Jonathan Skinner: Of Pissants and Peace Bridges

The following is a response to Bruce “Peace Bridge Chronicler” Jackson’s article, “That pissant Ralph Nader is coming to Buffalo” in Jackson’s own Buffalo Report. On the basis of the likely scenario that the war in Iraq will ultimately go well for the Bush regime, I address questions looming for the left in this country, from a “green” perspective—engaging the politics of globalization and local economies. In particular, I critique the characterization of the current administration as a “fascist” regime that only a Democratic White House in 2004 can save us from.

JS

Amidst all the fear and trembling about the new fascism in the US—of which Bruce Jackson’s recent, invidious ad hominem on Ralph Nader is a particularly low instance: “Had, in Florida, Ralph Nader behaved decently or honorably or with a modicum of concern for the fate of this nation, we would not be slaughtering Iraqis right now and American men and women would not be dying in Iraq right now” (Buffalo Report)—I can’t help but note the short-sighted (not to say US-centric and terror-driven) nature of much of the rhetoric.

At issue—and I take it to be an issue that will define the US left in the approach to November, 2004—is whether we would be facing a significantly different scenario had Gore taken the White House. At issue is Nader’s claim that there was “no difference” between Al Gore and GW Bush. At issue is whether GW Bush and September 11 really have marked a radical departure from the order of things under the Clinton administration.

One might try examining the situation from the perspective of the “developing” or “undeveloped” world (while Jackson writes from an era where these are still referred to as "Third World," I'm suggesting he update his discourse). From such a perspective—which I don’t pretend to comprehend sufficiently, only enough to know it differs substantially from that of our own “logged on” cyber-eyries—I’d postulate that the differences are hard to discern.

The indirect genocide which involves uprooting people from their lands and local economies to turn them into driftless refugees or urban ghetto squatters and which was ratified by NAFTA, GATT and a host of other free trade agreements under Clinton (remember Clinton was pushing for the same “fast track” authority our spineless Democrats finally granted Bush?) has, of course, been accelerated by the War on Terror, but it’s a difference of degree rather than kind.

I’m talking about the horrific pace of irreversible deforestation in South America or Indonesia— equivalent to systematically amputating the planet’s lungs; I’m talking about the desertification of the Sahara and the American Midwest; I’m talking about the war on and within bodies everywhere unleashed by a merciless and unaccountable chemical industry (just look at the cancer rate in Tonawanda, or breast cancer rates in general); I’m talking about “usura” lying down between the farmer and her seed, between the bridegroom and his bride* with corporate meddling in and patenting of genetic materials (“terminator” and “roundup-ready” seeds); I’m talking about AIDS decimating one quarter of Africa’s population while pharmaceutical companies sit on the vaccines; I’m talking about mountains of increasingly toxic garbage dumped on the same masses, huddled in the city and borderland slums, evicted from their lands (in order to set McDonald’s beef to pasture, for example) by the very industries producing this waste; I’m talking about the ozone chemical smog that is slowly killing urban dwellers around the world and the acid rain that is destroying boreal forests and poisoning fresh waters; I’m talking about the fossil fuel industry warming our planet until massively populated Bangladesh and other low-lying, impoverished lands are flooded out of memory; I’m talking about the privatization of what waters, arable soil and clean air is left to drink, farm and breathe; I’m talking about the enclosure of the remaining commons, the marketing of basic needs that have till now been considered a fundamental human right.

This is not to deny the further domestic woes visited on the US economy by Bush & Co., nor that Al Gore might have been softer on the environment. However, a closer analysis of Gore’s environmental politics would note that his oft-championed “sustainability” amounts in many respects to a preservation of the status quo and Foucauldian policing of boundaries between developed, developing and undeveloped nations. Dissensions within the Seattle WTO summit over the terms of “sustainability”—masked by the protests publicity—as with more recent disagreements at Doha or at the “Earth Summit” in Johannesburg, underscore tensions brought on by the co-option of environmental rhetoric by corporate interests.

Such cooption is to be expected when corporations are engaged (via “corporate education”) to produce change in environmental policy—and indeed there is much debate within the environmental movement about the extent to which these engagement should be pursued. But any policy which ignores the power and necessity of local economies and ground-up, grassroots initiatives is doomed from the start. Even a cursory read of Earth in the Balance reveals to what extent Gore was mired in top-down Cold War-era, “balance of powers” global-strategic thinking (where global warming replaces atomic weapons as the “mutually assured deterrent”). His inability to engage and adapt the issues supposedly closest to his heart in the course of his political campaign shows up the rigidity of his thinking here.

