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OPEN LETTER PROGRESSIVE ICONS: Brechin, Benjamin, Solomon, M.Parenti, Moore, Zinn, Chomsky
THE LIMIT OF THE ABOVE "PROGRESSIVES/LEFTISTS" POLITICAL CREATIVITY AND VISION HAD COME DOWN TO ONE SLOGAN AND THREE SIMPLE LETTERS: "ABB".
-
From: Gray Brechin <deleted>
To: "Joseph Anderson" <deleted>
CC: Jeffrey Blankfort, Medea Benjamin, Norman Solomon, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, (and other interested parties)
Subject: Re: "Double Standards: Bill Clinton and the ABB [“Anybody But Bush”] Movement"
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 06:20:29 -0700
Anyone who could vote for Nader has learned nothing nor suffered enough in the past four years and needs a great deal more punishment, and will get it. But so will we all.
Please take me off your list.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Also note Gray's Letter to the Editor below.)
TO:
Gray Brechin, prominent Bay Area author and historian
Jeffrey Blankfort, anti-ABB, verteran progressive activist, and photo-journalist)
Medea Benjamin, Co-Founder of Global Exchange
Norman Solomon, prominent progressive journalist
Howard Zinn, Boston University professor, academic historian
Noam Chomsky, "Anarchist for Kerry!", leftist "super-hero", academic media analyst, and squiggly "liberal Zionist!"
et al list
BCC:
Amy Goodman
Christian Parenti
Ferai Chideya
Dear Gray,
Harriet Tubman once said, "We could have saved a lot more of our people, if only they had known they were *slaves*!"
Too many people have become willing *slaves* to the Democrap Party. What will it be in 2008?: "ABJ"? -- "Anybody but Jeb!!"? Progressives can keep playing this game forever (note my email sign-off below. Almost everything the Republicans have done -- all their worst Supreme Court appointees, like Scalia and Thomas -- all the major economic policies (like NAFTA & GATT) and foreign policy actions (like both wars in Iraq and all the previous imperialist wars) -- have been done hand-in-hand with most of the Democrats.
See, Thomas Frank's book: "What's the Matter With Kansas" -- which went 60% for Bush. And if you think that there is *enough* of a meaningful difference to keep supporting the 'Good Cop, Bad Cop' RepubliCrap game.
Then you should read the first half -- even just the first chapter -- of the Cockburn & St.Clair book, "Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond Lesser Evilism". All the reasons to support Kerry -- and not finally break with the Democrats -- as not being *enough* of a *meaningful* difference between the Repubs and the Dems to *keep* unconditionally supporting the Democrats, no matter *who* the Dems give us -- CANNOT survive impact with REALITY or critical examination/debate.
That's why scared "progressives/leftists" (whose recourse was mudslinging or censorship) refuse to have this open debate in any media (like KPFA/KALW/Air America) or other formal setting.
Well, let me tell you about just a few people who are not playing the 'Good Cop, Bad Cop' RepubliCrat game anymore -- the people who refuse to be slaves anymore:
MUMIA is *not* playing the game. (Who is more vulnerable to Bush than he is!?)
Native American academic-activist WARD CHURCHILL is *not* playing the game anymore.
ARUNDHATI ROY is *not* playing the game anymore. (Remember?: Roy said that the difference between the Repubs and the Dems was like the difference between Tide and Ivory -- Tide gives you Oxy-Power brainwashing, and Ivory gives you gentle brainwashing.)
PETER/PEDRO CAMEJO is *not* playing the game anymore. Camejo said that, "More and more, the Democrat Party has made the Republican Party possible."
JOHNNY SPAIN, former Black Panther icon and Stanford university lecturer (who spent almost 20 years in prison), is *not* playing the game anymore. Spain said, "NO! I don't want Kerry just at *any* price!"
TRACEY JAMES, Oakland Black micropower media activist -- of "SLAVE REVOLT RADIO" (Berkeley Liberation Radio, 104.1fm, Fridays, 6:30-8:00pm or at luver.com) -- is *not* playing the game anymore.
M1 of DEAD PREZ is *not* playing the game anymore. He said that he wasn't giving his vote away for free! He's *off* the plantation.
DERREK BELL, prominent Black law professor, once said that, "We liberals and progressives keep saving just enough of this [RepubliCrat] system to keep it going."
