Thursday, October 18, 2012
Avedon Carol And Stuart Zechman: Vote To Make A Statement, Knowing The New Deal Is Going Down No Matter How You Vote
Please read. Ms. Carol (interleaving quite a bit of Mr. Zechman's prose) has contemplated the same bone-chilling possibilities I foresee, whoever is elected. She comes to a different conclusion on whom to vote for, but only by a hair. You'd better start thinking about what life will be like without the crux of the New Deal to civilize the jungle that is America today, because neither major party candidate will keep it safe, and no minor party candidate has a chance in Hell. Go vote, and Dog preserve you all from the worst possible results.
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Excellent point, Steve - I don't think a lot of liberals/progressives have allowed themselves to accept the fact that Obama will also cut Medicare and Social Security. I have decided to vote for Jill Stein, because the Green Party platform more closely aligns with my values, and I likely would be voting Green even if a vote for Obama is next to worthless in Texas. I have given it a lot of thought and have decided that I can not turn the other cheek toward extrajudicial executions (and their innocent "collateral" victims), toward the most secretive and punitive gov't since the USSR fell, toward surrendering single payer health care before the negotiations even began, toward a product of an interracial marriage whose own parents' marriage would have been illegal in their lifetimes but who needed to "evolve" on marriage equality.
ReplyDeleteI have been trying to convince my friends who plan to vote straight D not to do so, because there are numerous races for which no Democrat is on the ballot. Our ballot in the Austin area is particularly long this year so I am waiting until election day, because I'll need that weekend to sort through it all and make my choices. This will be the first time I went into the voting booth with crib notes.
Constance, you are fortunate not to need crib notes; my old man's memory compels me to use them. :-)
DeleteThere are few people in power in Washington today who represent my views. Now that it is possible to buy an election (thanks to Citizens United), that number will inevitably diminish in this election. But as someone (who?) pointed out, the most perilous time for our social safety net is not with the new Congress, but with the lame-duck session between November and January: departing members are effectively unaccountable for anything they do, and some of them have no internal guide holding them accountable.
I have mixed feelings about voting straight 'D'. I am doing it this year as part of my tiny effort to destroy utterly the Republican Party, which must be dismantled if America is to survive, but being in Texas, I know full well I have no effect no matter how I vote. I do not know Jill Stein well; I have more knowledge of and great admiration for Cheri Honkala. But a vote for them is a statement, and I find no fault with people in solid-red states who vote for them.
Myth Rmoney scares me more than George W. Bush, and that's a strong statement. I believe Rmoney would as soon start a nuclear war over Iran's purported nukes as he would attempt to introduce the Book of Mormon into public schools as required reading. He is a very dangerous man, and not just because he is a greedy bastard. And a political party that would run such a man for President deserves to go to ground. That, and not any admiration for Obama, is the basis of my straight-'D' vote. We are headed for a national Hell no matter how the election comes out; all I can do is urge everyone to hold fast with what they really believe. We live in parlous times!
I agree with you about Honkala. I've heard the two of them on NPR and Bill Moyers' show, and she is by far the more articulate of the two.
ReplyDeleteWelcome, Nony, though I'd prefer you give us some name to call you by. My knowledge of Honkala comes from reading about her work for the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, as impressive social activism as I've ever seen. Thanks for letting me know about the Moyers interview; I must have missed that one. With luck it's still online, with even more luck, my crotchety old computer will play it...
DeleteAnonymous was Constance Reader, it dropped my info when it took several attempts to get a captcha I could actually puzzle out.
DeleteConstance, I wondered if that might be you. I keep a big old rectangular magnifying glass with a handle beside the computer for just that purpose; often the dark text shows up better if enlarged.
DeleteThe other thing I do aperiodically is file a complaint with Google reminding them that CAPTCHA of that difficulty is truly discrimination against the elderly and the disabled. To date, they haven't replied and they haven't gotten rid of the procedure, but at least the CAPTCHA instances themselves have become more approachable, sort of... when they started this BS, no magnifying glass in the world would have helped me.
This election is causing storms among progressive/left and liberal friends. The specter of Ralph Nader haunts the discourse. (See my response to Fallen Monk ). I am in agreement with CR. because I firmly believe that Stein and Honkala represent the vast majority of my moral and political views. I simply cannot subscribe to the lesser of two evils meme, particularly when reviewing Obama's failed record on so many issues important to me. Nor, do I subscribe that such a choice is some kind of moral high horse. Neither Romney or Obama represent my understanding of Constitutional rights, civil rights, or positions on war and the police state. Betrayal by Obama on Universal Healthcare and churning more Insurance power without cost control and hiding the full Monty until 2014 was the last straw. According to a note I got from Diane Feinstein, the first major post election act of Obama is to pass a grand Bargain that cuts Social Security and Medicare. According to Einstein expecting some different result from Obama, given what we know would be insane. I agree. I voted (D) locally and at the state level, except for Feinstein, to whom I wrote a return not saying I voted for her opponent. Enough is enough! On the short side of seventy, I am a peace with my choice. GO Stein/Honkala, it is you who truly represent my values.
