NORTH COAST TIMES EAGLE, OCTOBER 2006
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Asia and other parts of what until recently was regarded as
the Third World.
The Democratic Party leadership chased its fleeing
whites into the conservative vice of the Republicans and left
behind the mass majority of its rank and file. As a result the
two parties appear to converge into a single interest group
with a symbiotic sameness and respond to an ever narrower
affluent and conservative constituency. The real question is
not about a third party but creating a truly second party.
A kinder assessment of the Democratic Party might
be that it is moribund, that it must acknowledge it has failed
as an alternative to the GOP since Nixon transfigured southern
Democrats into Republicans. The response of Democrats
has been to imitate the Republicans, which characterized
the Clinton years. The Democrats, like the Whigs of the 1850s
(who reformed into the Republican Party), are a dying party —
yet hopes that a vigorous new party will reborn is exceedingly
dismal.
The degeneration of the Democratic Party leaves a
black hole at the center of American politics. The Party's own
center has fallen out, deserted to the Republican Superparty,
leaving disenfranchised minorities clinging to a disintegrated
corona. Perhaps its ruins should be abandoned, the surviving
fragments reformed into a multitude of parties that might at
least reflect the disparate new majorities that have moved
into the American electorate but so far have not gained real
or even representative power.
The creation of a new political party or a spawn of
parties might have disruptive effects, a worst case scenario
being a civil war such as occurred when the Republicans
replaced the moribund Whig Party and happened in Russia's
“New Republics" whose multiple births ripped apart the Soviet
womb. The risks here at home are tremendous, yet the Ameri­
can political apparatus needs real change which is not being
provided by an antiquated two party system that represents
only a privileged minority.
Indeed, we must have international political parties
if we are to challenge a global economy dominated by amalga­
mated megacorporations which are fundamentally interlocking
commercial empires that command vast wealth, capacity and
political influence. Parochial politics are inadequate to the global
power structures that are forming beyond the shores of the USA
yet are dominated by its economic and military power. In a world
community, grassroots political parties as well as labor unions,
medical/health and environmental organizations must think and
act globally for the globalization of political power, in particular
for the representation of the vast and rapidly expanding global
underclass being created by capitalization and consolidation of
corporations.
The paradox is that the USA simultaneously acts
worldwide as the New Rome, intruding incessantly into global
political, economic, and military affairs while arrogantly (and
belligerently) rejecting global influence In its own internal affairs.
One opinion originating in Europe but perhaps held all over the
world is that American Presidential elections in particular should
be a worldwide suffrage.
Republican ads are once again calling their Democrat
opponents traitors, a vile form of campaigning. The people who
have highjacked the Republican Party the past six years have
seized the low ground and intend to keep it, accusing anyone
who opposes them as betraying the country. If indeed the word
traitor is to be used, it would more likely be on target to accuse
those who are dismantling the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,
and desecrating the culture of democracy through deceit and
fear, forcing their dictatorial agenda over the dead bodies of
American soldiers and Afghani and Iraqi civilians.
It should seem odd the political party that is determinedly
rolling back democracy and contemptuously overruling the Cons­
titution in its double-goal of dictatoralizing the Presidency and
instituting one-party rule, is amassing majority votes on computer
voting machines that are not only contracted by pro-Republican
corporations, but do not allow verification because of so-called
“proprietary" concerns, and have no paper backup.This begs the
question: how many more shams of elections do Americans
have to endure before they demand the legitimacy of their votes,
or will they, as the GOP must certainly desire, give up and stop
voting?
There is strong evidence that the country is indeed
conservative, slow to change and in constant reaction to it.
The problem is that blacks and the poor (which includes all
other racial minorities in the U.S. as well as a significant number
of women) are shoved out by the rightward politicians and party
hacks and they drop away, either too disillusioned or too angry
to register a vote (or are cheated of their votes when they do
vote). So a radically neoconservative minority rules in its claim
to be the majority.
Democrats have allowed themselves to be bullied
and weaseled every time the Constitution is assaulted by being
accused of being “soft on terrorism," and “coddling terrorists"
when they resist, and instead of defending the fundamentals
of American democracy they too often submit to the cynical
hypocrisy that endeavors to neuter them.
