Monthly Archives: June 2016

Jill Stein or Hillary?

Posted by on 2016-06-24 No comments

On June 24th Bernie Sanders was asked if he’d be voting for Hillary Clinton. He answered “yes” but hedged on endorsing her. That, he hinted, was contingent upon the Democratic Party’s adoption of some of his platform issues. For the progressive 43% of Democrats who supported him, however, voting for Hillary Clinton is going to be a lot like taking syrup of ipecac – a medicine of questionable value with an awful taste and horrific side-effects.

The issues of honesty and serial scandals have dogged Hillary Clinton and her husband for decades. Her credibility deficit is not merely due to a “vast rightwing conspiracy” or Donald Trump’s nickname for her. She is an opportunistic chameleon, one who’d make a better Republican than Democrat. What Republican would ever fault her for union-busting, playing tough on crime and immigrants, turning her back on welfare mothers, being a war hawk, a friend of dictators, and a Wall Street darling?

You get annoyed when you go to your local drugstore and it doesn’t have your particular brand of shampoo. But when it comes to politics, you’re expected to make do with two parties. And you’ve been trained not to vote for what you really believe in. Instead, your only choice is a candidate barely less evil than the other. But some citizens simply vote their beliefs and conscience. And for their trouble they and their candidates are branded “spoilers.”

Donald Trump’s fevered dream of attracting Sanders supporters will never happen: unlike Trump, they have some principles. And while I also can’t imagine progressives ever voting for Libertarian Gary Johnson, we are almost certain to hear about “spoiler” Jill Stein of the Green Party. Stein and Sanders in fact share a number of common ideas for a better America and it’s more than a possibility that many Sanders supporters will vote for her in November.

Yes, if Clinton loses to Trump, even narrowly, we’ll certainly be hearing about the evil Greens. But don’t blame Stein. And don’t blame progressives. Political parties ought to reflect the views of voters and offer real choices. And there should be more than two parties in this day and age. Besides, progressives gave the Democrats a chance – only to discover that the party awash in super-delegates seems to be a pretty small, and quite exclusive, tent after all. And many of them have heard the “Hope and Change” song before from Democrats.

So the question really boils down to this – will Bernie Sanders’ supporters vote for Hillary Clinton or Jill Stein?

That depends on how Sanders and his 43% are treated next month at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia – and whether they are ready to let go of a progressive dream for America.

This was published in the Standard Times on June 28, 2016
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20160628/opinion/160629560

Election a Referendum on White Male Privilege

Posted by on 2016-06-19 No comments

This election has reinforced an important truth about political candidates – that the bar is always lower for unqualified white men than it is for equally unqualified white women or men of color.

I am of course speaking of Donald Trump – and not merely of Trump, but of Rick Perry, Dan Quayle, and a long line of Good Ole Boys and Ivy League frat boys with foot-in-mouth disease, whose style is to speak first, think later – if they bother to think at all.

But let a woman try this approach and she’s a ditz or a bimbo. If she has an acerbic manner – well, she’s a bitch. In Sarah Palin’s case, the unqualified woman was quickly exiled to her porch to imagine her Russian neighbors. In Carly Fiorina’s case, her professional incompetence as HP CEO was an issue, while the male candidate who defrauded many with his fake university and who has declared bankruptcy numerous times gets a free pass.

If you are running for the Presidency while being a person of color, God help you. Every gaffe and error is offered up as proof of your genetic unsuitability for the office. Just ask Ben Carson or Herman Cain. Like Trump, Cain had women problems, but somehow Trump’s three divorces, his womanizing, his misogyny, and his ex-wife’s accusations of rape don’t really matter. Or ask Bobby Jindal, the son of Punjabi immigrants. Although what comes out of both Jindal’s and Trump’s mouths sounds much the same, it’s Jindal who is the buffoon, not Trump.

Yes, a lower bar for white men has always been a feature of American life.

Recently the rightwing commentator Patrick Buchanan wrote a piece for Townhall.com entitled “The Great White Hope.” Buchanan whines that white men are no longer respected as leaders and contributors to society. Now, he sobs, white men are seen only as the fathers of colonialism and slavery. I’m not sure how he can wave away fact as we begin to take a long, hard look in the mirror of history – and Buchanan’s case is overstated – but he writes that much is riding on Trump, a hero to millions of white men angry at the changes in society wrought by now “privileged” brown people and forced to give up their Confederate flags.

Writer Lyz Lenz reminds us that they have always been with us, these angry white men. William Faulkner’s “Abner Snopes” (from “Barn Burning,” 1939) is a beaten-down sharecropper who burns down the barns of wealthy men, and rails at rich whites and poor blacks alike. Snopes is precisely the man Buchanan is talking about – although, truthfully, Snopes would sooner burn down Trump’s tower than vote for him.

