A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
-- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
It's been a while since I made an entry. All the focus is on the primaries, and I'd like to move ahead to the general election and take on the Republicans. It looks like my candidate Obama is in a strong position, so much of the recent happenings seem like noise that must be endured, lots of sound and fury signifying nothing. We'll know more after Tuesday.
I'm thinking about how to take on the arguments of McCain. My own stance is probably more pointedly opposite him than even Obama's arguments may be when this debate starts heating up. I'm happy that with Obama as the candidate, there's much less chance for the Iraq discussion to deteriorate into how the "war" was simply mismanaged. Senator Obama will forcefully argue that there should never have been a war in the first place. There are a great many reasons why we shouldn't have gone into Iraq, and Obama correctly stated many of those back in 2002. Beyond the obvious misdirection of the battle against Al Qaeda to a country that had no role in 9/11, Obama knew that such a war would further damage relations, both within and outside the Muslim world, that it would require occupation resources and heavy cost, and that such endeavors are really doomed from the start. Obama's judgment on this issue is so inarguably correct, or at least it should be by now, that it's just a question of whether Americans are really ready to hear it.
Throughout history, occupying forces have never been able to fully conquer any nation. The pitiful excuse for a government now in Baghdad will never be truly accepted by the Iraqis. Democracy probably has a lot less chance of taking root in Iraq than it would have if we hadn't been meddling in that country since the 1950's, but until we get out of there, it has no chance at all. Will Obama talk much about the truth of why we're there? Will he discuss the heavy pressure being brought to bear by multinational energy firms such as ExxonMobil for control of Iraq's oil wealth under the guise of Iraq's oil "revenue sharing" plans? Will he mention the international leverage we want to possess by having our hands on the spigot of such an important resource right in the middle of the world's biggest region for it? There are many reasons why he might not. The forces that want to exercise that sort of control in the region will still be around after the election, and they'll continue to make an impact on how we behave. It's going to be up to us to make sure the whole argument gets laid out, because I don't think any President is going to be able to stand up to all this alone. It's still going to be up to us to drive the argument forward, and force America to face the truth about its own imperialistic pursuits. These problems extend beyond whatever administration is in power, and they don't go away simply by electing a relatively progressive Democrat. It's not that simple, folks. We have work to do.
If we simply accept that the world is a nasty place, and we have to be nasty if we want to be a part of it, I think we're failing to examine that position in sufficient depth. For myself, I can't lay claim to being an international expert, but I've known and worked with people from an enormous range of countries, and I think I've developed a pretty good sense of people overall. There are certainly some very violent pockets in the world, and there are some attitudes in the world that defy belief. Even in some countries we think of as being developed, there are nakedly racist attitudes toward other peoples that are beyond shocking to our American sensibilities. I wouldn't try to tell you for a moment that there isn't a whole lot to worry about with respect to our security. A lot of this planet is just plain crazy, make no mistake. Still, so much of the worst part of the craziness stems from patterns we can follow by studying history and related areas. When you look at what's happened, and after the shock has worn off a little, there's nothing very surprising that we haven't known all along about human nature. We know that too much power corrupts, that greed is too prevalent, and that we've become sort of a power-hungry, greedy nation. So what did you expect? I expect that we can improve things, perhaps beyond anything we could currently imagine, if we stay involved enough to examine the motives for our actions, and actually exercise the best judgment instead of opting for the most material gain. There's a lot we wouldn't solve by such a change, but we might start cutting some of our problems down to size.
Noam Chomsky resurfaced to give a
talk about Iraq in Massachusetts the other day, and an article for The Nation called
The Most-Wanted List that examines the terror of recently assassinated Hezbollah commander Imad Moughniyeh in the light of other violent activities in that part of the world. These are invaluable perspectives if we really want to understand the events of today's world as a caring human being, and not as an ideologue or unquestioning supporter of U.S. administration policies. I need to remind you now that I'm looking at all this in somewhat of an attitude of retrospective, as someone who's grown older and is no longer in the prime of health. I need you to understand how clearly the things that really matter stand out within that context, and the clarity doesn't represent a shift, such that some things should have mattered before, but other things matter now; what's clear is that these are always the things that really mattered, the things that provide a broad and deep sense of meaning and value throughout all phases of our lives without regard to age or life situation.
If you've read some of these entries, you know I've been studying the world situation very closely, and I've seen that our policies have done at least as much harm as good, and that's putting it mildly. I know that many of you just haven't had the time to pull back the curtain and see the sham for what it is, and I feel that many of you would be prepared to take very strong action if you really knew the truth. There are still too many, though, who would still try to ignore what's going on, who would hope that someone else could fix things, or afraid to try to fix things for fear of upsetting the status quo. What I have to tell you is that you absolutely must stop these things from happening because we're at multiple tipping points, for democracy, the climate, and the world. As long as we let George do it, he or Cheney most certainly will, and the world will suffer.