ReplyDelete"Nor, do I subscribe that such a choice is some kind of moral high horse." - karmanot
Deletekarmanot, surely you're not aiming that at me; if so, please point that thing somewhere else! Nor do I believe Obama will be any different in a second term, nor am I naive enough to believe he will not compromise away Social Security and Medicare if no one stops him.
All I'm saying is that one of two tickets will become president/veep: Obama/Biden or Rmoney/Ryan. Absent a worldwide cataclysm before 11/6, there is no third possibility. I'm simply recognizing that, however morally virtuous a Stein/Honkala vote may be, it's what my father used to call (toned down for the kids in the room) "spitting into the wind."
Oh no my friend. I only aim good will your way. And, do I ever understand the tensions among us ( liberal, progressive,leftists)over this election. The moral high horse is a phrase I often hear. I have been struggling mightily over whether to vote for Obama as a course of imminent practicality and for the preservation of what remains of our Democratic social contract. There were agonizing moments over choice. Then it seemed clear to me that democracy is a matter of clear moral choice and I looked at who filled the bill according to my closest held beliefs. At the very last second I had to go with Stein. Part of my long term reasoning is that the political direction of States Rights will advance and it is at the local and State level where I fully support progressive democrats and initiatives. The one exception was Diane Feinstein, who wrote that she supports cuts in Social Security and Medicare. I certainly don't criticize anyone who seriously and conscientiously votes their choice. I suspect Obama will win---certainly the Electoral College, where the true vote counts. The country is nearly divided and I think that spells a cultural civil war. peace, m
ReplyDeletekarmanot, I cannot fault any voter acting in good conscience. But some people have a very dim vision of their self-interest, and some of them have a conscience that doesn't do much work outside of Sunday-go-to-meetin'. You have my blessing as you vote for a pair of candidates superior in many ways to the pair I'm voting for. But I've always voted strategically, and I see no reason to abandon that course now. So I will do what I must do.
DeleteFeinstein is a disappointment to me. I expected better of her than she has delivered in recent years.
A "cultural civil war" is about the flat-out stupidest way America could destroy itself. If we have a virtue as a nation, it is that we have no single culture. Rmoney/Ryan want to "fix" that for us. AFAIC, they can go to Hell.
Sorry, I find Avedon's argument less convincing now than I did in 2000...
ReplyDeletentodd, admitting freely that Stein/Honkala are a better pair than Nader/Nader'sEgo, I clearly agree with you in having decided to vote for Obama/Biden. IMNSHO there is good reason this year to vote for the lesser evil, Obama/Biden, to prevent the greater evil from exercising their powers.
DeleteII am voting for Obama, and I don't feel sorry at all. As always I feel that I have no choice, given the experience of having spent my first 30-some years under the severe and grossly unfair strictures of Jim Crow -- an experience that today is only an abstract concept to the great majority of Americans of all colors. The facts that a man like Obama is the President and that his election in 2008 was, to me and others like me, nothing less than a fantastic miracle trump everything else, as important and even crucial as other considerations might be, and it greatly helped ratify the right of people of color to share in what it means to be an American. If he was an H. Cain, or an A. West, or a C. Thomas, my attitude would be very different, but I think that, all things considered, Obama hasn't done that bad a job, and while I may not agree with a bunch of his views, I'm optimistic that if he wins, his next four years will be different. In any case I expect that things will be a lot better for Americans in general than the slide deeper into fascism and racial- hatred-made-respectable that a Republican win would bring, to say nothing of how hard it is for me to understand why people would want to put right back into power the same party whose devotees brought about the current economic troubles a mere four years ago and that since then has mightily resisted all of Obama's efforts to turn things around, which to some degree might tie in with what you just said.
ReplyDeleteWelcome back, Carl; long time no see!
DeleteIn fairness to Obama, he has faced a sort of political Jim Crow from Republicans pursuing what Richard Nixon used to call their "Southern strategy" ... racism intended to induce fear and loathing in Southern white voters. Consider Mitch McConnell, who stated in Obama's first year as president that the primary mission of the Republican Party was to see to it that Obama became a "one-term president." No one needed to ask him why, and it wasn't because Obama is a Democrat. Obama has faced obstacles no previous president... ever... has faced, and acquitted himself admirably in spite of them.
