I salute liberals who are trying to do this very thing, but I don't believe that they will succeed unless they adopt a language that is more loving, compassionate, and generous than that reflected in the piece that Hedges wrote and which we at Tikkun sent out (albeit explaining that we often send out pieces with which we disagree because the views are ones that don't get a hearing in the mainstream media and deserve to be heard even if we think they are in some important respects mistaken or "off").
Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying here: I am not advocating that people follow the strategy of transforming the Democratic Party-I'm only saying that it remains a possibility that could be tried, that groups like the Progressive Democrats of America are trying precisely that and with excellent leadership from the Progressive Caucus of the House of Representatives, and that had Nader type people with more emotional nuance and psychological sophistication and genuine empathy for the American public run in the primaries for the Presidency and the US CONGRESS, and had those people been able to articulate their critique in a language that emphasized the spiritual and ethical dimension and the need for love, generosity, caring for others and provided the kind of alternatives that we have articulated in our Spiritual Covenant with America, including the Generosity Strategy as represented in our Global Marshall Plan (see all this at http://www.spiritualprogressives.org) those people might have become the Senators and Congresspeople from the states where we now have Rahm-Emanuel-chosen Blue Dog Democrats. And one such person might have been the presidential candidate in 2008.
Moreover, it remains the case that the majority of those who vote in communities of color, poverty, or low income still identify with the Democratic Party, and running in that party is a powerful way to communicate to people with whom we cannot ordinarily communicate through the corporate-controlled media that didn't even bother to cover our Strategy Conference in SF two weeks ago, though it was larger and at least as significant as the smaller sized Tea Party gatherings over which the media makes such a fuss.
To leave these people behind and turn one's back on them without having a serious strategy to reach them outside the Democratic Party is not a satisfactory political strategy, no matter how righteous and good it feels to those who have finally said no to the Democrats only to embrace a party of excessive political correctness but also excessive self-involvement and little serious outreach beyond their own fringe.
2. Hedges is wrong to characterize all liberals as lacking in emotion or leaving legitimate rage only to the proto-fascists. Here, as in Hedges' critique of the Democratic Party, there is a failure to recognize the efforts of so many very decent and ethically powerful people who have not been fully represented by their leaders. Who does he think turned out in the millions to demonstrate against the War in Iraq-all Greens? No, it was many of these Democrats. It's true that leadership like Nancy Pelosi failed to forcefully represent them, and that Obama is to some extent repeating that failure now and failing to articulate a clear worldview that could rally people and make them understand the alternative to "capitalism is the only option and domination is the only path to security" that underlies the "common wisdom" inside-the-beltway and throughout much of our society, but it is not fair to dismiss the vast majority of Democrats in this way. Doing so will not help us build a powerful anti-war movement again to counter the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and head off wars with Iran or Yemen. Just read the platform of the Democratic Party of California to see that there are voices within the Democratic Party that reflect much of what the secular progressives outside that party are calling for (though definitely not the New Bottom Line that spiritual progressives champion).
Nor is Hedges being fair or accurate when he says: "The timidity of the left exposes its cowardice, lack of a moral compass and mounting political impotence. The left stands for nothing. The damage Obama and the Democrats have done is immense. But the damage liberals do the longer they beg Obama and the Democrats for a few scraps is worse." This is unfair both because it ignores the genuine desire of people on the Left to heal and transform American society, and because it ignores the real dilemma facing those who vote for "the lesser evil"-namely their legitimate concern about the well-being of those who they perceive will be better off under a Democratic President than under a Republican President-particularly the poorest elements in our society. Their conclusion, with which I do not agree but which I believe deserves a complex and respectful response and not the dismissive and disrespectful tone that Hedges shows toward them, is that the suffering of those people will be somewhat less under a Democratic administration than under a Republican Administration, and that things like family leave, lifting the restrictions on providing birth control information in federally funded birth control centers, banning torture like waterboarding in our military bases, and other such steps, small they may be, make a big difference to those who are impacted by them and hence are worth compromising to achieve.
