Since Super Tuesday and John Kerry’s press-assisted nailing of the Democratic presidental nomination and the coffin of world peace, I’ve been struggling to find a way to endorse the candidate and still live with myself. “He’d be an improvement over Bush”, which I believe would be marginally true even without a supportive Congress, remains akin to an addict telling their sponsor, “It’s only Oxycontin. My doctor prescribed it.” If I were to disengage from the process, boycott the elections, could I live with enabling the loathsome Bush administration, address the morally demented and criminally deceptive George as ‘President’?
“List of Resentments” a.k.a “Grudge List” [the shortlist]
The Progressive: I wonder if Matthew Rothschild remembers the Editor’s Note in which he pronounced his judgements of a rally appearance made by Dennis Kucinich shortly after he’d declared his candidacy. I’ll never forget it. Rothschild was repelled by his ‘new age’ persona and fretted, like a weakling in a room full of bullies, over ‘electability’ issues. There aren’t words to describe the waves of disgust that wash over me whenever a leading ‘progressive’, and there’ve been a steady stream since DK declared, hand-wring then exercise their privileged positions to prolifically bloody a candidate with a track record of fighting the good fight. Why do they pound Kucinich and pander to the warmongers? What do they fear?
In his March 3, two-minute daily commentary, Rothschild scolds Kerry for his recent support of Israel’s wall, describing it as “hardly progressive” and “reactionary”. He then ameliorates his guilt-ridden conscience, I suppose, by declaring that he “waited in vain for Kerry or any of the Democrats, for that matter, to condemn the policies of the Sharon gov’t.”. Is he deaf, dumb and blind to Kucinich now as well?
After deliberating this for 24 hours, Rothschild delivered his recommendations for where to go from here. If you listen to his March 4 broadcast [or read it here] you’ll discover Matthew thinks we should pick John Kerry’s cabinet. What he doesn’t tell us is how these selections will in any way make a Kerry presidency more ‘progressive’.
He carved a place in it for Dick Gephardt as Secretary of Labor and Gephardt’s championing of labor causes is why regular Progressive columnist Molly Ivins stated last September that she’s “soft on Dick.”
I wonder if Ivins, a brilliant writer who holds her punches when it comes to old friends, remembers how Dick shafted those in the House who were challenging the irrational momentum for an Iraq Resolution, was an author of the final version no less, and distanced himself and his leadership from the building consensus to stop Bush in his tracks?
What’s a little pre-emptive strike and abrogation of sworn duties between progressive friends, Molly?
I am powerless to change your attitudes. But I can and have decided not to renew my subscription.
Carole King: In the final days leading into the Iowa caucuses, as part of the Kerry campaign’s “Women’s Voices on the Trail” initiative, King went from one house party to the next deftly reassuring sceptics that Kerry is the one, the only one who could facilitate a dialogue with the international community and correct our maligned standing in it. She boasted often and deservedly of her daughter’s accomplishments crafting music specifically for children.
From Kerry’s website:
But nothing else will matter unless we win the war of ideas. In failed states from South Asia to the Middle East to Central Africa, the combined weight of harsh political repression, economic stagnation, lack of education, and rapid population growth presents the potential for explosive violence and the enlistment of entire new legions of terrorists. In Saudi Arabia and Egypt, almost sixty percent of the population is under the age of 30, unemployed and unemployable, in a breeding ground for present and future hostility. And according to a Pew Center poll, fifty percent or more of Indonesians, Jordanians, Pakistanis, and Palestinians have confidence in bin Laden to “do the right thing regarding world affairs”
We need a major initiative in public diplomacy to bridge the divide between Islam and the rest of the world. For the education of the next generation of Islamic youth, we need an international effort to compete with radical Madrassas. We have seen what happens when Palestinian youth have been fed a diet of anti-Israel propaganda. And we must support human rights groups, independent media and labor unions dedicated to building a democratic culture from the grass-roots up. Democracy won’t come overnight, but America should speed that day by sustaining the forces of democracy against repressive regimes and by rewarding governments which take genuine steps towards change.
Does King truly endorse this chillingly familiar pamphleteering for permanent war, the same tunnel vision neoconservatives invoked only to emerge in Iraq? They hate us because they’re ignorant to the ‘truth’ of our benevolence? How will the lives of Palestinian children be improved by a man who unflinchingly supports Sharon and summarily dismisses their elected President? How does one claim to support human rights groups without criticising the current policies of the Israeli gov’t then expect us to believe, as Carole insisted, that he’s the “real deal”? How will he aid the “unemployed and unemployable” when he believes the only thing wrong with NAFTA is that it isn’t enforced correctly? How will she help him win this “war of ideas”?
Could she perform “You’ve got a friend?” before an audience of the occupied?
If King and daughter Sherry Kondor collaborated to produce songs for these children, what message would they send?
MoveOn: With all due respect for a team that has performed some invaluable services, have you no soul? I first began to ponder this when MoveOn staged an internet ‘election’ to galvanise their membership behind one candidate so hurriedly it was without benefit of even a quasi debate period following the one-page declarations from the contenders. What was the reasoning in moving on so quickly? Why should they now be telling me to give money to John Kerry? He has a website and a party behind him. Do they even wonder if support of a Kerry presidency would create conflicts of interest should they continue to advocate for peaceful solutions to international conflicts?
Will they prove John Pilger right? Because it seems to me they’ve taken a giant step in the wrong direction. Now is the time to be putting pressure on Kerry to adopt the causes they claim to support, not for endorsing his ignorance.
Like the Blairites, John Kerry and his fellow New Democrats come from a tradition of liberalism that has built and defended empires as “moral” enterprises. That the Democratic Party has left a longer trail of blood, theft and subjugation than the Republicans is heresy to the liberal crusaders, whose murderous history always requires, it seems, a noble mantle.
I have no use for them, or Kerry, until they do.
Until then.
-disenfranchised pacifist stranded in America because I have no choice…
Edited @ 12:33pm: Before contributing to MoveOn’s “Censure Bush for Misleading Us” campaign read this.