Ralph Nader Was Right About Barack Obama Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush. He promised us that the transfer of $12.8 trillion in taxpayer money to Wall Street would open up credit and lending to the average consumer. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), however, admitted last week that banks have reduced lending at the sharpest pace since 1942. As a senator, Obama promised he would filibuster amendments to the FISA Reform Act that retroactively made legal the wiretapping and monitoring of millions of American citizens without warrant; instead he supported passage of the loathsome legislation. He told us he would withdraw American troops from Iraq, close the detention facility at Guantánamo, end torture, restore civil liberties such as habeas corpus and create new jobs. None of this has happened. He is shoving a health care bill down our throats that would give hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the private health insurance industry in the form of subsidies, and force millions of uninsured Americans to buy insurers' defective products. These policies would come with ever-rising co-pays, deductibles and premiums and see most of the seriously ill left bankrupt and unable to afford medical care. Obama did nothing to halt the collapse of the Copenhagen climate conference, after promising meaningful environmental reform, and has left us at the mercy of corporations such as ExxonMobil. He empowers Israel's brutal apartheid state. He has expanded the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where hundreds of civilians, including entire families, have been slaughtered by sophisticated weapons systems such as the Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of victims' lungs. And he is delivering war and death to Yemen, Somalia and perhaps Iran. The illegal wars and occupations, the largest transference of wealth upward in American history and the egregious assault on civil liberties, all begun under George W. Bush, raise only a flicker of tepid protest from liberals when propagated by the Democrats. Liberals, unlike the right wing, are emotionally disabled. They appear not to feel. The tea-party protesters, the myopic supporters of Sarah Palin, the veterans signing up for Oath Keepers and the myriad of armed patriot groups have swept into their ranks legions of disenfranchised workers, angry libertarians, John Birchers and many who, until now, were never politically active. They articulate a legitimate rage. Yet liberals continue to speak in the bloodless language of issues and policies, and leave emotion and anger to the protofascists. Take a look at the 3,000-word suicide note left by Joe Stack, who flew his Piper Cherokee last month into an IRS office in Austin, Texas, murdering an IRS worker and injuring dozens. He was not alone in his rage. "Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it's time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours?" Stack wrote. "Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country's leaders don't see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political 'representatives' (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the 'terrible health care problem'. It's clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don't get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in." The timidity of the left exposes its cowardice, lack of a moral compass and mounting political impotence. The left stands for nothing. The damage Obama and the Democrats have done is immense. But the damage liberals do the longer they beg Obama and the Democrats for a few scraps is worse. It is time to walk out on the Democrats. It is time to back alternative third-party candidates and grass-roots movements, no matter how marginal such support may be. If we do not take a stand soon we must prepare for the rise of a frightening protofascist movement, one that is already gaining huge ground among the permanently unemployed, a frightened middle class and frustrated low-wage workers. We are, even more than Glenn Beck or tea-party protesters, responsible for the gusts fanning the flames of right-wing revolt because we have failed to articulate a credible alternative. A shift to the Green Party, McKinney and Nader, along with genuine grass-roots movements, will not be a quick fix. It will require years in the wilderness. We will again be told by the Democrats that the least-worse candidate they select for office is better than the Republican troll trotted out as an alternative. We will be bombarded with slick commercials about hope and change and spoken to in a cloying feel-your-pain language. We will be made afraid. But if we again acquiesce we will be reduced to sad and pathetic footnotes in our accelerating transformation from a democracy to a totalitarian corporate state. Isolation and ridicule - ask Nader or McKinney - is the cost of defying power, speaking truth and building movements. Anger at injustice, as Martin Luther King wrote, is the political expression of love. And it is vital that this anger become our own. We have historical precedents to fall back upon. "Here in the United States, at the beginning of the twentieth century, before there was a Soviet Union to spoil it, you see, socialism had a good name," the late historian and activist Howard Zinn said in a lecture a year ago at Binghamton University. "Millions of people in the United States read socialist newspapers. They elected socialist members of Congress and socialist members of state legislatures. You know, there were like fourteen socialist chapters in Oklahoma. Really. I mean, you know, socialism - who stood for socialism? Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Clarence Darrow, Jack London, Upton Sinclair. Yeah, socialism had a good name. It needs to be restored." Social change does not come through voting. It is delivered through activism, organizing and mobilization that empower groups to confront the hegemony of the corporate state and the power elite. The longer socialism is identified with the corporatist policies of the Democratic Party, the longer we allow the right wing to tag Obama as a socialist, the more absurd and ineffectual we become. The right-wing mantra of "Obama the socialist," repeated a few days ago to a room full of Georgia Republicans, by Newt Gingrich, the former U.S. speaker of the House, is discrediting socialism itself. Gingrich, who looks set to run for president, called Obama the "most radical president" the country had seen in decades. "By any standard of government control of the economy, he is a socialist," Gingrich said. If only the critique were true. The hypocrisy and ineptitude of the Democrats become, in the eyes of the wider public, the hypocrisy and ineptitude of the liberal class. We can continue to tie our own hands and bind our own feet or we can break free, endure the inevitable opprobrium, and fight back. This means refusing to support the Democrats. It means undertaking the laborious work of building a viable socialist movement. It is the only alternative left to save our embattled open society. We can begin by sending a message to the Green Party, McKinney and Nader. Let them know they are no longer alone.
By Chris Hedges
Posted on Truthdig Mar 1, 2010
Copyright © 2010 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.
We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/ralph_nader_was_right_about_barack_obama_20100301/
I have great respect for Chris Hedges, as one of the very few people who was a respected journalist at the New York Times and subsequently left the Times in protest of the way they ignored those of us in the anti-war movement who were warning about the lies of the Bush Administration and opposing the use of violence to achieve US ends in the Middle East, and because I am grateful that he has written a brilliant article in Tikkun on the Obama Brand and has accepted our invite to speak at our conference in D.C. Yet in this communication I want to state places where I disagree with Hedges article, although I do at first affirm some things that are right about Hedges' position even while I don't affirm the tone and style of his communication (which, to be fair to him, was written for a different venue and not at all like the more nuanced pieces he has put into Tikkun magazine). I hope you read this through to the end, even while grumbling that it is too long (I know, but here is a basic truth about communication: if you are referencing ideas that are already popular in the culture, you can do so with a short slogan; but if you are trying to introduce new ideas that do not resonate with the "established wisdom" or "common sense" of the culture, it often takes a nuanced discussion that is longer-and hence the nuanced position may feel too long to people who have been accustomed to the dumbing down of popular discourse by the media and the politicians.) Despite what Chris Hedges wrote, I have met Obama personally and privately on several occasions and do not believe he is a liar or a conscious manipulator. I do not agree with the decisions he has made since he won the Democratic nomination for President, and particularly after he became President, and I've gone out of my way to communicate in a clear, firm way those criticisms, and to do so in a positive language that showed exactly what he could do to change his approach. It was this commitment by Obama which led many Americans to take what was for them the huge risk of dropping their defenses and allowing themselves to hope that the world that they wanted (but believed to be impossible) would finally be on the agenda, and that someone in a position of power and influence would provide leadership to achieve that world (albeit against potentially insuperable odds). Few of them expected change overnight, none of them expected change without compromise, but all of them expected that Obama would unequivocally speak the same language and the same critique of the corporate powerful and the same critique of the Bush abandonment of human rights and civil liberties, to the whole country that he had spoken to his supporters when telling them that "you are the people we've been waiting for" and that he would deliver "change you can believe in." Most of the criticism of Obama is not about what he compromised for, but why he did it without first struggling hard for the progressive positions he articulated during his previous career as a US Senator and to crowds he met with during the campaign-that is, without trying to educate the country to the ideas he said he believed in, before making compromises on those ideas. Lest you think that this is somehow a rarified critique coming from a few intellectuals, please note the report in the New York Times today, March 3, 2010, page B1, in which leaders of the labor movement expressed strong critique of Obama's policies and indicated that it is unlikely that Labor will be able to mobilize their local unions to work for many Democrats in the 2010 elections. The story goes on to quote one typical steelworker who worked for Obama in 2008 who says "People aren't feeling so good about the president… people really believe that he bailed out Wall Street and forgot about Main Street. I think it's going to be a real challenge for organized labor to try to reenergize its base" in 2010 and beyond. A firefighter in Michigan is quoted as saying: "He's not what he purported to be, which was 'I'm going to change things, I'm going to fight for you, the average guy in the street.' He's no't fighting hard enough for what he believes. The ones that voted for Obama, they're not as enthusiastic."
Why I Disagree with Hedges and Nader on Obama
By Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor of Tikkun and Chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives
Many of the specific failures highlighted by the article I sent out yesterday by Chris Hedges criticizing the performance of the Obama Administration are legitimate points. But the way Hedges's positions are stated, and the conclusions drawn from them are not the path of spiritual progressives, in my view.There was too much anger in his statement overshadowing our spiritual progressive commitment to compassion and a spirit of generosity toward others with whose politics we disagree. And not enough sympathy for the problems anyone would face trying to get elected as President and to repair the damage of the past 30 years.