I have an ATTORNEY housemate whose law practice -- *livelihood* -- depends, to a certain meaningful extent, on whether Kerry or Bush got elected. Her practice has argued cases before the Supreme Coutrt. But, she voted for Leonard Peltier to at least show support for his release. She decided that the national (and world) community was more important than her law practice income -- and that the Republicans are not going to be stopped as long as the Democrats keep going along with them! She is *not* playing the game anymore.
I am *not* playing the game anymore. I said on a KPFA (interviewed with elected Green Party activist and Nader supporter Victoria Ashley) that every step the Republicans take to the right, the Democrats step to the right.
(For further thoughts of mine and others, see "Weak Kneed Progressives Buckle Under Democrat Pressure", http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/09/1695394_comment.php#1695483)
WE *REFUSE* TO BE SLAVES.
SOME OF US REALIZED THAT THERE IS *REAL* WORK TO DO -- AND IT'S NOT FALLING ON OUR KNEES IN BLIND UNSUPPORTABLE FAITH/BEGGING THAT THE DEMOCRATS WILL SAVE US, CRYING ABOUT STOLEN ELECTIONS, OR EVEN -- AT LAST -- BEGGING KERRY TO RECANT HIS CONCESSION.
But all these white guys (and my respected friend Medea, who tried 'to work from the inside' and the Dems literally threw her out!) who are among the very *least* vulnerable people in American society -- Zinn, Chomsky, Moore, Solomon (also my casual, respected friend), M. Parenti (a respected acquaintance), Benjamin, Lakoff (also a respected acquaintance) -- want to keep leading us back to the Democrap slave plantation! Contradicting everything they have said before about the Democraps. I guess that Ole Massa is better than a slave revolt and even a real chance at freedom!: at least he gives us scraps from his table! But, none of these people will have to pay one little bit -- unlike traditional people of color -- for not making one *single* demand on Kerry or the Dems.
Well, with all due respect, they all sold out like a cheap ho -- and we got Bush anyway. We keep trying to free ourselves and our icons (including to many elite Blacks) keep selling us back into *slavery* -- for *nothing*! (Although I fervently hope, out of spite for Kerry's spinelessness, that election investigations and revelations actually do irrefutably show -- eventually finding the smoking guns -- that system-protecting DemoPublican Kerry *did* win!)
These white icons said that "Kerry has to talk that way, so he can get elected". (Some Blacks used to say that about Clarence Thomas: "He *has* to talk that way in order to get appointed! You'll see!") Well, how much to the right will the *2008* Democrat candidate have to "talk"? Kerry was already both talking, and literally, to the right of Bush on some issues.
You apparently didn't catch Amy Goodman's recent interview of Noam Chomsky, where she 'tore him apart' on his blatant political contradictions regarding his support of Kerry vs. his previous statements about the Democrap Party. (I don't think Amy was ABB.) Chomsky was reduced to pathetic waffling -- just like Kerry, only even worse.
BUT EVEN A CHEAP STREETCORNER HO DEMANDS *PAYMENT* FOR SERVICES. ALL THOSE "PROGRESSIVE/LEFTIST" WHITE ICONS DEMANDED **NOTHING** IN EXCHANGE FOR THEIR SUPPORT OF, AND VOTES FOR, KERRY!!
Now that "THE SKY HAS FALLEN", what are they going to do now!? -- roll up into a ball in a little corner and die!? Or do the REAL work in the struggle that must be.
I USE CAPS MERELY FOR EMPHASIS:
PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE STILL LOCKED IN AS IRRATIONALLY EMBITTERED "NADER HATERS"! EVEN NOW, THAT'S THE LIMIT OF YOUR PSYCHOLOGICALLY SELF-SATISFYING POLITICAL CREATIVITY!: TO KEEP HATIN' ON NADER!
NADER HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH KERRY'S ELECTION LOSS!
NADER HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PREVIOUS 2002 HALF-TERM CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS WHERE THE DEMOCRATS LOST.
NADER WASN'T EVEN A FACTOR IN THIS PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
KERRY AND EDWARDS LOST (setting the issue of election theft aside) BECAUSE THEY WERE A SET OF *LOUSY* CANDIDATES WHO WOULD BARELY EVEN REALLY FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE REPUBLICANS, UNTIL, PERHAPS, A LITTLE FLURRY AT THE END!
KERRY AND EDWARDS LOST BECAUSE MOST OF BUSH'S AND THE REPUBLICAN MEDIA PUNDITS' CRITICISM OF HIM WAS *RIGHT*!
