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Would the Streets Have Filled with Demonstrators if McCain was President?
What might have happened if John McCain had won the presidency in 2008? One thing is certain: there would have been a lot more protest from Democrats, progressives, and the left. Take it as an irony of his election, but Barack Obama has proved remarkably effective in disarming the antiwar movement, even as the use of war in American policy in the Greater Middle East has only grown. That Obama, the supposed anti-warrior of the 2008 campaign, has paid less than no attention to his antiwar critics is no news at all. It’s now practically a cliché as well that he seems to feel no need to feed his political “base” and that, generally speaking (and explain it as you will), his base has not yet pushed back.
This has been particularly true of Obama’s wars, especially the disastrous, never-ending one in Afghanistan. Had Afghanistan been “McCain’s war,” you would surely have seen growing waves of protest, despite the way 9/11 ensured that the Afghan War, unlike the Iraq one, would long be the unassailable “good war.” Still, as American treasure surged into the ill-starred enterprise in Afghanistan, while funds for so much that mattered disappeared at home, I think the streets of Washington would have been filling. What protest there has been, as John Hanrahan of the Nieman Watchdog website reported recently, tends to be remarkably ill-covered in the mainstream media.
Obama, only two points ahead of Ron Paul in the latest Gallup Poll in the race for 2012, is a beyond-vulnerable candidate. (Somewhere there must be some Democratic pol doing the obvious math and considering a challenge, mustn't there?) Fortunately, in another area at least as crucial as our wars, demonstrators against a Big Oil tar-sands pipeline from Canada that will help despoil the planet are now out in front of the White House -- you can follow them here -- and they haven’t been shy about aiming their nonviolent protests directly at Obama. Will he or won’t he act like the climate-change president that, on coming into office, he swore he would be? Time will tell. Meanwhile, check out Bill McKibben, famed environmentalist and an organizer of the protests, just out of a jail cell on getting “Arrested at the White House.”
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050. His other most recent book is The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books). Previous books include: The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.
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113 Comments so far
Show AllYour commentaries are always a joy to read, OS, but this one deserves a really big feather. Thanks.
Dear Obie, I wish I had time to respond at length as your thoughtful post deserves, but I just want to at least say: wow! Thanks for the best post on CD in a loooong time! E
Elaine, I see it the way you do. And if Guitarist, Randy G, Elizabeth H. (previous posts), Kitaj, Bill from Sag (if I understood what he meant by voting NO), Ad, Petrrp and OTHERS all opt to vote Republican now, for Paul, then isn't this just the litmus test example of what happens to the rats caught up in the maze? If the democrats disappoint, head right... trapped in the flatlands, and/or the Big Muddy.
This is the time to do OTHER. Anyone who'd trust a right wing Republican libertarian to act as liberator is of the mind that licks the boots of generals. More controls on the venues of human expression are NOT the path to anything remotely compatible with freedom.
It's easy for ANY politician to mention positions s/he may advocate in the top slot, and quite another to implement them. The U.S. government is wedded to the MIC, and NO candidate is going to undo that knotted relationship until the TRUTH is fully understood by the public. So long as the media is controlled, AND the vote count "belongs" to the proprietary interests that own the technology of the machines used to decipher those counts, no anti-war prez is going to exist... at least not live and in color.
You are simplifying and smearing SR, and sadly not for the first time. I said I would vote for Greens both locally and at the state level, and for Paul ONLY if nominated by the Repigliecons, which is highly doubtful, otherwise a Green for President.
I am surprised an ostensibly "spiritual" person like you can't visualize and empathize with the pain of children being painfully burned to death by American bombs, I certainly can as a 100% atheist poet and song writer. Paul has shown great courage in resisting the war mongers and DID face death threats when he even resisted the call to war against Afghanistan right after 911 from his own party. When it comes to saving children from dying of American imperialist bomb burns in a burn ward I am a single issue voter, deal!!
Yes Paul will make it worse for the suffering creatures of the planet that would be my only real regret, and I would vow to do more Earth First! activism to balance any Paul vote.
