This month’s political conventions took place in a nation badly deformed by both major political parties.
Inside Cleveland’s “Quicken Loans Arena” the GOP anointed its candidates, while in Philadelphia the DNC was hosted at the “Wells Fargo Center.” In both cases, heavily armed police and the Secret Service kept protesters at bay, safely behind protest-free security barriers. Undeclared war, drone attacks, and civilian casualties continued, and assassination lists were drawn up both Tuesdays, much like they were when Republicans were in power. Spying on Americans continued, as it had when Republicans were in charge. Whistleblowers who could no longer operate safely in the U.S. filed reports from Berlin, Rio, Moscow and elsewhere, while others sat in embassies and federal prison.
This bleak snapshot could have been taken in any year since 9/11, and the sitting president could be either Republican or Democrat. There really hasn’t been that much difference.
Inside the convention halls, old rich white people were once again the winning office-seekers. Bluster, lies, superPacs, and subterfuge got them both there. Both are divisive figures. Both paint each other as evil incarnate. Trump is Hitler, while Clinton is Lucrezia Borgia. The message at both conventions was the same: only one person can save us, and for the nation’s survival all of us must unite around our candidates, our savior. And if you refuse to get on board – well, you’re either for us, or a’gin us.
For Repubicans, this effectively meant: we’re all fundamentalists and racists now. For Democrats: we’re all militarists, regime-changers, and neoliberals. Delegates and speakers were booed if, like Ted Cruz, they told fellow party members to “vote your conscience.” At least one dissident at the DNCC had her delegate credentials revoked when she questioned the direction, the qualifications, and the integrity of the presumptive candidate.
At the Republican convention, the Evangelical right, xenophobes, and more opportunistic elements within the GOP all signed up to sing Trump’s praises. In Philadelphia neoconservatives like Robert Kagan said “I’m with her” and Democrats practiced the Zen of blocking from consciousness all the sins and omissions of past Democratic administrations. Few lessons were to be learned in the slick, revisionist narrative of the DNC.
Trump’s character witnesses included fellow billionaires, reality TV stars, most of his family, evangelicals, and party extremists like Scott Walker.
At the DNC, Madeline Albright, the former Secretary of State (under Bill Clinton) who thought killing half a million Iraqi children “was worth it” and who schooled Hillary in Cold War “containment” policy and “regime change,” spoke of Clinton’s “toughness” and the need to fight Russian and Iranian aggression. Cory Booker turned Maya Angelou’s anthem of survival and personal triumph into an ugly piece of American Exceptionalism.
For both parties, the date might as well have been the 1980s. Republicans seemed stuck in a Reagan time-warp, while the Democratic leadership wished again for those halycon days when the U.S. had just become the world’s only superpower and could throw its weight around without consequence. Nobody talked about Israel’s occupation or the Democratic Party’s new embrace of fighting BDS by suppressing free speech.
Whichever candidate takes the Capitol steps in January, it will be an old rich white person whose party is flogging endlessly recycled, failed policies. Progressives may be the only ones in the nation aware that the year is actually 2016 – and not two generations ago.
This week, Progressives are taking it on the chin from Democratic loyalists who use Hitler analogies, cite Martin Niemöller (“first they came for the…”), and paint a scene of Republican meteors wiping out the earth. One article in Quartz goes so far as to say that voting your conscience is immoral. While couched in the logic of utilitarianism and “consequences,” the “ethicists” quoted don’t seem aware of the actual historical consequences of voting for both major parties – little things like the War in Iraq or the War on Drugs. Or the Clinton-era crime bills that created an incarceration nation. Those were consequences of truly immoral voting.
But guess what, Democrats? I really don’t care who your Democratic Party ethicists recommend any more than I care who Republicans think Jesus would endorse. Your party has been complicit in destructive wars and creating domestic suffering for decades. Your ideas have failed us as badly as the Republicans’. Inside and out, both parties are bankrupt.
So whether it’s Trump Steaks or regime change, tinkering with crime bills or foisting the TPP on Americans – we’re just not buying what either party is selling.
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