I share your incomprehension that anyone would want to put Republicans, especially Rmoney, in power right now. That way lies chaos and possibly collapse.
Like every president, Obama has some failings that impinge on his job performance. One is a propensity to give in too early on important issues. Maybe I was spoiled, having had the great Barbara Jordan as my representative several decades ago (I lived in a racially mixed neighborhood for over 10 years; I remember the experience as formative of many of my views), but Obama's a priori giveaways, e.g., ceding single-payer health care without even a minimal challenge, seem folly to me. Obama is no Barbara Jordan. Then there's Obama's casualness in matters of human rights and civil liberties, my personal highest-priority issues: he may have stopped the torturing (a distinct positive), but he continued imprisoning people indefinitely, without even minimal due process... a horrifically un-American practice, and one which many African Americans have faced themselves over the past century.
And then there's Obama's "kill list": targeted assassinations, again without due process, usually by drones, of American citizens abroad; again, that an African American would perpetrate such acts is horrifying to me. You know the great Martin Luther King, Jr. would never have tolerated that in his lifetime. The list and some of the assassinations are well-established facts. Obama has a lot to answer for!
But we don't have a Barbara Jordan or a Martin Luther King among us today. If the legendary Rep. John Lewis were to run for president, I would lace up my cripple's boot and go block-walking for him; that's how much I admire him. I shall vote for Obama, and endorse him (with reservations), but there are too many problems with important matters, too great a willingness to fold early on socioeconomic matters, too great a readiness to condone or even to order what I can only call human rights atrocities, for me to support him full-throatedly.
By the way, I don't know much about Jill Stein, but if you are inclined to dismiss Cheri Honkala, you might want to read a thumbnail biography of her. If anyone has the personal creds to advocate for the poor and the homeless, she certainly does. If you are curious about this remarkable woman, find and read a copy of The Myth of the Welfare Queen; it really opened my eyes to a lot of social issues.
A very compelling and important reason. This election is about racism, women's rights, GLTB equal standing under law, protection of seniors and children, food security, housing and poverty. Who could have imagined, even a decade ago, that American advances in the social contract would ever be up for destruction.
Deletekarmanot, meet Carl Sideoff, aka sofarsogoo... as wryly ironic a screen name as any I've ever known. You and Carl and I are well past our young years, and all of us are young in spirit and not shy about speaking our minds. Carl's blog is called Unpopular Ideas, and has been on my blogroll forever. Carl has an astonishing range of interest: he paints and writes, but those are by no means his only creative outlets. He built his own house in younger years, and lives with his wife in that house to this day (as far as I know), apparently into his eighties. His blog deserves more attention than it gets; give it a read. Do not expect conventional wisdom or platitudes; Carl goes far beyond those!
DeleteCarl, meet karmanot. A Californian who shares a blog and a dog with his partner of many decades, he is the leftiest lefty in my circle of friends, and has influenced my political thinking as much as anyone I know. His blog, also in the blogroll, is Adgita Diaries, and again, you won't find it boring!
This election is, indeed, about the things you mentioned. My father was born in 1920 and long since has passed from this earth, but I am very grateful he did not live to see the condition America has descended into. Dad would have delighted in an African American president; contrarian son of the South that he was, he relished the battles he engaged in for racial equality in various school settings, making enemies and friends easily as he thwarted racism where he could. As challenging as that was in a Texas public school in the Sixties, he never, ever gave up, and had his share of successes both within his school and in testimony before the state board of education. But Dad would have been heartbroken to see what our nation's political life has become. He rejoiced in the stories that Tip O'Neill and Gerald Ford went drinking together after their battles against each other in the House; though he was a strong Democrat, Dad would have wept to see what our GOP has become today. And so do I. It doesn't have to be this way.
Thanks Steve! Carl's site is a great read. peace, Michael
DeleteThis is an excellent discussion---passionate and perfectly representative of true democracy. I wish with all my heart that you and Carl are right about Obama, but cannot fathom that he will change his stripes in the next four years. His re-election may forestall the collapse, which gives us time to plan. I am focused on Obama Care at the moment, because I am convinced that when the whole of it is revealed in 2014 we will stunned by the implications of its details. I tend to agree with Paul Craig Roberts on this matter: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/10/19/obamneycare-converts-health-care-into-profits/
ReplyDeleteI certainly agree that Romney is a cold blooded fascist and understand the lesser evil argument. Since this may be my last presidential election I just had to vote my conscience and go for Stein/Honkala. You can get a sense of these two courageous and incredible women by checking into Bill Moyers interview with them. As a side observation: For those of us who are feminists and fully support women's rights, this is a perfect example of walking the talk. I also feel that these spirited discussions give evidence that many of us are still active and devoted to the principles of our democratic culture.