I believe that Obama's failure to carry forward on addressing the deep yearning of tens of millions of Americans for a different world than one dominated by the moneyed interests and the fearful who rely on power and domination of others to achieve security has been a dreadful mistake. Obama aroused in people a willingness to transcend the deep cynicism engendered in many by 28 years of Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush II, encouraged us to believe that he would stand for something really different, and that he would above all fulfill his promise to tell us the truth (which I and others understood to mean "the whole truth" facing him and moving him to make decisions).
So, please understand that when we critique Obama, we predicted all this a year ago, and now we are seeing what happened when Obama followed the path he did -- but we are not the ones who have created the mass defection from Obama and his weak-kneed Democratic Congress. I'll go on to say why I disagree with Chris Hedges' article in a few more paragraphs, but please get that it is Obama, not his progressive critics, that have caused the great disappointment that flowed from his prioritizing the needs of corporations and banks and investment companies over the needs of middle income people and the poor. No one expected a magic wand -- but they did expect him to fight for a progressive vision and to speak openly about what he was encountering when he was engaged in such a fight. So when Obama failed to do that, he failed to do the one thing that was in his power to do, namely, to tell the truth, to say honestly and openly to us what was happening and why he was taking the moves that he took, and to relate what he was doing to what he had said he would do, and when abandoning what he had said, to explain why and to acknowledge the pain and disappointment that any such abandonment would reasonably cause among those who had supported him precisely because they believed he would stick with his promises and would explain what he was doing and why. So when Obama failed to stay honest and open with us about what he was doing, he caused a tremendous disappointment and humiliation among many who had opened themselves in this way, and they have reacted in part by despairing of government at all (and yes, part of the resurgent populist Tea Party movement comes from reactionaries, but part of it also comes from people who, watching Obama use big government to fund the very entrenched interests of the rich and powerful that they had understood him to promise to challenge, feel rage and anger at this betrayal, even if they didn't vote for him but secretly nurtured a fantasy that maybe finally something different would happen in government). Another group has turned to deep despair and an unwillingness to get involved again in politics, and this may be a major factor in the triumph of right-wing forces or even fascistic forces in the next decade or two, because it's going to take a long time to get people to hope again. And finally, another group, represented by Hedges, is just so angry at having been disappointed once again, are coming to the conclusion that they were consciously manipulated and want to express their anger. And they too have a legitimate reason to be upset. And, no, I don't buy the argument that there was nothing that Obama could do differently. Over and over again in the past six issues of Tikkun we've described in detail what he could have done differently and still could. In Tikkun we printed Memos to Obama by some of the most creative thinkers in America, and we were assured by people close to Obama that he received these. We bought a full page ad in the Washington Post and again in a very respectful manner proposed some specific steps he could take to retain the energy and hopefulness of his campaign even within the constraints of "inside-the-beltway" consciousness that was being championed by writers like E.J. Dionne and other liberals in the first months of his presidency. The key thing that is right about Hedges is that we all need to STAND UP and become visible again now that Obama's wrong turn has made invisible the tens of millions of people who supported him in the primaries and our shared desire for a different kind of world -- because to the extent that we become invisible to others and to each other, the crushing weight of the current global capitalist system -- and all its violence, injustice, and preaching of the values of selfishness, materialism, and looking out for number one and assuming that everyone else only cares about themselves and will seek to dominate us unless we dominate them first -- makes people despair about changing anything, and makes plausible the rage of proto-fascist movements on the Right which give expression to the frustrations about the contemporary world but do so in destructive ways. Hedges is trying to say to the attempts to erase the yearnings of tens of millions of people for a different world: NO, WE ARE HERE, DON'T LOSE OUR PROPHETIC VOICE AND THE VALUE OF ARTICULATING OUR MESSIANIC ASPIRATIONS -- and in this respect he is saying something that deserves respect. This is what is good about Hedges article. So then where do I disagree with Hedges? Let me count the ways: 1. Hedges' analysis and particularly the harsh way he expresses it leads to despair and to the "blame game" that has little usefulness in politics. Our difference here is partly the difference between two styles of prophetic leadership: one that rails against injustice, the other that moves beyond the legitimate outrage and seeks to find a way to change the reality. My own work as a social change activist and psychotherapist for forty years has led me to believe that people's ideas and perspective can be changed in fundamental ways, but that requires a mixture of prophetic outrage with genuine compassion and a spirit of generosity and respect for those with whom we disagree (even respect for the humanity of people who are doing or saying things that we feel to be outrageous -- though that shouldn't stop us from strongly critiquing those perspectives). In my books over the course of the past twenty years I've shared with tens of thousands of people strategies for how those changes can take place, and they are strategies that are as much a challenge to the Left as to the Right, insisting, as I do, on the importance of psychological and spiritual sensitivity (and acknowledging that I sometimes fail to live up to my own values and deserve criticism as well). Let's acknowledge that the Democratic Party has been overwhelmingly catering to the interests of America's ruling elites. It has also been a major force for legitimating some of the program of liberals and progressives, particularly in regard to the struggles against some of the more egregious forms of racism, sexism and homopobia in our society; it has fought for the rights of immigrants; it has weakly but nevertheless consistently opposed giving priority to defense spending over social programs. I know that this has not been anything close to what I've wanted. But the party remains a mechanism by which liberal and progressive ideas can be communicated to ordinary Americans, and, if we could get enough of those Americans to actually vote in primary elections, we could get candidates at every level of government who shared a progressive agenda. Yes, we are up against huge odds, because the wealthy will step in to fund the most conservative and corporate-friendly and rich-friendly candidates. But in the final analysis, if enough of us reach out to other people in our own communities and convince them of the need for a spiritual progressive politics, it is we who could win in the primaries and even in the general elections. I know that this is a very difficult route, but primarily difficult because it takes a lot of effort on our part to make it happen. But the Democratic Party could be taken over by people who share the analysis of the spiritual progressives. I salute liberals who are trying to do this very thing, but I don't believe that they will succeed unless they adopt a language that is more loving, compassionate, and generous than that reflected in the piece that Hedges wrote and which we at Tikkun sent out (albeit explaining that we often send out pieces with which we disagree because the views are ones that don't get a hearing in the mainstream media and deserve to be heard even if we think they are in some important respects mistaken or "off").
Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying here: I am not advocating that people follow the strategy of transforming the Democratic Party -- I'm only saying that it remains a possibility that could be tried, that groups like the Progressive Democrats of America are trying precisely that and with excellent leadership from the Progressive Caucus of the House of Representatives, and that had Nader type people with more emotional nuance and psychological sophistication and genuine empathy for the American public run in the primaries for the Presidency and the US CONGRESS, and had those people been able to articulate their critique in a language that emphasized the spiritual and ethical dimension and the need for love, generosity, caring for others and provided the kind of alternatives that we have articulated in our Spiritual Covenant with America, including the Generosity Strategy as represented in our Global Marshall Plan (see all this at www.spiritualprogressives.org) those people might have become the Senators and Congresspeople from the states where we now have Rahm-Emanuel-chosen Blue Dog Democrats. And one such person might have been the presidential candidate in 2008. Moreover, it remains the case that the majority of those who vote in communities of color, poverty, or low income still identify with the Democratic Party, and running in that party is a powerful way to communicate to people with whom we cannot ordinarily communicate through the corporate-controlled media that didn't even bother to cover our Strategy Conference in San Francisco two weeks ago, though it was larger and at least as significant as the smaller sized Tea Party gatherings over which the media makes such a fuss. To leave these people behind and turn one's back on them without having a serious strategy to reach them outside the Democratic Party is not a satisfactory political strategy, no matter how righteous and good it feels to those who have finally said no to the Democrats only to embrace a party of excessive political correctness but also excessive self-involvement and little serious outreach beyond their own fringe. 2. Hedges is wrong to characterize all liberals as lacking in emotion or leaving legitimate rage only to the proto-fascists. Here, as in Hedges' critique of the Democratic Party, there is a failure to recognize the efforts of so many very decent and ethically powerful people who have not been fully represented by their leaders. Who does he think turned out in the millions to demonstrate against the War in Iraq-all Greens? No, it was many of these Democrats. It's true that leadership like Nancy Pelosi failed to forcefully represent them, and that Obama is to some extent repeating that failure now and failing to articulate a clear worldview that could rally people and make them understand the alternative to "capitalism is the only option and domination is the only path to security" that underlies the "common wisdom" inside-the-beltway and throughout much of our society, but it is not fair to dismiss the vast majority of Democrats in this way. Doing so will not help us build a powerful anti-war movement again to counter the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and head off wars with Iran or Yemen. Just read the platform of the Democratic Party of California to see that there are voices within the Democratic Party that reflect much of what the secular progressives outside that party are calling for (though definitely not the New Bottom Line that spiritual progressives champion). Nor is Hedges being fair or accurate when he says: "The timidity of the left exposes its cowardice, lack of a moral compass and mounting political impotence. The left stands for nothing. The damage Obama and the Democrats have done is immense. But the damage liberals do the longer they beg Obama and the Democrats for a few scraps is worse." This is unfair both because it ignores the genuine desire of people on the Left to heal and transform American society, and because it ignores the real dilemma facing those who vote for "the lesser evil"-namely their legitimate concern about the well-being of those who they perceive will be better off under a Democratic President than under a Republican President-particularly the poorest elements in our society. Their conclusion, with which I do not agree but which I believe deserves a complex and respectful response and not the dismissive and disrespectful tone that Hedges shows toward them, is that the suffering of those people will be somewhat less under a Democratic administration than under a Republican Administration, and that things like family leave, lifting the restrictions on providing birth control information in federally funded birth control centers, banning torture like waterboarding in our military bases, and other such steps, small they may be, make a big difference to those who are impacted by them and hence are worth compromising to achieve. I'm not going to go into my arguments against that position and why I believe that taking the risks of creating an alternative party might be worth it under some circumstances, though in my view such a party would have to be very different from the Greens, and would have to have a commitment to the kind of political strategy I outline in my book The Left Hand of God, and would have to emerge from a movement to transform the Democratic party which, having obtained massive support, would then leave that party to form a spiritual progressive party, but what I will say is that the argument of those who wish to stay in the Democratic Party and make small but significant changes in the life of the most powerless is an argument that deserves respect and a more careful consideration than Hedges gives in this piece that we sent out. Let me give just one example of what still feels compelling to me about the argument made by those who wish to transform the Democrats rather than abandon them. It's the story of the guy who sees a young child on the beach throwing back into the water some of the thousands of fish who have been swept up onto the beach after a huge tsunami. The many approaches the child and says, "What's the point of throwing those fish back in the water. Unless there is a massive movement of people down on this beach, or unless the government sends a bunch of equipment to quickly push these fish back into the sea, most of them will die. Don't you see that what you are doing can't make any difference?" To which the child responds, "To these fish I'm throwing back, it makes a difference." It is in my view hard to deny that the Democrats in power are doing more to help the poor and the oppressed, or to take steps to preserve the environment, or to take steps to protect workers' rights, than would the Republicans were they in power and than they did when they were in power. Those who argue that "there is no difference" like Nader did in 2000 really do us a disservice. It's one thing to argue that the differences are not significant enough, quite another to pretend that these two parties deliver exactly the same thing in power. It just isn't true. I'm not convinced by that argument, because I believe that we could in fact make much important changes in this society if even twenty million people were willing to join an alternative party. But they are not convinced now, and to get them to be convinced, we need a strategy that starts with respect for those who disagree with a "leave the Democratic Party" strategy. I didn't feel enough of that respect in this particular writing of Chris Hedges. And what's ironic about that to me is that I know Chris Hedges, and know him to be a person of humility as well as passionate intensity, and so I don't dismiss him but embrace him even as I critique this particular piece. And I sent it out precisely to engender this kind of discussion. What troubles me with some of the responses that I got was that they seemed to think it wrong for us to send out articles with which we disagree. But that has always been Tikkun's policy-including printing in the magazine articles with which we disagree. It's part of our belief that the deepest truth emerges from a marketplace of ideas within which respectful debate and struggling with alternative positions can emerge (credit due to John Stuart Mill). We respect our readers enough to believe that they can hear positions with which we and they may disagree, and struggle with those positions. In fact, I've found that when people don't have that opportunity, be it on the Left, Right or the Center of politics, they end up really not fully understanding their own positions and unable to defend them when critiqued. So for that reason we've always warned our readers: if you want to know OUR position, read our editorials in the magazine, but don't assume that we agree with everything we print or send out. 3. It is wrong to describe Israel as an apartheid society. I abhor Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and we at Tikkun were the leading voice against the Occupation for 22 years until J Street, a much better financed enterprise, took our place in Washington D.C. (and is doing a terrific job of getting the message heard which we and others in similar movements pioneered in the US-though they omit from their message our prophetic Biblically-based insistence not only on the "rights" of Palestinians but also on their fundamental humanity and why a spiritual or religious person must care equally for their wellbeing as the wellbeing of Americans, Jews, Israelis and everyone else on the planet.) But Apartheid describes the situation that existed in South Africa, not the one that exists inside the pre-67 borders of Israel. In South Africa Blacks did not vote in the election of the prime minister or of the parties who ran the country; in Israel its Palestinian residents in the pre-67 borders do vote and have ten percent of the Knesset populated by Arab representatives (and would have more if the Arabs didn't vote for Labor or other parties). In South Africa Blacks were prohibited from going to the same schools or universities a Blacks, from attending the same movie theatres or swimming on the same beaches; in Israel Arabs go to the same beaches, attend the same university classes, and in most other respects have the same political rights as Israeli Jews. True, they face the same kind of discrimination that Blacks still face in many parts of the US-it's not right and its discriminatory, and its deplorable, but it's not apartheid. Why use a term that can so easily be shot down by the Right-wingers, when what Israel is doing is not that, though arguably worse than apartheid in some important respects? The answer, I suspect, is that many activists are so frustrated at their failure to have won a majority of Westerners to our critical perspective about the Occupation that they think that if they label Israel with some well known disparaging term, that that will make it easier for Westerners to understand. But that is not a legitimate approach-you can't jump over the difficult task of explaining what is wrong with what Israel is doing by using incendiary language that actually can be refuted. Moreover, you can't really win over Westerners with a simplistic account-because many in the West remember that Israel was created in the wake of eighteen hundred years of global anti-Semitism and a twentieth century genocided that murdered one out of three Jews alive. We at Tikkun do not believe that that suffering is reason to excuse Israeli treatment of Palestinians, but we do believe it is a reason why the world had a right to return those Jews who wished to return to their ancient homeland from which they had been expelled by force, violence and repression, in an instance of global affirmative action which, unfortunately, displaced (in our view, unjustly) hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. This story too is too complicated to try to summarize here, but it must be told with compassion for both sides, recognizing that both sides have a legitimate story to tell, and both sides have been cruel and violent toward the other side (as for example when Jews were climbing out of the crematoria and gas chambers of Europe and Palestinian leadership refused to allow them to enter Palestine because they were Jews, while allowing non-Jews to come to Palestine). Every part of this story has two sides at least, and it doesn't help to label one side the "evil other" and the other "the righteous victim," but to develop a sense of compassion for both sides-if the goal is to seek peace and reconciliation, rather than simply to achieve some rhetorical advance. As one who sometimes falls into this mistake, I understand the frustration felt by all who are outraged at Israeli behavior-and I believe that outrage is legitimate-but I think that the prophetic condemnation is only one part of the story, and we also need to act strategically and with generosity of spirit if we want to change the situation and alleviate the current suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians. Inside the West Bank and Gaza there's a totally different story, and there the conditions do resemble apartheid. Jews who settle on the West Bank have a totally different set of laws, roads, water, and much else. But again, that discrimination is not based on being Arabs so much as being part of a society that has tolerated violent attacks on Israeli civilians. I do not think that that argument is sufficient to justify Israeli behavior, but neither do I think that the Israeli behavior stems from racism as much as from fear. How could they fear when they are so much more powerful than the Arabs they dominate? Well, if you were part of a people who had been traumatized by 1800 years of discrimination, oppression, murder and rape, and then had 1 out of every three of you murdered in the twentieth century, you too might have a difficulty in seeing things straight and recognizing yourself as the powerful one. If the US can have a majority of its citizens think that the outrageous and immoral attack on the Twin Towers provides evidence that the US itself is in danger of being destroyed by terrorists, when the US is the most powerful military force in the world, how can you doubt that the Jews could be so traumatized by our history to be acting out of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder rather than out of racism and a desire to dominate others for the sake of domination and lust for power? My point is that it doesn't help move things toward peace to be demeaning the Jewish people, or the State of Israel, though it is perfectly legitimate to oppose its policies and do what we can to change them (including using the full power of the US to do so). We at Tikkun fully support the call by the Goldstone report for an international inquiry into Israeli and Hamas war crimes if each party does not itself engage in such an inquiry in an objective and credible way. And we believe it fully appropriate for the peoples of the world to do what they can to end the Occupation of the West Bank, as long as they also use similar methods to end the occupation of Tibet by China, the end of repression in Iran, the end of the occupation of Chechnya by Russia, the end of the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by the US, the end of the genocide in Darfur, and other such moral outrages. For a fuller discussion of this issue, please read my book Healing Israel/Palestine. 