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CounterPunch
November
26, 2002
The Return of Al Gore?
Red Nightmare, White Knight, Blue Balls
by ANTHONY GANCARSKI
I guess there's just something in the air that
makes me want to revisit propaganda filmstrips. Recently, I had
occasion to watch "The Red Nightmare", a 1962 short
about a Caucasian gentleman who dreamt about living in a Sovietized
America where folks were gunned down after mock trials for deviationism
and the like. Produced under the auspices of the Department
of Defense, the movie comprised a small part of the Kennedy Administration's
efforts to combat the monolithic Communist conspiracy; it featured
the oracular Jack Webb as on-screen narrator.
The America of the Red Nightmare was
not a friendly place. It featured soldiers standing sentry on
downtown street corners. Entering private homes without consent,
to make searches likewise without invitation or sanction. A militaristic
mien amongst the unarmed citizenry, always looking to report
any outward expression of sedition to the proper authorities.
The Amerika of our hero's troubled sleep bears something of a
resemblance to today's United States -- we expect that our emails
will be read, our keystrokes monitored, our conversations overheard.
If one proposes to his fiancée in the K-MART parking lot,
he can feel secure in the knowledge that video documentation
of that special invitation exists. We buy into the idea that
governmental surveillance is beneficial to our lives, with a
hope that we are being protected from someone.
But exactly who are we being protected
from? Our "fellow Americans", strung out on simple
sugars and complex problem-sets, driven mad by living in a land
locked in thrall to fake teats and real guns? "Islamic
Fundamentalists" such as those thanked in the credits of
RAMBO III -- PIPELINE TO FREEDOM? Lost in the relentless bleating
in the mass media that "everything is different since 9/11"
is the central fact that the War on Terror, the War on Drugs,
and other related product-lines are rooted in the federal government's
own Sovietized dedication to overreach.
Perhaps the central government really
isn't best equipped to address what once were community concerns.
Whatever one's feelings were on, say, Opium Dens or personal
misuse of laudanum, it was once assumed that Washington had no
salient interest in monitoring acts of individual consumption.
Similarly, it was not expected that the Armed Forces were intended
to police oil rigs off the coast of Africa. It is unavoidable
that the exponential rise of the federal government's role in
the lives of Americans is concurrent with an expansionist foreign
policy, an expansionist prison policy, and the purposeful undermining
of social structures.
Never mind all that negativity, though.
The Democrats have a solution to these problems who very well
could be ready to grace us once more with his presence in 2004.
If you believe THE NATION, it's time to get behind a candidate
who is every bit as personable and principled as he is electable.
Yes, that bulwark of acceptable progressivism has yet again joined
the NEW REPUBLIC in getting on the Al Gore bandwagon. As William
Greider puts it, the "winter book has Gore as odds-on favorite
for the '04 nomination and the recent refurbishings look like
a smart play."
Oh, don't laugh. You thought of voting
for him once, maybe. Perhaps you entered the booth but were too
hopped up on painkillers to punch the card correctly. In any
case, THE NATION seems bound and determined to ensure you get
a second opportunity to check the box next to the jackass. Two
recent articles perhaps best illustrate the magazine's dedication
to Candidate Gore and his quest for the presidency.
Ronnie Dugger, who delicately describes
himself as "having played a role" in the political
ascension of Ralph Nader, was able to secure print clearance
for something called "Ralph, Don't Run". Undoubtedly,
this is just one of a series of pieces THE NATION will run in
the next two years; impassioned pleas to various people to step
aside and let a Democrat take a dive in a two-man race, as God
apparently intended.
Dugger makes the expected arguments for
his Judas kiss. What Bush has done in the course of his Terror
War, essentially, is "dramatically worse in degree and kind"
than what Gore may have done. Despite the incumbent party's "empty
campaign" in 2000, when it was running against someone who
was actually making populist arguments, Nader supporters from
that bygone era should argue against their own experience and
work within the Democratic Party, on the proposition that the
Dems will fight for their core convictions this time. Even as
their nominee fought against those same convictions last time,
and so many times before that.
Of course, it's not for Ronnie Dugger
to bring up those minor points of history. Not when he's telling
us that "progressives, and Senator John McCain as well--know
and say that both parties have sold the people and the government
to the highest bidder" as a prelude to telling us that "we
don't have the right" to support Nader "knowing it
will help elect Bush". Talk about your monolithic conspiracies!
Never mind that there are Nader supporters who wouldn't vote
for Gore or his ilk under any circumstances; apparently, those
people don't exist in Ronnie Dugger's political calculus.
Of course, Mr. Dugger would see all kinds
of nifty visions if he had a toke of what his colleague William
Greider was smoking when he wrote "Gore Story". Apparently,
Mr. Greider finds it "promising" that Candidate Gore
has vowed to "speak from the heart and let the chips fall
where they may". In the face of what Ronnie Dugger represents
as an "emergency that has materialized as if in a nightmare",
progressives are to turn their attention to ensuring that single-payer
health insurance is part of the Democratic platform in 2004.
Even as Greider himself concedes that the party's "platforms
are empty because they belong entirely to the insiders."
Left unaddressed by both authors are
numerous key points. Like why anyone should bust his ass for
a Democratic Party that will sell him out, inescapably, for the
interest of one corporate donor or another. Or why we should
expect the current version of Al Gore to be replete with the
heart, conviction, and moral fiber previous versions lacked.
Those questions are not for such as Dugger and Greider -- or
even Eric Alterman -- to consider. The role of such journalists
is a time-honored one. To ask those of us with political consciousness
to blind our eyes for one more election cycle. So that we can
trust their candidates to tell us the truth about what "our"
government is doing to us, one more time, only to find that trust
betrayed so often that the betrayal finally cannot be forgiven.
For every Kucinich in the Democratic Party, there is a Lieberman,
a Bob Graham, or a John Breaux; a shadowy figure of the center
much more willing to start wars than to end them. It is time
for us to break with this Democratic Party, once and for all,
leaving it to its fate. Just as it has left us.
Anthony Gancarski, a regular contributor to CounterPunch, recently
had his work recognized in Utne Reader's "Web Watch".
Email him at Anthony.Gancarski@attbi.com.
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November 23,
2002
Susan Davis
Now About
That Big Stick
Caoimhe Butterly
I Was
Shot While Escorting Jenin's School Children
Kurt Nimmo
Bush &
the Canadians
Chris Floyd
Rough Beast
Slouching
Francis Boyle
On Behalf
of Iraq's 4.5 Million Children
Dave Marsh
Spirit
in the Light
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Rebirth
of Student Protest in Iran
Mark Hand
Dr. Alterman,
I Presume
Ralph Nader
Back Alley
Loan Sharks
Elaine Cassel
The Shameful
Treatment of John Malvo
Adam Engel
& Ian Harvey
Poets'
Basement
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