AND EDWARDS COULDN'T EVEN GET KERRY A *SINGLE* SOUTHERN STATE. THAT WAS HIS JOB! IS NADER TO BLAME FOR THAT!?
YOU'RE STILL 'WHALING' ABOUT NADER IS LIKE BUSH STILL YELLING THAT BIN LADEN WAS PARTNERS WITH SADDAM OR THAT SADDAM WAS CONNECTED TO 9-11.
AND INSTEAD OF BUSH INSISTING THAT SADDAM HAD WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, OUR "PROGRESSIVE/LEFTIST" ICONS KEPT INSISTING ABOUT KERRY: "WE *KNOW* THERE'S A *SPINE* IN THERE SOMEWHERE!"
KPFA has never permitted a debate on this matter. KPFA has become as bad as the Repubs or the Dems on censoring free debate in its media venues. (You would never debate the issue. With all due respect, all people like you want to do is sling charges, not engage in critical debate. I wonder why?) Only Dennis Bernstein and Davey D have even presented alternative viewpoints -- alternative to the Democraps -- on their respective shows.
It is sad that the limit of most "progressive/leftist" white men's political creativity and vision these days ends at some psychologicallly self-satisfying palliative of ABB -- so they can go back to watching British dramas and nature shows on PBS, instead of doing any REAL POLITICAL WORK. This is a stunted and defeatest limit that reminds me of an educated "liberal" who, when asked about the large and often petty criminal street orphan problem in Brazil, said that the police just have to occasionally go in and shoot them all -- which the police had been known to attempt in the case of some orphan street gangs. The problem of petty criminal street orphans had been allowed to get so bad by society and the govt, that letting the police periodically kill some of the kids was even the limit of "liberal" 'vision'.
It's the Democraps that have helped the Republicans every step along the way. It's the Democraps who have helped to take the ship of state down. If the Democraps cannot even save us from the worst Republican excesses -- like the Patriot Act (where all but one or two Senate Democrats voted for it) -- then what good are they? When the Democraps had the choice of whether to fight or switch, they basically decided to switch!
I WANT TO END MILITARISM AND CORPORATISM -- NOT JUST BUSHISM.
(NOTE, WE DEFEATED SOUTH AFRICAN APARTHEID AND STOPPED THE CONTRAS UNDER *REAGAN*!)
The Republicans, the Democrats, the "progressives", and even the "leftists" all kept banging on "the FEAR button". But only the Republican voters had someone to vote *FOR*! The "liberal/progressive" voters could only -- once again hold their noses and -- vote their fears!
You speak in your letter of theocracy. Now Nancy Pelosi is making references to God. A local TV reporter (stunningly to me for his momentary incisive inquiry) asked her, "Now everytime when I talk to a DEMOCRAT politician, are they going to bring up God too?" Pelosi, caught off-guard by a mainstream reporter, stumpled and mumbled and hemmed and hawed and stuttered out some lame response.
THE LIMIT OF THE ABOVE "PROGRESSIVE/LEFTIST" CREATIVITY AND VISION HAD COME DOWN TO ONE SLOGAN AND THREE LETTERS: "ABB".
("PORGRESSIVES/LETISTS" USED TO CASTIGATE *REPUBLICANS* FOR CHEAP, SIMPLISTIC SLOGANS.)
AS A *CRITICAL* -- _NOT_ A PERSONAL/OFFENSIVE -- STATEMENT: THOSE "PROGRESSIVE/LEFTIST" ICONS *DESERVED* TO LOSE -- AND GO DOWN LIKE *CHUMPS*.
IN THE 'HOOD WE JUST SAY THAT, "THEY *PLAYED* THEMSELVES!"
AND THAT'S WHERE THE LEFT IS TODAY.
NO WONDER WE'RE IN TROUBLE.
Take care,
Joseph
=========================
It's the liberals and weak-kneed, vacillating, always scared progressives (closet liberals by another name) who over the decades have steadily "lesser evilled" us into the very situation they say is so unprecedentedly dire today. --JA
=======================================================================
Editor:
Whenever Ralph Nader is interviewed these days, I think of Melville's mad Captain Ahab who, in his ultimately catastrophic pursuit of the white whale, declared "All my means and methods are sane: my purpose is mad."
Nader has added to his extensive enemy list those progressives who, he feels, have betrayed him because their fear of the Bush agenda exceeds their former loyalty to him.