4. It is not a mistake for people to be demanding of Obama that he BE the Obama they voted for. But what would be a mistake is to think that such a demand is going to be given credence until we form a powerful movement of our own that is ready to take action and bring people into the streets and into nonviolent civil disobedience against the policies of the Obama Administration that are most abhorrent (e.g. the escalation of war or the funding of the banks and investment companies or its willingness to allow foreclosures on homes to continue or the give-aways to pharmaceuticals and health insurance profiteers). The huge mistake is to have treated Obama as a messiah and then expected him to deliver for us. Obama never named or targeted corporate power, and we need to do so, not just by saying what we are against, but by fighting for what we are FOR-e.g. the Global Marshall Plan and the Environmental and Ethical Amendments to the Constitution about which you can read at www.spiritualprogressives.org. We need to be more self-critical about not having built such a movement, and not as much at Obama who, facing the corporate power structure without the help of such a movement, could have been predicted to have caved as he did. 5. It is a mistake to allow Obama to face the wild charges of the right-wingers and Republican opportunists (who will oppose everything Obama calls for because they believe that his failure will bring them electoral victory in 2010) without the support and defense from people in the liberal and progressive world. Chris Hedges is correct in saying that the intensity of that assault has been aided by the failure of Obama and Congressional Democrats to passionately advocate for a different ethical vision, but instead to seem to be in bed with the corporate interests. But we should also acknowledge that at least some part of the anger against Obama stems from the same racism that has led many Americans to hate Obama with passionate intensity far out of proportion to anything he has done or failed to do. I do not minimize the impact of the humiliation that many faced who hoped for a different set of possibilities and Obama's betrayal of that hope, but I also do not believe that that accounts for all or even a majority of those who ruthlessly and unceasingly and irrationally attack everything he does. None of this is to challenge the importance of this discussion, a discussion that will also take place at our conference in DC June 11-14 (details at www.spiritualprogressives.org)--though we will also focus on the creation of a Constitutional Amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's decision empowering corporations, and on an Amendment that requires corporate environmental and ethical responsibility (please see various versions we are considering-at the Current Thinking section of www.spiritualprogressives.org. Nor will it prevent us from demonstrating at the White House on June 13th with the call to Obama: BE the Obama We Voted For, not the inside-the-beltway pragmatist/realist whose compromises have lost support for liberal and progressive causes and aided the upsurge of Tea Party conservatives. And by the way, we don't mean to be disrespectful to all Tea Party people either-some of them have a righteous anger at the way government has served the interests of the powerful, and they are responding to a right wing populism because they have not encountered enough of a progressive populism, and certainly not a progressive populism that has let go of the relgio-phobia that often cripples progressive movements from being heard by masses of Americans who might otherwise agree with them. So I hope Chris will still come to our conference, and that others who agree or disagree with him but understand the importance of discussing this in a comradely and caring way among those of us committed to peace, social justice, ecological sanity, love, generosity, and caring for others do also sign up for the conference before it fills up and closes registration as did our San Francisco conference two weeks ago. Sign up now at www.spiritualprogressives.org. Respectfully, Rabbi Michael Lerner RabbiLerner@Tikkun.org (responses to this letter may be published on our website or in our magazine unless you specifically state that you do not wish to have your response made public)
Responses to Hedges' article:
I certainly encourage multi-party movement in this country. But many of us out here (and clearly outside of Berkeley and Hedges' world), have found Obama to be a breath of fresh air, intelligence, determination and centeredness (yes, centrist to a fault at times, but here I really mean centered in the best sense of working from his core and not being simply tossed around. I think he sent more troops to Afghanistan with a different strategy and objectives, because the information put before him was simply compelling, even tho I believe it was against everything he wanted to do politically and personally. This is exactly the kind of person I wanted in office. One who is prudent. One who, unlike Bush, or those who can critique from the outside, don't have the luxury of saying, "Don't bother me with the facts." I actually think he wants to also deal with the country's health and food issues, but has the sense to use the "stealth" Michelle to talk about our children, rather than do a Hillary and have one more battle to contend with.
Unlike Hedges, I believe he's living up to many of his campaign promises -- from work around health care reform, to attempts at bank reform, to moves toward rescinding don't ask don't tell, to Iraqi withdrawal (and so you thot this meant everybody comes home?), trying very hard to figure out the complexities of enemy combatants and closing Guantanamo and dealing with the uproar from states and cities that don't want to house those that must be detained, etc., etc. I am also an outside critic. But I acknowledge that if I were an insider, I couldn't possibly do any better than he is given what he is up against. Hedges does understand the systems he's dealing with, right? If she wrote her article about challenging the system itself, not just Obama, it would certainly be more palatable, at least to me and those of us weary of hearing the man berated at every turn. I'd like to start telling people to start telling me, as my mother used to say, "something nice about someone or something good he's done."
Okay, the hell with pragmatism, realism, incremental change over the long haul. Go ahead back to Cheney and friends.. because that's where we'll be with Nader. Want to restore democracy? Restore reasons to believe, to have faith, to still hope. The Bush era were the days of real despair for me. And I still see hope now ... and I'm supporting it.
Jeanette Baust
Denver, CO 80220
*******************************
While I agree with Chris Hedges viewpoint, his anger frightens me; and if he is trying to form a grass roots movement with others who want to hurl their anger at anyone who doesn't agree with them, I doubt such a movement will succeed. I'm the type of person who has no problem getting together for coffee with just about anyone with whom I'm in disagreement. I'm always trying to understand the reasons a person thinks and behaves in a certain way, and it is imperative that I listen very carefully to the other person as well as stating my own views. If I were to project anger at the other person, then I feel a barrier would be created destroying any chance of understanding between both of us. The feeling of compassion and generosity of spirit makes me feel so much at peace even if differences of viewpoint can't be resolved. It took me a long time to discover that anger alone without trying to find some connection with another person makes me feel physically terrible and accomplishes nothing. I write lots of letters and e-mails to those in all levels of government and always aim to keep the tone open and friendly even if I'm conveying a message of disagreement.
Amy Rothstein
***************************************
Nader is responsible for giving us George Bush.
Had he not stayed in the race, there would have been no Pres. George W
and no IRAQ war. Perhaps there would not have been the recession
either. Definitely the country would not have lost all the funds to
the tax cuts and war costs.
I consider Nader to be one of the most despicable characters on the political
scene. At least Bush was true to his beliefs.
Nader worked to accomplish the opposite of his stated beliefs
and was successful in totally destroying so much that was good about America.
For YOU to present an article that tries to put NADER
in a positive light, makes me suspect everything
that you have ever said also.
DISGUSTING
You are a real disappointment.
ray miles
****************************************
Hedges is of course correct about McKinney and Nader being right about President Obama and his agenda. Obama is a defender of the corporate regime, and wants it to seem more progressive-like under his administration. Obama thus is a corporate Democrat. And so are many Democrats in Congress and at the state level.
Diagnosis is one thing, and treatment is another.
To support the Green Party of the United States is good. I believe in that and I do that.
To advocate "socialism" by name is problematic, for too many definitions of "socialism" say it is the system of government whereby the government owns the means of production and the delivery of services. This is not what progressive platforms advocate in the US.
A better term would be to advocate progressivism. For that we have a platform. I was on the Green Party Platform Committee as a guest, and I wrote part of it in 2008. The 2004 and 2008 Green Party Platform is a fine set of policies to advocate, and to represent progressive policies. So is the Nader platform. And the Kucinich platform. And the policies recommended by the 19 state progressive caucuses in the Democratic Parties at the state level. And also the policies of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which lists the state progressive caucuses under their section of links.
We need more sophisticated strategy than abandoning the Democrats in the context of a two-party system.
In a true multi-party system (such as MMP like Germany or New Zealand) that makes sense. To do what Hedges advocates in our two-party system with his silly, simplistic either/or suggestion would be a gift to the more corporate, more fascist, more militaristic, more stupid of the two parties.
There is a both/and solution that is simple and obvious in contrast to Hedges' flawed logic. That is to BOTH fully support the Green Party AND to oppose any and all corporate Democrats. And to BOTH fully support true-progressive Democrats in primary races, AND to develop a growing movement to support progressive Democrats AND the Green Party (our one national progressive party).
The most important long-term issues for determining whether a given person, candidate or activist is a true progressive Democrat is the key bridge issue: progressive electoral policies to create a multi-party system which is free of corruption through bribery. That means true progressive Democrats advocate for legislation and constitutional revisions that will transform our system and our Constitution into a modern democratic system. Any so called "progressive Democrat" who does not advocate for such a transformation of our system is not only a false progressive and an adversary of the Green Party, such people either need to be educated or directly opposed and exposed as frauds who are attempting to co-opt "progressive" as a name.
This bridge issue (as opposed to a "wedge issue") of electoral reform is found, in great detail, in each of the progressive frameworks I mentioned above.
Hedges has good progressive intentions. And offers both very good and very bad strategy.
Are you supporting the Green Party, AND building progressive caucuses at the state level? Are you pushing for progressive legislation AND pushing for a constitutional convention or amendments to fix the antiquated constitutional machinery that causes our system to be broken? And much, much more . . . ? I hope so.
New Zealand transformed their system from a two-party system to a true multi-party system in the 1990s. We can learn much from our progressive Kiwi allies.
