Sure, you know the facts. But are you devoting every ounce of energy to spreading the word and building resistance? Of course not. You're investing your time in campaigning for Obama votes (in swing states). You may understand that there's been no step back from Bush's policies, that Obama has advanced them further. Yes, Romney could advance them even further even faster than Obama would in the next four years -- even in the face of the public opposition that would likely materialize for a President Romney. But we need a reversal of course, not a slightly slower death, not even a significantly slower death. The environment is collapsing. Weaponry and hostility are spreading. We're dealing with a need for survival, not a desire for utopia. What we need for survival is a credible independent movement.
When a labor union today says "Reform NAFTA and push for the Employee Free Choice Act, or else," the "or else" is empty and everyone knows it. When Bill McKibben says "The tar sands pipeline is your test," nobody believes that when Obama fails the test McKibben will oppose his reelection. Compare this battered-spouse relationship with that of Latinos who posed a credible threat to desert Obama and thereby won some modest immigration rights.
You know that we had a significant (pitiably weak but significant) peace movement in 2005 and 2006. Why? Because opponents of war and opponents of Republican presidents' wars were teamed up together. That fell apart as Democrats took power in Congress in 2007 and as 2008 turned out to be the year of one of those endlessly recurring "most important elections of our lifetime." The movement was temporarily shut down, never to be restored. We went from Mitch McConnell secretly warning Bush to get out of Iraq to Obama getting credit for withdrawing from Afghanistan even as the troops there were double the number deployed when Obama entered the White House.
How in the world can anyone have spent the last many years in the peace movement and not noticed this partisan-based electoral-based collapse? I'm sure you've seen and were likely surveyed during the study done by the University of Michigan's Michael Heaney and Indiana University's Fabio Rojas. They documented this collapse and its partisan basis.
Would I object to people voting for a less-evil but still evil candidate if they could continue organizing for justice? Of course not. I do not fail to understand the power of your argument. I'm sure you'll do me the courtesy of not simply repeating it. A more evil candidate is more evil than a less evil candidate. A greater warmonger and bigger destroyer of the environment is worse than a lesser warmonger and lesser destroyer of the environment. I think the case for Obama's superiority to Romney is vastly overblown. I think, in fact, that Obama has been able to get away with much that we would never have allowed McCain to achieve. We stood up against Bush's attack on Social Security. But China is to Nixon as humanitarian goods are to Obama. Let's grant, however, that Obama is better than Romney. Let's grant it because it is not the central argument and may very well be right. That is, if you compare their platforms as presented, guesstimate how much of each is outright lies, and factor in the likely public resistance to each, Obama may come out ahead. My argument is not that he doesn't. My argument is not that he doesn't do so meaningfully. My argument is not that this isn't a question of life and death. And my position involves complete awareness that I will not be the first to die, someone else will.
Here, in contrast, is my actual argument: It is vastly more important that we have an independent movement based on policy changes rather than personality changes. In theory we could have that with lesser-evil-swing-state voting. In reality, we cannot. We cannot build a national movement in the 38 states from which all candidates and journalists have fled, and on the condition that we avoid building it large enough to have any impact whatsoever (which would ruin the whole strategy by transforming a non-swing state into a swing state). We cannot keep a movement from shutting down for each election cycle as long as most people see their jobs as followers of politicians rather than as the true sovereigns of this land.
I don't care about my purity. If I wanted to be pure I would avoid thinking about these matters at all. I wouldn't subject myself to a room full of well-dressed polite backers of mass-murder at all if I wanted to be pure. And I would hold my nose and work with them shoulder-to-shoulder if I thought that would lead to the greater good. I would have voted for Captain Peace Prize if I believed it would save the most lives. I do not. I believe that building an activist movement that depends on rejecting support for a party of mass murderers will save the most lives, and will do so in the relative near term -- or we will all perish.
As you know, I've spent months trying to avoid this discussion because I believe that our so-called elections drain energy away from activism. They also serve to divide us. We all want peace and justice. But we drop everything to debate or, more often, quarrel with each other over electoral matters -- something the powers in Washington must have great laughs over. But the election is this week, and this debate must be had. I enter it with a great deal of respect for that small group of people on the other side of it who understand the need for a real mass movement and believe a mass movement is compatible with lesser-evilism. I'm simply not persuaded.
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