I frankly really don't care if Americans suffer from a hypothetical Paul Presidency George Carlin was right when he said the (American) public sucks, fuck hope!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efKguI0NFek
SR-- what do you think we should do, if it's a bad idea to vote for Ron Paul in the Republican primaries, and then to vote Green in the general election? Obama would lose; I don't think that's a downside.
We have no one to vote for in the Democratic primaries. There is only one mainstream candidate (Ron Paul) who has a record of opposing the forever wars, opposing the decimation of our Bill of Rights and Constitution, and opposing the imperial powers Obama has claimed. We know our electronic voting is easily rigged.
We know that most Americans actually do not want war, economic servitude, and destruction of government services. We know that Ron Paul is horrible on everything but ending the wars, our greatest burden. We know that Obama and the rest of the Republicans are horrible on everything, period.
We know that our corrupt corporate mainstream media has been trying to marginalize Ron Paul, and not reporting on his consistent opposition to the wars. We know that if Ron Paul won the Republican primaries, the argument against war and against the imperial presidency would be on TV screens across this country daily for months.
We know that our country is responsible for immense death and destruction every single day, and we know that there is no end in sight. We want to stop the death machine, but how do we do it? Opening the discussion by voting for Ron Paul in the Republican primaries seems the best strategy I've found so far, but I'd love to know of a better one.
Ron Paul is the candidate to support in the primaries. He is not a corporate whore, as many are trying to assert. If he was a corporate whore, wouldn't he be getting more money from the corporations? Wouldn't he be for NAFTA, the Patriot Act (the terror/industrial complex), the Wall Street bailout, and the wars? He says corporations are on their own and will get no special government intervention if they fail. That's better than what the real corporate whore sitting in the Oval Office right now believes.
I am at a loss as to why people on the left are dismissing Paul, simply because there are issues Paul stands for that they are against. That's not the point. We vote for him in the primaries so there is candidate who will actually challenge Obama on important issues like the war, NAFTA, the Patriot Act, and the FED. If the left will support Paul in the primaries, their voices will be heard, too, and I think Paul will listen, discuss, and respond to their issues. Will Obama do that? No, he just allows his surrogates to call us "fucking r***rds," scream "Fuck the UAW!" (unions), and to make it clear to us "we have no where to go." For heaven's sake, why in the world wouldn't the left do everything in their power to get rid of this turncoat? If we join the Libertarians, if we form a Left/Liberatarian alliance, we can go after Obama from the left and the right, and together, we'll have the clout and the power to scare Obama, the Democrats, and the Republicans. Why wouldn't we want that?
Ron Paul is the most viable candidate to support now in order to challenge Obama from the left. It's crazy, but it's true. I wish everyone would quit looking under every floorboard for a candidate that isn't there, and instead, think strategically. Geez, it's not like anyone will suddenly contract some horrible disease if they switch parties for one lousy primary.
Thanks, lefttown. I've been puzzled by the vehement attacks from other lefties that this idea, of strategically voting for Ron Paul in the Republican primaries, has triggered. (At firedoglake.com, they go absolutely nuts if you propose this.)
Maybe we are all brainwashed. I have to admit I had to give myself a firm push yesterday and get out there and put the "Ron Paul for President" bumper sticker on my car!
Regardless of what one may think of Obama, and I don't think anyone here likes him, his presidency will always be significant because he was the first African-American to win the office in a racist nation. Since the election, Goodman has also hosted guests and run stories critical of Obama. I think she was a true believer during the campaign (I had to stop tuning in to the broadcast for a while), but since then she's covered him well, I think. Even when Bush was in office, her show wasn't anti-Bush every day of the week, and it easily could have been.
I bash the American public as much as anyone.
I think the aphorism, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." {Mencken} -- is one of the wittiest and most astute on record.
However, you have to accord the American voter (especially white voters) some small measure of credit for voting for a half African guy with a crazy Muslim name. Who would have predicted that based on this country's history?
Hey, voters did not realize that he was a complete fraud.
That he really is just Bush-Cheney with catchier slogans, a better education, and a nicer demeanor.
"That he really is just Bush-Cheney with catchier slogans, a better education, and a nicer demeanor."
Precisely.
