What the Progressive Movement Is Really Up Against

Crossposted from Progressive-Independence.org.

The Chinese strategist Sun Tzu cautioned against fighting wars on multiple fronts, and for good reason; it has the tendency of dividing and exhausting one’s forces, thus leading to inevitable defeat.  So it is that the Progressive Movement in America fights not one but two enemies: the fascist corporations and their dogs in government, and itself.

I was reading a column by Dave Lindorff at Smirking Chimp in which the writer goes through all the various lame excuses for voting against his own beliefs and interests.  I know them for what they are, because I used them in 2004 when I held my nose and voted for Democrat John Kerry.  That’s a mistake I’ll not repeat again.

Take a journey with me as I dismantle the excuses given, one by one.

First, Mr. Lindorff explains why he planned to vote for Ralph Nader, and gives very good reasons for doing so:

I was going to vote for Nader because I find Obama to be a seriously flawed candidate. He ran early on an anti-Iraq War platform, saying not that invading Iraq was wrong legally and morally, but that it was “the wrong war.” Since then, he has backed away even from saying he wanted the war ended, opting for a 16-month withdrawal timetable that would have the killing and dying in that sad land going on longer than most wars this nation has fought. He has also called for an escalation of the war in Afghanistan, despite clear evidence that more troops just will make the situation there worse, and has called for an expansion of the US military budget, to increase the size of the Army and Marines, which will only encourage more warmongering, more killing and more waste of precious resources.

Obama also sold us all out by going along with a bill sought by President Bush granting immunity to telecom companies that aided and abetted the illegal and unconstitutional spying on Americans by the National Security Agency–spying that we now know is massive almost beyond our imagination, even including the monitoring of private family conversations of American service personnel in Iraq, of journalists, and almost certainly of Bush administration political “enemies.” By backing that obscene bill, Obama has made it almost impossible for victims of this police-state surveillance campaign to sue and find out what the Bush/Cheney administration has been up to all these years.

In so many ways, Obama has tacked to the middle or even the right, while spouting soaring but empty rhetoric about “change.”

Okay, so why then is Mr. Lindorff proclaiming his intention to vote for the bastard in spite of all this?  He gives several reasons, all of which I shall debunk.  The first has to do with casting a ballot against racism:

when I see the hate-filled racists and right-wing yahoos braying at McCain and Palin rallies, when I hear people calling for Obama to be killed or lynched, and when I see the rabid hate mail circulating in email inboxes falsely labeling him as a secret Muslim, a terrorist, a Marxist and a black nationalist, I want to see the man resoundingly win this election.

That’s perfectly understandable; there is a lot of racism in this campaign, and if I wanted to stick it to the bigots by voting for the Black guy, I’d do it.  There is, however, more than one Black person running for president.  In addition to Obama, there is Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney.  What’s more, since she’s a woman, it would be the double whammy of protest votes – casting one’s ballot for a Black person who also happens to be a woman.  If that’s one of the reasons Mr. Lindorff or anyone else wants to vote for Obama in spite of his record, that’s a far more palatable option.  (I should point out at this juncture that I am categorically opposed to voting for people based on skin color or gender.)

Next, Mr. Lindorff tries to excuse his decision using an argument he freely admits has no basis in logic or fact:

I also, perhaps against all logic and experience, admit that I expect something good of an Obama presidency.

Call me naive, but based upon my own life experience, I keep thinking that a guy who has worked as a community organizer, a Harvard Law School grad (and even law journal editor!) who could have named his price at a Wall Street law firm, but who chose instead to be a political and community activist, a guy who has relatives who live in humble surroundings in Kenya, and who spent some of his childhood actually living in a Third World Asian nation, not to mention a guy who has surely felt the sting of being called a nigger, has to bring something new to the White House. Certainly no other president in the history of the country has come to the office with such a background.

Obama gutted health care reform as a state senator, actively assisted in dismantling the Constitution by helping to give immunity to telecommunications companies that have spied and continue to spy on us illegally, voted to continue funding the illegal occupation of Iraq, pushed for the blank check to Wall Street that has done absolutely nothing to provide even a short term solution to the economic collapse, but Mr. Lindorff still wants to try to convince himself that Obama would somehow do a complete 180° turn on all these issues upon becoming president.  On what does he base this admittedly illogical belief?

