A Cup of Crap
By Michael Albert
Dec 24 2000
Bush lost the popular vote. Bush lost the
Electoral College (or would have by a fair Florida count). But Bush owns the
White House. Cheney was our Gulf War Secretary of Defense. More than merely
military-entwined, Cheney is a war criminal. But Cheney will soon run the White
House. Powell is an ex-General. Powell wouldn’t mind wearing a perpetual
uniform. And Powell is another Gulf War criminal. But Powell heads State. And
then there is Schwarzkopf. This Gulf Warrior’s warrior also campaigned hard for
this outcome. Who knows what he’ll end up with.
How did it happen?
They incarcerated and disenfranchised large
swaths of the electorate. They obstructed Black voters on the way to the polls.
They manipulated and denied diverse constituency’s votes. They likely tanked
many ballots. But even with all that and with Gore’s pathetic campaign, their
cheating fell short of producing a Bush victory. No problem. The highest court
played piper. The Supremes sounded the final charge. They gaveled to submission
even our feeble democracy.
Not just a sullied election, this was a
hijacking. The military straddled the driver’s seat. The kiss-ass law crawled
across the floor. The Supremes pumped the breaks and gas. They are headed back
to the last millennium. Whoa -- who’s going to the inauguration?
Heretofore, regarding the election I have
mainly argued that translating Nader’s momentum into lasting left commitments
is our movement’s main task. And so it is. But there is another election topic
that is attracting almost no attention, even on the left. It is not the chads.
They were done to death. It is not the election rip-off. That should get more
attention, but is getting quite a lot. It is not even the racist reversal of
intent of the Black and Latino electorate. Even that has gotten some of the
attention it merits, as has the highest hypocrisy of the Supremest Court.
No, what I see as basically ignored is the
mindset of Tom, Dick, Harry, Sue, Sarah, and Sally. In short, where is the
anger in Des Moines, Phoenix, Portland, Mobile, Toledo, and Buffalo? Where is
the irrepressible outrage at this abominable election?
Do you know the method of argument called
reductio ad absurdum? First we assume some claim. Then we show that the claim’s
truth implies expectations confounded by reality. Finally, if we don’t see the
outcome the claim implies, we conclude that the claim itself must be false and
reject it.
Suppose we assume that the population of the
U.S. broadly believes what our textbooks tell us: that the U.S. is a democracy,
that the law is unbiased and sacrosanct, and that choosing a President is a
hallowed responsibility. Surely people who believe this would be mighty upset
at having it taken away. Wars are ostensibly fought to avoid such
freedom-theft.
But in full color 3D, with nary an obstructed
view in sight, and so explicitly that even the most obtuse observer had to
comprehend the events, democracy was beaten into oblivion. So where is the
anger?
This election should look to the presumed
patriotic public, like a vile, duplicitous power grab undertaken to attain
reactionary control of government. Even mainstream newspapers report that with
a Florida fair count Gore wins.
Is the absence of major reaction because most
people like the outcome? Come on. Less than 25% of the voting age population
wanted Bush in the White House and plenty of those thought only that he was
nicer, more honest, or less pedantic than Gore.
Is it that outrage was blunted by a lack of
prior learning that precluded people seeing the truth? Not at all. In fact, too
much prior education facilitates rationalization and denial. In our society a
good general rule is “the less the education the better the insight.” (An even
better rule, my favorite, aptly demonstrated in the election, is “garbage
rises.”)
If people sincerely believed before this
election that we live in the world’s foremost democracy, then they would be
irate, it seems to me. But people are not irate so we have to conclude that
most folks don’t really believe this is the world’s foremost democracy, or even
a democracy at all, and therefore didn’t see anything usurped during this
election that wasn’t already in the outbox.
Most folks knew the score before the election
and still know it after the election. Within the defining institutions of the
U.S. -- the government, the market, the corporations -- the deck was and is
horribly stacked. Power and wealth 83, freedom nearly nothing.