History is often cruel, and sometimes plays cruel jokes. Despite our best intentions, things don't always work out. At some point, unless one descends into total cynicism, one has to get out there and put one's puny weight on the scale on the side of justice. "One plus one plus one makes a million," as the song says.
Yes, many of us in the progressive community chose to project our hopes on to Obama. As a teacher, the warning bells sounded for me when he chose Arne Duncan over Linda Darling-Hammond for Secretary of Ed. Tim Geithner and the usual suspects filled out the Cabinet, and I think we all knew we had "misperceived." Much disappointment has followed, and the rhetoric of change has become thin gruel.
The question is what to do about it. Obama is still popular within his party, and is unlikely to face a primary challenge. Symbolism does matter, even though the substance has been disappointing. Just running a third-party candidate is not enough. Self-satisfied purity changes nothing. The stakes are too high; the impacts of empire and globalization are dire.
I would hope that some kind of "Emergency Committee" of leading progressives could come together around a pro-people, pro-environment, anti-empire program, in order to focus the discontent of the have-nots (which is most of us) in a positive direction. The alternative is the abyss. We can't abide four more years of the status quo. We must resist, however we can.
The "pro-people, pro-environment, anti-empire program" exists. It is called the Green Party. Here in the U.S. progressives have been too cowed by "the lesser of two evils" argument to break ranks with the Dems and swell the ranks of the Greens. However, this article alludes to the fact that it might in fact be better for the country to have "the greater of two evils" in the White House so that the progressives would not be afraid to mobilize.
Well said. What state are you in? Do the Greens have Party status there?
They barely have party status anywhere, and where they do have it, it's concentrated around the largest cities, with no outreach at all to the rest of the state. When 98% of Americans haven't the foggiest idea there even IS a Green Party, what it stands for or how to locate it on any map, never hear the faintest whisper of it on MSM and never glimpse it on the internet or anywhere else, how are we supposed to expect this alleged, nearly mythical party to get any sort of traction?
I've been hearing about the Green Party for 25 years, and except for some success in Europe, which has been whittled down and compromised to a predictable level of impotence over the years, I have yet to encounter any evidence of its actual existence. Oh, I'm sure it exists, in some form, but it's about as much a challenge to Obama and the Democrats as a windbreaker is against a Level 5 hurricane.
"Ephraim"
Dismissing the Greens as having no chance to make a difference is typical of most voters and it is a self-fulfilling assessment.
The lesser of two evils mentality will continue to corral voters into more egregious degradations through the democrats and the republicans.
The majority of voters have no integrity and they vote as if it is only reasonable to put their support behind a likely winner in a blatantly corrupt game of corporate fraudulence.
You show that you don't know and that you don't really care to know about the Greens.
You then probably think you are a "winner," but from my perspective you are an indifferent loser.
And you show that you make birdbrain assessments based on nothing but some emotion of the moment. I've been interested in the IDEA of the Greens for a very long time, but have yet to find much about them but boilerplate environmentalism, are anti-war, with which I don't disagree in principle, and some sense that they sort of exist in only the largest cities, in quite small numbers.
I loathe the Democrats as much as their doppleganger on the other side of aisle. I've been waiting and watching for the emergence of a coherent third party on the left for over 30 fucking years, and I am not seeing it take shape anywhere. Does this mean I think of myself as a "winner"? Suppose I assert that you see yourself as a tribal chieftain. It makes as much sense.
If the majority of voters have no integrity and only vote like idiots, as you clearly believe, then why the hell are you so attached to the Greens? Is it how you avoid feeling like an "indifferent loser"?
I'm in California. And contrary to what some of the posters here are saying, the Green Party here does call capitalism into question. The ten key planks of its platform can be found at http://www.cagreens.org/platform/10k.shtml
You can find the Green Party position on corporations at http://www.cagreens.org/platform/platform_democracy.shtml#corporations
Check these out for yourself.
"If you suggested to them supporting a socialist party, they'd look at you like you're nuts -- not because they really "oppose" socialism, but because they've never thought about it, or even know what it is."