Kelly Patrick Gerling Ph.D.
************************************************************************************
Obama is not responsible for the sickening choice the Supreme Court made, and you all know that if he gets any chance at all he will appoint judges who would never, ever do what they did. I only hope he gets a chance to shift the majority on the Supreme Court.
Amy Gibson
************************************************
It is the Republican opposition to any change that is the biggest problem here with Health Care, Green house Carbon tax, etc. and the Democrats lack of focus. Folks can be forgiven for dissapointment at the behavior of Democrats and the Administration, but I'm not surprised. Nader isn't an alternative, and he's not the most articulate person who is pushing the green agenda. We face a corporate power that manipulates whatever party is in power.
Even though I am dissapointed by Obama, I'm even more amazed at Hedges & Nader's egotistic trashing of the coalition that would be needed to make real change, while espousing many of the concepts and ideals that I hold dear.
It is true that voting isn't enough, that speaking truth is powerful and one of the only ways to bring the change we need, that part of the piece I agree with. Trashing liberals, destroying what coalition we have, this is so familiar to those who have seen the left consume it's own in years past. It is one thing that the right-wing counts on and this piece doesn't dissapoint them.....but I find it a tedious recycle of old swp hype, the stuff that justifies splinters without explaining why it is ok to give in to the right-wing propaganda "
I hope that Tikkun regains the clarity on issues and the relevance that I treasure, and continues to be a credible voice for change. This [Hedges'] piece doesn't cut it.
Bruce Bagnoli
**********************************************
This guy advocates taking a position that will cause "us" (the progressives,
liberals, the left) to spend years in the wilderness.
That sounds like about 40 years to me.
I'm 56.
If you guys are telling me that the only viable option is to wait till I'm
96, then I'm going to give up progressives, give up on spirituality, give up on
networks, and focus on something like day-trading that might get me and my family
something good in this life.
What a turn-off Hedges is.
-- David Arnow
******************************************************
I just wanted to drop you a line to thank you for taking up perspectives such as Chris Hedges. I personally think the solution for a real change in this country is to walk out from Democratic party (because it has shown over and over again it is corporate party). The more we engage in the efforts of changing Obama, we allow corporations to have power over us. We have to say "enough is enough" and create a new party that is fully committed to "We the People". Thank you!
Nozomi Hayase
******************************************************
This kind of hyperbole is the very thing that makes it difficult for Obama to get the support he needs to do what you want him to do. I think this tone of attack editorial reporting is "shooting yourself in the foot". Being critical is so easy and righteousness feels so good but..... this hyperbole attack analysis retards the cohesiveness of progressives, liberals, and the Democratic Party and diffuses support for an emerging extraordinary leader (Obama). He is up against a powerfully entrenched socio-economic-politcal system/culture (that you are part of and contribute to) that will probably have to go into complete breakdown in order to be transformed ( given the combined attack of right and left of Obama). This tone of complaining and attack is antithetical to producing transformational results and is helpful in insuring that Obama has insufficient support for leading productive change. Consider a different tone and framing, quit shooting Obama in the back. Consider turning your attack on the corrupt parts/players in the system. Or consider that you (and Hedges) are complicit in marginalizing Obama and his ability to catalyze change and with that are abetting the very dysfunction you rail against. Watching folks who are supposedly on the same team tear themselves apart while the other team wins another round is saddening. Obama is not the central problem here. This framing and tone and reporting IS a big part of the problem in my view.
Walt Roberts
******************************************************
Bashing Obama is not the solution. It is no surprise that he has not been able to live up to his campaign promises as he needed corporate money to get elected - and there in lies the problem. Is the US governable? A question that Paul Krugman and Bernie Sanders from Vermont have asked for years? Yet both of these progressives continue to support Obama and see the health bill on the table as better than the present system. Even Howard Dean is backing the present health bill. Did you really think that he could take on AIPAC? The lobbyist on K street run the country not the president nor the Congress.
John Heermans
Vermont
***************************************************************
Responses to Lerner
Dear Rabbi Lerner. Thanks for your excellent piece about Chris Hedges piece. I still believe there is enough of a difference between the parties to call myself a Democrat and vote that way in every election. On most major issues about which I feel strongly, I would say that a majority of Congressional Democrats (House and Senate) agree with me and vote the way I would want them to vote and by the same token, a small minority of Congressional Republicans would vote my interests. But if we you add up the totals, my progressive stand might get 40 Dems and 5 Repubs in the Senate and similar ratios in the House which do not even constitute a simple majority. And even achieving 50 votes in the Senate is not enough these days with the ridiculous filibuster. So I would agree(and I believe Obama would also) that we the progressive folks need to do more organizing, more letter writing, more protesting, whatever, to let those in power know we are out there. I am hoping that the tea party movement which I see as extreme right-wing, (or at least being led to support extreme right-wing leaders) would form a third party and thus weaken the Republicans just as I believe the Greens and Ralph Nader weakened the Dems enough in 2000 to make possible a GOP victory. I don't think a progressive third party now would be a good idea, at least on the national level. So I am for now, sticking with the Dems and trying to elect more progressive Dems and trying to convince those in power to get rid of the filibuster or at least figure out how to get around it.
Peace,
Dave Posmontier
*************************************************************************
I read your response to the article about disappointment and anger that Chis Hedges expressed at Obama's failure to act on promises made prior to his election. I agree with you that Chris made his anger quite clear. He may have gone too far. But I must admit that I share some of that anger. I cannot say that I share the same disappointment. When a friend mentioned in conversation that "of course, you voted for Barak Obama", I replied, "No, I didn't." The friend quickly shot, "Are you a racist?" I replied, "of course not, I voted for Cynthia McKinney. Are you a sexist?"
Even though I didn't vote for Barak Obama, I still hope that he gains spiritual insight. It is quite apparent that Obama is looking at our nation's bottom line. And our nation's bottom line is that of maintaining a dominating power. When I was a teenager, I assumed that the United States had enough power already to be secure. It was my hope then that this powerful nation would turn it's effort to help creating a more compassionate world. I don't know; I must have fallen asleep at some point. When I woke up, I saw my country trying to gain even more power. Even our "foreign aid" was tagged with Ameican national interest.
You cannot imagine how encouraged I was when I heard of your "Strategy of Generosity" when I heard you speak at Fort Benning a couple years ago. I thought, "How could any sane person resist this idea?" I am now beginning to see how those inpower can resist it. It is not in their immediate interest to accept the thought of being generous or compassionate in any way. I wish there were a word that described sadness/anger. If there were, it would be that word that, if not resolved would lead to despair.
Just last night I listened to Angela Davis at Bowdoin College. She tried to explain how the feminist movement led to what social conciousness we have today. I remember Angela from her anger days in the late sixties and early seventies. Last night she appeared more contemplative. As she tried to make connections between the many injustices, her thoughts almost seemed fragmented. In discussing her presentation with others, my assessment was confirmed. I concluded that Angela was tempering her anger with wisdom. She is now seriously seeking solutions. I can only wonder, "Is anger one of the catalysts that creates compassionate wisdom?"
I do get Tikkun Magazine and am impressed with the wide range of views by its many contributors. I have yet to find one writer that I fully agree with or one that I fully disagree with. Through such a conflict of ideas I hope to gain a little wisdom.
Pete Sirois
**********************************************************************************
Dear Rabbi Lerner,
Thanks for your insights regarding Obama. What I think is interesting (and amusing) is how similar, in many ways, you and the President seem to be. I'm happy about that -- I haven't lost my sense of faith in his judgment (which is very spiritual from my point of view). Unlike many, I don't expect perfection! After all, he's a relatively young man (I'm 92). And he seems to have an inner fortitude which is gradually playing itself out.
Ed Paul
***********************************************************
"Dear Michael,
Tsk, tsk.
[from] Prof. Bertell Ollman,
Dept. of Politics, NYU, and
President of the Chris Hedges for New Chief Fighting Rabbi Club of America".
***************************************************************************************
Dear Rabbi
thank you, both for the original commentary
and your wise and large-hearted response
fr john kavanaugh sj
prof of philosophy (medical ethics)
saint louis university
*******************************************************************************
The problem with people like Chris Hedges and Nader is that they get so carried away with their own rhetoric that they turn people off,even when some of their reasoning is legitamate.
That's why we Elect the Obama's and Clintons with all their
faults and stay away from the Naders.
Maryann Pike
****************************************************************************************
Rabbi Lerner,
I am so glad to get this message from you. After reading the Hedges piece, I was inclined to stop reading Tikkun. It was so vituperative, it reminded me of the Fox rightwingers, people who blast out bombast because they have no solid facts or reasoning. Not what I'd expected from you and Tikkun.
For all the shortfalls in his delivery, President Obama is still exercising extraordinary intelligence and a will to build bridges. Chris Hedges irate indignation towards him smacks of adolescent naivete. He would have had the same reaction to Nelson Mandela, another idealist who had to employ tough pragmatism to achieve as much as he could in the face of massive opposition. In that case, would you have broadcast his views?
