Chris Hedges: “Ralph Nader Was Right About Barack Obama”
by: Rabbi Michael Lerner on March 2nd, 2010 | 10 Comments »
Chris Hedges’ piece on Truthdig yesterday deserves to be widely read. He writes:
Chris Hedges. Flickr/Cheryl Biren
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….
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….
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.
The rest is here. My recommending the article is not meant to be an endorsement of Chris’s position any more than our circulation of other articles is meant as an endorsement of them. (Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives are nonprofits that are legally bound to refrain from endorsing political candidates or political parties, though we can certainly engage in discussions about them.) We are disposed to putting forward analyses that are rarely heard in the public domain in the US, even when we disagree with those analyses, because we want to support the kind of open discussion of ideas that is largely unavailable in American society.
On the other hand, in the case of Chris Hedges, he says so much that is true and insightful that we don’t want to distance ourselves too far from his courageous stands, which have earned him deep respect on the Left.
In fact, Hedges will be one of the speakers at the Tikkun/NSP conference in Washington, D.C., June 11-14, when we will focus on developing a strategy to challenge the corporate takeover of American society that has been accelerated by the recent Supreme Court decision on allowing corporations unlimited spending in national elections as well as by some of the policies of the Obama Administration (details here). Our conference will have a demonstration at the White House challenging Obama to BE the Obama that Americans Thought We Had Elected and will also refine a campaign for two Amendments to the Constitution that will both overturn the Supreme Court decision and also require corporate social and environmental responsibility (temporarily called the Environmental and Ethical Responsibility Amendments or EERA). Nor can we deny that the disillusionment with Obama is widespread among those who supported him in 2008, and has caused a deep depression and withdrawal of interest in politics among many — a depression that we address in the editorial “Obama and Avatar” in the March/April issue of Tikkun magazine.
However, even those who share this deep despair and strong critique of Obama do not necessarily conclude that the appropriate path is to join the Green Party which has its own limitations. There are those in our community who urge us to form a party of Spiritual Progressives, and there are others who urge us to form a Spiritual Caucus inside the Democratic Party to take it away from corporate control. We might think seriously about either path, and giving up our nonprofit status, if some philanthropist were to give us $5 billion for that purpose. But we won’t hold our breaths till that happens. At the moment, we, like most nonprofits, are holding on by a narrow thread, and that’s one reason why we implore you who benefit from our communications to please either join the Network of Spiritual Progressives (here, and you get a free subscription to Tikkun as part of membership) or at least subscribe to Tikkun to help us weather the storm.
We also invite you to form local demonstrations or conferences that mirror the issues we are discussing at our national conference, or if you cannot do that, then at least come to our national conference and demonstration, or if you cannot do that, contribute to allow us to help in reducing costs for those who cannot afford to attend.
Editor’s Note: Michael Lerner’s later and longer response to this article by Hedges is on our Current Thinking site here, and is followed there by many readers’ responses which were emailed to Michael.
Chris Hedges thinks that Birchers and libertarians articulate (and I quote from his article) “a legitimate rage” against Obama. He must be joking. No anger from ANY conservative or reactionary is “legitimate” on ANY issue, because all conservatives are insensitive fools, by definition.
As far as Obama, I certainly am dissapointed, like many others, that’s for sure (mainly because of the Honduras Coup situation). But if I were American , I would still vote for him at the next election, because he is the lesser evil (with some decent qualities), and you do NOT want to split the Left vote to allow Republicans in. That is a fact of political life here in Canada and the US which it has taken me years to learn.
Finally here is one perspective on Obama ,which I think merits consideration, from one John K. Wilson , a liberal, mainly unknown on the New Left, who was one of the first authors to write a book on Obama . His book and this article have the rare merit and courtesy of partly carrying on a dialogue with the New left (or progressives ,as he puts it):
John K. Wilson is the author of President Barack Obama: A More Perfect Union (Paradigm Publishers, 2009). Crossposted at DailyKos.
» JohnKWilson’s blog
The Year of Obama, and the Year of Us
Submitted by JohnKWilson on Tue, 01/19/2010 – 10:34pm.
After a year in office, Barack Obama has seen his popularity plummet and disillusionment rise. But Barack Obama hasn’t failed the progressive movement; the progressive movement has failed Obama.
Progressives haven’t built a progressive force to counter the massive conservative reaction to Obama. We couldn’t even save Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts. We have allowed the far right to define our political debate, often in insane ways.
