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on my earlier posting re: Ralph Nader...
The question from the Nader website was
"Why doesn’t Ralph just sit this year out?"
---
. Most quotations used in this lengthy LJ entry are from the Nader site:
"Someone has to be in the race to keep the two parties parties responsive and make sure that the issues the Washington insiders don’t want to address get raised all the way to election day, since most Americans only start to pay attention to the election after Labor Day."
1. The power of the duopoly extends to media coverage. This year, no one will raise issues outside what the two major party candidates and their lackeys raise. The vast majority of voters in swing states will not be privy to a wider world than what the candidates say in the debates and advertising.
2. This does not functionally mean an insufficiently broad field of issues will be raised.
These are profoundly important issues, with very high impact. Individually, each is a critical, can't-ignore problem. Collectively they represent a crisis to our national fabric.
3. The field of interest may appear to shortchange these critical concerns: Free trade/fair trade, corporate crime, poverty, consumer safety, consumer justice, agricultural responsibility and agribusiness-consumer relationship, election law reform.
However, these issues are not shortchanged by a focus on the first group. I think it's reasonable to use a kind of Maslow's heierarchy approach. The profundity of loss and damage to economy, jobs, education and life conditions is so great as to require action on those items as a necessary first step in addressing the wider field. This is what I mean when I use the term "national emergency." The existing administration has so dramatically set back the health and well being of the country that success– on even a narrowed field of interests– is imperative. Furthermore, the interlocking of so many issues means improvement of critical ones will almost certainly improve the others. Certainly it will allow us greater ability to do so. A rising tide will lift all boats. The GOP would like to simply end the tide-- poison, desalinate and sell the seawater, strip mine the shore, eat the fish and tear down the moon.
"If you think this country and world are so well spoken for that more people and wider agendas in the electoral arena are not needed, then don’t vote for Ralph.
"It’s that simple."
As an answer to the question, 'why not just sit this year out', this reveals an implied tautology. I'll take it in three steps:
Ralph is not sitting this one out because if you think the country is so well spoken for that a wider agenda is not needed, then you should not vote for him [thus-- presumably in answer to the site's own question, 'why not sit out?'--Ralph should run]. Which by implication is the same as saying:
Ralph is running because a world without Ralph running is one without a sufficiently wide agenda and we need a sufficiently wide agenda.
which is the same as saying:
Ralph should run because Ralph should run.
It's...uh...that simple.
"And don’t just let election-day dynamics affect your judgment about all the good and more explicit popular mandates that can come from pre-election day and post-election day dynamics, when more people expand their political and civic energies."
The above assumes:
1. It's not about winning.
2. Election-day dynamics are the sole reason people urge Ralph not to run.
3. Post-election day dynamics would not be different regardless of who wins.
on 1: No, it's not just about winning. But it's definitely about not losing. (see 3)
on 2: In short, the electability thing; to wit, people don't want Ralph to run because they assume Ralph can't win and we only want people to win. There are legitimate reasons to be opposed to Ralph without once saying, "I oppose you because you can't win." Here's a few:
on 3: Things really are that bad. We're not talking about lesser of two or three evils. We're talking about decades and centuries of damage to the American ideal.
I think what's worth reiterating is that conditions have grown dramatically bad in this country. Not for me-- if I was asked "are you better off now than you were four years ago?" I might have to answer, "Yes, absolutely." My life has really come together over the last four years. I guess I should vote for George Bush. However, it must be pointed out that I'm a white, middle class male. We white men usually do very well in this country (the white upper middle class, of which I am not even remotely a member, usually does even better). I didn't have the franchise denied me in 2000. I didn't lose a dime on the stock market because I didn't have any invested. I didn't lose my home to predatory lenders because I'd damaged my own credit so badly with predatory credit card companies in the 90s that I don't have the wherewithal to own a home anyway. I didn't have my entire ethnicity and religion INSTANTLY become JUST CAUSE for violations of my civil rights and other invasions of my privacy. No one I love was jailed in the last four years. No daisy cutters fell on my house. I'm already married, so nobody's chosen to make my love life the focus of a highly specified effort to deny me. My wife had a pregnancy that went full term with no serious health complications to her, so there was no need for an abortion which would have made her a suspect of the Attorney General's office. Hell yeah, I'm better off four years ago.
Hoo. Ray.
