy. But once the votes were counted, his support dwindled to a little over 700,000. Nader believes that many of his supporters entered the polling booth and could not bring themselves to challenge the Democrats and Barack Obama. I suspect Nader is right. And this retreat is another example of the lack of nerve we must overcome if we are going to battle back against the corporate state. A vote for Nader or Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney in 2008 was an act of defiance. A vote for Obama and the Democrats was an act of submission. We cannot afford to be submissive anymore.
"The more outrageous the Republicans become, the weaker the left becomes," Nader said when I reached him at his home in Connecticut on Sunday. "The more outrageous they become, the more the left has to accept the slightly less outrageous corporate Democrats."
Nader fears a repeat of the left's cowardice in the next election, a cowardice that has further empowered the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, maintained the role of the Democratic Party as a lackey for corporations, and accelerated the reconfiguration of the country into a neo-feudalist state. Either we begin to practice a fierce moral autonomy and rise up in multiple acts of physical defiance that have no discernable short-term benefit, or we accept the inevitability of corporate slavery. The choice is that grim. The age of the practical is over. It is the impractical, those who stand fast around core moral imperatives, figures like Nader or groups such as Veterans for Peace, which organized the recent anti-war rally in Lafayette Park in Washington, which give us hope. If you were one of the millions who backed down in the voting booth in 2008, don't do it again. If you were one of those who thought about joining the Washington protests against the war where 131 of us were arrested and did not, don't fail us next time. The closure of the mechanisms within the power system that once made democratic reform possible means we stand together as the last thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration. If we do not engage in open acts of defiance, we will empower a radical right-wing opposition that will replicate the violence and paranoia of the state. To refuse to defy in every way possible the corporate state is to be complicit in our strangulation.
"The left has nowhere to go," Nader said. "Obama knows it. The corporate Democrats know it. There will be criticism by the left of Obama this year and then next year they will all close ranks and say ‘Do you want Mitt Romney? Do you want Sarah Palin? Do you want Newt Gingrich?' It's very predictable. There will be a year of criticism and then it will all be muted. They don't understand that even if they do not have any place to go, they ought to fake it. They should fake going somewhere else or staying home to increase the receptivity to their demands. But because they do not make any demands, they are complicit with corporate power.
"Corporate power makes demands all the time," Nader went on. "It pulls on the Democrats and the Republicans in one direction. By having this nowhere-to-go mentality and without insisting on demands as the price of your vote, or energy to get out the vote, they have reduced themselves to a cipher. They vote. The vote totals up. But it means nothing."
There is no major difference between a McCain administration, a Bush and an Obama administration. Obama, in fact, is in many ways worse. McCain, like Bush, exposes the naked face of corporate power. Obama, who professes to support core liberal values while carrying out policies that mock these values, mutes and disempowers liberals, progressives and leftists. Environmental and anti-war groups, who plead with Obama to address their issues, are little more than ineffectual supplicants.
Obama, like Bush and McCain, funds and backs our unending and unwinnable wars. He does nothing to halt the accumulation of the largest deficits in human history. The drones murder thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as they did under Bush and would have done under McCain. The private military contractors, along with the predatory banks and investment houses, suck trillions out of the U.S. Treasury as efficiently under Obama. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus, have not been restored. The public option is dead. The continuation of the Bush tax cuts, adding some $900 billion to the deficit, along with the reduction of individual contributions to Social Security, furthers a debt peonage that will be the excuse to privatize Social Security, slash social services and break the back of public service unions. Obama does not intercede as tens of millions of impoverished Americans face foreclosures and bankruptcies. The Democrats provide better cover. But the corporate assault is the same.
"Obama has the formula now," Nader said. "You give the Republicans a lot of what they want. Many of them vote for you. You get your Democrat percentage. You weave a hybrid victory. That is what he learned in the lame-duck session. He gets praised as being a statesman and a leader and getting things done. Think of all the rewards he can contemplate while he is in Hawaii compared to what they were saying about him on Nov. 5. All the columnists and pundits say that now he can work with John Boehner. But once you take a broader view, it is the difference in the mph of corporatism. McCain is 50 miles per hour and Obama is 40 miles per hour.
"The left has disemboweled itself," Nader said. "It doesn't even have a strategy every four years like a good poker player. The best example is Richard Trumka and the AFL-CIO. Obama has given them nothing. Therefore, they are demanding nothing. They huff and puff. They make tough speeches. But Trumka hasn't even made Obama's campaign pledge of a $9.50 minimum wage by this year an issue. If you want to increase consumer demand, what better way to do it than to unleash $300 billion in wages? The card check for unionization, which Obama pledged as his No. 1 sop to the labor unions, is dead. The unions do not even demand a hearing. And now wait till you see what they will do to the public employee unions. Part of it is their own fault. They are going to be crushed. Everybody is ganging up on them. You have new class warfare. It is non-unionized lower income and middle class taking it out on the unionized middle-income public employees. It is a classic example of oligarchic manipulation. It will start playing out big time in New York State with Andrew Cuomo and others. They will start saying, ‘Why are you getting this? Most workers who pay the taxes, who pay your salaries, are not getting this.' This plays."
The banishment from the corporate media, Nader argues, has been one of the major contributors to the demoralization and weakening of the left. Protests by the left, which get little national or local coverage, have steadily dwindled in strength across the country. The first protest gets little or no coverage and this leads to movements, as well as the voices of activists, being diminished and finally suffocated.
"The so-called liberal media, along with Fox, is touting the tea party and publicizing Palin," Nader said. "There was an editorial on Dec. 27 in The New York Times on the Repeal Amendment, the right-wing constitutional amendment to allow states to overturn federal law. The editorial writer at the end had the nerve to say there is no progressive champion. The editorial said that the liberals and progressives have faded out to let the tea party make history. And yet, for months, all The New York Times has done is promote Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. They promote Newt Gingrich and the neocons on the Op-Ed pages. The book pages of the newspaper ignore progressive authors and pump all the right-wing authors.
