Political Oz
February 28, 2008 | 21 Comments
Oh no, it’s officially political ninny season in America. And we all know what that means. It’s time to shelve the issues and the activism and don our favorite party’s slippers, tap our heels three times and repeat this line until November: There’s no better place to kiss than your candidate’s ass.
And so it goes – especially with the Democrats when it comes to their expert-like ability to suspend logic and cheer the candidates who seemingly ignore their issues the most. Tap those slippers, baby, and forget that Clinton and Obama won’t even mention universal health care. Tap, tap, tap and forget that they both have military industrial complex henchmen crawling all over the top echelons of their campaign brass. And tap, tap, tap and ignore the fact that both are swimming in the big moneyed interests of Wall Street, nuclear energy and big oil, and the corporate consumer and food monopolies that bring us the big-box toxins.
There is apparently no end to the suspension of logic. But I guess we already know that since the dominant theme of the apparent winner of the Dem Oz-fest is the “man of hope,” Obama. At least he’s being honest. He’s not talking about accomplishments. Revolution. Systematic overhaul. Peace. Or any such measure of true change. Nope, just hope. And the crowds go wild, tap, tap tapping away….
All this hope comes from a most distinguished place of privilege too. If you’ve got a couple of years to do little but hope you certainly aren’t amongst those who are dodging bullets and IEDs in Baghdad. Or amongst those who are drowning in the financial atrocities of the subprime fiasco. Or amongst those who are so marginalized by the workforce that they no longer even qualify to be counted in unemployment numbers. And just try to send a hopeful note to your insurance corporation seeking an extension on the policy you can no longer afford. Good luck with that.
Sorry, but hope works better on a bumpersticker.
After publishing my piece on Nader vs. The Fundamentalist Liberals earlier this week, I received an avalanche of emails – mostly supportive – from folks immune from our nation’s spell of hope. None were better than the missive I received from Joel Hirschhorn. Titled “Delusional Hope: The Obama Rapture,” Hirschhorn offered this bit of reality:
Never have so many hoped for so much because of rollicking rhetoric and pulsating platitudes. A tsunami of hope has plunged America into electoral euphoria. In its path is the wreckage of critical thinking about what ails the US and what bold, revolutionary actions are needed. Barry Obama has accomplished semantic alchemy, turning justified but grim distrust and outrage with government and politics into hallelujah hope. But most hope never materializes and is a terrible predictor of reality.
Think about the prevalence of hope: sports teams heading into a championship game, research scientists envisioning a Nobel Prize, people in the criminal justice system awaiting trial, entrepreneurs starting a new business, people starting off on a long-awaited vacation, American Idol contestants, college seniors dreaming of becoming superrich, and all those supporters of Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and other presidential candidates that will not reach the White House.
Hope produces far more losers than winners. Hope is enjoyable until failure hits. But most people do not give up on hope, just move on to the next hope.
Indeed, we’ve seen this kind of “hope” before. Before we had today’s “Man of Hope,” we had the “Man from Hope.” Yeah, that man: Bill Clinton. Like today, the liberals of ’92 were enraptured by the Dem ticket, silencing themselves on the issues and demanding that everyone “shut up and get in line” no matter how ill-defined the destination was.
We were told that Clinton – along with his VP Gore — would be the nation’s first “environmental president.” Oh, the hope of it all. But, like today, the hope of yesteryear required that we not “rock the boat” in the election season and, instead, just ride the wave to change. The result? Well, here’s what I wrote in the Spring 1993 issue of Safe Food News:
In a very short period of time, the “Environmental President” and his hand picked administration have done the following:
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Promoted food irradiation as a “solution” to the meat contamination crisis;
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Advocated doing away with the Delaney clause, one of the nation’s most important food safety laws which, if enforced, would ban the use of many carcinogenic pesticides;
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Given final approval to a hazardous waste incinerator located near a grade school in Ohio, despite EPA studies demonstrating its danger and promises from Gore that he’d stop it;
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Rescinded five important anti-pollution regulations drafted by outgoing Bush EPA head William Reilly, including one which would have phased out the ozone-destroying chemical methyl bromide and another which would have required exporters of pesticides to provide clear danger warnings and safe handling instructions on labels.
I guess it’s rarely pretty when hope meets reality. And the reality of the Clinton/Gore finger to the eye of the enviros and liberals was that they allowed themselves to taken advantage of in the election season. Or, if you’d rather, they let their hope get the best of them. Instead of making demands from the Clinton/Gore team they hoped for the best and silenced themselves all the way to those heady days of White House invitations and more hopes for presidential appointments.
It’s as if we’ll never learn that the squeaky wheel gets the grease – especially in politics. But the panderers simply get taken advantage of. Worse, we seem to forget that our Democracy was intended to be “people” driven. Remember, the politicians were supposed to follow – not lead – the will of the people. And when the people cede that essential power to the politicians we do, indeed, get led…by our noses.
And all of this is just a very long way to say: Don’t forget or ignore the issues. We don’t owe any candidate anything other than the responsibility to make sure they FOLLOW the will of the people. They must EARN our votes. And, from my perspective, they will only earn that vote by stopping the rhetorical gimmickry and begin seriously addressing the war, health care, the culture of fear, the obscene economic inequalities, the environment and the outright betrayal of democracy that exists today.
In other words, I’m not tapping my heels. I’m demanding answers.
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