Yours,
Elaine Durbach
*******************************************************************************
Rabbi Lerner,
I read Chris Hedge's article and found it to be a spot-on critique of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party which it represents. I agree with your past remarks that the Greens are not a reliable voice of progressives (you find them religiophobic; I just find them flaky), but the Democratic Party has lost (actually, thrown away) any bona fides it ever claimed as a progressive party. It may have briefly been progressive (sometime between the Dixiecrats and the Blue Dogs), but critiques by people like Hedges are right on the money because many liberals are disgusted with the Democrats and their betrayal of progressive values. It doesn't represent us at all, if it ever did.
I have extracted the portion of your long email below which pertains to this discussion. Why is it that MoveOn.org, for example, is raising money for a progressive candidate who is opposing Democratic senator Blance Lincoln? Not just MoveOn.org, but other PACs.
I'm a Massachusetts resident and was initially surprised at the election of Senator Scott Brown. The citizens of this state, like the rest of America, may not always vote in their own interests, but they do recognize when they've been screwed. And screwed by inconsistent friends, like our congressman, Barney Frank, who played a part in continuing the Bush administration's disbursement of bailout money to insurance companies and investment banks. Democrats no longer make much of an attempt to disguise the fact that they're equally fond of Reaganomics, expanding wars, and selling out the middle class in order to prove they're "reaching across the aisle."
With Democrats like my congressman, we constantly have to watch that they actually vote in interests of ours they claim to support. With Republicans, they at least acknowledge they're opposed to our interests.
You unfairly portray the frustration of progressives as a self-righteous and self-defeating gesture of anger which simply removes them to the fringes of political discourse. But we need a party that reliably represents our own interests, and progressive Democrats should not fear to leave and create one. The anger in critiques like Hedges' is perfectly justified.
In contrast, the futile hope that the Democrats will stop lying and be something they're not is far more self-deceiving.
Regards,
David Ehren
Rabbi Lerner Responds: You are also right, David. I said at the beginning of my response to Hedges that I agree with many of his substantive critiques fo the Obama Administration, and in fact, we've been making those criticisms strong and clear inside Tikkun magazine this past year. I also agree that we need a viable 3rd party, and would myself create a Spiritual Progressive Party or a Love and Generosity Party or a Peace and Social Justice Party if someone with contacts with the wealthy would give us $5 billion to make it real and not just another non-starter (but I'm not holding my breath). The only other way to start such a party is to have a plausible candidate run inside the Democratic Party for the presidency, get over 25% of the vote during the primaries, support the candidate during the election, and then afterwards lead people who had come to support that candidate's approach right out of the party and into the formation of another party. Nader could have done that in 2000, and I believe that someone like Sen. Feinsgold of Wisconsin or Jimmy Carter or Congresswoman Barbara Lee or Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey or Cornel West or Jim Wallis or Rev. Brian McLaren or Congresswoman Marcy Kaptor or Congresswoman Maxine Waters might have the mass appeal to do that--if they would. So the question for me is not whether there needs to be a third party, but how to create that in a way that would actually make it a serious contender for shaping policy rather than a home for the powerless who wanted to remain righteous but powerless. And my strategy is that we need to do the education within the Democratic Party to create that base. Until we create that base there, there is little hope of a third party having any serious impact, and my goal is not to create a new party, but to seriously challenge the Empire (in all its multiple manifestations around the globe, not just the American Empire, but all Empires, because the Chinese or other potential Empires will not be significantly better than our Empire) and how to challenge the ethos of materialism and me-firstism that I call the Globalization of Selfishness and others call global capitalism.
********************************************************************************
You are probably correct in your own analysis of Hedges' article. Unfortunately, President Obama is repeating some very serious mistakes of his predecessor and this is the major reason for disappointment aka anger among so many who had hopes in him.
Backing corporations and their rights is not a wrong thing to do per se, but in times of recession, this support becomes unhealthy. People are feeling job losses and healthcare issues and then, to top it all, they have the stress of having some of their children involved in a war. This is an unhealthy situation for any nation and Obama inherited this from George Bush.
Obama is trying hard to be a centrist, middle-of-the-road president. This is a valid option. But the timing is wrong. He will need to show some strength on several issues if he wants a solution. Right now, Obama looks extremely weak and weak men often get kicked in the face. Too many have a tendency to kick when someone is down. Hedges is doing just that.
I do hope President Obama can stop wafting in the wind to please every Tom, Dick and Harry.
Best wishes and thank you for sharing your opinion.
Tamzin Jans
*********************************************************************
The general media view of President Obama is superficial for many reasons, but
one should be especially obvious to Jews. Having been knocked down, spit upon
and called a "dirty Jew" a few times in my youth (in suburban Boston) -- and
learning the subtle forms of anti-semitism that pervaded many social and
economic institutions in the 1930s and 40s when I was growing up -- it's clear
to me that Barack Obama's responses to the world have probably been shaped by
strategies to deal with racial attitudes carefully masked until the knives come
out.
My strategy was to avoid direct confrontations. I then had one experience that
illustrates something that doubtless could apply to the President: in my case,
it was in a Junior High School math class, sitting next to a tall, heavy, tough
Italian fellow named Nick Babo. Nick and I hadn't said much to each other till
the day he told me in frustration that he "didn't get it" and was scared of
flunking the course. I told him I'd explain the math after the class; I did and
helped him a couple of times so he had no problems. With a "protector" like
Nick (we were seen talking to each other for obvious reasons), I ceased being a
target of physical attacks. I didn't help Nick intentionally for that reason,
but it was rather instructive.
It's hard to believe that our first Black President has NOT had similar
experiences and has learned techniques to get around issues without open attack
on his enemies. On the health care bill, I think he's using a technique that
was well developed in the Fourth French Republic where the National Assembly was
so divided by ideological parties that it was often impossible to get anything
done. Successful leaders learned a technique called, in French "la levee de
l'hypotheque" (removing the question). That is, everyone says a leader should
compromise in a way that is contrary to the preferences of the leader himself
and his supporters Instead of ignoring these requests/suggestions, the leader
offers the opposition something below what the extremists in the opposition are
demanding; the opposition therefore predictably says "no" and tries every dirty
trick in the book to defeat the government leader. Having been rebuffed in an
offer of compromise, the leader than goes ahead with a strongly partisan policy
emphasizing that he offered the opposition aeal that they turned it down. The
"levee de l'hypotheque REMOVES the hypothesis or suggestion that "If the leader
had ONLY done X, Y, or z".... I see signs that Pres.Obama is going on the
attack.
The real issue concerns statistics comparing U.S.health care system with those
of other industrialized countries. Consider this citation with the key figures
that should be openly disseminated:
" The debate on health care reform needs to focus on four numbers reported in
OECD in Figures 2006 (a pamphlet published by the Organization of European
Development and Cooperation with data comparing its 30 industrialized member
states):
a) U.S. health care costs per capita ($45,500) are 40% greater than the average
annual costs of the 30 industrialized nations in the OECD ($34,100).
b) Life expectancy in the U.S. (77.8 years) is 1.1 years less than the average
for the OECD's 30 members (78.9 years).
c) Infant mortality in the U.S. (6.9 per 100,000 live births) is one-third
greater than the OECD average (5.2 per 100,000).
d) Obesity, measured as the percentage of adults with a body-mass index over 30
kg/m3, is observed in 34.3% of Americans -- which is more than twice the
frequency of obesity throughout the OECD (15.4%).
Despite paying almost twice the cost of health care in other contemporary
industrialized nations, Americans have lower life expectancy, higher infant
mortality, and higher obesity than comparable populations. The current debate
about how to pay this bill is beside the point: the issue facing the U.S. is how
to lower costs and improve outcomes -- and paradoxically, the best way to
achieve this objective would be to combine insurance for all Americans and
enforcement of current legislation on environmental pollution. To lower cost,
we need to lower rates of disease. And virtually no one in the debate seems to
realize that exposures to industrial pollution with several toxic chemicals
contribute to many diseases and would be -- to a degree -- absurdly easy to
reduce. One step that's needed is to stop treating our public water supplies
with two silicofluoride compounds that have never been studied for safety (even
after this was recommended by the National Toxicology Program). These
chemicals increase the absorption of lead and manganese as well as directly
damage normal brain chemisty. Since they aren't used in other countries and
significantly increase the frequency of seven different diseases, stopping their
use should be combined with screening and treating children for high body
burdens of toxins."
Source: Roger D Masters, "COST AND EFFECTIVENESS IN AMERICAN HEALTH CARE:
PAYING FOR A NEW MERCEDES AND GETTING A CLUNKER," International Journal of
Health Sciences, vol.II(July-Sept 2009), 221-226.
