Consider this: you enter an election booth, nobody’s inside that unit except you, and then you cast your vote. You are making a decision for your nation—and the world’s future.
Or this: you join an organization of your sector, class or interest, study the issues, launch activities that will enable more and more people to know your cause, press for legislative and governmental actions, unite with the rest of society, and struggle for change.
For much of modern history, and indeed of recent history, the concept of democracy has been singularly confined to the former. Voting in capitalist democracies is conferred sacredness, a citizen’s communion with an omnipotent and omniscient being that is the government, which is said to define one’s well-being as well as the rest of society. Now for Americans, it is also an act of confession, where the choice is considered a repentance and then atonement for one’s previous electoral sins.
It is only two days (Philippine time) before the U.S. electorate chooses its president in an election that has been characterized as the most active, most participatory, most expensive, and most observed, internationally. It is interesting how the coming U.S. election is considered by the media as most definitive in changing the conditions of hundreds of millions of needy Americans. Yes, there are differences between Republicans (the conservative, the right) and Democrats (the liberals, the left) but people on both sides compromise on many issues to have a centrist view on many economic, political and social issues. Republicans are free market and deregulation advocates and they are being blamed for the current financial crisis as Bush’s term paved way for a lot of marketers to profit from share price increases and money borrowings. But the Democrats who push for more regulation like their European counterparts just want to repair the system; they lobby for reforms in order to maintain the long-term interests of capitalism. Now they are being criticized for advancing socialism. The grave financial and consequent economic crisis has raised talks of capitalism’s downfall yet what the current governments in the biggest economies of today are doing is sort of a Keynesian management of the twenty-first century. It also enables some sliver of radicalism from the opposition. Obama’s “spread the wealth” call is however antithetical to “American” hard work and keeping one’s wealth his and his alone. Fighting for his ambitions, he has continually veered from left to center in order to please the moderate and anti-radical Americans. He disowned his former pastor, who’s the head of a militant black church, and also recently disowned a 70s anti-Vietnam War terrorist (this one resorted to bombings!). I remember his comment which echoes some leftist thinking on religion and militarist attitude – that desperate Americans cling to their guns and religion. Comparing the Republicans and the Democrats in the Clinton campaign of the early nineties, Joan Didion quotes a political scientist who says: “The last thing the Democratic Party has wanted to do is declare that there is a possibility for class struggle. The Republicans, however, are perfectly happy to declare class struggle all the time. They are always waging a one-sided class war against the constituency the Democrats nominally represent. In this sense, the Republicans are the only real political party in the United States. They stand for ideology and interest, not compromise.” [“Eyes on the Prize,” in Political Fictions, pages 148-149] The constituents, history and popular opinion have it, are labor, women and minorities.
[[[the image is from the New York Times, 31 october 2008]]]
2:24 am
tuesday, 4 november 2008
Or this: you join an organization of your sector, class or interest, study the issues, launch activities that will enable more and more people to know your cause, press for legislative and governmental actions, unite with the rest of society, and struggle for change.
For much of modern history, and indeed of recent history, the concept of democracy has been singularly confined to the former. Voting in capitalist democracies is conferred sacredness, a citizen’s communion with an omnipotent and omniscient being that is the government, which is said to define one’s well-being as well as the rest of society. Now for Americans, it is also an act of confession, where the choice is considered a repentance and then atonement for one’s previous electoral sins.
It is only two days (Philippine time) before the U.S. electorate chooses its president in an election that has been characterized as the most active, most participatory, most expensive, and most observed, internationally. It is interesting how the coming U.S. election is considered by the media as most definitive in changing the conditions of hundreds of millions of needy Americans. Yes, there are differences between Republicans (the conservative, the right) and Democrats (the liberals, the left) but people on both sides compromise on many issues to have a centrist view on many economic, political and social issues. Republicans are free market and deregulation advocates and they are being blamed for the current financial crisis as Bush’s term paved way for a lot of marketers to profit from share price increases and money borrowings. But the Democrats who push for more regulation like their European counterparts just want to repair the system; they lobby for reforms in order to maintain the long-term interests of capitalism. Now they are being criticized for advancing socialism. The grave financial and consequent economic crisis has raised talks of capitalism’s downfall yet what the current governments in the biggest economies of today are doing is sort of a Keynesian management of the twenty-first century. It also enables some sliver of radicalism from the opposition. Obama’s “spread the wealth” call is however antithetical to “American” hard work and keeping one’s wealth his and his alone. Fighting for his ambitions, he has continually veered from left to center in order to please the moderate and anti-radical Americans. He disowned his former pastor, who’s the head of a militant black church, and also recently disowned a 70s anti-Vietnam War terrorist (this one resorted to bombings!). I remember his comment which echoes some leftist thinking on religion and militarist attitude – that desperate Americans cling to their guns and religion. Comparing the Republicans and the Democrats in the Clinton campaign of the early nineties, Joan Didion quotes a political scientist who says: “The last thing the Democratic Party has wanted to do is declare that there is a possibility for class struggle. The Republicans, however, are perfectly happy to declare class struggle all the time. They are always waging a one-sided class war against the constituency the Democrats nominally represent. In this sense, the Republicans are the only real political party in the United States. They stand for ideology and interest, not compromise.” [“Eyes on the Prize,” in Political Fictions, pages 148-149] The constituents, history and popular opinion have it, are labor, women and minorities.
[[[the image is from the New York Times, 31 october 2008]]]
2:24 am
tuesday, 4 november 2008
No comments:
Post a Comment