Of
Boycotts And Elections
By Charles Sullivan
19 November, 2007
Countercurrents.org
One
hopes that at some point the American people will come to the realization
that most elected officials these days do not serve the public interest,
but their own economic self interests and those of their financial backers.
The few who would serve the public interest are filtered out by the
insurmountable fortress of capital that is the bulwark of electoral
politics, especially at the federal level. Genuine public servants have
roughly the same chance of winning a seat in Congress or the Whitehouse,
as one has of winning the lottery.
For the totally uninitiated,
or those on narcotics: the odds are astronomical.
It requires unfathomable
sums of money to even play the game, and that, in and of itself, precludes
the majority of us from meaningful participation. It filters ordinary
people possessed of ordinary means from serious contention. Ordinary
people overwhelmingly comprise the national demographic, and yet they
are wholly without representation in government at virtually every level.
Without substantial financial backing, you can play but you cannot win.
You are relegated to the outer fringes of the system, a distant planet
circling a distant sun in a distant orb.
A game in which only the
wealthy can afford to play assures that only the wealthy will win. The
result is that we have a system of electing politicians to serve a very
tiny segment of the population—less than one percent, while simultaneously
working against the great majority and, accordingly, the public welfare.
In the rarified lexicon of
corporate run politics—profits matter, people don’t; no
matter the self righteous proclamations to the contrary. The wonder
is that so many people continue to invest so much of their precious
time and energy in a system that has so obviously and completely abandoned
them.
Perhaps abandon is not the
appropriate word. Betray might be a better choice. Electoral politics
in the US is the realm of high rollers and robber barons, not of ordinary
people from working class backgrounds struggling for a piece of the
much ballyhooed ‘American Dream.’ That system has utterly
betrayed them, leaving them out in the cold to fend for themselves as
best they can, against the very crooks and thieves who are mortgaging
their future to the Corporate States of America.
The people’s plight
is akin to playing the lottery and hitting the jackpot against enormous
odds. It is a game of desperation in which defeat and loss are the predictable
outcomes for all but a few. The money system wins, we the people lose;
and we look like fools and chumps for having played the game against
such tremendous odds. But, as Thoreau said so well, “It is a characteristic
of wisdom not to do desperate things.” Collectively, we have yet
to show much wisdom. We just keep doing what we have always done and
keep getting the same sorry results, and wonder why things never improve.
When the choice is between
Hillary Clinton, Rudi Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, John Edwards
and Barach Obama, there is no meaningful choice. The difference between
these candidates is primarily a matter of semantics. In each case you
are getting essentially the same person representing the same economic
self interests, the same policies. All of them are pro war. Contenders
are in contention because they are the recipients of serious corporate
money, not because they are champions of the people or servants of the
public welfare.
Ron Paul is not the answer
either, as so many so desperately want to believe. Like his neoconservative
brethren, Dr. Paul seeks to shrink the public domain and privatize everything—including
all public lands. Economic self interest is the centerpiece of Paul’s
political ideology and that not only does not serve the public interest,
it undermines it. Dr. Paul is as much a product of Milton Friedman’s
economics as any neocon and equally dangerous.
We have an electoral system
that always chooses between two evils, what Ralph Nader calls, “The
evil of two lessers.” But choosing the lesser evils assures that
evil rules and, as we have seen, the evil is deepening with each successive
election.
To my mind, Dennis Kucinich
is better suited to represent the people than any of the other candidates
in the field. However, the democratic leadership will never permit Kucinich
to win the party nomination because he would undermine their authority
and threaten the established orthodoxy that controls the system.
Genuinely progressive candidates
are cynically used by the party leadership to create the appearance
that the party still has an effective liberal wing when, in fact, it
does not. The progressive wing of the party exists but it has been marginalized
through lack of media exposure, lack of financial backing, and through
the lack of support of the party leadership.
Candidates with the qualifications
of Dennis Kucinich only serve to retain the party loyalty of progressives.
It keeps progressives playing the game while also preventing them from
doing anything meaningful or revolutionary.
We saw what happened to Howard
Dean a few years ago; and Dean was a very moderate liberal, at best
only slightly left of center. Progressives will not be allowed to compete.
More people already choose
not to participate in electoral politics than those who vote. It is
not difficult to understand why: because they see elections as the sham
they are, riddled with corruption and illegitimate to the core. The
people intuitively know when they have been disenfranchised. They know
that elections are about profiteering, not about public service or the
collective good.
It must also be noted that
the previous two presidential elections were stolen by George Bush and
his cohorts. There are serious concerns about the efficacy of paperless
electronic voting machines, like those manufactured by Diebold with
its close ties to the Republican Party and neo-conservatism. A system
in which foxes are the guardians of the hen house is not in the people’s
interest; nor is it in the interest of justice.
