Rising to Our Potential

The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.(John F. Kennedy)

Our reluctance to entertain questions about public opinion is both strange and signular. In all previous periods of American history the expression of doubts about The People has been a marked feature of mainstream public debate. In response to the widespread use of propaganda by both the Allies and the Axis powers in World War I, so-called nervous liberals such as Walter Lippmann worried that ordinary people left to their own devices could easily be led astray by demagogues. In place of the “barbarism” of mass democracy Lippmann recommended that experts (he had himself in mind) be given the responsibility for guiding public opinion. John Dewey, though ostensibly and optimist, presciently warned that in a consumer society, which at the time had not yet fully materialized, voters would be hard-pressed to fulfill their responsibilities as citizens given the available distractions. A people who spend their evenings attending movies, listening to the radio, and taking automobile rides would take less interest in politics, making them increasingly vulnerable to manipulation, he predicted. (Rick Shenkman, “Just How Stupid Are We: Facing the Truth About the American Voter”)

…reality is that the once independent-thinking McCain has by now completely remade himself into a prototypical, dumbed-down Republican Party stooge — one who plans to rely on the same GOP strategy that has been winning elections ever since Pat Buchanan and Dick Nixon cooked up a plan for cleaving the South back in 1968. Rather than serving up the “straight talk” he promises, McCain is enthusiastically jumping aboard with every low-rent, fearmongering, cock-sucking presidential aspirant who’s ever traveled the Lee Atwater/William Safire highway.

Even the briefest of surveys of the supporters gracing McCain’s events underscores the kind of red-meat appeal he’s making. Immediately after his speech in New Orleans, a pair of sweet-looking old ladies put down their McCain signs long enough to fill me in on why they’re here. “I tell you,” says one, “if Michelle Obama really doesn’t like it here in America, I’d be very pleased to raise the money to send her back to Africa.”[Matt Taibbi, “Full Metal McCain”, Rolling Stone Magazine, June 26, 2008]

These three quotes (the JFK quote is taken from chapter one of Shenkman’s book) pretty well sum up the battle that lay before us as we head into the 2008 general election. One party is going to attempt to inspire us, help us rise above common prejudice and mythology, while the other is going to appeal to our base instincts. It’s a titanic struggle with serious consequences.

Most American elections are not that important – they are carnival shows with made-up issues, all furiously debated while the business of corporate Washington goes on unimpeded. It really doesn’t matter if the Democrats or Republicans control the congress, as we have seen, and Bill Clinton was only an ever-so-light and pale version of George H.W. Bush. But at stake now are future wars on undeserving countries (most likely Muslim), basic rights like habeas corpus, and the right of a woman to have a legal abortion if she so chooses. That’s a brief litany – there are other issues – media monopolies in every U.S. city and town, citizen control of the internet, and access to the commons by vulture corporations out to grab what is left.

Normally I would say that the Democrat is only pretending to be a man of the people, that our wars are bipartisan corporate affairs. Normally that is the case – we seldom get real choices. But I’m taking a leap of faith now, and staking a claim – Barack Obama means what he says, and offers an antidote to the raging fascism that has so infected us since 9/11. The stakes are high – never so high.

Are we up to it? Taibbi and Shenkman say no. Lippmann says that Obama and McCain need to play out the scene while holding our better interests above it all. For myself, strained by cynicism brought on by eight years of Clinton and twelve years of the Bush, and by a voting public that can barely find its way to the polls much less weigh in on serious issues – I’m hoping for a two-out bottom of the ninth three run dinger to pull us out of this one. I hope that Barack Obama is for real, and that the American public will rise to its potential rather than swim in the chum that McCain and the Republicans are going to be tossing our way.

So OK, self-important bloggers and curious passers-by, today I am a Democrat, and I am advancing Democrat[ic] ideals – a man can show us the way, and we have the good sense to follow. I support Barack Obama for president, I’m relieved its not Bill Clinton in drag, and I fear for our future if John McCain succeeds in his vile bamboozlement.