Post by POA on May 6, 2004 16:31:29 GMT -5
''Why I won't vote for Kerry''
Printed on Wednesday, May 05, 2004 @ 00:05:06 CDT ( )
By Gabriel Ash
YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)
(YellowTimes.org) -- Last summer I was in Nablus during one of the regular Israeli army raids that are destroying any semblance of normal life for the town. Hundreds of angry and courageous people gathered in the afternoon to confront the tanks that took over the main street. The crowds were swirling in large and furious circles, improving their positions, finding cover or attacking, evading the border police jeeps that were scurrying around, dispensing shock grenades and tear gas.
As we were running -- everyone was running -- down the market, some of which stalls were on fire, a young man, his two hands holding blocks of broken concrete he intended to throw at the tanks, ran past us and slowed down to our pace, noticing that we were not locals. He asked us "do you like Bush?" It was, in that particular moment, a scary question to be asked. Pumped with adrenalin, I answered without hesitating, "Bush is a madman." The young man sped towards the tanks, leaving us behind.
It is a journalistic cliché that throwing rocks at tanks is a futile gesture. Wrong. To be sure, it is a symbolic gesture, but not a futile one. It takes a lot of courage to confront a 60 ton steel monster with rocks; the powerlessness of the rock thrower to stop the tank only underscores the powerlessness of the tank to do what it is there to do -- terrorize the people.
Compared to rock throwing, casting a ballot in the presidential elections in November, 2004 requires far less personal courage and is far more futile. Yet the stone thrower confronted me with my choice of president. How do I answer?
To me, that young man in Nablus represents billions of disenfranchised people, people whose fate, and often their very life and death, is decided in Washington by the President of the United States, yet they have no say in choosing that president.
Some of the disenfranchised are American -- prison inmates, parolees and ex-felons, for example. There are also the hundred million Americans who gave up voting. But most of the disenfranchised aren't U.S. citizens. If the U.S. were minding its own business, there would be no reason to be concerned about the presidential preferences of non-citizens. But the U.S. government considers it has a God-given right to determine the fate of the residents of places like Nablus. From the Shia cities in southern Iraq to the indigenous villages of Bolivia, the U.S. assumes it can determine who shall live, who shall die, who shall be repressed and who shall govern, and especially, in what direction shall the money flow. The U.S. president is the unelected emperor of the planet.
Therefore, when I commit my own symbolic gesture of voting, what is my responsibility towards these people? When I exercise my privilege to vote, how do I take into consideration the interests and wishes of those without that privilege?
As a member of the American consumer class, it is clear to me that John Kerry would be a better President, for me and for most everyone I know personally, than George Bush. Not that this is a challenge -- my doorknob would be a better President than George Bush.
But a John Kerry presidency will not reduce the hardship of life in Nablus. Israeli tanks will continue to roll there, underwritten by U.S. financial support and protected by U.S. diplomatic immunity. Nablus will continue to die a slow, suffocating death, according to the U.S. approved master plan of the Israeli ethnic cleansers. With Kerry in the White House, Iraqis will go on dying for the right to be free from foreign occupation. The war on South American peasants will continue, perhaps even intensify, whether fought with "Free Trade" legislation, "war on drug" funds, or direct military intervention, etc., etc.
I cannot stop the tanks. But on my next visit to Nablus, I don't want to have to lie about my vote. I don't want to have to explain that I didn't really support Kerry's de-facto endorsement of ethnic cleansing even though I voted for him. It sounds like a lame excuse and it is. I don't want to have to admit to my hosts that I voted for Kerry because I thought about retirement savings and health insurance and personal security and I forgot all about Nablus and about what they were going through. Therefore, on election day, I won't forget Nablus and I won't vote for Kerry.
I know many will consider this a betrayal. There is a deafening silence regarding Kerry among the progressive leadership, a shameful silence that stills that familiar argument: this is the time if there ever was one to vote strategically for the lesser evil; Bush is destroying America and stopping him must be the highest priority. This argument would be more convincing if it weren't dusted and deployed every four years.
It is a self-serving argument for key progressive demographics. The palpable terror Bush evokes in the heart of many Americans is well founded. Bush is a direct menace to the wellbeing and finances of middle class America. As far as we are concerned, there is a real difference between Kerry and Bush.
But the farther away one stands, the smaller the difference between them appears. For 50% percent of Americans, the difference is probably too small to justify the trip to the polls. For the victims of American imperialism, there really is no difference. It is a choice between two different commitments to bomb them into submission.
The next election is not taking the shape of a referendum on the American empire, but rather a contest in management skills. Kerry claims he would be a better steward of the empire. He would be better at pacifying Iraq, better at forcing U.S. solutions on the Middle East, better at getting the world to submit to U.S. will.
Perhaps he would. But ought we help him? What is our stake in improving the quality of management of the empire? Many of us do have a stake and that may be the problem.
The "anything but Bush" argument today is self-interest masquerading as high-mindedness. When one says that anyone is better than Bush, what is left unsaid is that we, too, have a stake in the success of U.S. world domination. Bush's mismanagement is a threat to us because it threatens to bring down the empire, and with it the relatively sheltered lifestyle of those who manage to live well inside the beast.
But can we honestly say that a better managed American imperialism makes the world a better place for others, too? Does it help the people of the world that most of the huge "research" budget of American universities has something to do with developing more effective ways to kill people? Will an American victory in the war in Iraq help Americans who can't afford seeing a family doctor?
On election day, we have a choice. We can vote our complicity with imperialism or our solidarity with its victims.
I do not argue that "the worse the better." If I did, I would have to advocate voting for Bush. All I say is that I do not know whether a Bush or a Kerry presidency would be better for those who have no rights. I do not know, partly because this isn't an election issue. Both contenders are committed to extending and yielding U.S. military and financial power without consideration to its victims, both at home and abroad.
The "strategic vote" is, therefore, limited to "strategic from the standpoint of my own narrow interest." The conflict about whether to vote for "the lesser of two evils" is mis-framed as a conflict between pragmatism and idealism – "something is better than nothing" vs. "all or nothing." It is rather a conflict between narrow self-interest and ethics.
Let those who support imperialism debate how best to run an empire. The right thing to do is to use our power to vote, symbolically, to signal our refusal to contribute to a civic conversation about the quality of imperial management and domination. It is almost a futile gesture, but not completely so; it is an act of solidarity with the disenfranchised.
[Gabriel Ash was born in Romania and grew up in Israel. He is an unabashed "opssimist." He writes his columns because the pen is sometimes mightier than the sword - and sometimes not. He lives in the United States.]
Gabriel Ash encourages your comments: gash@YellowTimes.org
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