Certainly Nader in many respects lacks the qualities of a world leader. But what drew voters to this “primo egocentric evildoer” (to quote Jackson) in 2000 was the extent to which he was able and willing to articulate a complex vision, engaging environmental, labor and corporate concerns, where powers at the “bottom” count for as much as powers at the “top.” This vision, by the way, has been articulated over the years by the “anti-globalization” movement and not by Nader himself; note that Nader came to and endorsed the Green Party, not the other way around. I agree that he might have been more explicit about the “smart voting” Green voters were to practice—voting Green in the "safe" states, or “trading” votes with friends in the swing states . . . and there’s no doubt that, together with Gore’s hugely blundering campaign (devoid of any of the above vision) and with extreme right-wing corruption and meddling in the electoral and judicial processes, the Greens helped to deliver us Bush & Co.

But from the global perspective I’ve advocated, it’s easy to see why most foreign observers just laughed at the electoral breakdown of 2000, noting that it only confirmed what they’d seen (and felt the brunt of) for years: a sham Benetton democracy, whose big multicultural land-of-opportunity Wal-Mart success story has been nourished by support for dictatorships and ruthless economic and environmental exploitation around the globe.

To insinuate that Nader “misled” voters or is somehow single-handedly responsible for the current bloodbath in the Middle East is both condescending toward Green voters and viciously invidious toward Nader and the Green Party itself—not to speak of the relative blindness it betrays, with respect to a political landscape that is engendering, around the world and out of the media spotlight, slow but substantial change, in consciousness, ethics and politics. (That this is a change operating at the local, rather than state or federal levels may be what has kept it under the radar of the power-obsessed.) Most Green voters are far more savvy in politics than Jackson’s slur accomodates, and voted “smart” anyway, regardless of whether or not Nader told them to.

If anything, it’s the Democrats who’ve been misled (viz above) in a state of things where “voting” as the extent of political participation can only be considered a charade at best—ever since big money took hold of the process more than a century ago. (I don’t underestimate the important line Democrats hold on the domestic front, with regard to the precarious character of the Judicial Courts. At least they’ve been doing a modicum of their duty here.)

To be fair, one might write off Bruce Jackson’s myopia as an effect of living in the ideological backwaters of Western New York, where the Green Party put on an extremely lackluster showing in 2000 (an embarrassment and a debacle, which the Citizens’ Environmental Coalition’s laughable green hardhat theatre, in spite of this organization’s good work, doesn’t help a bit), and where endless debates about a “Signature” Peace Bridge overshadow much graver environmental concerns (of which the Peace Bridge is a part, but by no means a big part). Governor Pataki’s neglect of New York State’s depleted environmental cleanup “Superfund,” or Mayor Masiello’s shameful mismanagement of the toxic Hickory Woods development in South Buffalo, set far graver economic and health precedents for the region than whether we get a twin span or an Italian designer rainbow bridge. I’m not denying a certain connection between these issues, but I suggest local progressives train their eyes Westward, toward states like New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon or Washington where the politics are also hardly progressive, yet in spite of, or in response to, a heavy-handed Federal presence citizen initiatives have elected Green city council members and state representatives and brought a complex, globally-oriented yet locally-engaged vision to politics.

None of this is to deny the frighteningly fascist look of things on the “homeland” front. But from a wider perspective (which includes not just thinking across the equator but across Main Street as well, about the victims of economic violence within the US borders and our own city limits), one might say to those anti-war protestors who have been investigated, apprehended and detained without charges, and are nursing the bruises of police brutality—“welcome to the developing world.”

The extent to which eyes get opened once it’s one’s own ass on the line (or that of “one’s folk”) shadows these street conflicts with a certain irony not lost on foreign observers. These protests in the US, and this resistance, are necessary and good, and unlike Jackson I certainly don’t want to bring needless dissension or backbiting to an opposition that desperately needs to stay united. But it’s crucial—for this movement to continue and build, through a war that is likely to be a success for the current administration (and not the debacle the opposition vocally dreads and secretly prays for)—that reasons for resistance be articulated on the basis of contemporary complexities, through a vision that is able to make intelligent and practical connections between local and global, indigenous and cosmopolitan, human and nonhuman economies. “Empire,” a term much volleyed about lately, is one I have as many reservations about as “fascism”—as poet and thinker Robert Kocik has advocated, “biocide” is a more accurate label for the current, global corporate-military regime.

To forecast the success of Bush & Co. abroad and naysay a fascist scenario at home, is not defeatist and deluded; rather it is to recognize geopolitical continuities, retain historical memory, and prepare for the long struggle ahead. Such historical memory also tells us that fascism in the US, if it is indeed taking hold, would prognosticate an imminent demise to this tottering giant, and in fact be the best possible thing for the rest of the world: would that we could wish this nation and its sins (viz paragraph five) so swiftly away!

Jackson’s link on Buffalo Report to a recent, excellent Arundhati Roy article is indicative. Jackson writes: “But Iraq, says the Indian novelist in this important essay published the April 2 Guardian, isn't where the really important war is being fought just now. That other war is global, and George Bush brought it on.” This is a patently false representation of Roy’s more sophisticated claims. A glance at her concluding paragraphs suffices:

Arundhati Roy
Wednesday April 2, 2003
The Guardian

“Regardless of what the propaganda machine tells us, these tin-pot dictators are not the greatest threat to the world. The real and pressing danger, the greatest threat of all is the locomotive force that drives the political and economic engine of the US government, currently piloted by George Bush. Bush-bashing is fun, because he makes such an easy, sumptuous target. It's true that he is a dangerous, almost suicidal pilot, but the machine he handles is far more dangerous than the man himself.

