I just watched Philip Seymour Hoffman try to be a blond Michael Moore in the documentary The Party’s Over, about the 2000 presidential campaign. Very nostalgic.
The documentary was interesting and fresh only because it covered a side of the campaign that I previously hadn’t seen: the protesters.
I have masochistically relived many times the trauma of Gore’s “defeat” and even worse, his and his party’s unwillingness to fight for their base which was disenfranchised in that election. But every time I’ve revisited this topic, it’s been from the Democratic perspective.
Hoffman’s documentary is more representing those lefties who have been boycotting our political system — Gore and Bush were the same to them and they protested during both the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention. Watching these radicals — mostly young, often white — was both infuriating and inspiring. They are boycotting the only system through which we can work some change. But they are also standing up for higher principles than our current systems can deliver on.
I have sympathy for both sides.
It’s partly because of those protesters that I love this country. I’m having a difficult time giving up on the political systems which I’ve admired from afar for so long. This was a great country. The Constitution used to have the power to make me weep with sentimental admiration. Now it just makes me wistful.
We are no longer a democracy. Our leaders, the best among them, don’t do a very good job of representing our values. Half of them are in power to prevent government from actually doing anything useful — on principle, because dammit! they believe in “small government.”
I keep coming back to the people. I think it’s unfair to keep on blaming the people for the mess we’re in. The people come out on the streets. The people give generously to charities for services the government should be providing. The people vote. The people fight. It’s not their fault that they are being systematically disenfranchised and it’s not their fault they don’t have the time, between holding down two jobs and taking care of their kids and doing the housework, to look up “the issues” on candidates’ websites. Yet they do their best and many of them vote. Last couple of times, that hasn’t mattered. Their votes didn’t count.
If it wasn’t clear in 2000, it’s pretty clear now. The people have ceased to matter. But it’s the people that make me go on loving America. “Freedom” rings hollow when one examines America’s recent crimes against human rights at home and abroad. But freedom nevertheless is part of every American’s upbringing and it gives them an arrogant sense of entitlement to their rights that is infinitely encouraging. You don’t have to have a college education or any kind of authority to have faith in your humanity in this country — as an American, you are free.
I hope this spirit prevails over the impending disasters and Americans, when it comes down to it, fight to keep their freedom. They’ve lost it already on the books. But I doubt they’ll tolerate the jackboot in their own homes.
P.S. Yes, Larry and I are buying guns if the jackboots do come. Larry’s always been an anti-gun liberal, whereas I can’t get away from the coolness of firearms and killing unpleasant people. We finally see eye to eye on this bone of contention in our marriage. Woo!
Filed under: Socio-Political
Don’t listen to the fringe left. It’s all bullshit. The Constitution is still in effect, in spite of the exaggerations of the ultra-left. And don’t forget that the left is so anti-American it wants the US to lose in Afghanistan and Iraq. Note that Cindy Sheehan doesn’t think the US invasion of Afghanistan was justified, even though the 9/11 attackers were trained there and Osama Bin Laden was based there. Note too that only the SF Chronicle even mentioned the cartoon riots a few years ago, while the city’s left, including the “progressive” SF Bay Guardian, were silent. US democracy is alive and well, which the current election campaign shows. Don’t let your intelligent commentary degenerate into crackpot leftism and anti-Americanism.
It’s largely because of those protesters (and the arrogant and “gallant” sense of entitlement to human rights and individual liberty) and the spirit that I too love America.
I am mixing your words around because I so agree with you and have felt the same way, traversing the very same path from sentimental and intellectual admiration to wistfullness as regards the state of affairs in the US today. I think that the real destruction wrought by the 9/11 terrorists is the felling of human rights and democratic structures in the country which is still the world’s best hope for same.