In Buchanan’s fairytale America, historical oppressors have now become the victims, the historical victims the new oppressors. Where once a white man could readily find employment because of his skin color or his connections, now that same white man is competing with Asians and Mexicans in a global marketplace. I suppose we could lay some of the blame for this at the feet of the white male titans of Capitalism.

But – no. Blame it on the Mexicans.

Which brings us right back to Trump.

Trump’s campaign has accused Clinton of playing the “gender card.” Leaving aside his remarks on Megan Kelly and others, Trump’s own campaign doesn’t do much to dispel the truth of his misogyny and racism. According to a June 4th piece in the Boston Globe by Matt Viser, Trump pays his male campaign workers a third more than women and only 9% of them are minorities. Clinton, in contrast, pays her staff equally and 33% of them are minorities. Whatever you think of her, this says something about her willingness to be everyone’s president.

This election is really a referendum on White Male privilege. Forget Clinton’s email server. Put aside for a moment her lucrative speeches on Wall Street with their guarded transcripts, and all the revolving doors that have brought the Clinton Foundation a half billion dollars. Trump’s supporters simply hate Hillary Clinton for being smarter, more experienced, and more inclined to level the playing field for women and people of color.

Krauthammer, Krauthammer

Posted by on 2016-06-02 No comments

Charles Krauthammer’s pieces never fail to annoy me. When he’s not demonizing Obama and the Left, he’s penning fairy tales about the morality of the Right.

This week’s fable is about the differences between neoconservatives and so-called “idealist” foreign policy makers. As Krauthammer tells it, conservatives (the good guys) believe in democracy and nation-building, while liberals (the evil ones) believe in developing global institutions and downplay American Exceptionalism. Krauthammer constantly savages his bête noire, Obama, for this sin. He whines that every act of Obama’s international diplomacy, from Iran to China to Cuba, has been an exercise in appeasement or in withdrawing American power – including the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which he classifies as appeasement and containment of China.

Yet after all that, for Krauthammer democracy-building is not really as important as building up and harshly wielding American power. Real power is provoking a military confrontation with China in which the U.S. is dominant.

In fact, the conservative wonks Krauthammer admires so much have never been in love with democracy or been shy about propping up dictators and butchers. The Pahlavis, the Pinochets, the Somozas, the Saudi royals and many others have always been the Chosen Ones with American administrations of both parties.

To be fair, the Wikileaks/Manning State Department cable dumps reveal just how criminally similar Hillary Clinton is to Henry Kissinger. Even in Obama’s last term, our foreign policy is still barely distinguishable from anything that preceded it. We’re still at war in seven nations. We’re still propping up autocratic regimes. The U.S. constantly builds up weaponry, employs drones to kill both “evildoer” and hapless innocent alike, operates with impunity or in violation of the Constitution, enlists help from the corrupt and rewards them amply, and lies to the American public about what it is doing.

Krauthammer’s real objection is with Obama’s tone. He is outraged that Obama can go to Hiroshima and apologize for being the only nation to unleash nuclear terror on humans. Yet – and this should make him happy – Obama has simultaneously approved an upgrade of our nuclear weapons.

Yet if there is anything redeeming about Obama’s tone, it is the implicit recognition that American Exceptionalism is crumbling – not by Obama’s hand but because the demise of our empire cannot sustain the myth. The one thing in which the United States leads (besides gun deaths and incarceration) is military spending and invading other countries. By all other measures (longevity, health, education, savings, standard of living, contentment) we are well down the list in comparison with many of our neighbors.

And so it is refreshing when – even hypocritically or obliquely – a standing president acknowledges a few of our crimes on the international stage. No doubt it infuriates people like Charles Krauthammer, who would prefer that we continue to bluster, bomb, and bully our way into Rogue Nation status. Yet Krauthammer speaks for many Americans, especially those drawn to political candidates known for blustering and bullying.

While the distinctions between “idealists” and neoconservatives are virtually non-existent, what is really crucial is what kind of people we want to be. Can we coexist with others who don’t share our love of American-style “free markets” or “Western democracy?” Do we want to be a high-tech Hermit Kingdom, building walls between nations, in a permanent state of war with most of the world? Must we deny reality and insist on American Exceptionalism – despite our failure to provide adequate healthcare, education, and economic opportunity to most of our own population? That’s hardly exceptional.

Or is it really just the human thing to let slip that we are just like everyone else? That we, as humans, are sorry for what we’ve done?

There is a lot of wisdom in Martin Luther King’s observation, which Krauthammer derides and Obama cites, that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But men like Krauthammer, disposed toward violence, and lacking the patience for those long arcs, will never fully understand history – especially when only one nation is worthy of their consideration.

This was published in the Standard Times on June 2, 2016
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20160602/opinion/160609907