After dismissing the U.S. left as a joke, which does have some basis in fact, Mr. Lindorff then trots out the old excuse of Supreme (Kangaroo) Court nominees.

there are important things that could happen–and I stress the word could, not would–if this election were to be won by Obama and by Democrats in the Congress. One of these things is that there will be new Supreme Court justices named over the next four years. Some will inevitably replace some of the aging “liberals” on the bench (some of whom have not always been so liberal on economic issues). Some could also replace current conservative justices (Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, both obese men, don’t look terribly healthy to me, Justice Kennedy is getting on in years, and even Chief Justice Roberts, while looking hale, has a problem with epilepsy or some other ailment that has caused him to collapse in a frothing fit of unconscious on occasion).

What exactly leads him to conclude that Obama, if he becomes president, would actually nominate liberals to the Supreme Court – or any other court, for that matter?  Bill Clinton sure as hell didn’t; the GOP fought him at every turn, and like a good little dog, he waffled and nominated “moderate” (code word for conservative) judges.  Obama has given us no reason to believe he would do any differently than Clinton, given his record so far.

After arguing without any basis whatsoever that a Democratic Congress would pass progressive, pro-labor legislation with a Democratic president, Mr. Lindorff then dismisses Obama’s warmongering rhetoric as pretense.

I tend not to take Obama’s warmongering seriously. Given the man’s background, I am confident that he is not a militarist by nature. It may be politically opportunistic for him to try during this campaign to out-tough McCain on Afghanistan while calling for a wind-down of the war in Iraq, but it would be a disaster for him to pursue a wider war in Afghanistan after taking office, ensuring that his presidency, like Bush’s, Lyndon Johnson’s and Richard Nixon’s before him, would be dragged down by an endless bloody conflict.

Again, ignore the rhetoric, Mr. Lindorff.  What has Obama actually done as a legislator?  He has consistently voted to continue funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The only time he (and Hillary Clinton) voted against it was one time before the primaries, when they were shamed into doing it by Connecticut’s Christopher Dodd, who was also running for president.  Given his bellicose rheotirc and his record of supporting the illegal occupation of Iraq, what evidence is there for Mr. Lindorff to believe that Obama is all talk when it comes to war and military expansion?  The answer, of course, is absolutely none.

Lindorff next makes the absurd claim that Obama would take action to combat Global Warming.

Besides, I have a darker vision, which is that the crisis of global warming, so long denied by the Bush administration, is going to make itself felt soon in ways that will be impossible to ignore, and which will demand a crisis response. Obama, I believe, will be the right person at the right time, to lead that response.

Again, what is Obama’s actual record?  When asked during the primary debates what he and his family were doing to help the environment, the senator pretending to represent Illinois muttered, with a deer-in-the-headlights expression on his face, something about using energy efficient light bulbs.  Obama’s actual record on the environment does not look good.

Finally, Mr. Lindorff drags out the religious zealotry card as an excuse to piss away his stated principles.

And that brings me to the final reason I am voting for Obama. As crazy as John McCain clearly is, with his default setting on war as a solution for all problems, this sickly and possibly terminally ill old man has chosen to have a certifiable right-wing, closed-minded, bigoted and stunningly ignorant religious zealot as his back-up. Sarah Palin, as vice president, would in all probability end up becoming president during a McCain first term.

This country and the world simply cannot risk having as the leader of America an end-of-times believer at this critical moment. It’s not just the polar bears and the wolves in Alaska who would suffer under a Palin presidency. It would be all life on earth.

Considering Obama has stated his intention to attack Pakistan, a nuclear power, made threatening statements toward Iran, proclaimed his intention to continue the occupation of Iraq and widen the war in Afghanistan, what reason is there to think Obama’s presidency would be any less destructive than McCain’s dictatorship?  This isn’t even touching upon either candidate’s refusal to address the move toward fascist police state actions in America, torture of prisoners, denial of habeas corpus, and so on.

What I’m reading in Dave Lindorff’s column is fear.  He is spooked by it, to the point where he is perfectly content to throw away his stated principles for a candidate he knows is poison.

Yesterday, in response to a thread posted at Free Speech Zone, someone posted a comment containing a YouTube video showing how a creature thoroughly infested with a parasite is driven to act against its own survival.  This is the same effect fear has upon the populace – they continually act against their own interests, because they are driven by something that has taken hold of their minds and warped their thinking.  They’re no longer in control of their own lives and destinies; they’ve ceded it to fear.  THAT is what the Progressive Movement in America, such as it is, my friends, is up against.  It’s not merely the far right, with its wholly destructive agenda; it’s our own fear, which drives out all reason.

We MUST break ourselves of this habit of giving into fear.  I am open to ideas.