It’s easy to blame Obama, and many progressives have lined up to denounce him. But they’ve got the wrong target. Obama isn’t the one standing in the way of progressive reform, he’s the messenger telling the left that they’ve failed to create a movement that exerts any power in American politics.
The truth is that the first year of Obama’s presidency was one of tremendous progressive accomplishments. We forget that because the biggest accomplishment, the $789 billion stimulus package, came so early in his administration.
The stimulus package alone would exceed the accomplishments of many two-term presidents. In the face of a massive recession, one even worse than most people imagined at the time, Obama got a spectacular bill passed in record time with monumental results. Compare the $789 billion stimulus package to what Bill Clinton did in 1993, admittedly in the face of a much less severe recession. Clinton proposed a $19.5 billion economic stimulus package, but only got $4 billion to extend unemployment benefits.
The stimulus helped push the economy out of a recession and substantially cut unemployment from where it would have gone otherwise. It provided a massive investment in public infrastructure. The only mistake Obama made was trying to accurate depict the economic consensus at the time, instead of engaging in alarmism about the dire state caused by the Bush recession. But nothing Obama did could live up to the exaggerated expectations so many people had for him.
Where Obama failed, it wasn’t for lack of trying. On the public option for health care reform, Obama was by far the leading national advocate for it, pushing the idea strongly in the summer of 2009. But even though the public option was always strongly popular in every poll, progressives failed to create a movement to counter the misinformation of the far right.
Progressives have failed on all counts: they have been unable to build any criticism from the left to counter the rising right-wing Tea Party Movement, and they have failed to create any enthusiasm for the success of Obama’s progressive reforms. All they have done is engage in internal sniping, attacking the most progressive president in history for failing to live up to their exaggerated expectations.
Now, some progressives may argue that Obama should have been the leader of the progressive movement, the man who stood up to accomplish everything by personal proclamation what progressives failed to do
But Obama was never that kind of progressive. We should be honest about Obama and his administration: They are who we thought they were. Obama is a pragmatic progressive who is always willing to engage in compromise to accomplish his goals.
Obama’s biggest mistake so far has been to appoint Tim Geithner and Larry Summers as his leaders of treasury and economic advisors, perhaps believing their fake promises that they had seen their mistakes and would embrace reform. If Obama had appointed Sheila Bair and Robert Reich or Joseph Stiglitz, he might have found some real reformers and not be forced to adopt his recent populist approach of taxing big banks. However, at the bottom point of the worst recession since World War II, Obama probably felt that he needed to stabilize financial markets rather than really reforming them. He certainly didn’t have an effective movement on his left pushing for serious reforms.
Arianna Huffington wrote, “it’s become painfully obvious that elected officials are not going to save us.” Really? You thought elected officials in a corrupt system were going to save us, without any need to pressure them?
Perhaps I was naïve, too. The biggest hope I had for Obama was that he could single-handedly build a progressive movement as president that would fill in the yawning chasm we current face as progressives. It turns out that being president is kind of a difficult job, and Obama failed to revive the tattered mess of progressive politics while he was trying to fix the tattered mess of the entire federal government left to him after eight years of Bush Administration mismanagement.
I should have expected progressives to viciously denounce Obama. The left has been sniping at him from the start. I wrote a book about Obama as a pragmatic progressive in 2007 specifically because the left in America so thoroughly misunderstood him and the state of American politics. The left went from hating Obama to seeing him as their political savior and then back to hating him again once their inevitable disappointment with practical politics became real.
Astonishingly, while Obama is being eviscerated by the left for not being progressive enough, Democrats are looking at massive losses in 2010 because political experts say that these limited measures are too left-wing. The problem isn’t really popularity. People hate Republicans even more than the Democrats. The problem is an enthusiasm gap. The right-wing nuts are desperately trying to stop progressive reforms by throwing Democrats out of office. And progressives are sitting on their asses, helping the far right-wing by pouting about how little they’ve gotten.
The Teabaggers may seem like a bunch of racist, conspiratorial morons pushing inaction in the face of the greatest economic crisis in America in more than a half-century. But compared to progressives, the Teabaggers are brilliant. They actually understand how to influence politics. The progressive movement is responding to the most progressive president in history by denouncing him at every turn, trying to stop his legislative efforts, and using their mighty power of apathy to get rid of his marginal majority in Congress. Absolutely brilliant! Progressives couldn’t accomplish any more for the Republican Party if Karl Rove became editor of Huffington Post.
