No, it’s another false dilemma. In the U.S., we are obsessed with two beliefs. One is the idea that the world can be changed and/or everything can be made right again if we only vote in the right politician as president. This contributes to the corporate-media driven “horse race” mentality that buries the issues under the personalities and blunders of the candidates. Well, Obama proved many such idealists (optimists) wrong. The second idea that many have come to believe is that to vote is to accede to a rigged system that oppresses us and only pretends to give us a choice. These pessimists find the political process entirely futile. Optimists and pessimists are both fatalists – they assume that our fate is sealed. Partial truths coexist with outright illusions. The illusions tend to dominate.
Let’s take the current example of the Bernie-Hillary dilemma and the brace of buffoons in the Republican Clown Car. One position I’ve heard expressed on social media recently goes something like this: Don’t vote at all; it’s a betrayal of your independence and freedom since they are all liars and crooks and none of them will act in our interests; anyway, the system is rigged. Well, even that extreme statement is a partial truth. But is it something we should act on, or refuse to act on? Absolutes are always illusions.
Socialism, Centrism, and the Clown Car Entering the Arena from the Far Right
Of course, politicians usually frame their messages to avoid offending as many constituents as possible and play to voters’ hopes and fears to curry our favor. They also try to steer clear of any statement that would offend their large contributors. They even sometimes give weak criticisms of, for example, Wall Street financial manipulators. However, they know that the Wall Street money in their campaign coffers is secured by private commitments of support. But that is also a matter of degree. Messages change over time, for either good or bad reasons. A genuine change of heart is to be commended for its honesty, if that is what has actually happened. The label, “flip-flop” has been applied ruthlessly, sometimes with a strong basis – think Mitt – and sometimes without justification. But it is not always easy to measure.
Hillary has changed her messages quite a lot over time. Is that a case of genuine evolution or merely a history of pandering to political fashion? The debate over that continues. Hillary supporters affirm the former; Bernie supporters suspect the latter. Tea Partiers “know in their hearts” the absolute truth, evidence be damned, literally. Parenthetically, Republican attacks on the pseudo-issues of Benghazi and her email server are pure smokescreen and demagogic attempts to smear her – one has even admitted so publicly. But Hillary’s coming to her currently – and equivocally – more “progressive” positions on several issues was so slow and tentative that it makes one wonder. How much of it was her “feeling the Bern” on her left?
Bernie, on the other hand, has been an eminently consistent politician for decades. His independence is characteristically Vermonter. That alone, of course, is an important factor in drawing the crowds despite a virtual mass-media blackout. (And, like them or not, he actually advocates specific programs meant to directly address massive growing inequality and the takeover of politics by the super rich, whose corporations own the media.) After all, we Americans love an underdog and we are so tired of the slick consultant primed-and-scripted candidacies. This alone makes Bernie refreshing. We get the clear impression that the Bernie you see is the Bernie you will get. Yet, nobody is without flaws. Progressives wonder about his seeming ambiguity over gun control – Vermont hunting interests – and his seeming ambiguity over Israel-Palestine – American Israel lobby. Well, two out of dozens is not so bad.
Messaging and Performance
The performance of Barack Obama, like that of so many others who gain office on high sounding promises, has not achieved much of the “change we can believe in.” Of course, he was ultimately stifled by the racist Republican Congress, leaving us to wonder what he might have accomplished. Like so many, I was initially taken by his eloquent oratory. But early on in his candidacy I saw figures showing where his big-money donations were coming from. That’s when I began to worry that he would be too beholden to the financial elites to act fully in the Nation’s economic interest. Sure enough, he appointed all the usual suspects from the financial elite, which had dominated the Clinton and Bush incumbencies. These were the guys serving the interests of Goldman Sacks and the other elite financial institutions that have been hell-bent on ruling the nation with their casino capitalism. It was their policy recommendations Bill Clinton had enacted, leading eventually, with Bush-Cheney help, to the collapse of the Wall Street casino in 2008. So, Hillary’s close corporate ties and the people she hires to run her campaign give one pause. Her “Third-Way” international interventionist tendencies demonstrated while Secretary of State, are a great concern too. So, who is one to vote for in an imperfect world? Or, should we bother?
Changing messaging to first gain the radical right and the Republican nomination then trying to appeal to the general electorate may have been the major factor that did in Mitt Romney. His father was not terribly inspiring, but he was believable more or less. The Donald’s “charm,” strange as it is, stems from his blatant exposure of the brash fact of “who he is” while demonstrating total lack of self-reflection. His aggressive denial of any fact he wants to hide about his questionable business practices is accepted out of public ignorance. Along with Carly Fiorina, he might be termed a “successful” failure. It would be pointless to go through the RCC (Republican Clown Car) to elucidate the paucity of serious intellect or realism on the campaign trail – it is sort of obvious. So, it is understandable that some would be so disgusted by the whole charade that usually makes the outcome of elections pretty much the same no matter who is elected. Style aside, that’s pretty much what happened in the Bush-Obama sequence, at least in the areas of endless war and endless subsidizing and covering for the financial elites.
Take What You Can Get and Demand More
So, this is where hopeful realism ‘trumps’ optimism and pessimism. Our reality is truly grave. Yet, while still breathing we can have some glimmer of hope. However, hope is delusional without action. So, I must vote (among other things), if only to write in Ralph Nader, who would do more to clean up the mess than anyone, if not assassinated first. As Chris Hedges has put it, “I fight fascism not because I will win, but because it is fascism.”
No president will be able to do much, no less all, of what is needed absent a massive transformation of congress. Real change must rise up from the people in a mass peaceful social movement for rescuing the planet and defending the greatest victims of the tyranny of wealth and the corporate state. But no small opportunity for any bit of progress should be dismissed. I will vote for the imperfect over the straight-up total disaster, in hopes that some benefit will accrue to the people and planet, rather than give up or knuckle under to the two-party party of plutocracy.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 