We who believe that a medieval theocracy has no place in the U.S. disagree with Nader that there is little difference between the two major parties this time, and so Nader wants to harpoon us along with his old corporate adversaries.
If he and his supporters succeed in throwing the election to Bush once again, he will succeed in making his name an obscenity around the world, while sharing the fate of Ahab who took the ship down with all hands on board.
Sincerely,
Gray Brechin
From: Gray Brechin <deleted>
To: "Joseph Anderson" <deleted>
CC: Jeffrey Blankfort, Medea Benjamin, Norman Solomon, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, (and other interested parties)
Subject: Re: "Double Standards: Bill Clinton and the ABB [“Anybody But Bush”] Movement"
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 06:20:29 -0700
Anyone who could vote for Nader has learned nothing nor suffered enough in the past four years and needs a great deal more punishment, and will get it. But so will we all.
Please take me off your list.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Also note Gray's Letter to the Editor below.)
TO:
Gray Brechin, prominent Bay Area author and historian
Jeffrey Blankfort, anti-ABB, verteran progressive activist, and photo-journalist)
Medea Benjamin, Co-Founder of Global Exchange
Norman Solomon, prominent progressive journalist
Howard Zinn, Boston University professor, academic historian
Noam Chomsky, "Anarchist for Kerry!", leftist "super-hero", academic media analyst, and squiggly "liberal Zionist!"
et al list
BCC:
Amy Goodman
Christian Parenti
Ferai Chideya
Dear Gray,
Harriet Tubman once said, "We could have saved a lot more of our people, if only they had known they were *slaves*!"
Too many people have become willing *slaves* to the Democrap Party. What will it be in 2008?: "ABJ"? -- "Anybody but Jeb!!"? Progressives can keep playing this game forever (note my email sign-off below. Almost everything the Republicans have done -- all their worst Supreme Court appointees, like Scalia and Thomas -- all the major economic policies (like NAFTA & GATT) and foreign policy actions (like both wars in Iraq and all the previous imperialist wars) -- have been done hand-in-hand with most of the Democrats.
See, Thomas Frank's book: "What's the Matter With Kansas" -- which went 60% for Bush. And if you think that there is *enough* of a meaningful difference to keep supporting the 'Good Cop, Bad Cop' RepubliCrap game.
Then you should read the first half -- even just the first chapter -- of the Cockburn & St.Clair book, "Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond Lesser Evilism". All the reasons to support Kerry -- and not finally break with the Democrats -- as not being *enough* of a *meaningful* difference between the Repubs and the Dems to *keep* unconditionally supporting the Democrats, no matter *who* the Dems give us -- CANNOT survive impact with REALITY or critical examination/debate.
That's why scared "progressives/leftists" (whose recourse was mudslinging or censorship) refuse to have this open debate in any media (like KPFA/KALW/Air America) or other formal setting.
Well, let me tell you about just a few people who are not playing the 'Good Cop, Bad Cop' RepubliCrat game anymore -- the people who refuse to be slaves anymore:
MUMIA is *not* playing the game. (Who is more vulnerable to Bush than he is!?)
Native American academic-activist WARD CHURCHILL is *not* playing the game anymore.
ARUNDHATI ROY is *not* playing the game anymore. (Remember?: Roy said that the difference between the Repubs and the Dems was like the difference between Tide and Ivory -- Tide gives you Oxy-Power brainwashing, and Ivory gives you gentle brainwashing.)
PETER/PEDRO CAMEJO is *not* playing the game anymore. Camejo said that, "More and more, the Democrat Party has made the Republican Party possible."
JOHNNY SPAIN, former Black Panther icon and Stanford university lecturer (who spent almost 20 years in prison), is *not* playing the game anymore. Spain said, "NO! I don't want Kerry just at *any* price!"
TRACEY JAMES, Oakland Black micropower media activist -- of "SLAVE REVOLT RADIO" (Berkeley Liberation Radio, 104.1fm, Fridays, 6:30-8:00pm or at luver.com) -- is *not* playing the game anymore.
M1 of DEAD PREZ is *not* playing the game anymore. He said that he wasn't giving his vote away for free! He's *off* the plantation.
DERREK BELL, prominent Black law professor, once said that, "We liberals and progressives keep saving just enough of this [RepubliCrat] system to keep it going."