A regime that makes war on the basis of lies, that terror
bombs civilians and tortures captives is capable of nearly any­
thing, even subverting the rights and liberties of its own people
from whom it conceals information, deceives incessantly, and
spies upon with extra-legal powers it demands for itself.
The sinister paradox about the upcoming election
is that Republicans are desperate to win and probably must
attempt to steal it to prevent investigations into their stealing
the previous elections — as well as other chicaneries such
as virtually purging the Constitution, deceiving the nation into
invading another nation, secretly subverting the very govern­
mental organization they have sworn to uphold. Their premise
that one political party can take complete power and shut out
every other political option in the belief that only one ideology
is right is the most dangerous aspect of current politics in the
United States.
Our ancestors who wrote the Constitution following
their revolution two centuries ago were personally aware that
governments swallow the rights of their citizens and that the
natural inclination of authority is to concentrate and perpetuate
its power by any means. Reflexively, government subverts the
rights of all but its ruling classes, even if the system originated to
provide rights and liberties to the governed. The intent of the
Constitution simply makes it more difficult for the leaders of
government to make the rest of us so completely their subjects
The natural tendency of government is to rule in its own
interest, usually to the detriment of the people who live under its
control. Our government is like every other in that it is opposed
to the freedom of its subjects and wishes for them to serve and
obey. The men (and women) who founded this government
recognized this aspiration of government and more remarkably
restrained their own ambitions by setting up a form of govern­
ment that had as its primary authority the subjects it governed.
The contradiction has worked imperfectly, but it has worked for
the most part. Even at present, with people in power who want it
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TERRY LABAN
all, the system's checks frustrate them. It is the responsibility of
the people to always contain the power of their government,
which without that restraint will continue to take power away from
the people. The government has taken much power for itself
these past two centuries and 30, some of it for the betterment
of the people, such as civil rights laws; but much of it against
the people, such as the rule of fear, secrecy and doubt that has
permeated our society from the beginning.
The precept of government is to rule, and it is a para­
site. It must by the very nature of implied authority feed upon
and subtract the political freedoms and rights of those it rules.
The Bush administration has been the most persistently virulent
in its contempt for political and religious freedom and in with­
holding information to weaken the participation of the nation's
population in decisions that affect everyone. It has denied
political respect or support to any ideas in general that are not
in agreement with its dangerously narrow and aggressive view
of the world. It is also the most secretive administration in our
history.
Censorship of opinion and expression did not begin with
the administration of George W. Bush, nor will it end when Bush
and his rat-pack cabal are gone and considered a dangerous
episode in our history. This administration is the product of
advertising, or adheres to its principles, that truth is not neces­
sary, only the appearance of truth — or more pertinently, that a
lie told often enough and by enough people is accepted as truth;
the agreed upon fiction that masquerades as reality to distort and
manipulate circumstances and people, and eventually history.
The assumption of political and personal freedom is that
the average human being is intelligent and inspired by compas­
sion and that most people will think and act reasonably most of
the time. That belief is in general conflict with the assumption of
government that the citizenry is unintelligent, primitive and brutal
and must be shielded from its own prevarcarious nature. The
nature of authority demands that no one grow up. Governments
encourage an immature citizenry that must be told what to do
and whose only freedom is the freedom to obey.
Freedom implies a mature citizenry. To be free and
remain that way is a large responsibility and many people do not
want it. Freedom is an abstract. We are never far from fear or the
possibility of death or injury. We must work to feed, clothe and
shelter ourselves and our families, and always there is the fear
that it will be taken away. Freedom insists upon the value of the
individual but the ever increasing complexity of our society is
constructed upon aggregates and masses and makes less
valuable the usefulness and contributions of each of us Our
thinking and sense of self-worth are profoundly affected An
individual and ultimately aggregate sense of personal and
political helplessness sets in.
Our current government perpetuates political and
Constitutional paralysis. It attempts to make itself seemingly
omnipotent to such a degree that any dissent to its policies,
actions or decrees is treated as treachery, or at least as
unpatriotic. If someone disagrees with our bellicose and
insensitive President or tries to curb the power of the Pentagon,
that person is treated as a terrorist; such is the noxious decline
of our national dialogue. These policies are rapidly changing
our nation into an autocracy. The renascent of the military is
especially ominous, not entirely for the threat of perpetual war
or the increased possibility of nuclear holocaust but for the
obliteration of civil law and the assumption of military rule which
considers citizens only as utilitarian and economic objects of no
personal worth, independence or democratic rights.