"If we don't raise hell, we won't get any media," Nader said. "If we don't get any media, the perception will be that the tea party is the big deal.
"On one notorious Sunday, Oct. 10, two of The New York Times' segments led with a big story about Ann Coulter and how she will change her strategy because she is being outflanked by others," Nader said. "There was also a huge article on this anti-Semite against Arabs, this Islamaphobe, Pam Geller. Do you know how many pictures they had of Geller? Twenty on this front-page segment. The number of anti-war Op-Eds in The Washington Post over nine months in 2009 was 6-to-1 pro-war. We don't raise hell. We don't say Terry Gross is a censor. We don't say that Charlie Rose is a censor. We have got to blast publicly. We have got to hammer them, because they are the tribune of right-wing fascist forces.
"Three thousand people rallied to protest the invasion and massacre in Gaza two years ago," Nader said. "It was held four blocks from The Washington Post. It did not get a single paragraph. People should march over to the Post and say ‘Fuck you! What are you doing here? You cover every little blip by the right-wing and you don't cover us?'
"They are afraid of the right-wing because the right-wing bellows, and they have become right-wing," Nader said of the commercial press. "They have become fascinated by the bias of Fox. And they publicize what Fox is biased on. The coverage of O'Reilly and Beck and their fights is insane. In the heyday of coverage in the 1960s of what we were doing, it was always less than it should have been, but now it is almost zero. Why do we take this? Why do we accept this? Why isn't Chris Hedges three times a year in the Op-Ed? Why is it always Paul Wolfowitz and Elliott Abrams and all these homicidal maniacs? Why are they there? Why is John Bolton constantly published in The Washington Post and The New York Times? Where is Andrew Bacevich? Bacevich told me he has had five straight Op-Eds rejected by the Post and the Times in the last two years. And he said he is not inclined to send anymore. How many times do you hear Hoover Institution? American Enterprise Institute? Manhattan Institute. These goddamned newspapers should be picketed."
The timidity and silencing of the left fuels the steady impoverishment of a dispossessed working class and a beleaguered middle class. It solidifies a corporate oligarchy that is dismantling the anemic regulatory agencies that once protected citizens from predatory corporations. The economic system is designed to bail out Wall Street rather than replace the trillions of dollars and millions of jobs lost by workers. And the only hope left, Nader argues, is if the conservatives in the right-wing movement break from the corporatists. If the big banks again start going to the cliff and calling for new bailouts, Nader says, this may provoke a schism between conservative groups embodied by figures such as Ron Paul, and corporate lackeys.
"Every major movement starts with field organizers, the farmers, unions, and the civil rights movement," Nader said. "But there is nothing out there. We need to start learning from what was done in the past. All over the country people are pissed off. They hate Wall Street. They know they are being gouged. They know they are slipping behind. They know their kids will not be as well off as they were, and they were not that well off. But no one is putting it together. Who could put a thousand organizers in the field, besides George Soros? The labor unions. They have the money. They have a lot of cash. These idiots are going down. The UAW is a paradigm of a suicidal, supplicant labor union. It is disgusting. They are a puppy dog of GM, Ford and Chrysler. They have huge reserves. The labor unions could organize the country, but they are into their own emoluments and high salaries. The union leadership has so distanced itself from the rank and file that it is ashamed to do anything controversial. These union leaders will not go on TV on Labor Day because they do not want someone saying ‘Why are you making $500,000 a year with a pension that is six times your rank and file?' There is corruption at the top. The only way the union leaders can continue is to be in the shadows. And you don't build a strong movement in the shadows.
"The black swan question is whether something will erupt that is rare, extreme and unpredictable," Nader said. "It is amazing that it hasn't happened in any pockets of the country. How much more can the oppressed take before they revolt? And can they revolt without organizers? These are the two important questions. You have got to have organizers, and as of now we don't."
Comments
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331 Comments so far
Show AllThe Democratic Party is a completely lost cause and so irrational now that left to its own devices will completely self destruct.
Yet the Dem/Repub oligopoly on American politics has never been stronger. Go figure.
Mark, somebody has to be paying you to be acting like a Democrat party clown here. Your whole post is laughable and can be summed up as follows:
"Don't be stupid and vote third party. Just be stupid and vote Democrat or the Republicans will destroy the USA. Whenever the Republicans win, just blame Nader and the Greens."
Nader's vandalism "my ass" !
Oh please ! Your consistent blaming of Nader for everything the Republicans had done is the worst case of thoughtless scorn than anything I have said so far.
Jennifer B.
Very well said.
Yes, indeed, let us blame Nader for exercising his constitutionally guaranteed right to run for public office. Imagine thinking that right to be an actual fact!
Why don't you respond to my post?
Making threats is the only way to influence the people in power. Always has been, always will be.
How do you think they get their way? How do you think they rule over us? Making - and carrying out - threats.
Now, if what you are actually saying is that if we talk about threatening the rulers, then you will not approve of us, then I say take your threat and hit the road. Your days of dominance are over, and bullying will no longer cow us.
You threaten us, you support people who rule by threats, and then you lecture us that threats are not the best course of action? The days of people being fooled by that sort of double talk are over.
..."And the only hope left, Nader argues, is if the conservatives in the right-wing movement break from the corporatists. If the big banks again start going to the cliff and calling for new bailouts, Nader says, this may provoke a schism between conservative groups embodied by figures such as Ron Paul, and corporate lackeys."
There may be something to this...IF you can see that the political spectrum is a broken circle---not a straight line with 2 ends.
It's the corporate elite v. everybody else, and when that comes into focus, maybe things will happen.
The broken circle metaphor may be a bit better than the straight line one... but it is still woefully inadequate. In fact, a broken circle is still a line with two ends. It only nods its head to the fact that the extremes are closer to each other than they are to the middle.
We need to drop labels and affiliations entirely.
Progressivism... Socialism... these things are just as meaningless as Conservatism and Neo-Liberalism.