I've never said this won't be a long struggle. We can't just elect a progressive candidate and take a snooze. We not only have to wake up, we're going to have some long nights ahead, and we're going to have to upset some applecarts along the way. I'm the last person that will ever advocate any sort of violence. Don't look for that sort of thing here, because any attempt to solve problems with violence immediately destroys the solutions. What we do have to be is strong, and steadfast, and confident that we'll know what has to be done when the time comes as long as we listen equally to our heart and our head when we're asked to decide.
An election is a good time to shake things up, but we need to shake things up every day from now on. I don't want anarchy. I don't want everyone to give away all their belongings and renounce materialism. I don't want to open the door for every crazy who shows up. I just want you to start making your decisions with a thought to the things that are really important. I want you to imagine how you'll feel about things when it's nearly over, and how you'll feel then about some of the choices you made. Will you rationalize about that compromise that helped to exploit a few hundred workers in some obscure part of the world, or will you look for some way to ask for some kind of forgiveness for having come up short when you didn't really need to? I don't think we always need to think in big, revolutionary terms, even to achieve something big and revolutionary. Sometimes we just need to start taking care of the little things, and the big things will start to fall into place.
I'm getting really sick of this. I didn't hate Hillary Clinton when all this started. Plus, I've always been kind of a champion for women's rights. I've been a fairly typical male in a lot of respects, but I've been out there for women quite a lot in my life, and I don't mean Eliot Spitzer-style. I don't think there is any male who wants to see women achieve equal rights and respect in every area more than I do, and I can say that with conviction. I know that if the United States is around long enough, there will be a lot of capable and talented women holding the office of the Chief Executive. I have felt strongly about this sort of thing long enough that I don't have to consider voting for someone out of sexist or racist guilt. I feel free to consider candidates based on their merits, and I'm confident that neither racism nor sexism will be involved in my decision, including reverse racism or sexism. I'm going to try and pick the best person. Just so you know. Hillary, please go away. I can't believe your capacity for screwing things up. You've lost, dear. It's over. Better luck next time, and thanks for playing. We have some lovely parting gifts. Please get out of here before you take all the hope and promise of the 2008 Presidential Campaign and turn it into yet another chapter in the total nightmare that has been the 21st Century up to now. To a very great extent, your base has become Rush Limbaugh Republicans who flood the voting booths of open primaries at the behest of their chubby spokesman to prop up support for the candidate they would prefer to face this fall. You have never embraced the really progressive principles of the Democratic side of the fence, preferring instead the big business of backroom deals and cynical posturing. You voted for war, and you voted for tough talk, you lied about NAFTA in a couple of dozen different ways, you have reveled in the politics of fear and of racial division, and you've taken the excitement of a nation and twisted it up in a manner reminiscent of Bush's squandering of global good will after 9/11. This isn't how it's supposed to be, and I venture there's as little real support for you right now as there is for W. I had some hopes for you, despite your reputation as a Centrist, but you're simply proof of how corrupt our system has become. Drop out of the race. Now! America is sick of you! We're sick of Mark Penn and Ed Rendell and Eliot Spitzer and Geraldine Ferraro and the whole ulcerous corrupt lot of you. We're sick of the way you're playing with Florida and Michigan, the way you skirt around the edges of race, good grief, don't get me started again, just go! Fortunately, there seems to be precious little chance you're going to win. You've started the worst of these games too late, and the lead is just a little too big. You're not going to get there. At this point, you'd need to win about 62-63% of the votes remaining even to get anyone to listen to you, and only your blindest followers believe you can do that. If you simply planned to compete, fairly and honestly, then I'd say go for it. I love a good competition, and I'd be more than happy to go toe to toe on the issues with you the rest of the way. But that's not what's going on, is it? We're all going to have to start wearing athletic cups the rest of the way over here, even the women, because the frequency of hits below the belt is beyond belief. Politics just isn't the way it used to be, is it? Time was, when most of these tricks could be pulled off pretty much unchallenged. We'd get maybe a sniff of what was going on in the paper and on the evening news, but that's all we knew. Now, it's a new ball game. Now, the whole filthy game plan is laid out on the internet for inspection, and we can decide what we like for ourselves. Even so, you came awfully close to pulling it off, and you can still do so much damage that even a sorry old loser like John McCain might come out of this thing with the prize when it's all said and done. I've already done a fair amount of ranting on this topic before I started to write this post. I've been over at Huffington Post, among other places, getting all this off my chest. Here's one I wrote in response to a nice post by Jane Smiley, called I'm Already Against The Next War:
