Ok, here's the e-mail I sent out the other day in response to Transcritique's first post, which has since garnered a couple responses. I want to reply to the replies when I get a chance. In the meantime, I wanted to ask the other folks posting here if they ever read any of the big liberal/lefty blogs (DailyKos, Atrios, Talking Points Memo, TAPPED...there's lots and lots of others)? I've been reading these out regularly for a couple years now and they're probably the single biggest influence on my own politics and I think the most exciting new avenue for political involvement and activism out there. I'll probably get into why I think this more later, but for now I'd recommend you all check out what's already being done with political blogging. Anyways, here's that e-mail:
Ah, I actually (drunkenly) read that AIPAC speech the
other night after getting home and was going to e-mail
you my take on it when sobered up but then forgot.
Not much going on at work today so here goes...
My take on it is that, as much as I'd like to hear a
full-throated denunciation of the Isreali bombing of
Lebanon last summer, no politician who wants to have a
shot at winning any elected office in this country is
going to do so in front of AIPAC. Just speaking
technically, Hezbollah did make the first move in that
whole terrible mess (kidnapping the Isreali soldiers)
and, once Isreal then attacked them, shot off lots of
Iranian supplied unguided rockets that inevitably hit
some civilian areas. Those are both illegal acts, the
second is definitely a war crime, and the fact that
Isreal caused far more damage and killed far more
people in Lebanon, that their actions were most
definitely war crimes as well, doesn't change that. I
don't see that being disgusted with the Isreali
response means that I've got to support Hezbollah.
Now, if I'm a politician and want to be able to raise
money from prominent American Jews, and don't want
AIPAC shelling out millions of dollars to run ads
accusing me of anti-semitism and probably morphing my
face into Ahmadinajad's, I'll denounce the actions of
Hezbollah and just skip over any objections I've got
to the Isreali response, at least when speaking to
Jewish right-wingers. What I'd be curious to
read/hear is what Obama would have to say when
speaking in front of an Arab or Lebanese American
group.
On the Iran issue, while Obama, like everybody else,
seems compelled to repeat the "all options on the
table" phrase, I think that it's pretty clear that
he's not interested in military action against Iran,
and sees diplomacy as the course to take. Note the
reference to negotiating with the Soviet Union during
the cold war--they had thousands of nuclear weapons
aimed at us, and we were willing to talk to them; Iran
doesn't even have one yet, so why not do diplomacy.
Actually the best response on Iran from any of the
Democratic candidates that I've seen was a while back
from Bill Richardson, who has way more experience in
diplomacy than any other candidate on either side, and
he didn't even bother with the stupid "all options on
the table" crap. I could look up his statement if
you're really curious...
I'm curious if when you say our big choice in 08 will
be among very similar people who have already made the
major choices for us, if you mean the entire field of
candidates dem and rep or not. If so I've got to
strongly disagree with you; even if you're just
talking about the dem field I think that implying that
there is no real choice is wrong. I think that
there's huge differences between the democrat and
republican candidates, on both domestic and foreign
policy. Another republican president, even a
"moderate" one like Guiliani, will end in income
inequality continuing to worsen, poverty increasing,
unions weakened even more, another four to eight years
of doing absolutely nothing about global warming, a
supreme court willing to outlaw abortion, and probably
a continued belligerent, warmongering approach to the
rest of the world. A democratic president may not be
able to fix global warming or income inequality, and
whatever they do will be constrained by the numbers in
congress and how viciously the right wants to fight
whatever they put forward, but I think they'd at least
consider these (and others) to be real problems worth
addressing.
On the dem side, there's differences as well. I'm
actually not sure about Obama, who's a hell of a
speaker, but who's actual policy stuff is really vague
right now. I could see him being a transformative
progressive president, like FDR...or just as easily a
decent but totally middle-of-the-road president like
Bill Clinton. Hillary on the other hand I don't see
as having any real progressive potential; her health
care ideas are the weakest of the big dem candidates
and her foreign policy is the furthest right. She's
the only one still saying it was right to go into
Iraq, and for that alone I'd have a real hard time
supporting her. Edwards is taking a really strong
progressive/populist economic stance, and has some
pretty strong, concrete proposals out on things like
health care. Richardson is pretty good on most
things, too, but is overweight and apparently has a
tendency to sexually harass women, so he's probably
not going anywhere.
Anyways, any one of them though would be a huge
improvement over the current president as well as
anyone the republicans could run this year. Saying
there's no real choice is garbage. There isn't the
choice of "the guy who believes all the same things as
me and could convince enough people to vote for him
and enact all my/his ideas" but there's never going to
be. In 2000 I didn't think the choice between Bush
and Gore was a real choice at all, and look how that's
turned out. A president Gore wouldn't have solved all
our problems and made everything perfect, but he
wouldn't have led the country into one disaster after
another for eight straight years. I think that you or
I or probably any of our friends are secure and
affluent enough that the admittedly often small range
of allowed differences in mainstream politics don't
affect us much or seem like much of a difference. But
if you're someone who relies on the social services
that are getting defunded, or live near a power plant
that doesn't have to worry about pollution regulations
being enforced, is a woman seeing their reproductive
rights limited or has a family member serving in Iraq
(or, on the other hand, are one of the handful of
families who will see their income skyrocket if the
estate tax is abolished), then this stuff does matter.
And I think that if you believe that neither of the
big parties are far enough to your end of the
ideological spectrum, the answer isn't to just become
disengaged and curse the system, it's to get involved
and try to sway things in the direction that you think
it should be going. That's one of the reasons that I
believe that the left in America is in such poor shape
these days: the far-right nut-jobs are for the most
part very involved in Republican party politics;
really the far right folks took over the party from
the old-school Rockefeller Republicans and made it
into the crazed beast that it is today. A lof of
people on the left, on the other hand, gave up on the
democratic party and spend all their time talking
about what a sellout it is and supporting little third
parties that can't do anything but get Republicans
elected.
Alright...I should get back to work. I do have a few
things to do. I've got lots more thoughts on all this
stuff if you're interested, so if you're looking into
any sort of online forum for us to discuss I could
probably participate. Feel free to forward this on to
the other bros if you like this topic as a starting
point.
No comments:
Post a Comment