If you think Obama has failed to push progressive policies with 60 votes in Senate, it’s not going to get any better with 55 votes. It’s going to get much worse. A political defeat for the Democrats isn’t going to cause them to come to their senses, abandon their corporate masters, and fulfill the demands of the people for progressive reform. Electoral defeat is going to make move even more to the right, as Bill Clinton and Democrats did following the Republican Revolution of 1994.
2009 was the year of Obama, where all of politics centered around him. 2010 needs to be the year of us, when we build a progressive movement to defend Obama and give him the power to pursue progressive reforms rather than centrist compromises.
Crossposted at Daily Kos.
» JohnKWilson’s blog
Mr. Wilson: Sorry, but I agree with Chris Hedges. That means I disagree with you more emphatically than I can even begin to tell you.
I was thinking about posting his article last night on Democratic Underground, my favorite political forum, when I discovered that it had already been posted in the Editorials section. The topic had about four replies when it was LOCKED by a moderator who defended his action by claiming it did not constitute “constructive criticism” of the Democratic Party.
Well, I am through with “constructive criticism” of the Democratic Party and through with the Democratic Party, period. I am 64 years old and until now I have been a lifelong Democrat. But I’ve been sold out and betrayed for the last time, and I intend to re-register as a Green at the very first opportunity.
Obama KNEW exactly what he was doing when he appointed Geithner and Summers to the Treasury Department. He knew what they are all about and what constituency they represent–and it’s NOT the middle and working classes. Likewise when he appointed Rahm Emmanuel as his chief of staff, which was practically the first thing he did after winning the election. When that happened I knew that the progressive base had been betrayed, and that we’d been baited and switched–AGAIN! Obama’s actions and the actions of his administration on every possible issue have since confirmed that over and over again.
You come across as just one more Obama apologist blaming the victims when you chide progressives for failing to organize an effective political opposition to the teabaggers and the extreme right. One of the main reasons we haven’t done that is because the present Democratic Party won’t allow it. You don’t need to look any further than their abominable treatment of Howard Dean after the election to understand that. I agree with you that such organization is badly needed, but I’ve been forced to conclude that it cannot and will not happen within the present DLC-dominated Democratic Party.
It’s no good threatening me with “the greater of two evils” (i.e. a Republican majority at the midterms) either. Been there, done that more times than I want to count, and November 2008 was the very last time. If I NEVER hear the word “bipartisanship” again in my life, it won’t be too soon. Along with Chris Hedges I’m willing to spend a certain number of years in the wilderness being marginalized and ridiculed, if at the end of it I see the resurrection of the Democratic Party of FDR, even if it’s called by a different name–the Green-Progressive Party, maybe?
Dear Linda Sang: You addressed your reply to Mr Wilson above, who did NOT post his article. I did, Marco, above. So he has not read your reply here probably. Maybe you can write him directly.
One last thing, you are making a big mistake by not voting Democratic again. If many more people like you did that, you may allow Republicans to win, by splitting the vote. Is this what you want?! You want Sarah Palin as President in a close race!? Think about it hard. It would be partly your fault. And as far as your “noble” attitude of spending years in the wilderness, you will spend the rest of your life there, since nothing is going to change in the next 20 years, or even in the next 50, in my opinion ,to let a Nader-type become President. Obama is as good as it can get, despite his gross limitations thus far.
Marco
When I read something I disagree with, I usually find somebody who articulates my position better than I could. Thank you, Linda. I’m surprised there weren’t a boatload of comments to this article. After reading Rabbi Lerner’s critique, I will refrain from responding with anger to you, Marcos. Linda and I are NOT responsible for any one who votes for Sarah Palin. We are responsible for whom WE vote for. When you choose the lesser of evils, you still choose evil. If Obama is “as good as it can get,” then the American dream is truly dead.
Marco, you may be right: Americans,for whatever reason have resigned themselves to choosing A or B, Coke or Pepsi, Ford or Chevy. How pathetic that the vested interests have hijacked our nation and are in the process of cannibalizing it leaving the middle and working classes bereft. Obama walked in office with progressive support and proceeded to betray us to his corporate handlers – especially with health care, fueling the wars, pushing Every Child Left Behind, keeping the Patriot Act intact, not closing Guantanamo, FISA, etc. etc.,
If he had wanted to he could have pushed for single payer and explained it to our nation of television hypnotized- dullards who fear “guvmint healthcare” in a way that they would have ALL been behind him. Hell, right up the road from the White House we have our own version of Doctors without Borders who treat poor people in THIS, the richest country in the world! (RAM see Random Area Medical). Progressives generally don’t have the cash to run infomercials — even if they could buy a place on the corporado controlled networks!
