What Can and Should Be Done?
The Presidency If Lives Matter More Than Ideology
* For any true humanitarian, any true believer in human rights and civil rights, any true believer in the equality of all peoples, any true believers in the principles of Christ and Buddha, Mohammed and Moses, true admirers of Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez, of Bishop Desmond Tutu and Archbishop Oscar Romero, Fathers Bartolome De Las Casas and Antonio de Montesinos, Deganawidah and Vine Deloria. Susan B. Anthony and Betty Friedan, Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, Willy Brandt and Mikhail Gorbachev and Vlacav Havel, Elie Wiesel and Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler and Paul Rusesabagina and Rigoberta Menchu...
* If that is you, why be a partisan party follower? Why makes excuses for wrongs done by those you once voted for? Why devote yourself to any political party, except to hold its feet to the fire and live up to higher principle? Why would any such person of good heart and intentions focus on fluff and ephemera like “leadership qualities” and supposed statesmanship? Why focus on anything but whether people will live or die because of wars threatened or prolonged or avoided or ended, or policies or politics that inflict or relieve human suffering? Why care about anything but these concerns?
* That is the challenge. Get yourself or others to turn away from any abstract principle except what enables humanity to live, and live longer and better. Choose your president and any other leaders, elected or not, based solely on humanitarianism. Throw partisanship and ideology on the garbage heap, and set fire to it.
* For there are too many admirers of abstract principles taken to their extreme with an utter disregard for humanity and basic decency, a lack of principles disguised as intellect. There are too many admirers of Lenin and Mao, Reagan and Nixon, Bismark and Kissinger, too many Crusaders, Communists, Libertarians, fascists, neo conservatives, and fundamentalists of many faiths. Such men are dangerous and not to be trusted, and their followers are variously to be feared, pitied for their gullibility, and hopefully guided away from amoral near insanity.
* Some actions of what is to be done are obvious. Drop any blind allegiances to any party or platform, as already said. Avoid the candidate who tries to make you feel good. The better their skill at it, the more they are to be distrusted. Avoid thinking of their appearance, charisma, likability, or lack of. Forget about ideology, unless it is constrained by something deeper. The only principles worth focusing on are spiritual, ethical, or moral. (Obviously an atheist can be every bit as moral as someone of faith, and rationality can be made to serve either high morality or amorality.) Instead focus on the most important issues, first, last, and only.
* That first most important issue must be war and peace. What will they do about wars? Are they likely to start them? Are they claiming to appear to end them, but really will keep them going? This is what Kerry would have done had he been elected, kept fighting both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is also what Obama would have done had he not been forced out by Afghan, Iraqi, and to a lesser extent American opposition. Many antiwar Democrats keep getting badly used by the party leadership and get nothing for it. Most Republican leaders may be warmongers, but at least they are not hypocritical warmongers as many Democratic leaders are.
* There have been far too many wars in American history. The only just wars the US has ever fought have been just two, the Civil War and World War II. All other US wars were unjust. America should never have gone into these wars. In most cases, aggression and invasions were begun by US elites, often using deception or force against the will of much of the public. In some cases, like World War I and the Korean War, both sides were equally villainous and the US and world would have been better off had the US stayed out. In some cases, like the US-Vietnam War and US-sponsored state terrorism and atrocities in Central America, these wars were not even fought over what elites claimed to be fighting for.
* Almost all presidents have not opposed wars unless forced to by the public. Of more than forty presidents, Carter is the only one in all of US history that can be described as truly antiwar, and that fact explains much of why some despise him. JFK? A hardline anti-Communist who started the Cuban Missile Crisis when he didn't need to. Wilson? His claim of being antiwar fell apart as soon as the flimsy claim of possible war with Mexico threatened his deeply ingrained white supremacy. Then he turned to persecuting those who were antiwar.
* Even the presidents who were the greatest wartime leaders, Lincoln and FDR, were reluctantly going to war, pushed into it by the attacks of irredeemably evil enemies, the Confederacy and the Axis. One could make a good case for military service making it less likely a president will resort to war. Career military officers like Grant, Eisenhower, and Carter tried to end or avoid wars, though Washington was heavy handed in his use of the army. (Jackson was a militia commander, part time except during war.)
* The worst of all presidents on war and peace tend to be those who have marginal military experience, and thus kid themselves they understand war. The most obvious example was dilettante Teddy Roosevelt, who bragged endlessly about a few hours on a charge up a lightly defended hill. Nixon was a liquor officer spending World War II playing poker. Reagan spent World War II in Hollywood, shooting training films. GW Bush spent the US-Vietnam War in an Air National Guard “champagne unit,” one set up to keep wealthy men's sons out of war.
