File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2001/lyotard.0102, message 9


Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 12:01:03 -0600
From: Mary Murphy&Salstrand <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: An old liberal looks at the village idiot


>From his piece forthcoming in the Texas Observer magazine.
     John Kenneth Galbraith on the election
  
                    Corporate Democracy; Civic Disrespect
  
           With the events of late in the year 2000, the United States
   left behind constitutional republicanism, and turned to a different
   form of government. It is not, however, a new form. It is, rather, a
   transplant, highly familiar from a different arena of advanced
   capitalism. This is corporate democracy. It is a system whereby a
   Board of Directors -- read Supreme Court -- selects the Chief
   Executive Officer. The CEO in turn appoints new members of the Board.
   The shareholders, owners in title only, are invited to cast their
   votes in periodic referenda. But their franchise is only symbolic,
   for management holds a majority of the proxies. On no important issue
   do the CEO and the Board ever permit themselves to lose. The Supreme
   Court clarified this in a way that the Florida courts could not have.
   The media have accepted it, for it is the form of government to which
   they are already professionally accustomed. And the shameless
   attitude of the George W. Bush high command merely illustrates, in
   unusually visible fashion, the prevalent ethical system of corporate
   life.
          Al Gore's concession speech was justly praised for grace and
   humor. It paid due deference to the triumph of corporate political
   ethics, but did not embrace them. It thus preserved Gore for another
   political day, the obvious intention. But Gore also sent an
   unmistakable message to American democrats: Do not forget. It was an
   important warning, for almost immediately forgetting became the media
   order of the day. Overnight, it became almost un-American not to
   accept the diktat of the Court. Or to be precise, Gore's own
   distinction became holy writ: One might disagree with the Court, but
   not with the legitimacy of its decision. Press references from that
   moment forward were to President-elect Bush, an unofficial title and
   something that the Governor from Texas (President-select?
   President-designate?) manifestly is not.
         The key to dealing with the Bush people, however, is precisely
   not to accept them. Like most Americans, I have nothing personal
   against Bush, Dick Cheney, nor against Colin Powell and the others
   now surfacing as members of the new administration. But I will not
   reconcile myself to them. They lost the election. Then they arranged
   to obstruct the count of the vote. They don't deserve to be there,
   and that changes everything. They have earned our civic disrespect,
   and that is what we, the people, should accord them. In social terms,
   civic disrespect means that the illegitimacy of this administration
   must not be allowed to fade from view.
         The conventions of politics remain: Bush will be president;
   Congress must work with him. But those of us outside that process are
   not bound by those conventions, and to the extent that we have a
   voice, we should use it. In political practice, civic disrespect
   means drawing lines around the freedom of maneuver of the incoming
   administration. In many areas, including foreign policy, there will
   be few major changes; in others such as annual budgets and
   appropriations, compromises will have to be reached. But Bush should
   be opposed on actions whose reach will extend beyond his actual term.
          First, the new president should be allowed lifetime
   appointments only by consensus. The public should oppose -- and 50
   Senate Democrats should freely block -- judicial nominations whenever
   they carry even the slightest ideological taint. That may mean most
   of them, but no matter. And as for the Supreme Court especially,
   vacancies need not be filled.
         Second, the Democrats should advise Bush not to introduce any
   legislation to cut or privatize any part of Social Security or
   Medicare.
          Third, Democrats should furiously oppose elimination of the
   estate tax a social incentive for recycling wealth to the non-profit
   sector, to foundations and universities, that has had a uniquely
   powerful effect on the form of American society. Once gone, this
   ingenious device will never be reenacted.
         Fourth, the people must unite to oppose the global dangers of
   National Missile Defense -- a strategic nightmare on which Bush
   campaigned -- that threatens for all time the security of us all.
         Fifth, Congress should enact a New Voting Rights Act, targeted
   precisely at the Florida abuses. This should stipulate: mandatory
   adoption of best-practice technology in all federal elections; a
   24-hour voting day; a ban on private contractors to aid in purging
   voter rolls; and mandatory immediate hand count of all under-votes in
   federal elections.
         With those steps taken, Democrats must also recognize and adapt
   to the new political landscape that emerged from this election.
   Outside of Florida, Democrats are finished in the South. But they
   have excellent prospects of consolidating a narrow majority of the
   Electoral College -- so long as, in the next election, there is no
   Ralph Nader defection. What can prevent such a thing? Only a move
   away from the main Clinton compromises that so infuriated the
   progressive left. Nader's voters were motivated passionately by
   issues like the drug war, the death penalty, consumer protection and
   national missile defense -- issues where New Democrats took
   Republican positions in their effort to woo the South. Clinton the
   Southerner succeeded at this -- but against Republicans who were only
   weakly "Southern" at best. Gore, on the other hand, was principally a
   Northern candidate, strongly backed by the core Democrats, who ran
   against, and defeated so far as ballots were concerned, a wholly
   Southern Republican.
         Future Republicans almost surely also be "Southern"; for that
is
   where the base of the party now lies. And future Democrats, if they
   are Northern candidates too, can beat them -- all the more so if they
   bring the Greens back into the Democratic fold. In short, Al Gore's
   campaign proved that there is an electoral majority in the United
   States for a government that is truly a progressive coalition, and
   not merely an assemblage of sympathetic lawyers, professors and
   investment bankers. Rather, Americans will elect a government that
   firmly includes and effectively represents labor, women, minorities
   -- and Greens. This is the government we must seek to elect-- if we
   get another chance. And for that, the first task is to assure that
   the information ministries of our new corporate republic do not
   successfully cast a fog of forgetting over the crime that we have all
   just witnessed, with our own eyes.



   

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