But the public’s passivity about the vile and
transparent duplicity in Jeb Bush’s police state, about the vapid campaigns,
about the Court’s almost comical hypocrisy, and about the media’s moronic
manipulations, isn’t apathy. Instead, virtually nobody sees a good reason to
militantly react. It isn’t that folks don’t care about their future. It is that
folks believe (however wrongly, if we account for serious activism) that the
future is beyond their reach.
Real democracy, remember, means that people
have both information and means to impact outcomes. But in our society, unless
we have a lot of time to find and read obscure sources, we have little if any
honest information bearing on major decisions. We lack ways to develop
meaningful political preferences. We can’t significantly impact low-level
superficial matters such as deciding who should be president, much less more
serious matters such as what the president will do in office, what the
government will do, what corporations will do.
U.S. elections are a sham. And it now turns
out that even the sham is a sham. And the new revelation piled on top of that
is that everyone knows it. Let’s get this side-show over with, people think.
It’s boring. It’s embarrassing. Let’s go back to school, to work, to our
households, or to wherever else we can get some modest pleasure and
consistency. Let’s congregate where reality is at least partly what it appears
to be. Let’s express preferences where outcomes are at least somewhat subject
to our desires. Let’s go home, or perhaps to the mall, or maybe to read the
sports pages, the only honest ones in the newspaper.
This attitude doesn’t change the world, it’s
true, but it's not crazy or apathetic.
Envision someone in prison. He or she tries
to get the best out of the allotted work-out room, library, TV-room, or
commissary, however meager the attained pleasures may be. Such prisoners
certainly don’t methodically research all the limitations their cells impose on
them. They don’t daily protest those limitations. They turn the other cheek and
get on with their (limited) life. Unless and until prisoners see a way out,
they cautiously seek to create a viable existence. It only looks like apathetic
acceptance.
Our electoral system. Our government. Our
markets. Our private ownership. Our corporations. Our divisions of labor. Our
institutional racial and ethnic persecution. Our familial and organizational
sexism, misogyny, and homophobia. These imprison us. And everyone knows that
pretty much everything is broken. But no one is going to do much about it, not even
be outraged much less struggle about it, until they believe two things. (1)
That life could be much better. And (2) that we can get from where we are to
that much better place if we work hard enough.
No one over eight years old and not in
complete denial truly believes in 2001 that our U.S. system is honorable,
worthy, or just. Those at the top know the system serves them and have decided
that that’s just dandy. Their morals are toast. The rest of us know the system
sucks. We try to make do.
Yes, many people intone favorable words about
democracy and freedom and don appropriate rhetorical garb to get through the
day. But no one really believes the myths, not deep down. Folks don’t enlarge
their doubts into full critiques nor adopt associated protest agendas, it is
true. But this isn’t because they believe in “the system.” It is partly for
want of time after working, caring for their kids, and sleeping. It is partly
because they don’t see any congenial avenue for dissenting. But it is mostly
because they doubt that dissent matters.
Without believing in new institutions and an
accessible path to attain them, protest seems to them like hopeless whining
that leads nowhere. Most folks look away. The bad guys get even worse.
So my Christmas and New Year’s query is why
don’t we radicals we put more mental and organizational energy into creating
widely shared vision and strategy? That's what differentiates having
enlightened, committed, and effective movements, from having good critiques but
minimal movements.
The big irony about the election, by the way,
is that other than the very few rich folk who vote their real interests and
care avidly about doing so, the half of the population who actually goes out
and votes are not significantly more involved or concerned than the half who
don’t vote. In fact, I submit for your consideration that U.S. voters who vote
do so largely because to not vote would violate the assumptions and protocols
of their communities and their superficially held personal mythologies. Not
because they sincerely believe they are exercising an influential democratic
responsibility. And I submit that U.S. non-voters who stay home do so for
pretty much the same reason. They abide their community’s norm, which is “why
vote given that the candidates are two heads a single corporate party that
remorselessly screws me?”
So the truth is out. And deep down, virtually
everyone knows. Our society’s defining institutions are nearly all a cup of
crap: the elections, and the rest too.