Because media demagogues have done such a good job of turning "socialism" into such a dirty word, the same people who support the military 100%, the military which is the largest socialist organization in the country. They don't think about that. They don't think about all those "socialist" roads they drive on, those "socialist" ports they use, those "socialist" agencies that USED TO ensure clean food and water, for example.
Good comment, Rick. You put this into better perspective than I did. I think one reason I've been dismissive of the Greens, insofar as they exist, has been exactly their accommodation with capitalism that you summed up very well. Middle class liberals afraid of radical analysis of the very things that most frustrate and enrage them.
Or one could say that both socialists and the mainstream parties both believe exponential industrial growth is possible forever and thus are more the same than different. As an Earth Firster! and anarch-syndicalist I have to say that I think there is more science behind the Greens than the socialists.
Your notion of socialism as being compatible with exponential growth is based on capitalist propaganda and Stalinist practice - neither of which have anything to do with socialism.
It is interesting that while most anarchists are dubious of uncritically accepting anything from mainstream (capitalist) sources this good practice breaks down when it comes to criticism of all things "socialist."
Marx studied and wrote quite a bit about agricultural production under capitalism. In his day, the big environmental problem was the depletion of nutrients of the soil using capitalist agricultural methods (monocrops etc.) Capitalist agriculture was literally killing the land. This was before the invention of artificial fertilizers. Capitalist agriculture created what Marx called a "metabolic rift" between humans and nature. Humans are part of nature, to mend that rift, the metabolism between humanity and nature must be MUTUALLY beneficial. Very few contemporary environmentalists (let alone Greens) would go that far. They are simply trying to mitigate the harm that we do to nature (and ourselves) under capitalism. And, of course, they are failing catastrophically.
If you are not caught in the identity politics of anarchism, and really want to learn something valuable, check out these two books:
"The Ecological Revolution" by John Bellamy Foster and,
"Ecology and Socialism" by Chris Williams
I have never seen a socialist directly adress resource scarcity, or the idea that exponential growth is not sustainable, I always hear 19th century paradigm things like scarcity is only true under capitalism as though socialists had a magic machine to make infinite oil. I will take my class analysis with a critique of infinite growth industrialism and state centralism ala Murray Bookchin thank you very much!
Edward Abbey astutely said that infinite growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
Capitalism manufactures scarcity in order to make profits. It's not that socialists consider that there are infinite resources, or that infinite growth is possible -that would be silly (where are you getting this idea?). But capitalism generates massive amounts of waste of all kinds. Only 2.5% of waste in the US is household waste. The rest is industrial and construction waste. If every US household cut their waste to nothing it would still be a drop in the bucket.
Trillions of dollars are spent (wasted) in the advertising industry to get you to buy products you don't need and are not good for you. When was the last time you saw an add for fresh asparagus?
Trillions spent on wars. Hundreds of billions on locking people up. How wasteful is that?
Because capitalism considers harm to nature an "externality" capitalist economists don't account for the massive costs to the health of species, of ecosystems, the health of most of humanity or the whole planet. Global warming is an externality as far as capitalists are concerned, that's why we have not seen (and will not see) any real progress on reducing carbon - despite the Green washed rhetoric.
Consider the wasteful cost of consumerism, of making of all the crap we don't need; all the resources extracted and the ecological damage that ensues. Under socialism we would not waste all those resources. They would be reduced to serving human needs, not the needs of profit. We would extract resources based on use-value, not exchange value and we would do so with consideration of future generations. How do I know that? Because real socialism is democratic, or it isn't socialism at all. (The USSR, China, Cuba etc don't even meet the basic requirement of socialism: control of the economy by the majority of the population: the working class.)
That gargantuan misuse of natural resources is currently all going to make a very few wildly rich. Without that waste, there is enough for everyone on the planet to have enough for a healthy life, planet and future.
RE: ...infinite growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
No disagreement there, that's the logic of capitalism, but that doesn't have anything to do with socialism.
RE: I have never seen a socialist directly address resource scarcity, or the idea that exponential growth is not sustainable...
Then make sure you don't read any of those books I recommended. Ignorance is bliss!