I have an ATTORNEY housemate whose law practice -- *livelihood* -- depends, to a certain meaningful extent, on whether Kerry or Bush got elected. Her practice has argued cases before the Supreme Coutrt. But, she voted for Leonard Peltier to at least show support for his release. She decided that the national (and world) community was more important than her law practice income -- and that the Republicans are not going to be stopped as long as the Democrats keep going along with them! She is *not* playing the game anymore.
I am *not* playing the game anymore. I said on a KPFA (interviewed with elected Green Party activist and Nader supporter Victoria Ashley) that every step the Republicans take to the right, the Democrats step to the right.
(For further thoughts of mine and others, see "Weak Kneed Progressives Buckle Under Democrat Pressure", http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/09/1695394_comment.php#1695483)
WE *REFUSE* TO BE SLAVES.
SOME OF US REALIZED THAT THERE IS *REAL* WORK TO DO -- AND IT'S NOT FALLING ON OUR KNEES IN BLIND UNSUPPORTABLE FAITH/BEGGING THAT THE DEMOCRATS WILL SAVE US, CRYING ABOUT STOLEN ELECTIONS, OR EVEN -- AT LAST -- BEGGING KERRY TO RECANT HIS CONCESSION.
But all these white guys (and my respected friend Medea, who tried 'to work from the inside' and the Dems literally threw her out!) who are among the very *least* vulnerable people in American society -- Zinn, Chomsky, Moore, Solomon (also my casual, respected friend), M. Parenti (a respected acquaintance), Benjamin, Lakoff (also a respected acquaintance) -- want to keep leading us back to the Democrap slave plantation! Contradicting everything they have said before about the Democraps. I guess that Ole Massa is better than a slave revolt and even a real chance at freedom!: at least he gives us scraps from his table! But, none of these people will have to pay one little bit -- unlike traditional people of color -- for not making one *single* demand on Kerry or the Dems.
Well, with all due respect, they all sold out like a cheap ho -- and we got Bush anyway. We keep trying to free ourselves and our icons (including to many elite Blacks) keep selling us back into *slavery* -- for *nothing*! (Although I fervently hope, out of spite for Kerry's spinelessness, that election investigations and revelations actually do irrefutably show -- eventually finding the smoking guns -- that system-protecting DemoPublican Kerry *did* win!)
These white icons said that "Kerry has to talk that way, so he can get elected". (Some Blacks used to say that about Clarence Thomas: "He *has* to talk that way in order to get appointed! You'll see!") Well, how much to the right will the *2008* Democrat candidate have to "talk"? Kerry was already both talking, and literally, to the right of Bush on some issues.
You apparently didn't catch Amy Goodman's recent interview of Noam Chomsky, where she 'tore him apart' on his blatant political contradictions regarding his support of Kerry vs. his previous statements about the Democrap Party. (I don't think Amy was ABB.) Chomsky was reduced to pathetic waffling -- just like Kerry, only even worse.
BUT EVEN A CHEAP STREETCORNER HO DEMANDS *PAYMENT* FOR SERVICES. ALL THOSE "PROGRESSIVE/LEFTIST" WHITE ICONS DEMANDED **NOTHING** IN EXCHANGE FOR THEIR SUPPORT OF, AND VOTES FOR, KERRY!!
Now that "THE SKY HAS FALLEN", what are they going to do now!? -- roll up into a ball in a little corner and die!? Or do the REAL work in the struggle that must be.
I USE CAPS MERELY FOR EMPHASIS:
PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE STILL LOCKED IN AS IRRATIONALLY EMBITTERED "NADER HATERS"! EVEN NOW, THAT'S THE LIMIT OF YOUR PSYCHOLOGICALLY SELF-SATISFYING POLITICAL CREATIVITY!: TO KEEP HATIN' ON NADER!
NADER HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH KERRY'S ELECTION LOSS!
NADER HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PREVIOUS 2002 HALF-TERM CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS WHERE THE DEMOCRATS LOST.
NADER WASN'T EVEN A FACTOR IN THIS PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
KERRY AND EDWARDS LOST (setting the issue of election theft aside) BECAUSE THEY WERE A SET OF *LOUSY* CANDIDATES WHO WOULD BARELY EVEN REALLY FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE REPUBLICANS, UNTIL, PERHAPS, A LITTLE FLURRY AT THE END!
KERRY AND EDWARDS LOST BECAUSE MOST OF BUSH'S AND THE REPUBLICAN MEDIA PUNDITS' CRITICISM OF HIM WAS *RIGHT*!
