October
2000
Editorial: Truth
or Power? This Silly Season
By Mia MacDonald
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It is a strange moment in the American political process
when two socialist leaders speak more truth about the state of the
world than nearly all of this election year’s numerous—and numbingly
callow—candidates. "The world is undergoing a catastrophic
situation," said the perennial U.S. bugbear Fidel Castro at Manhattan’s
Riverside Church in early September, here for the United Nations Millennial
Summit. "Don’t believe the experts," he continued, "who
feign optimism and ignore the cruel realities of the developing world."
Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of Russia and leader of the Soviet
Union, was in town for the "State of the World Forum," a week-long
gathering of world leaders, business executives, activists, academics
and a few celebrities timed to coincide with the UN Summit. There, he
opened the meeting with an honest and impassioned assessment of the
decade since the end of the Cold War, arguing that most of the world’s
people had expected more from the world’s "great powers"—more
peace, more equality, more personal and economic security, more big
visions. Instead, they have gotten globalization, which, as Gorbachev
made clear, has created many winners, but also many more losers. He
spoke of the more than one billion people who live on $1 a day or less,
and the fact that the assets of the world’s three richest men
exceeds the combined GDP of the 48 poorest countries.
Not fighting words exactly, but Castro’s and Gorbachev’s speeches
laid down a clear challenge—here, in the world’s only hyperpower.
They dared to name some uncomfortable truths about the world we live
in; a world that American interests continue to direct—now almost
wholly unchallenged. And yet in this silly season where balmy weather
collides with politicians gorged on campaign contributions and corporate-sponsored
soirees, each more lavish than the last, where the "democratic"
process is so greased by money that it’s as if candidates’ feet
are perpetually sloshing in huge vats of golden Crisco, and when soundbites
masquerade as policy, will any candidate running, apart from
Green Party presidential nominee Ralph Nader, do what Castro and Gorbachev
did? Take an honest, clear-eyed look at the world and at the U.S. and
name names?
Name poverty—egregious as it stands and getting worse? Name the
millions of American children—one in every five—who live in
poverty, in this the world’s richest country? Name the realities—stagnating
wages, union busting and a frightening race to the bottom in terms of
pay, rights and environmental standards—that underlie the numbing
mantra of "free trade"? Name the ecological crisis, so vast
that it almost defies description in terms more potent and real than
Al Gore’s rhetorical calls for "clean air and clean water?"
Nader does name these names and is very good at it. But he’s too
good: too cerebral and earnest, too well-informed, too little of a
sloganeering
optimist, too much of a Don Quixote, tilting at windmills already plastered
with corporate logos, to capture the soul of America, whittled down
as it has been by a nihilistic popular culture, the cult of celebrity
and the knockout punch power of money to seduce, silence and alienate.
We are living in a land and a time where the seriousness of Castro,
Gorbachev and even Nader seems a thing of the past, a quaint curio
of
the time when cars and Communists were scary, when recessions happened,
when energy conservation was a serious public issue, when ending poverty
and inequality were core American values (or so it seemed at the time),
and when people—especially young people—thought that their
vote mattered. We are in an era where SUVs and "Survivor"
form the contours of our lives. An era where in the rest of the world’s
eyes, the U.S. is—as a sardonic (and astute) French philosopher
recently observed—a nation wholly omnipotent and almost wholly
ignorant.
In such a place, perhaps George W. Bush—the most insipidly venal
major party candidate in a (my) lifetime—will be elected. He and
running mate Dick Cheney have been so short on policy specifics and
so long on defense of privilege (their own) that it is positively breathtaking.
Can they, whom Jay Leno describes as "Wizard of Oz" candidates
(one without a brain, the other without a heart) really hoodwink, baffle
or bore enough of the American people to win?
Or will Al Gore, resurgent after his Democratic Convention kiss, the
new populist rhetoric, and his choice of sunny Joe Lieberman (who’s
hard not to like, even if you don’t like many of his centrist,
business-friendly "New Democrat" positions, not to mention
his oh-so-moneyed corporate contributors) capture enough of the swing
voters to triumph? How much "soft money" will be raised? How
many more large contributors—corporate and individual—will
get the policy and budget goodies they desire?
And will Nader, who would probably make as good a president as he has
a policy advocate, get the five percent of the vote the Greens need
to become a national (and funded) party in the next election?
And how much, if any, truth about the state of the world and the state
of the American prospect—bloated, dulled and consuming itself and
the planet into oblivion—will be spoken, be examined, be named,
be put truthfully before the voters, be taken seriously by the media?
I’m not holding my breath, but I will be on the lookout for sobriety,
not of the faux George W. kind, but of the straight-talking, straight-thinking
kind that is all too rare. Nader, I’m listening. Gore, I’m
vetting. Bush, I’m disdaining in every way I can think of. And
as for Gorbachev, well, I’m lauding—and thinking of making
a "Gorbachev for President" sign for the front garden. Perhaps
that would stir up some sober discussion before this silly, silly season
mercifully ends.