We need to make intelligent decisions on an issue by issue basis. There is no overarching platform that will house all the intellectuals and working class "liberals." The corporatists win because 1) they have money and power & 2) because intellectuals are spineless and poor "working class" people are uninformed and have no time to figure anything out.
At the moment, you are playing the corporate ballgame with their ball, wearing their shoes, on their playing field and drinking their gatorade. You think that arguing with them about some arcane points of their rule book is going to change that?
jonabark
A lot of talk about voting here and we all know that's not enough. If every progressive could get 3 new voters committed to a 3rd party we could give them a run for their money.I don't know how to organize , but its time to learn. Who's going to talk with the neighbors about a progressive 3rd party candidate and platform , Money out of war and into education and green jobs, universal health care, end of corporate personhood, restoration of local production of goods. ? How do we organize to demand change from NPR and the right wing papers? This year is not going to go the way either party hopes. We are headed for Trouble with a capitol Tea and that rhymes with B and those Banks will flail and some will fail, Palin will pale and the rebels're gonna wail.
What is interesting is that while the Newspapers increasingly become fascist propaganda and gossip the real news is going to the movies. Inside Job, Sicko, and others are getting large audiences. Also that despite controlling most of the media the propagandists are amazingly unable to control opinion which gathers against the war and the philosophy of top down bailouts for the megarich.
I'm looking for a year of new beginnings. Rebel!
Jonabark, I don't have "the" answer either. I really don't think any of us do. But then I think that this is very much a long haul, multi-front fight, and that there are many answers, each dealing with a portion of the problem.
Like you, I've been looking for ways to organize, something that will translate into actual action. I've given up, at least at the national level. Right now what I've been doing is to try to sway things at the extreme local level. Really go for the "ground up" which I think is the only way to go.
I was raised in a blue collar democratic family and once 18 promptly registered Democrat. Been that way my whole life, even through the Reagan and Bush (both of em) disasters. Thought Bill Clinton was an aberration and over reaction to the two previous electoral losses and hoped my party could come back. What Obama has showed everyone who cares to see is that the Democratic party is most definitely not the party of Franklin Roosevelt, or even JFK (if it ever truly was).
Changed my registration to Green (hit them were it hurts - loss of registered voters)and have been looking for ways to strengthen this fledgling organization in my area ever since. Many at our monthly party meeting are like some of the debates here on CD, and are obsessively focused on national or statewide offices without being willing to do the hard foundation work of building up the local structure - council members, district supervisors, school boards, county supervisors, and the like. I think this is a big mistake and one of the few things the Republican party has always had right. There is no office to small or insignificant to not try to control - after all they not only provide a training ground in public office for new and inexperienced people, but in many respects they have very real power over our daily lives and futures.
We see every so often an article on school boards who wish to place creationism or some other far right crap into our public school curriculum and yet we can't seem to make the connection that the only reason they can try to do this is that these people actively seek out these offices to do just that. We truly do ignore our local politics at our own peril.
So, I guess my advice would be to become active in your local Green party. Help to get good people elected to those small, and in many cases unglamorous local offices. Start to build up the party from the bottom up.
It's easy for the corporatocracy to absorb civil disobedience by the usual suspects and to fit such disobedience into a "role" in the corporate story, if not make it disappear altogether. It's sad, and I think most of us feel it.
What is needed are surprises and new faces. That's why I think "People should march over to the Post and say ‘Fuck you! What are you doing here?" is a good idea. Except they ought to go there first and with intent.
We all know that the corporate media, by their very nature, compose the propaganda arm of the corporate state, so there is no expectation that they will "come around". It is essential to lay the groundwork of systemic change by making the source of popular delusion ridiculous and defensive, to shine a light on its true anti-populist nature. The web of corporate consciousness in its effect on the population has to be broken through. In the realm of civil disobedience and related actions, this is what we should be doing, IMO.
This is not to say that there are not other, possibly more effective and related things to do...whistleblowing and so on.
I think we need to get into the experimental mode.
I tend to agree with Hedges here and I voted for Nader the past several elections. I do think they need a new strategy to get make folks more comfortable to vote Green. I think fo rthe purpose of Advertising ONLY. The Greens and Libertarians out to share Ad space and suggest that the Democrats and Republicans are one corporate party and that regardless of a persons political stripes they need to vote third party and then present Greens and Libertarians as two options on opposite sides of the spectrum. The Ad would get a lot of attention and "free" airtime (as news cycle highlights the unique approach) AND If folks on the Left Know that it might be a 4-way race rather than 3 way than both ends of the spectrum feel more confident voting their hopes rather than fears
QUOTE: "The Greens and Libertarians out to share Ad space and suggest that the Democrats and Republicans are one corporate party and that regardless of a persons political stripes they need to vote third party..."
_______________
It's difficult for people to overcome the indoctrination that's drummed into them from womb to tomb.
It should not be merely "suggested" that Democrats and Republicans are one. They are one.
The world's people didn't need Americans to support a 3rd party. It was a 2nd party that was needed.
Liberals dutifully, for too many decades, performed their function of protecting and preserving the corporate state. Those "progressives" kept a viable 2nd party from developing... thereby ensuring that elections could not serve the good purpose that they could and should have.
Now, it's too late.
The young today don't have 40 or 50 years of habitable planet left, for them to "long-haul" organize from the bottom up.
It's the "progressives" who dedicated their activist selves to ensuring that votes would not be "wasted" who doomed all humanity to climate change extinction.
What was and is needed is a strong, militant and radical organization(s) operating outside of the parties to bring intense pressure on them. That has always been the case. That can happen very suddenly, as it has over the last year all across Europe - from a handful of people to millions in merely a few weeks. Conditions drive that, and the rulers are hell-bent to continue to impose austerity measures, and to take other cruel and draconian steps - all to save the comfort and freedom of the wealthy few from their own folly - and those steps are certain to worsen the conditions. Worsening conditions are certain to lead to resistance and rebellion. That is the way of the world, throughout all time.