Greens deal with problems like externalizing costs without being wedded to the dated 19th century smokestack industry paradigm like old school socialists. Exponential growth is exponential growth waste or not, it's the doubling of output every couple of decades that kills you not the waste. And even regarding waste, state centralism is no great shakes either, ever read Emma Goldman's My Disillusionment in Russia? The Trots wasted even more than the vile capitalists and czarists. Credit Union funded worker owned and self managed cooperatives are the future, not top down hierarchical control by an inner party in what Chomsky correctly calls "state capitalist" in classical socialism.
And Abbey was no socialist BTW he was an anarchist!
RE: Greens deal with problems like externalizing costs ...
Like in the book "Natural Capitalism" by Paul Hawken? Greens attempt to interalize the externality, to commodify everything in nature so it has a price. But how can you do that? Science only has a limited understanding of nature and natural processes now. And more to the point, why would the capitalist class want to pay more to do business? They run the political systems of the world. Why would they go Green if they don't have to? Because Bill McKibbon says they should? The Greens have no real solutions as long as they work within capitalism.
RE: 9th century smokestack industry paradigm like old school socialists
Where do you get this idea that socialists are "wedded" to that?
RE: ever read Emma Goldman's My Disillusionment in Russia?
No, but I will look at it. It is worth pointing out that she wrote it well after the counterrevolution had begun. 14 capitalist nations including Britain and the US provided troops and materiel to aid the White army (czarist counterrevolutionary forces) in putting down the revolution. This severely weakened the revolution, laying the preconditions for Stalin's takeover. Many anarchists refuse to acknowledge this crucial fact.
RE: The Trots wasted even more than the vile capitalists and czarists...
What do you mean by that? Trotsky had to flee Russia for his life. The rest of the Bolsheviks were sent to Siberian prisons and/or shot. If you are talking Lysenko-ism, that was after Stalin had consolidated his power.
RE: ...not top down hierarchical control by an inner party in what Chomsky correctly calls "state capitalist" in classical socialism.
The USSR was indeed state capitalist (unlike market capitalism of the West). It was only truly socialist for a very brief time. Revolutionary socialists (4rth International) would agree. However, if he calls the USSR "classical socialism" then he is using "actually existing socialism" of the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, etc. as his models. As I said before, none of these countries meet the basic requirements of socialism as described by Marx.
When it comes to US foreign policy and corporate media Chomsky knows his stuff. But how about radical theory? He hasn't even written much about anarchism let alone anarchist theory. Chomsky has admitted that "I am no Marxist scholar" yet he is more than willing to make sweeping pronouncements about Marxism and socialism. I have great respect for Chomsky, but he's not a god. I have heard some of his criticisms of socialism and Marxism. He dismissed Marxism as "19th century" theories. So should we dismiss gravity because Newton was of the 18th century or dismiss evolution because Darwin was another 19th century theoretician? When it comes to Marxism and socialism, Chomsky is no authority. He got his anarchist ideas when he was a kid listening to old Jewish anarchists in NYC. I doubt very much if he ever gave Marx any serious thought.
RE: And Abbey was no socialist BTW he was an anarchist!
I am aware of that. So what? Anybody can call them-self an anarchist; you ask ten different anarchists what they think anarchism is and you'll get ten different answers. They're against authority. Are you against the authority of a picket line? What about the authority of a democratic decision (what if you're in the 49% that loses a vote? Gonna take your toys and go home?).There's not much more authoritarian than a revolution. Are you against that too? Abbey was no theoretician and certainly not a revolutionary. The fictional characters of the Monkey Wrench gang were terrorists (a tactic with a long anarchist history). Abbey himself claimed never to have done any of that.
It is said that Abbey inspired many in the environmental movement. Ok. That's a good thing. After their activism resulted in 1972 with the EPA, the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts, most environmentalists have become liberals and haven't done much since of significance. Yet environmental problems have only gotten exponentially worse. The only thing that is going to change that is overthrowing capitalism by a worldwide social revolution.
My interchange with you has only confirmed what I said earlier: "It is interesting that while most anarchists are dubious of uncritically accepting anything from mainstream (capitalist) sources this good practice breaks down when it comes to criticism of all things 'socialist.' "
Your knowledge of socialism comes from people who are enemies of socialism (the capitalists) or people who really don't what they are talking about (the anarchists).
