 I
listened this morning to CBC's coverage of the Iowa caucuses, and was
struck by the dismal mood of Democratic Party voters. The election is,
after all, theirs to lose. But there was an overwhelming sense, voiced
by the supporters of the party's three leading candidates, that nothing they did really mattered.
Ending
the war, restoring civil liberties, closing the torture prisons,
restoring integrity to government and the rule of law, getting serious
about global warming, getting social and environmental laws and
regulations actually enforced, and strengthening them, solving the
health care and education crises, restoring the US' international
reputation, grappling with the horrendous and dangerous fiscal and
trade deficits, reining in corporatist excesses -- the voters don't
seem to believe any of the
candidates, despite their rhetoric and regardless of the strength of
their mandate, will be able to do anything on any of these issues.
"So why," the CBC reporter asked, "even bother to vote?"
"We can always hope," the candidates' supporters replied, glumly.
Yet they didn't seem very hopeful. Dennis Kucinich, the candidate who just about everyone who's studied the positions
seems to agree is the candidate most in touch with the progressive
electorate, has been written off as 'unelectable'. Why? Because he
speaks truth to power? Because he's not tall and handsome enough? Or is
it, perhaps, because people know the corporatist establishment would
pull out all the stops, and billions of dollars, to buy the election
for his political opponent if he were nominated?
Even John Edwards, who seems to have acquired some balls recently,
is getting the Democrats nervous because he's willing to say that
corporatists have far too much power and will keep using it until it's
taken away by force. To many that makes him, like Kucinich,
'unelectable'. Entrance polls today suggest he'll finish third in Iowa.
The
US has had a Democratic congress for three years now, and they haven't
been able to do much more than posture. Their record on reform of
elections and corporate influence in the political process has been
dismal. The war goes on, with a 'surge' even, bankrolled mindlessly by
the congress. Hillary Clinton is so hawkish that she sounds like a Bush
Republican. Barack Obama is saying nothing, except that his is a
campaign of -- you guessed it -- hope.
Gerrymandering, the disgraceful US partisan redrawing of electoral
boundaries which virtually guarantees election of the incumbent party
and which no candidate has vowed to change, makes it a waste of time to
vote for representatives in most US states.
Back-room dealing,
pork-barreling, overt corruption, non-enforcement of the laws of the
land -- this is the Bush legacy of 'lowered expectations', but it's a
legacy that dates back decades. There hasn't been a truly progressive
US president in decades, although there has been plenty of progressive
rhetoric. The Clinton/Gore presidency was a huge disappointment to
progressives -- if they couldn't reform anything, how likely is it that anyone else can? Lower expectations enough and Learned Helplessness
sets in -- we 'learn' from propaganda and bitter experience that
there's nothing we can do, so we stop trying. But we don't give up
hoping.
Americans are the poster children for learned
helplessness -- most evangelical religions, so popular there, are
models for cultivating learned helplessness -- God and the Preacher
will look after you, so you need do nothing except confess your
inadequacies and await salvation from the powerful. But we in other
countries shouldn't be smug. I wrote yesterday about how addicted we all
are to modern communication, energy transmission and transportation
infrastructure. But we aren't weaning ourselves off this dependency. We
don't know what to do. We can't help ourselves.
It may be hopeless, but we still hope. What else can we do?
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