It will happen. We are right on the verge. One of these mornings people will wake up thinking "enough. We have nothing to lose. We don't know what to do, but we will figure it out." And we will figure it out. Necessity will most assuredly be the mother of invention. We will organize, we will fight, we will think, eat and breathe revolution 24 hours a day. There will be an explosion of creative talent. We will see great courage, and be called upon to make sacrifices for the greater good. We will be a part of something constructive and powerful, and we will be fighting to relieve the suffering and misery if millions of people, and creating a future for the people yet to come.
Happy new year to everyone here. This post is my positive message, and a true cause for celebration. The end to this stressful stalemate, this paralysis and confusion, this hellish nightmare is coming soon.
>>It will happen. We are right on the verge.
Hi TA,
Can't say I agree with this assessment. I came here to be in an echo chamber and what surprises me is the high level of denial that exists even here. The apology article is a case in point. Another is the mindless mimicry of right wing talking points that has become accepted as fact even amongst so called progressives. Talk about education as a case in point. All of this is wrapped up nicely in a Gandhi sari of non-violence, victimhood and enabler.
We have a tough row to hoe.
I could be wrong, of course.
However...
I did not expect millions to be in the streets in Greece. I did not expect the workers to stay strong and refuse to cave or compromise.
I did not expect the radical Left, the Reds to be leading that and growing stronger every day.
I did not expect a suddenly revived and growing Union movement and radical left in Italy, France, Spain, Ireland and Portugal. It is like the dead rising from the grave.
I did not expect the wave of resistance and organizing to leap the English Channel - a more formidable barrier than the Atlantic.
Looking back, it was the conditions that led to the uprising in Europe. The same conditions, or worse, are here as well and getting worse.
I think that a global working class uprising is the path of least resistance now, the most likely outcome. The alternative - mass submission to "austerity measures" - seems much less likely. Those are now the only two alternatives, as it is clear that the rulers will not back down - cannot back down - and that the "austerity measures" (really an all-out assault on the working class) will only escalate.
There has been a massive shift over the last few months - maybe the greatest ever. Yes, Americans will resist that - deny it, avoid it, suppress it. That is what most of the authors and commentators here are desperately trying to do. The sudden increase in racist hatred being posted here, as well as the paranoid suspicions of other members are symptoms of that. There is a rear guard action going on as people try desperately to revive or restore the illusions known as the "American Dream," and cast about looking for scapegoats to blame for the decline of the "American Dream."
The more that people resist, the harder the landing will be. But the illusion known as the "American Dream" is no match for a global working class uprising, and it is coming down. The Bailey Savings and Loan will not get us through this crisis, and Mr. Smith will not be going to Washington. Discouraging words will be heard, and the skies may very well be cloudy all day.
"Revolutionary progress determines its directions when it rouses a powerful self centered counterrevolution by engendering an adversary that can only cause the insurgent party to evolve in its battle against the counterrevolutionaries into a veritable revolutionary party."
–(Karl Marx, as cited by Ulrike Meinhoff.)
"Who says that revolutionaries even want to destroy the society of coercion at all?"
–(Otto Muehl)
The "progressive" liberals are that "powerful self-centered counterrevolution" in America.
Liberals have very effectively eliminated any possibility for nonviolence to achieve the change needed now.
If the changes needed for human survival can possibly come in time, now that will only occur when near everyone has no choice left but to risk their lives fiercely fighting; ether for the global corporate state, or against it.
When conditions eventually get that bad, then, for either side to "win" that End Stage war, each side will impose a universal compulsory draft... with death being the immediately provided option for any conscientious objectors, or reluctant recruits.
The dark end that the "enlightened" have caused will be darker than anything imaginable.
>>each side will impose a universal compulsory draft
Complete nonsense. As Gracie Slick sang, we're volunteers of America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SboRijhWFDU
That generation got sold. Time to finish the job that was started in the 60's.
Anyone who understands US history realizes that the left in this country has been hounded, marginalized, decimated and driven into the dust. The McCarthy era was very real and the purge was massive. It raised its head briefly for the Vietnam war and once again it was attacked and left for dead. There is a reason for this country being the most imprisoned populace on the planet per capita. Today the ranks of the left are threadbare and what little remains is a handful academics that really aren't interested in rocking the boat and giving up their six figure salaries and padded chairs in their ivory towers. We can deny it all we want. God bless Nader, Zinn, Chomsky and the likes. That said, do these men really represent the working class of America? What success can they claim in America when the word socialism itself has become a dirty word? Nader himself is today a millionaire and his leftist credentials don't even exist. In what article has he ever articulated a rigorous call for socialism? Yet Hedges wishes to hold him up as a leftist leader?
The tired old horse of voting has been dragged out of the barn again. That coupled with non-violence is the balm that continues to sooth. Anyone who voted for Obama went about the business of non-violent change. We heeded the message of the Gandhi wannabes and worked within the system. It's our fault when he turns out to be a criminal as bad or worse than Bush? I watched his campaign claim that they would do a serious investigation of the Cheney's and Yoo's if elected. Has that come to pass? Is Gitmo closed and someone forgot to tell me about it? Did the drone bombing stop? These are bald-faced lies presented to the public yet we should forgive and forget. Hedges would have us go out and participate yet again in the hopes of propping up this failed system. Let's be clear on this, voting in this corrupt and failed system is your stamp of approval on it. Better for them to scream democracy in our faces. Let's all deny the massive forces of mass persuasion and information manipulation that occurs on a daily basis.
I am not voting again and I have told numerous people that I will not vote in this system until we have genuine campaign finance reform and regulation of corporate media. I would recommend that you all do the same. Would I vote if I saw an independent or third party candidate garnering a meager 10% in the polls? I probably would. Are we likely to see it? Face the facts, we never will. They own the information funnel and they aren't going open it up. Nor will we see any legitimate campaign finance reform as those who hold the levers of power will never relinquish them voluntarily.