BTW, I used to consider myself an anarchist.
No!!! Read Emma Goldman DIR written around 1920, Trotsky oversaw the massacre of anarchists and trade Unionists at Kronstadt and military industrialization and inner party rule by 1920, way before Stalin's even greater horrors. Goldman describes in great detail the waste of resources and labor under Lenin and Trotsky. I have some respect for modern Swedish style democratic socialism, non whatsoever for any form of Bolshevism even early Bolshevism. History is NOT on your side if support the murder of trade Unionists and anarchist by Trotsky and Lenin!
P.S. Abbey never sold out to the liberals and the socialists he was his own man and supported Earth FIrst! to the very end.
RE: The Green Party is a party of well-intentioned middle-class liberals.
Great post! The Greens are not anti-capitalists. That's all one really needs to know. The wars, the total lack of progress for mitigating global climate disruption, the attacks on education, public workers, tax-payer bailouts to the banks, the concentration of wealth greater than ever (and its concomitant poverty) are ALL bi-partisan, which really means that they all serve the singular interests of the "property party" aka, the capitalist class.
But "what do we do?, what's the alternative?"
There is no alternative without - at least - challenging the system. (The system includes the electoral system. You can't challenge the structure of the society by using a ruling class structure (elections) meant to marginalize the vast majority.) Both reform and revolution require mass movements made up of regular people. Keep in mind that groups oriented only toward reforms tends to get nothing more than reformist rhetoric (that's the role that the Democratic Party serves.) In the 1930's and 1960's the movements had revolutionary potential, that's why we actually got some modest reforms. The ruling class only gives something up when it is threatened with something worse (to them).
I hesitate to jump in and defend the Greens mainly because I get tired of doing it and I am entirely open to better options if they emerge.
My experience with the Greens doesn't conform to your description at all. I'm not a "middle class liberal". My fellow council members were not middle class liberals, and all were acutely aware of the need for structural change. Many local Greens were in the lower levels of income. I carried on extensive correspondence with the state council and, frankly, got tired of endless arguments of who among them was the most knowledgable Marxist.
Greens, in my experience, are profoundly anti-corporatist. They are also radical decentralists. The party may be too amorphous, however, I will grant.
Possibly my enclave of radical Greens was atypical; but, as I said, participants in the email groups (consisting of state officials and members of county councils) were anything but "middle class liberals". Many were frankly in poverty. I often hear your description, but it isn't what I saw.
The local peace center, which participated with us in some projects, would more realistically be characterized as consisting of "middle class liberals" (not all, to be sure). For the most part they kept the Green leadership at arms length, considering us too radical and militant.
I have not completely given up the idea (shared by many Greens) that the organization could have an organizing function on the local level, working with unions and communities.
Despite the differences in rhetoric and style I can't imagine a McCain presidency being much different than what we are getting with Obama. The biggest problem in the United States is not who wins between the republicans and democrats but the massive greed and corruption that dominates and poisons everything.
Does anyone seriously believe the security/MIC apparatus would allow a true progressive to occupy the White House? If, for some reason, the votes weren't altered, he or she would would soon be staring blankly up at the inside of a flag draped casket. The stakes are high and the likelihood that those in power are willing to release their iron grip is unimaginable.
How true. The only really honest to God progressive to ever occupy the White House got there by accident because the establishment thought they had buried him the that dead end job of the vice-presidency. The next most progressive president got there by the disaster of the great depression.
That Tom Engelhardt is hoping that a democrat will challenge Obama indicates that Mr. Engelhardt is losing his credibility.
There is no democrat who is also not a corporate tool.
The party, like their partners in crime, the republicans, is owned by Wall Street.
End of story.
I'm tempted to vote for Rick Perry or Bachman. Seems like it's the only way to truly break this cycle of fakers. Only this time around (after Perry/Bachman ruin the country and its standing in the world) progressives (like myself, I admit it) will pay more attention to the NEXT Dem/Progressive candidate and this time won't be fooled by the likes of Obama. Unfortunately it'll be almost unbearable when the religious nuts come out of the woodwork even more than they are currently.