What I’d like to understand is your criticism of “small government”. A pakistani woman living in Canada, I have read both your pretty justified criticism of Canada’s immigration policy and, by extension, its politics. Canada is an example of big goverment. In America holding down two jobs might get you somewhere in the end - it does not, here in Canada. My criticism of welfare (and the very arrongant, undeserved, self-serving entitlement it has engendered in its poor/immigrant segments/whatever—you know what I mean) is very much in tune with Ayaan’s, as is my criticism of the far left white religious apologists who, in her words, can “afford the luxury” of spitting on freedom…and who have taken the (albeit well intentioned) idea of faulting-oneself-first-and-foremost (an idea moreover, that i prescribe incessantly to us muslims) to some kind of fairytale extreme where realities have been sacrifised at the altar of political correctness.
What I am trying to ask you is this:
1. Why exactly the Democratic ideology over the Republican one (viewed entirely theoretically and independent of their present form and application - harkening perhaps even as far back as the thought of the founding fathers )
2. Why Hillary over Obama (give me hasty pointers if you will, I dont want to impose and can research the ideas myself) (I dont need to be told why not McCain for chrissakes so dont dismiss my “right leanings” as completely demented)
As a Canadian I am not very directly or actively involved in US politics but I see this as a much larger global and intellectual issue which is why all the interest….
Word of advice — buy the guns BEFORE the jackboots come. Practice a lot, and if you’re at all serious, take a tactical handgun course. Otherwise, you’re just going to hurt yourself or your husband.
I am so happy I married a woman who came with her own shotgun. =]
Sista
1. Why exactly the Democratic ideology over the Republican one (viewed entirely theoretically and independent of their present form and application - harkening perhaps even as far back as the thought of the founding fathers )
It’s kind of difficult for me to evaluate either Democrats or Republicans except as they are — and I have never known them to be anything but what they are now. In basic terms, Republicans want to fuck everyone over except for a very tiny minority of old-style capitalist oppressors and they want to ruin the country’s treasured institutions in the process. I see Republicans as essentially destructive, essentially selfish, essentially non-contributing members of society. This progression, increasingly getting worse and achieving its objectives in the Bush administration, has been going on for at least five decades. Republicans also hate the idea of a government actually, you know, providing service. But they want to take the jobs they don’t think should exist in order to fuck them up.
Democrats have a better track record of actually doing their job. They actually believe in progress and want to improve things for people. At the very least, they aren’t crooks, through and through, down to the last man.
The distinction is increasingly being erased because if the Democrats aren’t as destructive as they Republicans, they are no longer positive forces for progressive change, in part because Republicans have mastered the art of handicapping them.
2. Why Hillary over Obama (give me hasty pointers if you will, I dont want to impose and can research the ideas myself) (I dont need to be told why not McCain for chrissakes so dont dismiss my “right leanings” as completely demented)
For me personally? Because she’s a woman. But not only that: if she was a woman who wasn’t a Democrat, who wasn’t a feminist, who wasn’t smart, I wouldn’t support her. But compared to a man who isn’t sufficiently different from her in terms of policies to make that much difference*, I support the woman.
*I’m rethinking how much of a difference there is between the two in terms of policies. He doesn’t have a proven track record for much, so it’s hard to judge how he will actually act, vs. comparing mere words.
I also have always liked both the Clintons and I liked the Clintonian America. Part of it is nostalgia. My formative period, my coming of age, was during the 90’s.
I support government. Not “big government” — I support government. The Republicans do NOT represent small government, whatever that may be. At heart, I’m an anarchist. But if we have to have government, and we do, I want it to actually do its job — you know, provide services.
Small government doesn’t effectively do that, nor have we ever had a small government. Republicans promise small government, but look what Bush has wrought in a mere eight years, after inheriting a balanced budget from a Democrat. And sure, Clinton cut some social programs, but nothing like what Bush has and nothing like what we’re facing in the immediate future.
I don’t believe in the concept of every man for himself. Quite apart from any other considerations, it just doesn’t work in reality and never has worked. If we are to have functioning communities, we have to take care of each other, period. There is just no getting around that. By letting government get away with not providing social programs (which taxing us hard anyway), we are merely shifting the burden to voluntary programs (non-profits and charity, etc.). That is not efficient and not desirable for communities because many people end up getting under-served.
