Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 01:48:01 -0700 (PDT)
From: Marwan Dalal <dmarwan-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS  ON AMERICAN POLITICS


The Nation
July 24/31, 2000
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS  

If Not Now... 
 
There are a number of persuasive reasons to cast a
vote for Ralph Nader in the fall, and a number of
unpersuasive reasons, too. But the principal argument
in favor is this: On the 22nd of May last, Nader said
without equivocation that if he had been a Congressman
he would have voted to impeach Clinton and that if he
had been a Senator he would have voted to convict him.

The argument that "they all do it" has, paradoxically,
become an argument with which the Washington permanent
government actually justifies itself. It used to be a
Nixonian gambit, and it evolved easily into a
Clintonian one. But you have not broken intellectually
with the consensus unless you view the phrase "they
all do it" as part of the case for the prosecution,
not the defense.

This sets Nader apart from most of those liberals who
only affect to despise or oppose the "bipartisan"
monopoly. Faced with the question, How corrupt and
lawless can a man be and still be President, the bulk
of the American left (which, to put it coarsely, is as
much as to say the bulk of a rump) answered, Easy. He
can be as corrupt and lawless as he likes, as long as
he's a Democrat. After all, aren't his foes
Republicans? Aren't they partisan? This riposte,
insofar as it deserves the name, is one of those
beliefs that are only true for as long as the speaker
is stubborn enough to persist at them. It's not unlike
saying that a vote for a third party is a wasted vote.
Self-evidently, if more Democrats had denounced
Clinton's abuses of power, the honor of holding this
position would not have accrued so exclusively to
Republicans. By a somewhat longer chain of reasoning,
if all those who wanted political pluralism and a
multiparty system were prepared to waste their
franchise by voting in favor of it, their franchise
would turn out not to be so wasted. Admittedly, both
propositions are quixotic to begin with, but they do
not express the obvious fallacy or tautology of the
opposed positions, and they do not depend on having
other people determine your thinking for you.

I had the slight distinction of being the speaker at
the defeat celebrations of the Green Party in
Washington, DC, on election night 1996, and I probably
looked as much of a fool as I felt. For one thing, I
am not a member or supporter of the Green Party. (If
you care to know my politics, I am an old socialist
who is living fascinatedly through a period when only
capitalism seems to be revolutionary.) For another, I
had been awfully disappointed at the apparent vanity
and futility of Ralph's campaign. Nineteen ninety-six
was the year in which it became clear to literally
millions of people that an election could be bought,
party conventions could be rigged, media coverage
could be arranged and presidential "debates" could be
fixed. Yet those willing to work and argue for at
least a protest against this--and there are times when
even a protest is better than nothing--had been let
down by a manneristic, even eccentric noncampaign.

It feels very slightly different this time. For one
thing, the Democratic Party is not so much dead as
actually, visibly, palpably rotting on the slab. The
only breath of dissent in the bought-up and closed-out
"primary season," where almost nobody got a chance to
vote, was supplied by a reactionary crowd-pleaser from
Arizona who's had it with the campaign finance racket.
Meanwhile, I suppose it's possible to use the threat
of Christian fascism one more time to terrify the
liberals, but it's pretty obvious that Governor Bush
is not a hostage to his party's Jurassic wing.
Sinister little mediocrity he may be, but who's
seriously frightened of him? He's smoothly
domesticated by the old moneyed establishment, just
like his rival, and it's actually quite hard to
picture him using cruise missiles out of personal and
sexual pique, as Clinton really did do twice.

And it seems that Ralph Nader is taking the moment
seriously. All the questions he is asked by the media
pack have been scripted by the Democratic National
Committee. "Aren't you a spoiler?" "Isn't a vote for
you a wasted vote?" "What about the lesser of two
evils?" And to these he has replied--with enough
confidence to deter too much repetition--what's to
spoil? His emphasis has been more and more on the open
theft of the democratic process, on the importance of
having or being able to have an election at all. His
critics in the Gore camp are now so degenerated that
they don't mind saying a rigged and bought election is
fine if only their side wins it. Their objection to
Nader's running is not merely an objection to his
program, but--keep your eye on this point--to the fact
of his daring to run at all. Even the Mexican system
has more capacity for shame than that.

Now I know that many of you are sincerely, gravely,
brow-furrowingly worried about which future monarch
gets to appoint which future Justice. But why not
admit it? You don't really know, and you won't really
be asked, who will fill the next Supreme Court seat.
(And it was the Democratic majority on the Senate
Judiciary Committee, not George Bush senior, who made
Clarence Thomas a Supreme.) It is as possible, in
theory as well as practice, to imagine Gore making a
safe and stupid reactionary appointment as it is to
picture Bush making an "unpredictable" centrist one.
The point, though, is that it is servile to wait upon
their pleasure and caprice in this way.

The ruling class doesn't have to play the humiliating
roulette of "lesser evil." It has its bets covered by
ownership of the casino. It has, as far as is
possible, everything under control and all
contingencies provided for. Casinos are places where,
oddly enough, poor people go to transfer their money
to rich people. (And that's just what you do, buster,
and you too, honey, when you make your campaign
donations.) But, just as the casino owner would have
to work or starve without the endless gullibility of
the punter, the whole two-party machine would stall if
people stopped playing the existing odds. It's the one
freedom that can't be taken away or "factored in," and
it is, thus, the one faculty that most needs a
vigorous and unabashed exercise. If I was shyly asked
when people should dare allow themselves this
frightening liberty, I'd say the time was 'round about
now.



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