What is the take away from this article? Organize? Has anyone read the news about how the government is going after anti-war activists? Does Hedges really know what it is like to sit in jail because you can't make bail? How about having all your stuff taken away, computer included. These are very real deterrents to organizing. Perhaps a clarion call for disorganizing and striking at the beast with open source revolution is what is needed. To what ends would a campaign of vandalism and property destruction be an effective response to this ever tightening noose of corporate fascism is a question that needs to be asked. He's radicalizing, that much is certain. Will he become militant? That's the real question.
Bricks, bottles and barricades.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trFiL3L0WKE
Where are they from, where are they from? They are from the barricades.
Justice Arcs and Readytotransform. Your posts are easy to read and smart.
Yes, Pay no taxes, don't go to work, don't vote, and stop shopping. That would completely and ultimately shift the power back to us. But if done in pitiful amounts just like our marches on Washington, then nothing will ever change.
Some of you will still believe in the (gag) American Dream, and some of you will actually believe voting for anyone will make a difference, and some of you will still go to WalMart as a repast for depression and lack of intelligence. Meanwhile your future has already been flushed, so go get a cart and a donkey and join the rest of the world...oh ya, don't forget your gas mask.
Powerful post. Very powerful.
Violence has solved how many problems? If you can destroy 'them', you can destroy 'me'. It all depends whose side you think i am on. It hasn't worked so far in human history. Not that i don't agree with most of your observations.
And the academics are who you are talking about, although we know darn well that zinn got knocked around in the sixties, and put his body on the line. Chomsky may have as well.
"The more things change the more they stay the same".
>>Violence has solved how many problems?
If it wasn't for militant groups like the Black Panthers, SDS and yippies, I'd have been sitting in a Vietnamese jungle at the ripe age of 18.
If it wasn't for the 60's riots, you would still have lily white police departments protecting and serving and punishing. Not to mention any other city job outside of trash collector.
If it wasn't for split skulls at the Rouge Plant, we'd still have child labor and 80 hour work weeks.
If it wasn't for 1 million dead, we'd still have slavery.
If it wasn't for the French Revolution, we'd still have monarchy, peasantry, and debtors prison.
I could go on and on and on. The United States of Amnesia. The corporate fascists have wrested away ALL the levers of power in this country. They will NOT relinquish them VOLUNTARILY. As Dear Abby would say, wake up and smell the coffee.
John, what is it with you, Mark Abram, and the other increasing trolls here on CD?
You continually talk of the "51% wealth" vs. "49% poverty", when any fool, let alone all real CDers here know that it is an issue of the 1/10th% wealthy ruling-elite corporate/financial/militarist Empire vs. the 90+% oppressed (oh, and the 9.9% Empire butt-boys and trolls).
You talk of the "systemic and satanic thing called 'democracy'". when all real CDers know that the systemic, satanic, seminal cancer in the belly of our fading democracy is EMPIRE.
Do you trolls think that you are accomplishing anything for the thirty pieces of silver that you are receiving for your crap trap?
Here's a compelling, eloquent, and early article that correctly diagnoses the real "systemic and satanic" horror that is attacking all of us, our children, our country, and our fragile world, and which none of us at CD is foolish enough to support, believe in, or shamefully work for:
http://www.zcommunications.org/confronting-empire-by-arundhati-roy
I thought the vaunted Empire had plenty of money to buy anything.
They clearly need to buy better trolls.
Best,
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
amacd: Don't expect any intelligent discussion with that moron. It's a waste of time. I've tried many times. All he does is drone on about 51% wealthy lording it over the 49% impoverished, slow-witted working class who don't vote, while we in the 51% elite class hobnob with the 10% High Society, and run interference for them. He's all about shedding LIGHT on the rest of us shrouded in darkness, if only we'd be humble enough to heed the vast wisdom of John Ellis.
He's created his own religion, and all the talking points are fully displayed every day on CD, over and over and over. He dominates many threads, never tiring of boring everyone to tears with his lame-brained fantasies of 51%/49%, and how the purpose of this world is "to show the harm in it" and assorted gibberish. He's an evangelist of a sui generis religion, with John Ellis as its great enlightened prophet. The guy is definitely mentally disturbed.
organize around what? for what?
neither Nader nor Hedges provides the answers.
yup, they huff and puff alright.
but they can't bring themselves to pointing to socialism and communism.
I'm sorry folks, the elephant in the room is that the left has no where to go because the left has failed, year after year after year, to present a viable candidate or to demonstrate any understanding of the process to back one.
What is Nader doing? Is he not even savvy enough to realize that he is simply not Presidential? With no leadership experience and being out of touch with the non-intellectual, he is not even close. Kucinich at least has some leadership experience, but some of his stances are simply odd and disturbing. Who else? Right, no one. Where is the leadership? I mean like knowing how to build an organization and lead? How about starting by forming a year to year consistent 3rd party (Green?) that presents an attractive, fundable, and consistent platform? And along the way presents viable local and congressional candidates. Win a few elections and then it will be time to think of a presidential run.
Why the heck am I bothering to say this? Its so fundamental. I am so discouraged by the left's lack of leadership and common political sense.
"Who could put a thousand organizers in the field, besides George Soros? The labor unions."
This finally gets to the point that should be front and center in any serious discussion of challenging the two corporate parties for power. We live in a class society. It's labor and its allies on one side, and big business on the other. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are playing for the other team.
There's no such thing as "one America". There are two Americas, and everybody has to choose sides. Abstract "third party" candidates are not enough; We should be agitating for the formation of a labor party, based on the unions, that would consciously, openly fight for our team.
The labor movement, even in its weakened state, has the power and the foot soldiers to field candidates and win elections NOW. In stead of spending millions each election cycle on candidates of the corporate parties, unions should run their own, labor candidates.
Such a turn of events would be a tonic for both the political landscape in general, and the labor movement in particular, which has been fighting since the 1930's with one hand tied behind its back, refusing to enter the political arena directly. Labor supporting candidates of either corporate party makes about as much sense as a football team looking for leadership from the quarterback of the opposing squad. Enough!