AND EDWARDS COULDN'T EVEN GET KERRY A *SINGLE* SOUTHERN STATE. THAT WAS HIS JOB! IS NADER TO BLAME FOR THAT!?
YOU'RE STILL 'WHALING' ABOUT NADER IS LIKE BUSH STILL YELLING THAT BIN LADEN WAS PARTNERS WITH SADDAM OR THAT SADDAM WAS CONNECTED TO 9-11.
AND INSTEAD OF BUSH INSISTING THAT SADDAM HAD WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, OUR "PROGRESSIVE/LEFTIST" ICONS KEPT INSISTING ABOUT KERRY: "WE *KNOW* THERE'S A *SPINE* IN THERE SOMEWHERE!"
KPFA has never permitted a debate on this matter. KPFA has become as bad as the Repubs or the Dems on censoring free debate in its media venues. (You would never debate the issue. With all due respect, all people like you want to do is sling charges, not engage in critical debate. I wonder why?) Only Dennis Bernstein and Davey D have even presented alternative viewpoints -- alternative to the Democraps -- on their respective shows.
It is sad that the limit of most "progressive/leftist" white men's political creativity and vision these days ends at some psychologicallly self-satisfying palliative of ABB -- so they can go back to watching British dramas and nature shows on PBS, instead of doing any REAL POLITICAL WORK. This is a stunted and defeatest limit that reminds me of an educated "liberal" who, when asked about the large and often petty criminal street orphan problem in Brazil, said that the police just have to occasionally go in and shoot them all -- which the police had been known to attempt in the case of some orphan street gangs. The problem of petty criminal street orphans had been allowed to get so bad by society and the govt, that letting the police periodically kill some of the kids was even the limit of "liberal" 'vision'.
It's the Democraps that have helped the Republicans every step along the way. It's the Democraps who have helped to take the ship of state down. If the Democraps cannot even save us from the worst Republican excesses -- like the Patriot Act (where all but one or two Senate Democrats voted for it) -- then what good are they? When the Democraps had the choice of whether to fight or switch, they basically decided to switch!
I WANT TO END MILITARISM AND CORPORATISM -- NOT JUST BUSHISM.
(NOTE, WE DEFEATED SOUTH AFRICAN APARTHEID AND STOPPED THE CONTRAS UNDER *REAGAN*!)
The Republicans, the Democrats, the "progressives", and even the "leftists" all kept banging on "the FEAR button". But only the Republican voters had someone to vote *FOR*! The "liberal/progressive" voters could only -- once again hold their noses and -- vote their fears!
You speak in your letter of theocracy. Now Nancy Pelosi is making references to God. A local TV reporter (stunningly to me for his momentary incisive inquiry) asked her, "Now everytime when I talk to a DEMOCRAT politician, are they going to bring up God too?" Pelosi, caught off-guard by a mainstream reporter, stumpled and mumbled and hemmed and hawed and stuttered out some lame response.
THE LIMIT OF THE ABOVE "PROGRESSIVE/LEFTIST" CREATIVITY AND VISION HAD COME DOWN TO ONE SLOGAN AND THREE LETTERS: "ABB".
("PORGRESSIVES/LETISTS" USED TO CASTIGATE *REPUBLICANS* FOR CHEAP, SIMPLISTIC SLOGANS.)
AS A *CRITICAL* -- _NOT_ A PERSONAL/OFFENSIVE -- STATEMENT: THOSE "PROGRESSIVE/LEFTIST" ICONS *DESERVED* TO LOSE -- AND GO DOWN LIKE *CHUMPS*.
IN THE 'HOOD WE JUST SAY THAT, "THEY *PLAYED* THEMSELVES!"
AND THAT'S WHERE THE LEFT IS TODAY.
NO WONDER WE'RE IN TROUBLE.
Take care,
Joseph
=========================
It's the liberals and weak-kneed, vacillating, always scared progressives (closet liberals by another name) who over the decades have steadily "lesser evilled" us into the very situation they say is so unprecedentedly dire today. --JA
=======================================================================
Editor:
Whenever Ralph Nader is interviewed these days, I think of Melville's mad Captain Ahab who, in his ultimately catastrophic pursuit of the white whale, declared "All my means and methods are sane: my purpose is mad."
Nader has added to his extensive enemy list those progressives who, he feels, have betrayed him because their fear of the Bush agenda exceeds their former loyalty to him.
