Two Civilized Men Among the Barbarians

http://www.blackcommentator.com/58/58_cover_dems.html

The character of much of what passes for debate in the United States
signals that the nation has become the moral equivalent of Tobacco
Road, a backwater of civilization.

Humankind has traveled a long journey since the time when some folks
walked out of Africa, and others decided to stay. Yet at the American
center of the Earth's material wealth and military power, human
progress has been short-circuited - smothered - by a ruling group bent
on dragging the rest of the species down a social and moral dead end.

This hyper-aggressive group maintains an iron grip on both the
mechanisms and the terms of civil discussion, retarding the rest of
the citizenry's ability to think and speak like other humans
privileged to live in the developed countries. American political
conversation is becoming nonsensical, divorced from the very purposes
of life.

Measured by the most minimal standards of the modern, industrial
world, only two of ten Democratic candidates for President passed
civilized muster at the September 25 debate in New York City: Rep.
Dennis Kucinich and Rev. Al Sharpton. The rest of the field, to
varying degrees, fail to even comprehend modern assumptions of what it
is to be human, living among other humans.

The civilizational divide

Why do we work? What is the purpose of industry and commerce? Do other
peoples have rights that stronger nations are bound to respect? Only
Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton appear prepared to take part in the
evolving global discussion on the central issues facing humanity,
Americans included. Other nations have begun fashioning answers to
these questions, to the moral, material and physical betterment of
their inhabitants. They are reaping the benefits of a long and
sometimes bloody debate over humans' obligations to one another, and
the proper uses of wealth and power.

In the U.S., Sharpton and Kucinich must shout to even broach these
subjects. Kucinich is labeled a kook when he argues for "health care
for people, not for profit" - although this is the premise on which
all the other wealthy societies begin their discussions of health
matters. Rev. Sharpton's platform calls for a constitutional amendment
guaranteeing quality health care as a right, and seeks universal,
single-payer coverage in the interim. "I would rather have no bill and
fight for something real," he told the Pace University crowd.

The mind-shrinking corporate media snicker and sneer, focusing instead
on the other candidates' partial schemes based on the concept of
"affordability" - barbaric constructions in which the lives of fellow
citizens are endlessly devalued. (Candidate Carol Moseley-Braun favors
single-payer national health care, but reveals her barbaric side in
other matters - casting doubt on the moral grounding of all her
positions, as we will explain, below.)

The "top tier" is oblivious to the obscenity of their Social Security
retirement age debate. Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean is in
trouble for having once suggested that the age be raised to 70, to
ensure the continued "solvency" of the system. However, Dean's sin is
worse than the rest of the media-favored pack only in degree - they
all discuss Social Security retirement in insurance company actuarial
terms, morbid calculations that fail entirely to address the basic
questions: why are people expected to work hard for much of their
lives, and what is the value of life after one's time in the workforce
is over? These are the logical, natural and civilized questions with
which societies grapple once there is enough wealth to provide
acceptable standards of food, clothing, education and shelter for all.
It is at this point that human populations can envision the larger
possibilities of existence, as individuals, as nations, and as a
species.

Western Europeans treat time not spent on the job very seriously - and
have arranged a social contract that finds many of them in the
Caribbean for long stretches of the summer. They debate ways to
implement national goals for progressively shorter work weeks and
earlier retirement ages, so that the collective nation can enjoy its
wealth and become - more interesting! The United States is even richer
than Western Europe, but the debate over Social Security is confined
to formulas that leave concentrated wealth untouched. In this sense,
U.S. Social security is not a "national" program, at all, since the
futures of citizens who have outlived their usefulness to employers is
not financed as if it were a key component of the common, national
mission. Longer life spans, the greatest benefit that society can
convey to its members - and the reason humans band together to create
societies - becomes a "problem," or so it is treated by the leading
voices of the two American mass political parties.

Dennis Kucinich promises to restore the retirement age to 65. He is,
at least, peeking through the window at civilization.

Non-thought processes

Americans have been trained to cheer when the stock market goes up.
They don't know why. Nowadays, the closing bell on Wall Street is
likely to be tolling for their jobs. No matter - the Pavlovian
conditioning is general: up is good. "Trade" has also become a
positive mantra to be chanted rather than debated, even when what is
being traded away is millions of jobs and the industrial capacity of
the nation. None of the top tier Democrats can find the words to
directly address the vast dislocations and suffering that other,
corporate Americans are inflicting on their fellow citizens and the
world. Better to bash China, instead.

Kucinich is made to seem hallucinatory, when he points out that U.S.
government policy is facilitating the impoverishment of America. "We
need to cancel NAFTA, cancel the WTO, which makes any changes in
NAFTA.illegal." But even "staunchly" pro-union Rep. Dick Gephardt
cannot bring himself to "challenge the underlying structure of our
trade," as Kucinich puts it. Dean and Kerry make just enough noises
about workers rights and such to convince wishful thinkers that they
are really listening.

Rev. Sharpton also opposes NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. "I
disagreed with NAFTA when Clinton was in, and I think that we have
come to see that that disagreement was correct," said Sharpton,
following up on Kucinich's broadside. "I think that we cannot have
trade policy that overlooks labor, overlooks workers' rights,
overlooks environmental concerns. We can't act like just because
something is trade, that also that makes it right. African-Americans
are here on a bad trade policy."