Sure, unions today are weak and corrupt. But we will all remain weak and powerless unless we recognize who's on our team and begin to fight politically. A labor party would not be just another "third party"; it would be the first time in American history that a mass party beholden to working people challenged the corporate charlatans.
Well put Bruce. This thing that Chris Hedges, and Ralph Nader for that matter, concieves of as "the Left" is in fact a slice of the petty bourgeois. It is a group of very smart, very white, very thoughtful and very compassionate Americans. But they are outside the only force capable of defeating the capitalist ruling class, the other opposing class, the working class.
You have an infinitely clearer vision of the only way forward. A class-conscious political force based in the workers unions, no matter how decimated they may seem right now. Strategic thinking at the ballot box or spectacular expressions of conscience, like chaining yourself to the White House fence, are roads to nowhere. Organizing is one of the most difficult and painstaking processes there is but that is where our chances to turn this system upside down and put working people in charge lies. Only the working class has the inate discipline to do that organizing.
And if the world is saved by its workers, there will not be a more progressive tax structure, the wealth of parasites like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and the Waltons will be siezed and no person will ever again be allowed to acumulate such obscene personal fortunes and plunge millions of other humans into misery. And if the workers win, there will not be better collective bargaining agreements and OSHA won't have a bigger budget, the workers will just run the industries they toil in. The workers will not be interested mortgage modifications, or lower co-pays, because the banks and their insurance company partners are finished. And finally these triumphant workers will no longer allow their sons and daughters to be cannon fodder in wars for oil and other resources to fuel the American Empire.
The banks and the whole of the ruling class have struck gold with this guy Obama. He has nearly nuetralized the most militant sector of the working class, its African-American component. So in the next two years, as he fronts for the assault on African-American and all other workers, immigrants, women, and escalates the drone strikes (raining down cowardly fire on innocents who never see the face of their killer and his lovely wife and two sweet daughters), Obama will be lauded like never before. Watch for words like Reaganesque, Trumanesque and Clintonesque.
Another good post.
"This thing that Chris Hedges, and Ralph Nader for that matter, conceives of as 'the Left' is in fact a slice of the petty bourgeois."
Yes.
Well said.
Progressive, antiwar, & ecologically-minded voters do have somewhere to go: the Green Party.
Read my article here: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Memo-to-Progressives-Gree-by-Scott-McLarty-101216-690.html (Title: "Memo to Progressives: Green or the Graveyard -- Why progressive, antiwar, and eco voters must lead a popular revolt against two-party rule")
Unfortunately, too many such voters are squeamish about the Green Party. Maybe they fear the 'spoiler' accusation, or they've heard about controversies within the GP, or they're worried that going Green means burning bridges with the Dems.
In the arena of electoral politics, the only solution to the rule of the two corporate pro-war parties is the emergence of a party that is dedicated to progressive, democratic, antiwar, & ecological principles and refuses corporate money.
Building the party, getting new members & registrations, fundraising, dealing with the inevitable internal party squabbles, reaching out to indifferent or hostile media, collecting signatures to win ballot access & place Greens on the ballot, and getting Greens elected to public office -- these are all part of the hard work of building the party. A lot of people are already doing it, and they've been doing it for years.
After his earlier Green runs, Ralph Nader ran well-organized independent campaigns for the White House in 2004 and 2008, but these efforts contributed nothing to a permanent alternative political party. Like John Anderson's campaign in 1980, Ralph's independent runs leave no institutional legacy. We need a lasting alternative.
The GP will build its base by getting candidates elected to school boards, city councils, county commissions, & state legislatures. But it's also possible that we'll see a Green or two elected to Congress in the next ten years. Imagine the seismic shock to the political landscape if we begin to see some Greens in the US House. The Democrats & Republicans will no longer be each other's sole competition. Medicare For All would no longer be "off the table" if the passage of a health care reform bill depended on a few Green votes.
Don't mourn, go Green! Green Party web site: http://www.gp.org
Amen Scott !
No party that supports "socially responsible investing" can ever speak for the working class. No party that cannot speak for the working class can ever be a serious alternative.
Green party growth has not kept up with the growth of the population. No party that is based on the enlightened and progressive few can ever be a majority party. Even were these things not true, no social and political change has ever come from partisan electoral politics. Partisan electoral politics serve the purpose of taming, neutralizing, and gentrifying any and all attempts at building working class solidarity. It is the alternative to progress, the safe and powerless alternative, the place to escape and avoid the reality of the struggle we are engaged in.
I cannot tell you how utterly divorced from, alienated from, the very real struggles going on locally here the Green party is. Either the Green party has become a haven for those determined to avoid the struggle, or else it is holding people back from the struggle.
The Left does not need "a place to go."
"A place to go" means a safe cage, a dead end, a coral within which we can all herded and then neutered, a dark soundproof room we can be locked in until the next election.
Good that the Left does not have a place to go! Good that we start facing that reality. Good that we do not allow ourselves to be herded once again into the pen of futility and irrelevance.
The entire world and everything in it belongs to the Left, and we are coming to claim it. No place to go? Good, we are coming for your place, then, the place you built on our backs.
"Rebel?" Among the gentrified progressives? Hah. Rubble. That is all that the progressive "work within the system" fantasy is now - rubble. A rubble without a cause.
The words of a leader. No defeatism, no attribution of superpowers to the bourgeoisie and the simple truth--we can take them! I just want to look around in the mansions of Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon before they are turned over to working families.
Left, right... conservative vs. progressive...
Tweedle dee & tweedle dumb.
We don't even have a two party system. We have a single corporatist party in collusion with itself... pretending to argue along an illusionary spectrum of illusionary poles.
Ralph Nader despite being right sometimes has no answers.
It is nice to see Bernie Sanders stand up from time to time... it is even nice to hear Ron Paul say some truthful things from time to time.