What has been brought forcefully into focus is that I get to emerge from the last four years essentially unscathed due to my privilege of class and skin color. Perhaps the only bad part was a little extra smoke inhalation during 2002 when horrific forest management policies vs. horrific timber extraction lobbyists helped Black Hills area forest fires burn crazily. This may have been bad for my lungs. But since I'd quit smoking in 2001, it's probably balanced out.
Again, I say: Hoo. Ray.
It's our whiteness and muddle crassness that Mr. Nader and I share in common. Which is to say, the evidence suggests he and I have nothing to lose in four more years of Bush. So we would emerge, again, 'towering o'er the wrecks of time' as happy and healthy and still building our wealth. But alone, increasingly alone. No, Ralph and me aren't in a national crisis, which may be one reason he can't see the forest for the trees, as it were. But everyone else is. This can't go on. White men of a certain class (or higher) can't be allowed to just take and take and win all the time! It won't stand.
I mean, think about this-- I'm not even a majority in my own home. I'm just 1/3 of my family. 1/4 if you count the cat. So the rights of my wife, my daughter and my animal have a high percentage chance of going down, while my own privileges go up. They stand to gain a little, because some of my shining fun will rub off on them. But since my life expectancy is still shorter, they may outlive that benefit. Multiply that dynamic 50 million times. The scale is staggering. The implications are terrifying. White wealthy men benefit, all others do not (including white male children-- don't forget how education is suffering!). That's an enormous problem, on an enormous scale. That's the very definition of a crisis.
That's the very definition of a crisis. And it's enough of a reason to a) not vote for Ralph Nader, and b) specifically take time out of my day (and yours) to ask him to stand down.
"Why doesn’t Ralph just sit this year out?"
---
. Most quotations used in this lengthy LJ entry are from the Nader site:
"Someone has to be in the race to keep the two parties parties responsive and make sure that the issues the Washington insiders don’t want to address get raised all the way to election day, since most Americans only start to pay attention to the election after Labor Day."
1. The power of the duopoly extends to media coverage. This year, no one will raise issues outside what the two major party candidates and their lackeys raise. The vast majority of voters in swing states will not be privy to a wider world than what the candidates say in the debates and advertising.
2. This does not functionally mean an insufficiently broad field of issues will be raised.
- In fact, the breadth of issues has been greatly narrowed in the last four years by the right wing of one party, not both parties together in some kind of self-supporting cabal. Further, if the breadth of issues has been narrowed, their depth has increased dramatically.
- The greater national emergency is that the existing breadth of potential issues is heavily weighted. Herewith in no particular order:
Social Security,wars and police actions, health care, jobs, environment, education, civil rights, privacy, and reproductive freedom
These are profoundly important issues, with very high impact. Individually, each is a critical, can't-ignore problem. Collectively they represent a crisis to our national fabric.
3. The field of interest may appear to shortchange these critical concerns: Free trade/fair trade, corporate crime, poverty, consumer safety, consumer justice, agricultural responsibility and agribusiness-consumer relationship, election law reform.
However, these issues are not shortchanged by a focus on the first group. I think it's reasonable to use a kind of Maslow's heierarchy approach. The profundity of loss and damage to economy, jobs, education and life conditions is so great as to require action on those items as a necessary first step in addressing the wider field. This is what I mean when I use the term "national emergency." The existing administration has so dramatically set back the health and well being of the country that success– on even a narrowed field of interests– is imperative. Furthermore, the interlocking of so many issues means improvement of critical ones will almost certainly improve the others. Certainly it will allow us greater ability to do so. A rising tide will lift all boats. The GOP would like to simply end the tide-- poison, desalinate and sell the seawater, strip mine the shore, eat the fish and tear down the moon.
"If you think this country and world are so well spoken for that more people and wider agendas in the electoral arena are not needed, then don’t vote for Ralph.
"It’s that simple."
As an answer to the question, 'why not just sit this year out', this reveals an implied tautology. I'll take it in three steps:
Ralph is not sitting this one out because if you think the country is so well spoken for that a wider agenda is not needed, then you should not vote for him [thus-- presumably in answer to the site's own question, 'why not sit out?'--Ralph should run]. Which by implication is the same as saying:
Ralph is running because a world without Ralph running is one without a sufficiently wide agenda and we need a sufficiently wide agenda.
which is the same as saying:
Ralph should run because Ralph should run.
It's...uh...that simple.