That is truly a strange temptation and makes no sense whatsoever. Write in Tim DeChristopher or someone else you care about. Why would you ever pull the lever for a POS you don't believe in?
Of course, I guess millions did the last time.
Comment deleted - but not Obysmal.
"Lifting the Veil" - Barack Obama and the failure of Capitalist "Democracy"
documentary --
http://metanoia-films.org/compilations.php
A definite must-see for all progressives!
"Take it as an irony of his election, but Barack Obama has proved remarkably effective in disarming the antiwar movement, even as the use of war in American policy in the Greater Middle East has only grown."
I'm not sure if Obama has been so effective, or that after the Bush holocaust we were simply desperate to pin our hopes on somebody, anybody but Bush or his ilk. Many of us still remember those horrid Republican times and will not go back.
Now that progressives have the best chance of taking over the Democratic Party and to finish voting out the Blue Dogs and the DNC cons will we have to drag Obama with us?
I could vote for Ron Paul instead of for Obama if I knew beforehand that there would be no conservatives in it. It might be interesting to have a Libertarian candidate running with say...a Bernie Sanders.
You seem like a wounded soul
I notice that whenever anyone effectively challenges your more questionable comments, you respond with parting insults or put-downs.
Here, you shamelessly abandon the dubious merits of your comment in favor of rhetorically "taking pity" on RickWright and gently implying that his response somehow reveals a troubled or pathological personality.
Actually, there's nothing at all in Rick's thoughtful and civil comment that would lead an objective reader to perceive the pain or pathos of a "wounded soul".
And when I took issue with you not long ago, you responded by comparing me to "Jabba the Hutt" and declaring that I seemed to be emitting flatulence and "drowning in eloquence".
I leave it to other readers to judge the truth of this, but it seems plain enough to me that your tactic of jumping to meta-replies expressing ostensibly sympathetic pity or scornful contempt is itself a pathetic attempt to recover "one-up" status, at least in your own mind.
Maybe Rick isn't the "wounded soul" here.
I realize and appreciate that you've got to work with the tools you've been given, but you might want to reconsider emulating the skunk.
Emitting a parthian musky or vitriolic spray before dashing into the woods doesn't work so well for bipeds.
Not that you were "drowning in eloquence" but that you were "drunk on your eloquence", to mean that you should put your thesaurus aside, edit yourself, stop trying to impress with big words and try to communicate with mere mortals.
RickWright stalks and attacks with the best of the mob. I don't do that, but if one attacks me, I have the right to defend myself. Most of us enjoy debating things, but not personal attacks. They are not constructive, add to progressive disunity and make conservatives happy.
That said, until you retract the shitty comment above, you remain Jabba the Hut, farting away from your easy chair, drunk on your eloquence.
There is a really stupid error in the title of this article. I think Mr. Englehardt meant "Would the Streets Have Filled with Demonstrators if McCain was President?" Did the Commondreams editor write this title?
Suddenly fixed.
".....If McCain were President."
"disarming the antiwar movement"
more than a bit oxymoronic.
RE: "Would the Streets Have Filled with Demonstrators if McCain was President?"
The answer is a profound YES!
The following study proves that Democratic administrations have the effect of DEMOBILIZING protests. Excerpts from the study are below.
~~~~~
"Partisan Dynamics of Contention: Demobilization of the Anti-war Movement in the United States, 2007-2009" [Google to find the study in pdf form.]
“Drawing upon 5,398 surveys of demonstrators at antiwar protests, interviews with movement leaders, and ethnographic observation, this article argues that the antiwar movement demobilized as Democrats, who had been motivated to participate by anti-Republican sentiments, withdrew from antiwar protests when the Democratic Party achieved electoral success.”
"Activists identified with the Democratic Party were disproportionately likely to leave the movement as time went on, as they considered Democratic electoral success to be concomitant with the achievement of their policy aims (mechanism: partisan identification)."
"First, the withdrawal of Democrats from the movement led to the collapse of UFPJ, the movement’s largest and broadest coalition [United for Peace and Justice]. This collapse resulted in the fragmentation of the movement into smaller coalitions and left it relying more on individual organizations acting independently. Second, the adjusted balance of power among activists in the movement promoted the expression of more radical and anti-Obama attitudes by leading organizations."
"UFPJ was able to maintain a budget of approximately a half million dollars at its peak, but was forced to cut that figure in half after Obama’s election (Zeller 2009)."
"While the declining magnitude of protests suggests that activists of all partisan persuasions were leaving the movement, the analysis demonstrates that Democrats left at a greater rate than third-party members or non-party members."
~~~~~
This demobilizing of the peace movement as well as other social movements is in fact the role that the Democratic Party serves in US politics - going way back.
I highly recommend Lance Selfa's "The Democratic Party: a Critical History" as it "makes the case that the party's record of backing the rich and breaking promises to its voting base is not a recent departure from an otherwise venerable past, but results from its role as one of two parties serving the interests of the US establishment."
There's only one hope - Bernie Sanders for President....
Sign the petition at
http://www.sandersforpresident.org/
"..and they haven’t been shy about aiming their nonviolent protests directly at Obama."
So what? I'm sure he's just shaking in his alliga'tah shoes.
95+% of these 'protesters' will go right back and vote for him again – including McKibbon. Obama knows it. The party knows it. Which means: no leverage.
FAIL.
Someone here, mentioned that Clinton left us with a booming economy, by comparison with the "bust" economy Obama has overseen. Hillary, on the other hand, though she "reluctantly" voted yes for Bush's approach to the Iraqi war, is damned for being a war monger. Obedient Servant condemns the Clintons as war promoters. Where's the evidence? This view of the Clintons is certainly not reflected in both the Clinton tenures in the presidency, i.e. not by Clinton's "actions." And where's the "evidence" that Hillary would have been anything even approaching the war monger Obama turned out to be, even though he portrayed himself as a :peace monger during the primaries. Obedient Servant may write elegantly, but he's lying to us about the Clintons. Whenever anyone concentrates on damning the Clntons, in an article ostensibly about someone else, Obama, etc., you can be sure you're dealing with a Clinton hater, whose foremost interest is degrading the Clinton's in the voter's eyes. But reality makes mincemeat of these anti-Clinton efforts. In fact, in Hillary's primaries against Obama, Hillary maintained a 25 point lead against all the other dem candidates including Obama. Obama did nothing to turn things around near the end of the campaign. It was the likers of Goldman-Sachs, and other corporate forces, notably corporate media (still supporting Obama) that favored Obama with a huge surplus of campaigning monery, far in excess of what they gave both Hillary and McCain combined, that forced Obama on us. I still would like someone to come forward, anyone, and explain to me, why corporate America gave Obama so much more money than they gave other dem or republican candidate for his fight with Hillary? Why, why, why? No other question needs answering here. Yet I've not seen anything resembling an answer to this question, from any source or quarter. The question is not whether McCain would have been as war-mongering a president as Obama, which is moot and pointless. Once Obama won the primary campaign against Hillary, it was clear sailing against McCain. Polls show Hillary winning in a hypothetical race with McCain, by 11 points. But the corporations were dead set against a Hillary win, and didn't care who won as long as she lost. Obama was a perfect foil,. Unknown, and a very cooperative democrat poseur. People who make the preposterous claim that Hillary would have been as bad as Obama, are making fools of themselves. Hillary is a true professional, a poitical genius compared to Obama, vastly more clever, with a subtler understanding of the political realities around her, realistic, patriotic, fair-minded, a workhorse compared to the tepid, work-evading Obama.
Wow you totally forgot the massively criminal attack on Serbia didn't you?
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20060425.htm
(Chomsky on you U.S. war crimes overseen by Bill Clinton).
Or the 500,000 children starved by the brutal sanctions against Iraq that madame Albright said were "worth it?" Or the no fly zone in Iraq bombings?
Or when Killery threatened to nuke Iran on behalf of Israel?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24246275/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann/t/clinton-warns-iran-us-nuclear-response/
That was some of the most forgetful, or more likely dishonest, Dim shilling I have seen CD JohnCP, shame!!!! Enough Dim party killers, nothing lesser about their evil!!!