A Principled Progressive
Tuesday 30 August 2011 - Filed under Uncategorized
As rare as a blue moon, truly principled progressives are a rare breed. Though I often might disagree with Greenwald’s policy positions (or rather policy prescriptions for problems that we would both agree exist), there is no denying that he is one of the very few principled progressives left; one of the very few who would put his principles before his team.
But coverage of these presidential campaigns has even more pernicious effects than mere distraction. They are also vital in bolstering orthodoxies and narrowing the range of permitted views. Few episodes demonstrate how that works better than the current disappearing of Ron Paul, all but an “unperson” in Orwellian terms. He just finished a very close second to Michele Bachmann in the Ames poll, yet while she went on all five Sunday TV shows and dominated headlines, he was barely mentioned. He has raised more money than any GOP candidate other than Romney, and routinely polls in the top 3 or 4 of GOP candidates in national polls, yet — as Jon Stewart and Politico’s Roger Simon have both pointed out — the media have decided to steadfastly pretend he does not exist . . .
There are many reasons why the media is eager to disappear Ron Paul despite his being a viable candidate by every objective metric. Unlike the charismatic Perry and telegenic Bachmann, Paul bores the media with his earnest focus on substantive discussions. There’s also the notion that he’s too heterodox for the purist GOP primary base, though that was what was repeatedly said about McCain when his candidacy was declared dead.
But what makes the media most eager to disappear Paul is that he destroys the easy, conventional narrative — for slothful media figures and for Democratic loyalists alike. Aside from the truly disappeared former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson (more on him in a moment), Ron Paul is far and away the most anti-war, anti-Surveillance-State, anti-crony-capitalism, and anti-drug-war presidential candidate in either party. How can the conventional narrative of extremist/nationalistic/corporatist/racist/warmongering GOP v. the progressive/peaceful/anti-corporate/poor-and-minority-defending Democratic Party be reconciled with the fact that a candidate with those positions just virtually tied for first place among GOP base voters in Iowa? Not easily, and Paul is thus disappeared from existence. That the similarly anti-war, pro-civil-liberties, anti-drug-war Gary Johnson is not even allowed in media debates — despite being a twice-elected popular governor — highlights the same dynamic.
It is true, as Booman convincingly argues, that “the bigfoot reporters move like a herd” and “put[ their] fingers on the scales in elections all the time.” But sometimes that’s done for petty reasons (such as their 2000 swooning for George Bush’s personality and contempt for Al Gore’s); in this case, it is being done (with the effect if not intent) to maintain simplistic partisan storylines and exclude important views from the discourse.
However much progressives find Paul’s anti-choice views to be disqualifying (even if the same standard is not applied to Good Democrats Harry Reid or Bob Casey), and even as much as Paul’s domestic policies are anathema to liberals (the way numerous positions of Barack Obama ostensibly are: war escalation, due-process-free assassinations, entitlement cuts, and whistleblower wars anyone?), shouldn’t progressives be eager to have included in the discourse many of the views Paul uniquely advocates? After all, these are critical, not ancillary, positions, such as: genuine opposition to imperialism and wars; warnings about the excesses of the Surveillance State, executive power encroachments, and civil liberties assaults; and attacks on the one policy that is most responsible for the unjustifiable imprisonment of huge numbers of minorities and poor and the destruction of their families and communities: Drug Prohibition and the accompanying War to enforce it. GOP primary voters are supporting a committed anti-war, anti-surveillance candidate who wants to stop imprisoning people (dispropriationately minorities) for drug usage; Democrats, by contrast, are cheering for a war-escalating, drone-attacking, surveillance-and-secrecy-obsessed drug warrior.
Greenwald has escalated the discussion beyond Team RED v Team BLUE partisan handjobbing and decided to focus on the issues that count: the cessation of fucking war, both on peoples elsewhere in the world and right here at home. Even if we can’t agree on how to approach income “inequality” (even if we can’t agree that the “inequality” in itself is not a problem so long as the standard of living continues to rise for BOTH the rich and the poor), we can certainly agree that supporting a candidate who has repeatedly gone against his own policy positions in a relatively short time is not how one fosters a healthy democratic republic. And we can also agree that those who resort to Team politics despite individual principles is a shill.
Perhaps the worst outcome of the protracted obsession with presidential campaigns is how it intensifies partisan tribalism, and bolsters divisions among ordinary Americans who have far more in common than differences. I recall a conversation I had early on in the Obama presidency with a civil libertarian; at the time, progressives were rarely critical of the new President, but because civil liberties was the very first area where he so blatantly embraced Bush policies and revealed how he truly operates, that was the one area where harsh criticisms were somewhat common. I suggested in that conversation that the trend of progressive criticism of Obama would be expressed by an inverted “U”: it would continuously increase as the Real Obama revealed himself in more and more areas of prime importance to progressives, and then would decline precipitously — more or less back to its original levels — as the 2012 election approached. I think that’s being roughly borne out.
Because presidential elections are such a stark either/or affair, many people feel compelled to choose one side and then elevate its victory into the overarching — even the only — political priority that matters. For that reason, even those willing to criticize their own side’s Leader a couple of years before the election become unwilling to do so as the election approaches, on the ground that nothing matters except boosting one’s own team and undermining the other. That, in turn, further reduces the already-low levels of independence, intellectual honesty, and — most importantly — accountability for those in power.
In a just world, Obama would NEVER be re-elected (in a truly just world, he would be OUSTED from office). Doing such would only further undermine our power as a people to control our own government in the way it was designed. It encourages, if not guarantees, expansions of powers not granted to the executive, such as the “kinetic military action” in Libya, and debases the political conversation down to silly and ultimately unproductive and, in many many cases, dangerous rhetoric designed to create fear of what could happen if you deign to vote for someone from the “other side”.
2011-08-30 » madlibertarianguy