* Americans of good conscience should reject any candidate for president who is any way inclined towards war. Too often those on the left, the center, and even the libertarian minded or pragmatic conservatives have fallen for fear mongering, false absurd claims such as imagining a nation in the Mideast or Latin America can actually be a threat to the US. Remember, the US is essentially unconquerable. Al Qaeda at its worst could only destroy several buildings and planes in America and the people within. The oceans, vast territory, powerful economy and resources, and an absurdly oversized military make the US a fortress beyond the dreams of any emperor or dictator.
* Keep in mind the US spends almost as much on its military as the next top fourteen nations, almost as much as the entire rest of the world. Even were the US to cut that spending in half, it would still be a bloated military budget obviously meant for aggression, not “defense.” Were the obvious lies put out about nations like Iran and Venezuela true, there is still little real threat to the American nation, only to American empire, US corporations, and egos who worship at the altar of power. Even genuine fanatics like North Korea's dictators are only a regional danger, not to the US.
* Yet paradoxically, one must also choose presidents willing to intervene against atrocities. It is to the utter shame of FDR, Nixon, Ford, and Clinton that each of them failed to act when lives could have been saved, up to the hundreds of thousands fairly easily. The one example in recent years of a president acting as decisively and as quickly as needed was Bush Sr., rescuing Kurds at the end of the Gulf War. The reason why is obvious: the media was there. Public protests would not let him turn away. Again, it was not human rights interest which made him act, but political self interest. US troops must only be sent to end the loss of human life, not to preserve profit nor US power nor impose US control posing as “democracy.”
* One of the oldest sayings is that the only two real issues in politics are always war or peace, and guns or butter. As political analysts have put the second question for several decades now, “It's the economy, stupid.” But that question misses the point. Most analysts miss the point because they are focused on who wins elections and not what is just, and because of that horse race mentality much of the public misses the point as well. Whether the economy is doing well is not a reason to vote for or against a president. No president can magically command the economy to do well. Not even a dictator has ever been able to do so.
* The second question should instead be, what has a president done to make the lives of as many people as possible better and not worse? This includes the biggest issue of our time, inequality, for all other economic issues are part of it. Inequality and allowing poverty to continue are inherently immoral. Capitalism is a sin and an inherently irredeemably evil system, no less than Communism or fascism or feudalism or chattel slavery. Capitalism is un-Christian. Any moral person must not not defend it and must work towards its end and replacement.
* Margaret Thatcher, the worst British prime minister of the twentieth century, had the ludicrous slogan TINA, “There Is No Alternative” to capitalism. This is ideological blindness at its most extreme and idiotic. TINA must be answered with T triple A, “There Are Always Alternatives.” Claiming that capitalism or “free markets” are the natural state is what scholars refer to as the naturalizing tendency. Because capitalism is such a pervasive powerful system, some assume it must be natural and never ending. The same absurd argument was made about slavery only 150 years ago and about keeping women inferior only 50 years ago.
* Actually capitalism is less than 400 years old, by some scholars' definition less than 250 years. Feudalism was around two to three times that long. In some parts of the US (on Indian reservations) capitalism is less than 80 years old. There are alternatives to capitalism in Scandinavia and Bolivarian nations in Latin America, mixed economies. There are even alternatives here in the US, those same Indian reservation economies that turn capitalism into something quite different. On reservations, citizens turn all their shares over to tribal government, which in turn provides all to their citizens as needed or possible. It is far from perfect, but most of its imperfections come from the infection of capitalism and Natives learning outsiders’ greed. But it is a system no Wall Street broker would live by. Neither would they care for the circular, mesh, or sharing economy movements, still in their infancy.
* If the moral argument will not persuade you, perhaps simple practicality, self interest, and even survival will change your mind. Inequality caused both the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession of 2007-12. Inequality caused both crises for obvious reasons. When an economy depends on wealthy elites buying and consuming, it is much more vulnerable than depending on the general public buying and consuming. Not only that, the nature of market trading has become more untenable, and international markets are little understood even by economists, bankers, and brokers, in their more honest moments. The image of the trader on the floor of the stock exchange is less and less true all the time. Now most exchanges are done online faster than any human could, at times millions of trades per second. This is inherently unstable and dangerous. Much like the nuclear arms race was and like environmental crises still are, financial crises are Frankensteins. The crises of capitalism have the power to outright destroy their creators. The second great issue of American politics is thus not guns versus butter, but trying to keep butter from being spoiled by those who sell both.