Now that's breaking it down in civilized language. The slave trade was
fantastically lucrative, a centuries-long commerce that shaped every
society in the Americas south of Canada and allowed Europe to assume
its unnatural position of dominance in the world. "I'm here on a bad
trade policy," said Rev. Al. "So just because it's trade, doesn't mean
that it is good and it is something that we should support."

The largely conservative audience and the Wall Street Journal and CNBC
hosts got a good laugh out of that one. No doubt they considered Rev.
Sharpton's remarks gritty and homespun, a kind of comic relief. In
fact, he is by far their superior in both intelligence and
civilization.

Trade in what, and on what terms? Business and commerce for whose
benefit? These are the burning questions, the stuff of national and
global debate - except in the United States, where substantive
discussion is confined to the bottom tier of the out-of-power party.
(Were conservative Democrats in power, as in the Clinton years, we
would likely hear even fewer challenges to "underlying structures.")

"No choice" candidates

Printer friendly version of "Bush Flag Covers All" Cartoon

Wars, and war profiteers, require money. No funding, no war.
Occupations can be even more expensive. The entire cast of characters
running for the Democratic nomination - including Lieberman - now
claims to be opposed in some fashion to Bush's Iraq policy. But only
two propose that Bush's policy be de-funded.

Howard Dean: ".even though I did not support the war in the beginning,
I think we have to support our troops."

Joe Lieberman: ".we have no choice."

Bob Graham: ".whatever is required for the troops in Iraq."

John Edwards: "I will vote for, what's necessary to support the
troops."

"We have no choice" is also the Kerry and Clark position. Thus, the
entire top tier sees no alternative to funding a policy that they so
loudly oppose. They denounce the madness - and then hand the madman a
check.

Kucinich: "I will not vote for the $87 billion. I say bring the troops
home unequivocally."

Sharpton: "I would unequivocally vote no. Real patriots don't put
troops in harm's way."

It is eminently logical to withhold funding from adventures that one
opposes. In a sane society, Kucinich and Sharpton would be thought
neither courageous nor kooky for following the logic of their stated
positions. However, voices of reason and logic are forced to the
margins of American discourse.

Possibly hoping to somehow escape from marginality, Carol Mosley-Braun
revealed that in the final analysis she, too, is a creature of
barbarism. Moseley-Braun has opposed the war for nearly as long and as
fervently as Kucinich and Sharpton but, like Lot's wife, at the
critical moment she looks back - and is lost.

Braun: ".it is absolutely, I think, critical that we not cut and run."
In the end, the former U.S. Senator cannot escape the imperatives of
Manifest Destiny. By her moral compass, demonstrations of U.S. resolve
are more important than other people's national sovereignty. The Black
woman from Chicago cannot imagine that she is talking like a
barbarian, that such patterns of thought are the principal threats to
the survival of the human race - in short, that she is warring against
civilization.

Seconds later, Moseley-Braun waged war against English as a coherent
language: ".it's going to be important for us to come up with the
money to make certain that our young men and women and our reputation
as leaders in the world is not permanently destroyed by the folly of
preemptive war." It's not so much Moseley-Braun's fault that this
sentence makes no sense. The logic of barbarism does not mesh with the
realities of an inter-dependent globe. It becomes difficult to
communicate in civilized company - the essence of George Bush's
problem at the UN, last month.

Civilized language

Americans think they are guardians of civilization. In reality, they
don't even live there. The proof is plain for all to see in the
statistics on wealth and public service disparities, infant mortality
rates and, most damning, incarceration levels that certify the U.S. as
the world's gulag (25 percent of the planet's prisoners). This is
barbarism writ large, since these conditions exist as the direct
result of public policy, rather than as a consequence of general
deprivation or factors external to the nation.

The U.S. evolved as a nation without a real "social contract" - merely
an agreement that white males could pursue riches without too much
interference from the state. The contract for Indians and Blacks took
the form of bounties for scalps and bills of sale for slaves. Now a
relatively small elite comprised of a few million millionaire
households and led by piratical corporate politicians, have seized the
state. The people - the whole people - face a multitude of disasters,
and desperately need to forge the beginnings of a real social
contract, but they have few national historical references to draw
upon. The dramatic exception is Black America, which has been
compelled by history to value justice above all else.

Sharpton and Kucinich bring social justice to the national political
conversation, for which they deserve our deepest gratitude. The Black
activist preacher and the white leftist congressman speak to civilized
values, without which the United States will become a failed nation.
At a pace that corporate media cannot comprehend and, therefore,
cannot convey, the world recoils from the backward model that the U.S.
presents in domestic as well as foreign policy. There is nothing surer
than that the U.S. will in coming years be shrunk to normal size in
the community of nations. When that day arrives, Americans will only
prosper if they have learned to speak to a world of equals, in
civilized language.




-- 
"When our children fail competency tests the schools lose funding.
When our missiles fail tests, we increase funding."  ---Dennis
Kucinich