The
coming U.S. electoral struggle is going to be down and dirty. The
right is entrenched, inflexible, outnumbered but more than willing to
compensate with gerrymandering, voter suppression, Russian
assistance, e-voting fraud and outright cheating. And, as Chomsky
points out, the largest interference with our elections comes from
U.S. corporations and wealthy elites. There will be no converting
what Chomsky calls the most dangerous political party in our history,
but it would be a mistake to allow them to set debate terms.
It is the general voter who must be reached. The right wants the
discussion to pit capitalism against socialism because of the
advantage the former generally holds, given years of indoctrination
in media, schools, churches and most institutional life in the U.S.
They will try always to get their opponent defending socialism and
link that to communism and the worst abuses of that system,
ignoring/denying of course the worst aspects of capitalism. It might
be helpful to consider that there is Big capitalism and little
capitalism. To lump them together as the villain is to alienate some
potential allies. The real issue is more clearly found on different
terrain. The poles are not capitalism versus socialism but greed and
domination versus decency and democracy. This gets us more
immediately to the issues, by-passing a couple very loaded words and
some default loyalties.
I.F.
Stone's collection of essays, The Haunted Fifties, 1953-1963, a
Nonconformist History of Our Time demonstrates that the
anti-democracy tRump phenomenon, though certainly on steroids, is not
new. Wisconsin Senator McCarthy was smearing reputations and careers
and constricting debate to a narrow right-wing, jingoist range where
few officials were safe from charges of disloyalty or
“un-Americanism”... or courageous enough to speak out. McCarthy
was embroiled in financial impropriety which, if revealed, could have
stopped his rampaging much earlier but political cowardice won out.
Eventually he, like Nixon, stepped on the wrong toes or out-lived his
usefulness but while he conducted hearings the inquisition was live.
One victim was Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein's parents who were
reduced to managing a laundry mat to make a living. But they were far
from being alone. On the other end of the fame-spectrum Charlie
Chaplain was forced, or elected, to leave the country. Many Hollywood
artists and writers were harassed and blackballed, some with the
connivance of the president of the Screen Actor's Guild, Ronald
Reagan. Most of the victims were exercising their constitutional
rights by joining a party or engaging in political activity that
resisted the ruthless domination of the ruling class. This technique
of labeling those who demanded justice and real freedom as subversive
was (and is) frequently found useful by those who orchestrate and
profit from injustice.
In
critiquing the then new Eisenhower administration Stone points out
the appointment to key cabinet positions of defense contractors, oil
industrialists and corporate lobbyists. One of the appointees,
dismissing conflict of interest questions around his General Motors
investments, commented that “...what is good for General Motors is
good for America.” The more things change the more they stay the
same. I think it's called BAU, business as usual. Joseph Heller in
his magnificent novel, Catch 22, used that phrase to good effect to
unmask insidious corporate nightriders.
Just
as today we have anti-science climate change deniers, the political
climate in the 50s allowed the U.S. to dismiss proposals to do away
with nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union, claiming that the Soviets
then would have a numerical conventional advantage. Even when the
Soviets agreed to limit conventional arms the U.S. rejected,
apparently ranking profits for the military industrial complex to
survival of our civilization. Going against science and going against
popular will, BAU.
Another
more recent book, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, The
Surreal Heart of the New Russia, by Peter Pomerantsev. Confirms
that Russia is completely corrupt, run by and for gangster/oligarchs
and that as these characters attempt to park their wealth in safe
places, particularly London, they bring their corruption. The author
holds double citizenship in England/Russia so focuses on that
relationship but, given other books on the subject, it is clear that
the U.S. is hardly free of this spreading contagion.
