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CounterPunch
September
23, 2002
Being Green
in Montana
Peace in Our Time
by Steven Hendricks
My vote's more important than yours. Sorry, but
I got it coming to me. I wake up every day to a governor who
calls herself "the lapdog of industry" and a U.S. Senator
who calls Arabs "ragheads" and a state House that wants
to abolish education-not just public education, I mean education-and
a state Senate that still loves electricity dereg and
a state AFL-CIO that toadies to Republicans and winters that
really suck.
Plus, before Montana I gave ten years
to Texas, where every vote left of the Birchers is compost. This
country owes me.
It's not my fault I'm more important
than you. It was the Framers who gave 900,000 Montanans and 34
million Californians two Senators a lick. You do the math.
As to the Framers' foresight, recall
that the Golden State gave us Nixon and Reagan and wanted
to give us Bob Dornan till we wised up and that Montana hasn't
given us anyone who isn't safely behind bars or holed up in a
really out-of-the-way cabin.
My civic burden is particularly great
this year with our senior U.S. Senator, Max Baucus, a titular
Democrat, up for review and the whole damned Senate, which means
the whole damned U.S. government, which means the whole damned
world, a twitch from being repo'd by the GOPihad.
You may think me biased against Republicans,
but I'm ecumenical. I don't like Republicans of either party.
This is hard on my Democratic friends,
especially those who live in places where you can get Indian
food and who nonetheless envy us rubes every other November,
when they tell me to cast my 38 votes for a Republican who hangs
a "D" after his name. They just adore that I'm voting
Green this fall.
I don't want more hate mail from the
coast-though if you send it, perhaps you could include a passable
chicken tikka masala--so believe me when I say I really wanted
to vote for Senator Ex-Lax. I have always said Ex-Lax Max (what
goes in him firm comes out mushy) was unfairly nicknamed. He
is a man of principle, the principle being his election. He got
to the upper chamber in 1978 beating up on incumbent "Panama
Paul" Hatfield (D) for giving away Mom and Apple Pie with
the Canal. It's hard to top that kind of debut, but Ex-Lax has
tried. Recently he's put the skids on ergonomic workstations
and cleaner smokestacks. He's a sucker for any regressive tax
that can be pawned off as growth. He's damned sure ranchers are
being overcharged for grazing federal land at dimes an acre.
His faith in NAFTA, WTO, IMF, and the World Bank are pure. For
sport, he gut-shoots bills that would protect Montana's last
wildernesses. True, he holds the marathon-racing record for the
U.S. Senate, but have you seen Jesse Helms in shorts?
Fact is, I just couldn't resist our Green
candidate, who, let me soothe you, is bats. He makes H. Ross
Perot look stable, and he makes H's alzheimatic running mate,
Admiral James Stockdale, sound like Chrysti the Wordsmith. He
has held one office, delegate to our 1972 constitutional convention,
where he submitted more proposals than any other delegate, all
rejected. He's pro-gay but anti-choice. He wants a revitalized
merchant marine. He wants mandatory voting. He wants custody
of his toddler; what 78-year-old wouldn't? Best of all, he's
from Butte--think Flint without curb appeal--which is indictable
in most jurisdictions.
"But he's a lawyer," a supporter
once pled, which reminded me of the legal seminar my wife took
where two troglodytic Montana barristers asked a third if the
topic, Marbury v. Madison, was "that cattle rustling case."
'Course, y'all already know Bob Kelleher
from his 1976 Presidential race, when he stumped for parliamentary
government with the promise to be the last U.S. President--not
a bad idea really. Don't hold Bob against the Montana Greens.
For one thing, they'd give him to your state for the asking.
For another, if his politics were Right instead of Left, he'd
be governor.
As for me, I love him. I don't love him
because he's so deep-fried as to be fun and harmless.
Just the opposite. I love him because seeing as how Ex-Lax's
election may be close, Bob makes the message of a vote for him
real clear. (Since some Democrats may still be reading, I'll
spell it out: If folks like me will pull a lever for Bob, the
Ds got a gully-washer in their cellar.)
I know, I know protest votes are so twentieth
century, especially now that King George is on the hobby
horse. It's not the Ds got problems, it's me's got problems,
my D advisers tell me. The advisers are all earnest and have
good teeth and last held a minimum wage job in kindergarten and
can get an endoscopy even if the HMO denies coverage and don't
live near a clearcut or in a toxic waste dump or in sight of
anything resembling Section 8, unless you count their federally
subsidized mortgage, which would be as unfair as counting their
federally subsidized college loans. The advisers can list the
costs of losing the Senate like stocks in their favorite mutual.
(Newsflash, dearies: a D-owned Senate confirmed Clarence Thomas.)
And they agonize so about all the little policy concessions
The Party has made in defense of civilization as we know it-a
little welfare dropped here, a little estate tax axed there,
a little über-war and Constitution-mulching which (shocking!)
nary a leader of The Party will oppose, a little laxity with
fuel economy that will melt Sweden, a little defense of marriage
and of the Pledge and of any soft fascism guised as theism-you
know the roll call. Funny so few of The Party's rightward staggers
hit the padded classes loyal to It. Connection? Nah. Anyhoo,
what are the loyalists to do? The Party says there's a madman
out there, variously a Jersey accountant or a Topeka soccer mom
or an Orange County hardhat who gives a rat's rear for naught
but who'll chuck more mental patients in the gutter so he can
get $10.30 off his 1040. Now, I say *those cats* got problems,
but The Party says we can't try to change their minds with child
care or health care or union protections (sooo FDR!), and we
can't jujitsu the Rs' class warfare to mobilize the gazillions
of nonvoting poor (sooo incompatible with pâté at
$1,000 a head), so we Ds gotta be more like 'em, gotta give a
little more to the Rs each day-else real mayhem will break out.
If the strategy sounds familiar, so might the name Neville Chamberlain.
Don't mind us nutters if amid the applause for Munich we ask
The Party in the only unmoneyed language It still understands
to put up a fight before the Luftwaffe is at Fisherman's Wharf.
Steve Hendricks
has been published in the Boston Globe, DoubleTake, Seattle Weekly,
and other periodicals. He is working on a book about survival
on a Montana Indian reservation. He can be reached at: hendricksmt@qwest.net
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September
21 / 22, 2002
Alexander
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An Entire
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Tom Gorman
The Press & Sabra and Shatila
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By the Hand of the Father
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Advice from a Polemicist
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Greed Without Limits
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Why Bush
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