"And don’t just let election-day dynamics affect your judgment about all the good and more explicit popular mandates that can come from pre-election day and post-election day dynamics, when more people expand their political and civic energies."
The above assumes:
1. It's not about winning.
2. Election-day dynamics are the sole reason people urge Ralph not to run.
3. Post-election day dynamics would not be different regardless of who wins.
on 1: No, it's not just about winning. But it's definitely about not losing. (see 3)
on 2: In short, the electability thing; to wit, people don't want Ralph to run because they assume Ralph can't win and we only want people to win. There are legitimate reasons to be opposed to Ralph without once saying, "I oppose you because you can't win." Here's a few:
- we are in a national emergency (see 3)
- Ralph is not running with the Green Party. This is a pre-existing group who relied for many years on the boost of a well known national candidate in order to make significant gains in the battle for recognition. So the question is, did Ralph simply abandon them to pursue a run? Or did they ask him not to/indicate they weren't all that interested? More to the point: either of these alternatives is a strike against him as they show a tendancy (just a tendancy, not hard proof per se) to be uninterested in a coalition. This disinterest is admirable from the perspectve of America's independent "yeoman-farmer" founders. It becomes a liability when we consider that it offers an obvious backhand to Green Party candidates who will be further marginalized, the leftist/Green vote now at risk of being splintered into meaninglessness.
- The likely eventual nominee of the Democratic party has a vote-worthy record. John Kerry is a liberal senator, who has been hailed by ADA, League of Conservation Voters, ACLU, and others for high marks on the liberal side.
on 3: Things really are that bad. We're not talking about lesser of two or three evils. We're talking about decades and centuries of damage to the American ideal.
I think what's worth reiterating is that conditions have grown dramatically bad in this country. Not for me-- if I was asked "are you better off now than you were four years ago?" I might have to answer, "Yes, absolutely." My life has really come together over the last four years. I guess I should vote for George Bush. However, it must be pointed out that I'm a white, middle class male. We white men usually do very well in this country (the white upper middle class, of which I am not even remotely a member, usually does even better). I didn't have the franchise denied me in 2000. I didn't lose a dime on the stock market because I didn't have any invested. I didn't lose my home to predatory lenders because I'd damaged my own credit so badly with predatory credit card companies in the 90s that I don't have the wherewithal to own a home anyway. I didn't have my entire ethnicity and religion INSTANTLY become JUST CAUSE for violations of my civil rights and other invasions of my privacy. No one I love was jailed in the last four years. No daisy cutters fell on my house. I'm already married, so nobody's chosen to make my love life the focus of a highly specified effort to deny me. My wife had a pregnancy that went full term with no serious health complications to her, so there was no need for an abortion which would have made her a suspect of the Attorney General's office. Hell yeah, I'm better off four years ago.
Hoo. Ray.
What has been brought forcefully into focus is that I get to emerge from the last four years essentially unscathed due to my privilege of class and skin color. Perhaps the only bad part was a little extra smoke inhalation during 2002 when horrific forest management policies vs. horrific timber extraction lobbyists helped Black Hills area forest fires burn crazily. This may have been bad for my lungs. But since I'd quit smoking in 2001, it's probably balanced out.
Again, I say: Hoo. Ray.
It's our whiteness and muddle crassness that Mr. Nader and I share in common. Which is to say, the evidence suggests he and I have nothing to lose in four more years of Bush. So we would emerge, again, 'towering o'er the wrecks of time' as happy and healthy and still building our wealth. But alone, increasingly alone. No, Ralph and me aren't in a national crisis, which may be one reason he can't see the forest for the trees, as it were. But everyone else is. This can't go on. White men of a certain class (or higher) can't be allowed to just take and take and win all the time! It won't stand.
I mean, think about this-- I'm not even a majority in my own home. I'm just 1/3 of my family. 1/4 if you count the cat. So the rights of my wife, my daughter and my animal have a high percentage chance of going down, while my own privileges go up. They stand to gain a little, because some of my shining fun will rub off on them. But since my life expectancy is still shorter, they may outlive that benefit. Multiply that dynamic 50 million times. The scale is staggering. The implications are terrifying. White wealthy men benefit, all others do not (including white male children-- don't forget how education is suffering!). That's an enormous problem, on an enormous scale. That's the very definition of a crisis.
That's the very definition of a crisis. And it's enough of a reason to a) not vote for Ralph Nader, and b) specifically take time out of my day (and yours) to ask him to stand down.