Donkey. Elephant. Chicken.

DONKEY. ELEPHANT. CHICKEN?
The pacifists stick to their guns, and then some.
http://www.nypress.com/17/27/news&columns/MattTaibbi.cfm

By Matt Taibbi

Well, thank god the Green Party came to its senses last week and nominated
David Cobb to run for the presidency, ending that whole ugly Ralph Nader
episode. I was afraid I might have to make an actual decision before this
upcoming election--but now I can safely be a gutless worm and throw my
vote away to a gang of ferrety, querulous, self-flagellating intellectuals
who learned politics from the '61 Mets.

What a relief! Now, when I have to explain my electoral choices at Upper
West Side cocktail parties in 2005, I can have it both ways! I did--and I
didn't! It's perfect!

For those of you who didn't follow this story, Cobb snatched the Green
Party nomination away from Nader last week largely through his embrace of
the so-called "safe states" strategy, known affectionately in political
circles as the "Crack Suicide Squad" approach to campaigning. In this
scenario, Mssr. Cobb agrees in advance to refrain from campaigning in any
state where the Greens might have a chance to affect the outcome of the
Bush-Kerry race. Bravely, however, he condescends to campaign balls-out in
any state where a vote for the Greens doesn't matter. This is the kind of
political warfare that would have made the Mensheviks proud: whistle-stop
tours full of rowdy Greens singing "Kum Ba Yah" and "Give Peace a Chance"
in front of crowds of two dozen in Cambridge and Portland and Seattle.

There is simply no way to explain the Green Party's decision to nominate
Cobb except as a formal admission/cementing of its national role as a
quixotic affectation for the spineless intellectuals of the
Starbucks-and-SUV set. This is the kind of politics you get when you raise
a generation of people who don't understand the difference between brand
identification and ideological conviction. Much the same way that Burger
King and McDonald's are scrambling to figure out a way that you can be on
the Atkins diet and still spend your money at their vile, ass-inflating
restaurants, Cobb and his party basically figured out a way that Nation
subscribers can wear Green this fall and still keep their friends. They
have turned politics into a shoe and a handbag, a conquered market
demographic.

Vote Green--elect Kerry! Lose weight--drink Lo-Carb Coca-Cola! It's the
same thing, on many different levels. Because both decisions really boil
down to the same insane compromise: trying to fit an instinct to reject
corporate consumer culture into the ruling paradigm of corporate consumer
culture.

Logic dictates: If you want to lose weight, the way to do that is not to
drink the right kind of Coca-Cola. The way to do it is to not drink
Coca-Cola. It doesn't take a genius to figure this out, but it is
apparently beyond the grasp of most Greens.

Similarly, if you don't believe in things like corporate personhood, if
you are against the war in Iraq, if you are against the scourge of
corporate money in politics, if you are in favor of a reduction in
military spending, if you want to abolish the WTO and NAFTA, if you want
to end the export of arms, if you want to break up media monopolies, if
you want to get Channel 1 out of public schools, if you want to end the
targeting of children by corporate advertisers--if you believe any of
these things, or more to the point, if they are embedded in your party
platform, then you can't vote for either the Republicans or the Democrats,
because they're united against you all the way down the line.

I understand the logic of the Greens' decision. I don't agree with the
"anybody but Bush" idea, but I will admit that it is a rationally
defensible position, one that makes sense on some primitive level. What
does not make sense here is why the burden of "anybody but Bush" should
fall on the Green Party. The burden really rests with the Democrats. If
they want to end the Green Party problem, then those votes are there for
the taking. All the Democrats have to do is renounce the WTO and NAFTA,
create a universal healthcare system and slash the defense budget, putting
the proceeds into education and healthcare. Among other things.

But the Democrats won't do that; they're too addicted to corporate money.
They're money junkies. And as anyone who's had any experience with junkies
will tell you, junkies cannot be trusted. They'll say anything you want
them to say about going straight, but at the critical moment, they'll
still steal your television and shoot it straight into their arms.

The only way to deal with a junkie is to change your phone number or, if
you ever find him in your house, chain him to a radiator. If you're
feeling generous, you might consider bringing him hot chocolate and
chicken broth during the three days he spends freaking out and writhing on
your floor. But the one thing you can't do is keep giving him that one
last chance. That only guarantees that he will come back again very soon,
covered with mysterious bruises and needing 200 bucks to pay for--tchya,
right--a Hepatitis shot.

Shit, just look at what's happened since the last election. The junkies
got kicked out of office, which ought to have been a wake-up call, and
what did they do? They went out and almost unanimously voted for the
Patriot Act, the No Child Left Behind Act and two wars.

And now here they come, four years later, and they say: "We need all your
votes right now or we're fucked." Am I the only one laughing?

That said, I understand the Democrats' point of view. I used to take a lot
of drugs, too. And when you take a lot of drugs, absolutely nothing
matters except getting off. In the quest for drugs, any kind of behavior
is excusable. You will be standing with a nice fat gram firmly in your
fist and you'll still stare your best friend right in the eyes and swear
to him that you couldn't find anything, either. And the funny thing is
that later, when he finds out that you've been smacked out watching
Starship Troopers for three days, he won't even be mad. He'll laugh.
Because he would've done the same thing to you.

That's junkie morality. That's why, from the Democrats' point of view, it
makes perfect sense to nominate a gazillionaire missile-humping aristocrat
who'll have more corporate logos pasted on him than a NASCAR driver when
he gets into office. What's the difference? We got off! Why is everybody
complaining?

But this line of reasoning doesn't make sense for the Green Party. If
you're going to suck a cock in a train-station lavatory, you ought to at
least get something for it. But the Greens are going to roll over for John
Kerry, and in the best-case scenario all they're going to get for it is
another insane trade agreement, more troops in Iraq, more corporate
handouts and another my-dog-ate-my-homework healthcare fiasco.

Yes, Bush is a moron and a monster, and it would be better if he were not
around. But America's political problems are bigger than Bush. The real
problem in American politics is the rule of calculation and money over
principle, and until this problem is fixed, the Bushes of the world will
always be with us.

The Greens used to offer a solution. They've now become part of the
problem.
_______________________________________________
heads mailing list
[email protected]
http://ballistichelmet.org/mailman/listinfo/heads/
http://ballistichelmet.org/donate/