As US citizens, we should
have enough integrity that we do not allow the public wealth to be stolen
with our blessings. We should denounce the process that unabashedly
transfers the public domain into the private sector as the outright
theft that it is. We should not pretend that it is the pubic interest
or that it is a democratic process because we voted for it. It is self-interested
greed and nothing more.
I could not blame any sane
person for not voting, for non-participation in a process that is so
obviously fixed. We need to devise better and more imaginative strategies
through which to express our dissatisfaction, our outrage with the process.
A good beginning might be to wash our hands of that system entirely.
Clearly, the solution is
to get the special interest money out of politics. But how can the people
achieve such an ambitious objective against such tremendous odds? Those
who benefit from the system effectively own it, and they are not going
to voluntarily dismantle it. It is too lucrative for them to let it
go and erect a genuinely democratic system in its place.
Participation in a sham system,
while pretending that it is legitimate, will only prolong the prostitution
and continue the corporate feeding frenzy at the public trough. We must
do something different than what we have always done in the past, if
we are to get a different result.
One method of undermining
the system may be to boycott the 2008 elections by not participating
in them. Since the outcome is already predetermined by the selection
of only pro corporate candidates—war mongers and disaster capitalists
all, there is really nothing to lose. The system is rigged to keep the
war profiteers and corporatists in power, by keeping genuine public
servants out of contention. The appearance of democracy and citizen
participation is just window dressing, more facade than real.
As democracy craving citizens
in an ever more dangerous emerging fascist state, our energy would be
better spent denouncing the electoral process that only masquerades
as a democracy than participating in it and giving it the appearance
of legitimacy to the outside world. We have an obligation to expose
it for the sham it is and say, “No more!”
This might be accomplished
by boycotting all federal elections until the special interest money
is coerced out of the process, and the playing field is leveled; where
outcomes are determined by ideas and commitment to public service, rather
than access to huge amounts of capital and cronyism.
Perhaps then Dennis Kucinich
or Ralph Nader might have a legitimate chance to win office, or even
your next door neighbor. Public service could be put into the political
process thereby legitimizing it by making it democratic.
Electoral boycotts could
be conducted by large numbers of public spirited citizens turning out
not to vote, but instead to protest, which if widely publicized would
be too large and too controversial to be ignored even by the corporate
media—democracy in action indeed. We really have nothing to lose.
As it is now, government
is nothing more than a revolving door between political administrations
and business. Corporate lobbyists are running the government rather
than the people.
Voting is one of the sacred
cows that symbolize a democratic republic but it does nothing to actually
create such a republic, especially in the absence of meaningful choice.
The strategy of boycotts
is low risk to the individual and it is legal. It requires very little
physical effort and little personal sacrifice. Everyone can participate,
regardless of political knowledge, income level, age and party affiliation.
It could potentially become a grass roots movement toward real democracy
and it could begin immediately. If conducted on a large enough scale,
it could provide real results too.
The idea of political boycotts
does not originate with me but I believe the initiative has merit. Perhaps
we should give it the serious consideration it deserves. How such boycotts
might be organized will be left in more capable hands than my own. The
first step is to widely publicize the idea and to generate serious discussion
about it. Let the dialog begin.
A Note about Reform and Revolution:
Ultimately what we are talking
about here is not reform but revolution. Voting in the absence of meaningful
choice is a poor substitute for real democratic processes. It is an
exercise in self-deception and futility designed to keep the working
class people servile and marginalized.
Electoral boycotts are one
of many tools available to us as we plant the seeds of revolution and
create the atmosphere for a major paradigm shift sometime in the future.
Boycotts are a peaceful way of hastening the change that will eventually
make a more just society possible; a world in which just people, not
wealth and privilege, decides the future.
The political system should
belong equally to every citizen, rather than to the moneyed gentry that
have locked most of us out. No one is going to give us the keys. We
must take them because they rightfully belong to us.
Revolution is possible only
with a broad awakening to our predicament in a sham democracy that is
subservient to immense wealth and power. Awakening must be followed
by enlightenment through self-education and comprehension of the problems
we face as a people. It will grow by having serious discussions amongst
ourselves and by putting everything on the table.
Revolution is a word that
scares some people because it conjures images of armed rebellion and
chaotic violence. But it does not have to be so. India was transformed
by non-violent resistance to horrible tyranny. The people and their
detractors will decide what form it will take.
Revolutions do not just suddenly
erupt. They are grown slowly and over increments of time, beginning
from seeds that are carefully sown and nurtured. Sowing seeds are an
act of faith; an expression of hope that there will be a future worth
living.
Revolution should only frighten
those who hold the keys to empire. We are only at the very beginning
of a long journey of transformation. We are laying the foundation stones
of fundamental change and redistribution of wealth and power that must
be based upon justice and equality.
Charles Sullivan is a nature
photographer, free-lance writer, and community activist residing in
the Ridge and Valley Province of geopolitical West Virginia. He welcomes
your comments at [email protected].
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