Immigration is a difficult question. On the one hand, I hate America’s strict immigration policies. On the other, I don’t like some of the imagined consequences of open, or even relaxed, immigration. It’s too easy for a Pakistani peasant to buy a plane ticket and land here. And you know, I was raped by a Pakistani peasant who had bought a bus ticket to Lahore. I’m just not eager to have my own people follow me to where I came to escape them. Haha. Very selfish viewpoint, but this is the reality that gives my liberal theory pause.
The brown hordes, in other words.
But, for immigrants who are here, we need to treat them humanely.
As far as work goes, I don’t believe “work or starve” is either a necessary policy or a desirable one, mainly because in a prosperous post-industrial country, it is NOT necessary for productivity. Americans cling to it for moral, not practical/economic, reasons.
I think you are mistaken about holding down two jobs and getting somewhere. You will enjoy and find instructive Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickle and Dimed, about being a low wage two-job worker in America.
Sorry if this comment is not well-presented or if there are typos. No time to fix.
“And don’t forget that the left is so anti-American it wants the US to lose in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
WTF?
Is that meme still going around? That is so 2004.
Cindy Sheehan has in fact opposed the US “occupation” of Afghanistan, as if it was simply some kind of imperial adventure, not a rational response to those who plotted the 9/11 attack. And the whole gun nut thing is completely irrelevant to the situation in the US. A gun may be helpful for personal protection, but it has no overall political significance.
I don’t know. You let “the people” off pretty easy. I came across your blog via a link from Feministe comments, and I love that you write about the US as a kind of beacon of hope to people in much more repressive societies around the world. I love this country, and despite the savagery and injustice woven into our history, I thought at the very least that American-style freedom to think and live as you choose could exist as a kind of (imperfect) model for other less open cultures, but after the last 8 years, I just don’t know.
But this is the thing. In a country whose government supposedly derives its just power from the consent of the governed and whose founding document codifies the right of the people of any nation to alter or abolish governments they see fit, there is simply no one else to blame.
The hard fact is that after a horrible but in no way militarily significant attack, a vast majority of citizens responded by collectively curling into a fetal position under the bed. So long as they could keep driving their SUV’s to buy cheap crap at Walmart, daddy Bush could do anything he wanted and did.
The people who do take it to streets are great but are way too few to accomplish anything that way. Maybe things are turning around with this election, but i think it’s still too early to tell.
And then there’s Rob Anderson above. This is the type who spent the 90’s crowing about Clinton and black helicopters and jack-booted thugs. But when Bush claims for himself the powers of a king, then it’s “anti-American” to call his actions what they are: despotic. With so much hypocrisy and so little courage, is the venality of our government really any surprise at all?
Anyway, I really enjoy your blog, especially when you write about religious stupidity. The topic is so privileged in most discourse that when some writes the truth about it, well, it’s like a breath of fresh air.
DCC, about letting the people off easy… I didn’t use to. But think about it: They did elect both Gore and Kerry, you know? If the Republicans stole two elections, that is NOT the fault of the people.
Yes, more of them vote for Republicans than is respectable. But again, we no longer have a free media. If the nightly news feeds you crap, how are you to know better? I’m not infantilizing here; it’s just the reality of life in most of America. They don’t read blogs. They get their news off the teevee. A lot of them don’t have the time for anything else.
I’m also done holding people to absurdly high standards.
The American people are more sinned against than sinning. Our politicians and myth-makers are a different story.
Cindy Sheehan has in fact opposed the US “occupation” of Afghanistan, as if it was simply some kind of imperial adventure, not a rational response to those who plotted the 9/11 attack.
And we care what Cindy Sheehan says because..? Rob, here’s a word of advice: Liberals don’t give their loudmouths the same adulation and authority conservatives do theirs. What little relevance Cindy Sheehan had to 90% of all liberals vanished into the ether years ago. For me, it was around the time she had her love-in with Hugo Chavez, whom I despise.
That sound you heard was Rob’s head a-sploding at the thought of a “Leftist” not fulfilling his stereotype.