Roger D. Masters Dartmouth College
*******************************************************************************
Rabbi Lerner, thank you! I have read all of Hedges work and appreciate it, but I agree that he hasn't thought a lot about how HELPFUL his work is to the cause of building a better world, which I know is your focus. I always appreciate your thoughtfulness and insight.
I think what you miss, though, in your position of relative power compared to us "little people," having had conversations with Obama yourself, is that there's no apparent venue for most people in this country to "hold Obama accountable." Or frankly, any of our elected office holders. There's no room for input into the system--that's why even many people with a great deal of passion and even significant past political involvement are just sitting back and watching everything play out. There's no progressive movement, yours included, that's even gaining a foothold. It may still be an okay thing to do, but I think most people need results. Otherwise they see it, pretty legitimately, as a waste of their time. Conversation circles are fine, but I don't have time for them.
Respectfully,
Nancy Brown
Rabbi Lerner responds: I believe this is a very significant criticism of the Obama presidency. When he spoke to millions of people saying "You are the ones we've been waiting for" and "Yes WE can" he was giving the message that he would be responsive to his own constituency. But then he gave us no method to stay in touch with each other. His operatives have the lists of five million or more people who worked for him or donated to him, yet we have no way of reaching those people with our critiques. Instead, the communication is one way: they send us messages telling us to support Obama's latest plans, but we get no way to say, for example, don't base health care reform on enriching the pharmaceuticals and health insurance companies, or don't base an enviornmental plan on "cap-and-trade" or don't escalate tropps in Afghanistan, or don't back nuclear power plants and offshore drilling in the US, or don't back the mistaken approach of No Child Left Behind, or don't capitulate to Netanyahu's refusal to freeze settlement expansions in the West Bank. Yes, we can send that message to his website, but no, we can't send that to the other five million people and make our case. So this is a real disempowerment and deserves strong critique--because when we recognize that we need to build a movement to push Obama to Be the Obama we voted for, the people who were involved in building the Obama movement have no way of getting access to the others who were part of that movement.
*******************************************************************************
Thank you for your compassionate and wise statement. Like you, I disagree with some of President Obama's key decisions, especially the escalation in Afghanistan, and I am disappointed that he has not been more decisive on climate change or Middle East peace. But, like you, I do not think it helps to reduce him to caricature. There is too much anger and too little nuance in this country at the moment, and we progressives should contribute more than that.
David Keppel
*******************************************************************
It is a president's executive orders, especially any deadly orders given as Commander-in-Chief, that deserve our attention. It is even more painfully appropriate to be interested in how the imperialist media masks and clothes a president's intentions, how these intentions are made to misrepresent all of us to the rest of the people on Earth, and how domestic issues are artificially heated up into seemingly irresolvable public confrontations in order to confound, distract and relegate war to secondary consideration.
The system has thrown up a likable, well spoken, nonwhite president of the American capitalist empire successfully dampening criticism from the hundreds of millions abroad and millions at home who are aware of U.S. imperialist programs.
As uncomfortable as it is, especially for Black Americans, to condemn homicide ordered by a Black President without seeming to be going against the aspirations of majority Mankind long dominated by less than fair administrators, managers, and CEO overloads largely of white Anglo-Saxon descent, a way must be found to confront and block the spread of legalized mass murder.
Progressives and Blacks were far less deceived into remaining mum and uncritical when the Imperial token was two back to back Black Secretaries of State , fourth in line for emergency presidential power: former Chief of Staff Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice who had also had held the power wielding office of National Security Advisor.
Beginning in 2007, commercial media, with a enormous assist from the entire progressive community, eventually convinced most Americans and a billion souls overseas, that having a half-Black American president could brake U.S. imperialism and unrestrained and unethical corporatism. One disastrous year later, pro-Obama progressives are still assisting the empire's establishment to play out a life-costing foolishness for their limited constituency of Liberal capitalists that unfortunately make up most of what is called the Left in America. In excusing and backing Liberal imperialists, they inadvertently override war worries, and are unintentionally misleading trusting audiences into focusing in greater detail and fear on right wing activity thrown up by capitalist establishment itself and featured in its conglomerate media.
Tea-baggers are not commanding the U.S. military to bring the death and destruction that is provoking anti-American outrage, enlistment of ever more extremists to fight U.S. occupations and polarizing the world again into capitalist and socialist camps. No, a Liberal imperialist president is in command. Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn warned us beforehand not to expect much from Obama. Few progressives listened to what turned out to be vastly understated, and socialists see progressives as countenancing war.
Most progressives are proposing cures for the symptoms, but not the disease of capitalism, and even worse, consort to prevent this mortal disease from being identified by making it appear difficult to diagnose.
Millions of immigrants from the impoverished nations of neocolonialism in Latin America and other continents have no such difficulty. They come from cultures where common sense and kind social education has not been totally compromised by the all engulfing media blessed desperate consumerism and commodification of life pressed upon society in industrialized nations. For these millions of newly arrived, the word "capitalist' has never had any rehabilitation from being an insidious pejorative describing opprobrious antisocial behavior. Once in America, usually suffering as cheap labor and unprotected non-citizens or citizens discriminated against for their nonwhite complexion, they have little difficulty in seeing the way things are regardless of conglomerate media hype.
On the other hand, the greater amount of intellectuals who call themselves progressive are, perhaps almost unnoticed by themselves, progressive capitalists and associate themselves with Liberal capitalists who propose legislation to mitigate the worst abuses of capitalism. They dissimulate by avoiding referring to anyone or anything as capitalist while going along with the use of the pointing out label "communist' for socialist revolutionary governments and their officers.
Progressive capitalists lay the cause of America's wars in and on the Third World, as well as corporate mega-crime to mistakes and bad judgments of [capitalist] public officials in an an otherwise viable capitalist system that is practical to accept and live with, not realizing that they sabotage and splinter organized antiwar effort even while the disgusting profiteers, promoters and defenders of war are arousing some good amount of public anger and willingness to join in opposition to war and capitalism.
Progressives, though they are part of the antiwar movement, tend to be stridently careful to disassociate themselves from those of in the peace movement that see capitalism as the root cause of war throughout modern history.
The floundering insane power elite of the world governing capitalist superpower and its allied NATO nation societies is reassured of its rectitude, uprightness and normalcy by having a loyal educated well behaved dissenting minority serving as an example of it allowing freedom of expression. An unorganized powerless but culturally prestigious grouping of non-trouble making independent thinking progressives acts as a buffer between between those in command and the millions of citizens that might otherwise be motivated to unite in class awareness.
There is an affable and easy going cohabitation and warm social intercourse between a good many progressives and many of their rich and famous Liberal compatriots who co-rule media and the military that is torturing and executing humankind. This pleasant fraternizing is understood as civilized behavior.
Activists like of Howard Zinn, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Eugene Debs, Thorstein Veblen etc., representatives of the common man, were not "progressives.' They would not be or have been at ease palling around with obvious to them war criminals, and they were not, or will ever be, invited to.
Albert Einstein stressed non participation in war, Malcolm, self-reliance on one's own integrity and distance from capitalism, MLKjr, Gandhi, and Howard Zinn, civil disobedience, Eugene Debs, an organized solidarity so strongly achieved that he received a million votes for President while in prison. None of these, nor Noam Chomsky and Rev. Jeremiah Wright were or are progressives, and of course, not capitalists. None see or would have seen Obama as someone apart from the capitalism he professes and extols.
Why is the war weary and capitalist depression suffering public unable to bring its millionsfold weight to meaningfully to bear? (With the last two elections its voice has proved to be of no consequence.)
Imperial capitalist governance aims to preserve an America politic divided into Liberal and Progressive capitalists on one side and and conservative and reactionary capitalists on the other, counterbalancing each other, thus frustrating new legislation while the body counts overseas and the exploitation at home and abroad go on unimpeded. This is the perennial "Divide and Rule' of all empires.
Managed media constantly dramatize personalities in spectacular conflict, purposefully disorienting perception of a mechanically functioning political economy of desperate private capital accumulation and diverting attention from feelings of solidarity with fellow human beings slaughtered right in front of electronically enhanced eyes. Are progressives helping big media make it easy for those who profit from war to continue them by backing the Liberal president who has rehired war hawks and corrupt bankers?
Howard Zinn would often say that we must make it too difficult for those who are subjugating us to continue that subjugation. Are progressive apologists for capitalism standing in the way of public awareness of who and what is making America and the world suffer wars, massive injustice and hunger? Why is such a key but faceless leader over decades as David Rockefeller never even mentioned?
Progressive journalists write against war policies and even lead opposition to specific wars, while hardly addressing the root cause of constant war. Secondly, progressives push domestic issues of injustice as equally important, diluting the effectiveness of the peace movement and distracting public attention away from the more horrific mass homicide with effect of inadvertently assisting what the criminal corporate media goes about opening with its pro-war programing. Those who are not serious about stopping the killing as a first priority above all others, help those who are running the wars to be able to continue them.