* Not only is capitalism immoral and dangerous, it is run by sociopaths and psychopaths. This is not hyperbole, but science. One study found CEOs as the most psychopathic profession, followed by lawyers, media personalities, and salesmen. (It may be of interest that teachers and artists have among the fewest psychopaths, alongside doctors and nurses.) The documentary The Corporation took a look at the personalities of corporations. If one truly regards corporations as people, their personalities are clinically sociopathic. Capitalism, its leaders, and advocates have no empathy for others. To succeed in capitalism one must be amoral and often destructive.
* Folded within that second great issue of inequality is every attempt to soften the brutality of capitalism, the everyday abuses anyone not of the elites must face. These include issues like the minimum wage, union rights, anti poverty, public relief/welfare, unemployment, and that badly misused bait and switch issue, taxes. For most Americans who are not part of the elite, the tax issue is simple: Make the elites pay theirs and quit shifting the burden onto everyone else. Why do most Americans pay more Social Security tax than income tax, and the wealthy almost no SS tax? Why are most Americans paying high sales taxes but Wall Street brokers do not pay any taxes on stock trading? In most other nations, they do. In a just nation, a stock market trade would be taxed the same or more than your groceries.
* Almost every issue beyond these two main issues, beyond the huge exception of individual freedoms (e.g. anti discrimination or censorship), is trivial. Many of these supposed issues exist only as Weapons of Mass Distraction. They are propaganda tools, designed to cause confusion, and most of them deserve as little attention from us as contrived controversies by pop stars to sell records.
* Culture wars are probably the biggest set of issues that are a huge waste of time, aside from conspiracy theories. It is harder to think of an issue as petty or as overly and needlessly emotional than posting the Ten Commandments on a courthouse or whether someone says Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays. Culture wars and conspiracy theories both serve the same purpose for elites. They distract people from doing things that might actually make a difference.
* Combined with that, a fairly simple formula:
* 1. Focus on the big two issues.
* 2. Ignore the distractions of culture wars, conspiracy theories, and surface issues like a politician's charisma or likability. What else must be done?
* 3. Organize and work with others. The fiercely individualistic might not like to hear this, but relying entirely on one's self is isolating. Find others to work with. Often my students ask for advice on how to bring social change, and my standard advice is; find one issue, one you care passionately about; join those already working on it; push, push hard again, push harder yet again, as persistently and creatively as you can. Then be prepared for it to maybe take a long time. If change were easy, someone would have already done it. Susan B. Anthony fought for women's right to vote her whole life and did not live to see it. Yet we rightly honor her.
* Of course, one must be informed. Choose your sources carefully. As a general rule of thumb, look for a university website first, or news analysis by professors. Professors can be fired for lying online or anywhere else, unlike every last commentator on news shows who often are rewarded for lying the most persistently, loudly, or outrageously. News corporations of any political bent cannot be trusted, not for their politics, but because their first aim is profit. Rely on nonprofit sources, those that often are licensed under creative commons, not copyrighted. Do not rely on or even listen to or watch any political ad, period. One of the most hopeful signs of the last election was that the public ignored ads. It was the most expensive political campaign in history. Yet the ads did not change people's minds. Opinions barely moved. Most people hit the mute button or clicked “skip ad.”
* What about third parties? Some are among the worst possible choices for president, including the likes of racists like Buchanan and Larouche, the openly amoral like Ron Paul, conspiracy theorists like Ross Perot and Cynthia McKinney, or celebrity stunt candidates like Roseanne Barr. Even if the candidates were better, the system is a two party monopoly, one they will never voluntarily give up. A third party may win city council or state congressman, or even Vermont senator. But historically, the only chance they have at president is when established candidates switched from the two main parties.
* What if there are no good candidates? There is nothing wrong with not voting. If both are equally bad, do not waste your energy and time by endorsing either. Voting is literally the least you can do anyway, in both senses of the phrase. It is a minor thing at most, a start not an end, not a magic wand, and far from the most important thing. Far more important is using your voice to speak out, your volunteer efforts to organize, or simply being a good person who helps others. But at times one must vote for the least worst, if one is certain the other would be far more disastrous. (Of course such a judgment must be measured, based on facts, and not partisanship or hyperbolic claims.)
* Part of what this book is about is not just choosing a president. It is also about not being overly reliant upon presidents for your salvation, or indeed any leader. This book has tried to show why such hero worship is almost always misplaced. Even the best presidents such as Lincoln and Carter made several huge humanitarian mistakes. It's also worth noting, both were elected as flukes, Lincoln because of electoral splits and Carter because of public disgust over recent scandals. Candidates for president are filtered out by wealthy elites long before any of us get a chance to choose them, and we must be honest about the system we live under. Regardless of who gets into office, they will not do what is right unless the public makes them.
* I hope this guide was of interest and use to you. I welcome your comments and input. I make no claim to being anything but as flawed as we all are, and correct any errors made.
* presidentsbodycounts@yahoo.com