We are a democracy because it is necessary The few
basic rights and liberties we have inherited have been sought
by the mass of humanity for millennia Citizen sovereignty
independence and equitable justice do not come easily and
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never stay very long without constant nurturing. Our freedoms
are in essence our obligations as well — to preserve them for
our descendants by not allowing the avaricious among us to get
their hands on our political rights and liberties.
It is exactly that which our ancestors attempted to break
away from, though of course some of them wanted only to sub­
stitute themselves as the local authority in the absence of the
king's power.
The rule of law is a recognition that some of us will
cheat, rob, murder and otherwise make life uncomfortable for
the rest. A majority desires protection from the psychopathy of a
malicious minority. For exactly the same purpose, to protect us
from predatory or cruel government, political freedom has been
the law of this nation. A government of the people is assumed to
also be a government for the people. So it is entrusted to act in
the people’s behalf, to correct the excesses of despotic and
unprincipled private interests, in contrast to the current adminis­
tration’s avowed principle of corporate rule and privilege. Bush is
wrong when he says that a free government must be free from
government. In his dismantling of government protections he has
simply switched it from acting as a benefactor and protector of
civil rights and liberties to its more ominous nature as military
policeman.
Freedom and dominance are in direct conflict. To
dominate outside an area of its authority a government must
first begin subjugation within its rule in the Homeland, and any
opinion or movement that challenges the views or purposes of
those in power is generally isolated and suppressed.
The war in Iraq is an example of cities and communities
all over America that are denied any measurable voice in
decisions that directly affect them.
The “war on terror" sets up American citizens as
possible targets and casualties even though we go about our
daily lives hardly involved in a war except that we are as guilty
and innocent, and as vulnerable, as the “collateral casualties"
inflicted in our name with or without our consent or approval.
Periods of national crisis reveal the real impotency of
average citizens who have very little input other than through
petitioning as supplicants rather than as the true “deciders” —
we are relegated to letters or e-mail to elected representatives
whose interests are at the very least distracted by powerfully
unelected elites who more often than not initiated the crises.
9/11 precipitated a crisis of democracy that might well
be more momentous and prolonged than the so-called war on
terrorism. Civil liberties are dramatically threatened and average
citizens have little to say about it. Ordinary people are rendered
impotent. Most citizens are at the bottom of the crisis and are
affected every day by the consequences — social services are
withdrawn as well as public health because tax money is being
diverted toward war, and of course to the corporations of the
military/industrial mafia that unabashedly profit from making war
possible and continuous. The USA Patriot Act that was rapidly
cobbled together in the wake of 9/11 with hardly a whimper in
protest by Congress circumvents and erodes Constitutional
rights and liberties that are essential to democracy.
The societal ceiling is cracking over our heads and it is
up to us — common ordinary citizens who live in neighborhoods
and communities who are ultimately responsible to prevent the
sky from falling down around us. Individual voices are not nearly
enough; they are lost, diluted, neglected — certainly diffused
Only through groups, associations and political parties is there
any sense of personal influence, yet with each successive level
even that is diluted and essentially marginalized to evaporation.
A level to reflect the personal voice must be closer to home, a
community voice.
Cities and communities are not simply parochial entities
concerned only with schools, sewers, streets and strip malls.
They are also integral parts of a political whole and represent the
American citizen at home and work
Cities and communities must be actively engaged in
the critical and urgent national dialogue of terrorism, war and
the dangerous abrogation of civil liberties in the name of national
emergency. Every city and community certainly has a myriad of
local issues and problems that demand attention and resolution,
but they are secondary to the current assault upon the nation's
fundamental freedoms and Constitutional rights by avaricious
national leaders transgressing their sworn duty to uphold them.
It is crucial that cities and small communities question and
influence state and national policies that ultimately affect the
lives, liberties and fortunes of their citizens
As everybody knows, “All politics are local."