But facts are facts. Our problem is not that progressives don't have a voice or any leadership... (they don't) Our problem is allowing this to be portrayed as a two way street.
Progressivism isn't the answer to anything. It is just a response to something. The same way that Satanism is only a response to Christianity. What do you want in place of the Corporatocracy?
We may all agree about some things, but truth is that I don't agree with a lot of you guys on a number of issues. The corporations are united in their pro-capitalism, globalist stance. We have nothing in common with each other save for some degree of an education.
If you are just now realizing that progressives have nowhere to go, then you have been in denial for an age and a half. THAT is the reason no one is taking you seriously. You have nothing to offer. You are just reactionaries... spineless ones at that.
Sorry.
Excellent comments.
What on Earth are you talking about?
Are you talking about the World, America, or some other nation?
And since when is the laboring class 49% of any population? How is a 2% majority enough to be secure in anything?
It isn't clear from your post if you think the rich constitute 51% or just that 51% is not impoverished.
BTW if you want to reply to someone's comment, there is a reply feature.
I have to take issue with your "EXAMPLES".
1) Roll bars: True, you don't see visible roll bars in most motor vehicles, but since 1973, there have been in place vehicle roll over standards to protect vehicle occupants in the event of roll over. http://www.iihs.org/research/qanda/rollover.html See #12!
2) "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" A work of fiction, by Ralph Nader. Where is your proof that the "Rich" paid him to write this?
3) A mickey-mouse campaign for president? Ralph has been shut out of debates by both parties! The corporate media machine will not cover anyone that doesn't fit their "mold"!
Ralph Nader would have been a much better President than anyone of the approved occupants since Johnson!
Actually... The Left Has Somewhere That It Must Go!
BOOK REVIEW: Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air:
http://chenangogreens.org/home/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=490&Itemid=1
David J. Cyr, good point about the Left needing to get serious about sustainability. I have read this book, also available online for free (or it used to be).
But the main message I took from this book was that the scope of renewable energy as an alternative to fossil fuel-based systems was ***seriously*** limited by, first of all, the availability of the primary energy in usable form - such as wind and solar incidence, and the availability of all the various materials and the energy that would be required to manufacture these systems. Bottom line: there is simply NO WAY that renewable energy systems can provide for anywhere close to current levels of consumption. Simply, NO WAY!
The only sane thing to do is to start massive conservation efforts, cutting out all the non-essential stuff - forthwith! But based on my experience, I am not sure how many people want to listen to that message - that much of what makes up current "civilization" and "lifestyle" will simply have to go if everyone is to have the basic necessities for a healthy and a decent life.
The problem is deeper than "left" vs. "right" - the problem has to do with wrong lessons learned over generations due to what is basically ill-gotten wealth. I suspect that even many of those who think they are on the left imagine that somehow fixing the economic system would allow them to continue life as we know it, largely unchanged, including everyday meat eating.
I also suspect there are those who realize that there are serious problems waiting when petroleum runs out or when its consumption has to be drastically reduced. But instead of looking at major change in lifestyle, they long for a much smaller human population, so their current lifestyle can continue. Personally I am fully convinced on the need for drastic reduction in human population, but I am not stupid enough to hope to see such a reduction in my lifetime.
I think there is a general inability to grasp this problem of how to move towards sustainability and to face reality. That is why most of those on the left still think in terms of economic and social change, rather than starting with the limits imposed by nature in the first place and then work out an acceptable economic system where everyone will have the basic necessities for a healthy and decent life.
Text below (without graphic) of my book review that I provided a link to above, which was apparently not read:
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Graphic by David Cyr, using energy stacks provided by David MacKay
"Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to be pro-nuclear. I’m just pro-arithmetic."
David J. C. MacKay is a Professor of Natural Philosophy, in the Department of Physics, at Cambridge University. He is also the Chief Scientific Advisor to the British government's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
In his book, Sustainable Energy (without the hot air), MacKay has provided an indispensable tool for the people who want humans to get fit... rather than remain unfit to survive.
Al Gore quickly accumulated popularity and fabulous celebrity by too comfortingly convincing too many millions of people that catastrophic climate change could be easily averted by the smallest deeds, like changing your light bulbs... or purchasing a Prius.
David MacKay's book offers a serious science responsible climate change mitigation and fossil-fuel replacement analysis, presented with an honest understanding that developed nation people are not going to radically reduce their energy consumption, and that developing nations will be increasing theirs. He has provided a real world environmental cost — for sustainable energy benefit — analysis.
Being a physics professor, and a proper Englishman, MacKay says his explanation of sensible solutions are "without the hot air." The American translation: without any bullshit!
MacKay has methodically calculated the possible contributions that each fossil-fuel alternative could provide. What clear-eyed science quickly makes clear is that, while renewable energy replacement of fossil-fuels is possible, those solutions won't be cheap, nor easy... nor small.
MacKay explains the enormous potential of renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, but then demonstrates that energy dependence upon renewables would require a highly industrialized landscape. The enormous potential of renewables can only be realized if the renewable energy collectors are enormous... covering enormous areas on land and at sea.
Truly effective use of renewable energy will be pervasive, and it will be invasive. We do not have time left upon the planet to argue over which privileged few will have backyards fully free of renewables, while many millions of the not so privileged people are displaced by renewable installations. MacKay demonstrates that there are various ways to resolve that size problem that renewables have... well, various ways available in any society filled with smart people, who all work well together with common interest, for the Common's good.
Because real science is subservient to political realities, MacKay provides an analysis of new nuclear energy potentials that people seriously concerned about climate change and human survival should seriously consider.
For those who think no big solution can ever be a good solution, I suggest they consider what the obvious Final Solution will be. If developed nations don't rapidly reduce energy waste and provide the large scale alternative energy source transition required to mitigate climate change, before it's too late to do so, then, when faced with both life sustaining resource depletion and the prospect of total human extinction, those with the capability to exterminate millions and billions of "others" will.