We who believe that a medieval theocracy has no place in the U.S. disagree with Nader that there is little difference between the two major parties this time, and so Nader wants to harpoon us along with his old corporate adversaries.
If he and his supporters succeed in throwing the election to Bush once again, he will succeed in making his name an obscenity around the world, while sharing the fate of Ahab who took the ship down with all hands on board.
Sincerely,
Gray Brechin
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http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/09/1695394_comment.php#1695483)
In it he discusses the Presidential election from an interesting perspective. It's a good read.
IGNORING TIRED PLEAS
Matt Gonzalez
op-ed from Mesh Magazine issue 7 dropping 11/10
Democrats succeeded in getting Greens and Independents to vote for John Kerry, but will we be asked to do the same thing four years from now?
Although Democrats didn’t elect John Kerry on November 2, they did get something they wanted badly. They convinced Greens, Independents, and progressive Democrats to support a candidate who did not represent their beliefs about issues like the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, and the WTO. The Democratic Party successfully scared voters with the specter of another “spoiled” outcome like 2000.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans were disenfranchised by abandoning candidates who truly represented their values in exchange for John Kerry. Only “anybody but Bush” did not even win in the end, and progressives are left wondering if our votes could have been better cast. And if we will be asked to repeat the same futile exercise in four years.
The Democratic Party’s strategy is apparently to hope it will be able to talk progressives out of voting for their chosen candidates every election cycle. This is hardly a democratic—or practical—solution. But since Ralph Nader didn’t cost them the election this time around, their “solution” appears to have worked out just fine. And, unfortunately, very little post-election punditry has focused on the need for more democratic elections.
But are Democrats—who went to great lengths to silence third party candidates this year—willing to reform elections so we don’t face the same quandary four years from now?
Sadly, I predict they won’t. Democrats will likely ignore the necessity of updating the antiquated two-party system because they don’t perceive it to be in the Party’s long-term interest to do so. Although Democrats are quick to invoke Nader’s role in 2000, they fail to mention how Ross Perot’s campaign in 1992 allowed Bill Clinton—who ended up with just 43% of the vote—to ascend to the Presidency. The Democratic Party understands how the existing system, although not always kind to its candidates, does in fact reward it with power roughly half of the time.
Why should they bother with election reform that might actually allow a multi-party system to emerge? Why help the Green Party? Isn’t it better for Democrats to simply accept the results this year and look forward to a future in which power is shared with only one other party?
So what are progressive voters to do? For starters, we should pledge that we are not going to delay our efforts to build a more humane society. We will vote for the candidate we truly want to win, the one who represents our beliefs. The tired pleas for us to abandon our candidate are not going to be heard next time. We must communicate this now, so Democrats are on notice that they have only four years to fix elections or suffer future defeats—regardless of how “evil” the Republican candidate.
We need only look to San Francisco for an example of a simple and practical electoral reform. On November 2, San Francisco successfully implemented a voting system called “instant run-off voting” (or IRV) for electing its local County Supervisors. Voters, in one trip to the ballot box, were able to rank their top three choices, allowing a runoff to be conducted immediately if no candidate received over 50% of the vote in the first round of tallying.
The use of IRV nullifies the “spoiler” argument used by the Democratic Party. It ensures that the winner of an election will have a mandate with a majority of the votes cast, not just a plurality victory as the current system permits. In addition, it allows for the inclusion of voices not counted in traditional run-off elections, as run-offs are generally plagued by a dramatic drop in voter turnout.
So why can’t we have IRV, or at the very least, traditional two-candidate run-offs, in Presidential elections? If this method of voting had been used in Florida in 2000, Nader’s supporters could have selected Al Gore as their second choice, guaranteeing that their votes would not be wasted and eliminating the pressure to vote for a candidate who was not their favorite.
Last month, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) introduced IRV legislation in the United States Congress. House Resolution 5293 mandates that states implement IRV by 2008 in elections of all Federal officials. The only problem is that it’s not the first time he’s introduced such a measure. In the past he hasn’t been able to convince enough of his Democratic colleagues to join him. Will it be different this time?
Now more than ever, progressives must pledge not to bail out the Democrats next time around. Certainly not if they’ve failed to work toward electoral reform. To do otherwise is to get caught up in an endless cycle that props up a rotten and undemocratic system of voting in order to avert short term evils – all the while guaranteeing long term ones.
http://www.meshsf.com