Despite the pall of gloom that hangs over us today, I'd like to file a cautious plea for hope: in times of war, one wants one's weakest enemy at the helm of his forces. And President George W Bush is certainly that. Any other even averagely intelligent US president would have probably done the very same things, but would have managed to smoke-up the glass and confuse the opposition. Perhaps even carry the UN with him. Bush's tactless imprudence and his brazen belief that he can run the world with his riot squad, has done the opposite. He has achieved what writers, activists and scholars have striven to achieve for decades. He has exposed the ducts. He has placed on full public view the working parts, the nuts and bolts of the apocalyptic apparatus of the American empire.”

Again and again, I’m told, by this crowd of Democratic Party faithful, that it’s “too soon” for the kind of change I’m advocating. However, even the most conservative assessment of the global environmental predicament (barring that of “skeptical environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg, our nutso statistician from Denmark) gives humanity ten to twenty years at the outside to reverse the biocidal tide, and predicts catastrophic consequences, if such reversal is not made, within fifty. (Fortunately for our own children and unfortunately for those of the developing and undeveloped world, the brunt of such catastrophe will be borne by the economic “South”). The dire moment may even now be upon us: according to most climate science, our window for reversing catastrophic change just expired. We waited through eight long years of a Democratic administration that threw nothing but fig leaves at the environmental crisis (a few “National Monuments” by Presidential Decree, lip service to the Kyoto “protocol” on global warming—go and read the accord to see what a flawed, token agreement it is, basically a vehicle for liberalizing environmental regulation). Like Roy, I’m tempted to prefer the Bush & Co. frontal assault on the environment, as it has awoken many of us from a certain complacency.

Documentarist Michael Moore, who spends most of his time speaking to and drawing inspiration from the kind of grassroots activism I’ve alluded to, having turned his back on clearly bankrupt “beltway” politics, fuels his courageous and untiring media activism with the same cynical-optimist outlook: “George Bush, your time is up!” Can we honestly expect much from the glorious old “jackass” Democratic party? Didn’t they seal their fate when, with little to no ado, many representatives and most senators delivered up Congressional oversight of civil liberties and war-powers to an all-mighty unelected Executive Branch hell (or heaven)-bent on prosecuting its limitless “War on Terror”? That’s when I was seriously tempted to stop wasting time writing letters to “my” representatives.

No one should pay the price of our awakened consciousness in blood, but the least we can do is not squander that consciousness on the kind of egotistically short-sighted, “electoral politics” rhetoric we’ll be hearing more of in the run-up to November, 2004. To “vote safe now” is to cave into the very “culture of fear” Moore so devastatingly nailed in Bowling for Columbine. When such moderates tell me it’s “too soon,” I like to ask them, bringing all of the evidence to bear: how long do we have to wait before too soon is too late?

Why wait ? Let’s continue now the exposure of corporate crime that began with the Enron scandal, and keep the pressure on; withdraw our dollars from the franchises and invest in local business and grassroots initiatives like CSA (Cooperative Society of America) farms; sign on to cyber-empowered educational cooperatives like Joel Kuzsai’s “Modern Schools” revival— www.factoryschool.org; look into www.bioneers.org for “practical and visionary” solutions ordinary citizens are cooking up to solve the world’s problems now; implement creative rituals to facilitate real dialogue and help build the positive community networks (of production as well as resistance) that are spawning change around the globe. Let’s not wait for elected officials to work miracles for us. (Sure, we can work hard to get the Democrats back into the White House in 2004, but this work should be just the tip of our political iceberg.) Such activism is a potent counter-force to the politics of fear and hate now dominant: “In the U.S. and U.K., the war against Iraq has become a convenient diversion from issues of globalization and the rise in unemployment and economic insecurity. A politics of hate is becoming the indirect support for the failed and failing project of globalization” (Vandana Shiva, ZNet Commentary, “Globalisation And Its Fall Out,” April 05, 2003).

Let me note, in closing, that calling Nader a “pissant” is either undue flattery of this human demagogue or an insult to the hymenopteric order—that diverse society of globally engaged ants which probably do more good for this planet (certainly, representing about 10% of the planet’s biomass, they outnumber humans by an order hard to imagine) than all of human activity combined. Nader at least should be grateful of the compliment.

JS

*“With Usura . . .
is thy bread dry as paper,
with no mountain wheat, no strong flour
. . .
wool comes not to market
sheep bringeth no gain with usura
. . .
It has brought palsy to bed, lyeth
Between the young bride and her bridegroom”

Ezra Pound, Canto XLV

Posted by Jonathan Skinner at April 08, 2003 09:32 PM | TrackBack