I am not going to vote for the corrupt Democrats again. With the exception of Kucinich, Feingold and a very few others they are all on the take. And if the repugnant Repubs win again I take no responsibility because I am not going to be forced to vote for the lesser evil.
Chris Hedges is a prophet, bright, compassionate and fearless. Painful to read because the truth hurts, but necessary to maintain mental stability versus cognitive dissonance. The latter is what keeps the Obama apologists going: it’s simply too much to admit that he has yet to fulfill any promises much less offer and substantial hope.
What we need is someone like Martin Luther King, Jr. to articulate a spiritually progressive vision of where we need to go and to lead a social justice movement to challenge and change society. If you know someone who is good and brave and strong and intelligent and charismatic enough to do this, please urge them to come forward. Now is the time! They don’t need to be an American either, because this is a global problem.
Many, unfortunately including Rabbi Lerner, have placed too much faith in Barack Obama rather than themselves. I’m not even talking about pressure to make the Democrats do the right thing. They can only be pressured to open the door to the right discussions. It’s up to the rest of us to have those discussions and push them through to fruition. The reason we don’t have single-payer is not because the Democrats didn’t live up to promises they never made in the first place, but because we haven’t fought for it.
We can’t wait for Godot.
Chris Hedges places too much confidence in Nader, and especially Cynthia McKinney, who has linked herself with Holocaust deniers and fascists.
We as extended family, have been for many years supporters of Dr. Ralph Nader, the fact that even under the Constitution, to form a Third Party is questionable, this factual rejection, makes very difficult for a clear mind such as Dr. Nader ( Dr. of Jurisprudence, but not only that Dr. For the People that we are never considered in the main stream of Washington DC or even at State Political scope) – If the majority of the citizens do not joint together, understand the real issues at risk, for us Seniors, our Son and Daughters, the Grand Sons future; we fail our duties as Citizens. When these obligations fail us all, we are at fault. What reasons have to complain among ourselves ? In German we express very well as ” Sturm und Drang ” or Storm and Stress, a period of decades of bad political policies; in the end are economic cost concerns, coming out of each other bill folds, diminishing returns for us, as Citizens because we never joint to express what we must support.
Aside from the above needing a real edit (ugh, not very readable), this debate has been going on for a while.
Let us start by realizing we’re on the same side, and keep the horizon in mind.
Perhaps a progressive summit is needed at this point, but we must pledge not to devolve into personal attacks and huffy storming-out tactics.
I think it may be time to let a two-pronged approach occur. Historically, third parties have been good at holding feet to the fire, and pushing mainstream parties in directions they were afraid to go.
Hedges’ appeal to emotion is flat-out wrong, and I think he’s talking about an imagined Green Party, not the real one. Revive socialism? Not gonna happen. Sorry. Aren’t we creative enough to come up with something new?
Move the Democratic Party left? Unsuccessful so far.
What next? Thinking caps, everyone.
In Australia I’ve voted Green in every election since I was 18, knowing that I didn’t want to vote for neither pepsi nor coke. I have also spent 20 years protesting and fighting for a more ‘just’ world. Now in middle age I’ve finally found true ‘democracy’ (for want of a better word) in my own neighbourhood, with myself taking action in creating the life I want to live with my family. My friends and I grow our own vegies in our own gardens and swap the surplus, and share common land in which to grow more, and hold gatherings there and sit/dance/huddle around a fire telling stories and singing songs. We lend a listening ear to life’s troubles, we help to keep each other ‘authentic’ and real as much as possible. In short, we have community. The children have mentors, the men have companionship, the women get support. We don’t need to call this anything except perhaps, Life!
I feel now that politics can go and do what it likes because it doesn’t have a lot of bearing on our community (even though we still vote). Strength lies in community and that’s where the strength of the ‘Left’ will be based. However, for communities like these to grow and flourish it needs political nurturing and only the Greens offer this (so far). Fears of being put in the political wilderness are unfounded when you can take refuge for a few decades in your own green community where the storm will pass over and with luck, collapse under the weight of it’s greed. Give me clean food, clean water, clean air, and a simple shelter – luxuries in a world gone mad. That’s all I wish for myself and my family and that’s all I claim the right to need. Everything else is not necessary.
To take action Google: ‘Transition Towns’ and ‘Permaculture’.