When the Climate Wars begin, the nations that now casually wage the Resource Wars to just be more comfortable than the "other" will not be reluctant to exterminate any "other" in order for the privileged people in the most highly weaponized nations to survive, and continue to be comfortable.
The people Peak Oil obsessed claim that technology can't possibly replace fossil-fuels. MacKay has explained how technology surely can. The science needed is available. The decision to use it or not to, and how to use it if used, are political decisions for societies to make. We already have the technological ability to replace fossil-fuels with sustainable alternatives. What's currently lacking is the political will. It's been too easy for We The People to short-term benefit from essentially sacrifice-free wars of aggression waged upon "other" people living over large remnants of fossil-fuels. There is some glimmer of hope. Many Americans are waking up to the fact that it is now them who are the "other" living over what are the last tiny remnants of fossil-fuels.
The transition away from fossil-fuels to sustainable alternative energy won't happen — can't happen — unless there's a great political reformation — a revolution — soon. For humans to continue to have a habitable planet, without resorting to massive exterminations in the Climate Wars already being Pentagon planned (under assumption that victors will survive those), the sociopathic global corporate state's control of national governments would need to end soon, and the corporate capacities to construct would need to be controlled by the sensible policies of natural person governed socialist states.
The unfortunate reality is that the liberals and conservatives of the American electorate regularly united together provide 99% corporate party popular mandates for perpetually waging fossil-fueled resource wars. The American people won't likely support large scale renewable energy unless scientists first discover ways to use it for powerful new solar and wind powered weapons.
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PDF files of MacKay's book can be downloaded for FREE, at:
http://www.withouthotair.com/
His site also has links to purchase in hardcover or paperback form
David J. Cyr, I did read your review. But unfortunately I did not see this particular points of serious limitations on the availability of the primary resources themselves (wind, solar incidence, etc.) and the finite amounts of materials and energy available that would be needed for the manufacture of these new energy systems explicitly mentioned in your review. You do say " those solutions won't be cheap, nor easy... nor small". But I was looking for "...nor even possible".
And I had some trouble with this part of your review:
>>"The people Peak Oil obsessed claim that technology can't possibly replace fossil-fuels. MacKay has explained how technology surely can. The science needed is available. The decision to use it or not to, and how to use it if used, are political decisions for societies to make. We already have the technological ability to replace fossil-fuels with sustainable alternatives. What's currently lacking is the political will.">>
This is exactly the OPPOSITE of the message I got from that book. That is, while the technology may be available, the materials to manufacture them and the primary energy to power them are both limited ***to supply current levels of consumption*** or even anywhere close. The only way is to cut back on consumption - fossil fuels or not. So, yes, I did read your review, but apparently we both got different messages out of that book. If you want to dispute my understanding, please look through his calculations and conclusions on solar, wind and tidal systems - of course made for Britain, but you can see how the numbers compare in terms of availability, potential, current demand and what would be required in terms of cost and materials.
300+ comments -so much frustration, so many complaints, all real. However, believe it or not, there are good things happening. And yes the "Left" needs to take a deep breath and figure out what we are really about or we will continue to be "left" --left behind and left out, that is!
Forget about what goes on in Washington DC. Are you helping the homeless?
Change the world one person at a time-yourself! The only person most of us have control over.
Check out the Peace Pilgrim website www.peacepilgrim.org. Read "Steps Toward Inner Peace." Her core message: "This is the way of peace: Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love."
Also this: "When evil is attacked, it mobilizes, although it may have been weak and unorganized before, the attack gives it validity and strength. The positive approach inspires – the negative approach makes angry." Peace Pilgrim
JanisRose, thanks for mentioning Peace Pilgrim. I first came into contact with her message in 1989 when someone gave me a small booklet. Then I made a small donation and bought another book (with her picture on the cover - I think, of her walking on a highway). I think her energy must still live on and is possibly helping to neutralize so much of negative energy in the society, thereby preventing outright chaos.
As always, I agree with everything Nader said. I haven't read the 315 comments, but I'll add one more.
Yeah, candidate Obama was a good liar, and labor and other constituencies were too credulous. The Trojan Horse worked for the Greeks, and it worked again for the Republicrats in 2008. And yeah, the first black president has co-opted and neutered civil rights other liberal leaders, who are now invisible as a Democrat in the White House advances the neo-con fiscal and foreign policy agenda. All very bleak, I agree completely.
Still, Nader's remark that [AFL-CIO's] "Trumka hasn't even made Obama's campaign pledge of a $9.50 minimum wage by this year an issue. If you want to increase consumer demand, what better way to do it than to unleash $300 billion in wages?" is an eye opener. Let's educate ourselves and others about trickle-up economics, and the history of minimum wage hikes boosting the economy.
I'm heartened that once liberal/leftist concepts have now become mainstream. Polls show big majorities of Americans want to preserve Social Security and Medicare, balance the budget by raising the highest marginal tax rate, cut military spending and bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
A Canadian-style, single-payer health insurance system. Environmental protection. Ending to-big-to-fail corporate socialism. It's all supported by two-thirds, or more, of Americans. We should continue rallying a progressive-populist movement around these core concepts.
So, thank you Ralph Nader, Chris Hedges and everyone whose tireless efforts have been so useful. Even in this dark hour, we're winning the education battle. Keep writing, speaking, learning and organizing. We all need to write our elevator speeches for unenlightened family and friends, and share and refine them here and elsewhere. Keep up the good work everyone.
The real problem is most Americans are sheep. They have no mind of their own and must be told who to vote for. Instead of doing any real research they listen to TV adds that are paid for by Wall Street for guidance. We listen to polls that tell us who the projected winner is and not wanting to be associated with a loser, that's who we vote for. I am 1 of the 700k that voted for Nader. I told everyone that would listen to research where all the candidates stood on the issues to the point that I was tired of hearing it. I Did it in 2000, 2004 and I will do it again in 2012. Grow some balls America otherwise get in line to have them chopped off.