It behooves all within the peace movement to distinguish progressives who do not put halting the carnage above other concerns, from progressives who do. Distinguish between those who oppose and would shut down the private capital dictatorship in order to stop the wars once and for all, from those that limit criticism of a capitalist system that requires wars. Distinguish between those who would usher in a national government that would allow communities to develop in freedom from mega corporations and conglomerates, from those who call for modest reform of a national government of masters at arranging personal fortunes to trickle down to the confined majorities at home and abroad.
In our present tragic situation-comedy, these bloody and inhumane resource wars will end when the business community overreaches itself as it did vis-à-vis the burgeoning Japanese economy during the Vietnam war and not for any antiwar demonstrations. But fighting war is an immediate human obligation but should be seen as an initial step toward ending all wars and the capitalist system that requires them.
Howard Zinn patiently explained progress (the root word of "progressive') as people organizing against injustice, which can only be removed from the bottom up, when enough people become activists for justice and make life too troublesome for the perpetrators of injustice. We can choose between saving lives in six (and counting) Muslim countries on our way to ending capitalist imperialism, and accepting white Anglo-Saxon led world military dominance as presently fronted up by its first black Commander-in-Chief. In all due respect to progressive colleagues in alternate media journalism, that choice is also between progressive capitalism and peaceful nonviolent opposition to the wars of capitalism and its wars, and civil disobedience as it becomes necessary.
Confirmed non-capitalists and uncompromising anti-imperialists seem destined to expend greater time and effort arguing with their progressive peers who by and large wish or feel the need to work from within the pseudo democratic framework of a capitalist political economy that marginalizes them as a token, non-interfering, opposition.
Instead of accepting their marginalization as an exceptional avant guard learned group singularly known for a preponderance of university professors from the arts and sciences criticizing the status quo from the wings, progressives could be taking a leadership role commensurate to their academic background as educators.
If progressives should come to merge with a smaller group of American scholars and historians who as socialist revolutionaries study, among other alternatives to capitalism, the successes of a Cuban society that the elected presidents or more than a half dozen, going on to a dozen, Latin American presidents look to as a role model for uplifting their own nations from misery under imperialism, a real Left with national influence could arise in an America on the skids.
Such a strong Left would, as Noam Chomsky does, recognize the real widespread suffering that is the fertile ground in which an even more frightening proto-fascism is being planted, and provide an alternative understanding of events for the hard put upon people out there across the nation.
A united Left might act to diminish the power of a national media than keeps the general population in dangerous ignorance.
Post Script:
Let's inject some specifics into the general confusion about political designation:
What kind of a Progressive? Anti-capitalist and anti empire progressive or progressive capitalist?
What kind of Liberal? Pro social reform Liberal or banks and empire supporting Liberal?
What kind of Conservative? Old fashioned agrarian Conservative or corporate Conservative.
Root words like common, social, progress, liberate, conserve, react are used by everyone to express everyday reality. Later suffix is added to concoct an abstract concept that seems invented in order to confuse. Let's sort it out. Break down meaningless and misleading generalities into components and distinctions.
Jay Janson
******************************************************************
Dear Rabbi Lerner,
I hope you are feeling well. Thank you for this in depth, lengthy critique of Chris Hedges article on President Obama. I, too, have been disappointed by some of his actions, but I will have to work with him these next three years in changing his approach to a more progressive one. I voted for President Obama, am not satisfied by his results, but also am not deluded into thinking that a Republican administration would have served the American people better. To paraphrase a part of your article, no fish will be thrown back in, to survive, to swim another day, with the Republicans.
President Obama was met with a country in far worse shape than he had anticipated, as Joe Biden has said, and moving forward, without recriminations has proven to be not as transparent as he had promised, and we citizens had hoped. He was met with fierce opposition from a corrupted congress, cemented to lobbyist money. He needed, as you stated in your article, a movement supporting him, similar to the movement that elected him. We citizens voted, then deserted our cause, allowing false rhetoric, innuendo and slurs to dominate the media. We need to join together, like the Tea partiers, but unlike the tea partiers, with valid, honest dissension.
I appreciate your article and its length.
Cathy C. Chapman
***********************************************************************
Dear Rabbi Lerner,
I read your response to Chris Hedge's article in Tikkun Magazine. Both of you are men whose views I have appreciated over the years. I am writing to you because I am not sure you understand the full extent of Israeli policy toward Arabs within Israel proper. For example, in 2003 the Knesset passed the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, which prohibits any Israeli who is married to a Palestinian from the Occupied Territories from living with their spouse within Israel itself. This law formalized a practice that had been going on for many years. It institutionalized racism and is contrary to international humanitarian law. It creates a situation where thousands of Palestinians must choose between having their spouses live with them in violation of law and in constant danger of being expelled or joining over a million Palestinians who have already been forced to leave over the past 60+ years. In January 2006 Israeli police raided six homes in Jaljulya and arrested thirty-six women. Some of the women were pregnant; most had lived with their husbands for years; many had children. Eventually, eight were deported.
With regard to the Israeli political system the government controls the political platforms upon which a candidate can run for office. Anyone can be disqualified from seeking an elected position if he or she advocates that Israel become a non-sectarian state rather than a Jewish state (in truth Israel is not a Jewish state; Israel is a Zionist state). Well-known University of Tel Aviv historian, Schlomo Sand puts it like this: “In liberal Israeli democracy 80 percent of the population knows that the state does not belong to 100 percent.
Even the U.S. State Department has said: “[There is] institutionalized legal and societal discrimination against Israel's [Arab] Christian, Muslim and Druze citizens. The government does not provide Israeli Arabs with the same quality of education, housing, employment and social services as Jews."
During Operation Cast Lead Israel took steps to protect its Jewish citizens in the line of rocket attacks but did no such thing for Israeli Palestinians whose villages were also in the line of fire. According to Adalah (The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel) there is “institutionalized discrimination in land and housing policies, discrim-ination resulting from the granting of military service benefits, a harsh new criminal procedure law for detainees suspected of security offences, impunity in cases of excessive use of force by the police against Arab citizens. . .a law banning family unification with Palestinians from the Occupied Territories based solely on national origin, unequal state funding of Arab towns and villages and the lack of participation of Arab citizens in the planning process, displacement and dispossession of Arab Bedouin citizens from the unrecognized villages in the Naqab [Negev], discriminatory resources allocated to and limitations on access to education for Arab students, discrimination in state support for Arab cultural institutions, and the lack of recognition for Muslim holy sites in Israel, among others.
In short, life for Palestinians in Israel proper may not be as bad as life was for Black South Africans under apartheid but it is inferior to life for non-Arabs, simply because of their ethnicity or religion. And many Israeli government officials would like to get rid of the Israeli Arabs and send them to the Occupied territories where life is as bad or worse.
Sincerely, Rich Forer
Rabbi Lerner responds: I am outraged at Israeli behavior toward Palestinians on both sides of the Green line. I oppose the discrimination faced by Arabs inside Israel and the oppression in the West Bank. But using the word "apartheid" plays into the hands of the right-wingers who can show why it is significantly different than what happened in South Africa. In my view, it is reasonable to say that in some important respects what Israel is doing is WORSE than apartheid, but it is not apartheid. So I object to the use of that word, just as I would object to saying that Stalin was a Nazi--you see he was a terrible terrible terrible and destructive and murderous human being and the party he created destroyed the hope of a communist world, but much as we hate Nazism, it is not the same as Stalinism. And ditto, much as we hated apartheid, right wing Zionism is a different phenomenon which must be challenged in its own terms.
**************************************************************
Rabbi,
A legitimate case can be made that Obama is a criminal just like his predecessor. Unnumbered innocent men, women and children have been needlessly slaughtered, families destroyed, our Constitution torn to shreds... all this by a professor who taught Constitutional Law to future lawyers. And you don't think anyone has a right to be angry? You want to have compassion for Obama... how about a little compassion for the innocent who suffer because of the hubris, stupidity, and unconscionable behavior of those who have the power to defend the rule of law and basic human decency but refuse. OK, we are all a bit flawed. But we must not let fools remain in power when they run amok with that power at everyone's expense. Ok, don't be angry... be responsible... protect the innocent from the immaturity of those who are not qualified to lead. www.gpln.com/citizen.htm
Mark
*********************************************************************
You laid out the ideas very clearly and thoroughly and very fairly.
The righteous anger is not surprising, given the elation when Obama was elected, but I think it represents and leads to distortions in understanding which then develop exponentially. Anger is only superficially satisfying in the end.
I am grateful that you call our attention to the causes of suffering people of all ethnicities. Taking sides is tempting and too easy. I feel that we each have to work on ourselves to cultivate empathy and compassion and then act with discernment from that place. I think the individual work is indispensable, as is the recognition that the people we try to deal with are individuals themselves. Working with that recognition is very difficult and seems to get in the way.
I am grateful to Tikkun for working so persistently and with such honesty for a better world.
Whether it comes to pass or not, the effort itself is a triumph. Of course, I do hope that it will result in many concrete achievements.
Valerie Baseley