I'm not going to go into my arguments against that position and why I believe that taking the risks of creating an alternative party might be worth it under some circumstances, though in my view such a party would have to be very different from the Greens, and would have to have a commitment to the kind of political strategy I outline in my book The Left Hand of God, and would have to emerge from a movement to transform the Democratic party which, having obtained massive support, would then leave that party to form a spiritual progressive party, but what I will say is that the argument of those who wish to stay in the Democratic Party and make small but significant changes in the life of the most powerless is an argument that deserves respect and a more careful consideration than Hedges gives in this piece that we sent out.
Let me give just one example of what still feels compelling to me about the argument made by those who wish to transform the Democrats rather than abandon them. It's the story of the guy who sees a young child on the beach throwing back into the water some of the thousands of fish who have been swept up onto the beach after a huge tsunami. The many approaches the child and says, "What's the point of throwing those fish back in the water. Unless there is a massive movement of people down on this beach, or unless the government sends a bunch of equipment to quickly push these fish back into the sea, most of them will die. Don't you see that what you are doing can't make any difference?" To which the child responds, "To these fish I'm throwing back, it makes a difference." It is in my view hard to deny that the Democrats in power are doing more to help the poor and the oppressed, or to take steps to preserve the environment, or to take steps to protect workers' rights, than would the Republicans were they in power and than they did when they were in power. Those who argue that "there is no difference" like Nader did in 2000 really do us a disservice. It's one thing to argue that the differences are not significant enough, quite another to pretend that these two parties deliver exactly the same thing in power. It just isn't true.
I'm not convinced by that argument, because I believe that we could in fact make much important changes in this society if even twenty million people were willing to join an alternative party. But they are not convinced now, and to get them to be convinced, we need a strategy that starts with respect for those who disagree with a "leave the Democratic Party" strategy. I didn't feel enough of that respect in this particular writing of Chris Hedges. And what's ironic about that to me is that I know Chris Hedges, and know him to be a person of humility as well as passionate intensity, and so I don't dismiss him but embrace him even as I critique this particular piece. And I sent it out precisely to engender this kind of discussion.
What troubles me with some of the responses that I got was that they seemed to think it wrong for us to send out articles with which we disagree. But that has always been Tikkun's policy-including printing in the magazine articles with which we disagree. It's part of our belief that the deepest truth emerges from a marketplace of ideas within which respectful debate and struggling with alternative positions can emerge (credit due to John Stuart Mill). We respect our readers enough to believe that they can hear positions with which we and they may disagree, and struggle with those positions. In fact, I've found that when people don't have that opportunity, be it on the Left, Right or the Center of politics, they end up really not fully understanding their own positions and unable to defend them when critiqued. So for that reason we've always warned our readers: if you want to know OUR position, read our editorials in the magazine, but don't assume that we agree with everything we print or send out.
3. It is wrong to describe Israel as an apartheid society. I abhor Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and we at Tikkun were the leading voice against the Occupation for 22 years until J Street, a much better financed enterprise, took our place in Washington D.C. (and is doing a terrific job of getting the message heard which we and others in similar movements pioneered in the US-though they omit from their message our prophetic Biblically-based insistence not only on the "rights" of Palestinians but also on their fundamental humanity and why a spiritual or religious person must care equally for their wellbeing as the wellbeing of Americans, Jews, Israelis and everyone else on the planet.)
But Apartheid describes the situation that existed in South Africa, not the one that exists inside the pre-67 borders of Israel. In South Africa Blacks did not vote in the election of the prime minister or of the parties who ran the country; in Israel its Palestinian residents in the pre-67 borders do vote and have ten percent of the Knesset populated by Arab representatives (and would have more if the Arabs didn't vote for Labor or other parties). In South Africa Blacks were prohibited from going to the same schools or universities a Blacks, from attending the same movie theatres or swimming on the same beaches; in Israel Arabs go to the same beaches, attend the same university classes, and in most other respects have the same political rights as Israeli Jews. True, they face the same kind of discrimination that Blacks still face in many parts of the US-it's not right and its discriminatory, and its deplorable, but it's not apartheid. Why use a term that can so easily be shot down by the Right-wingers, when what Israel is doing is not that, though arguably worse than apartheid in some important respects?
The answer, I suspect, is that many activists are so frustrated at their failure to have won a majority of Westerners to our critical perspective about the Occupation that they think that if they label Israel with some well known disparaging term, that that will make it easier for Westerners to understand. But that is not a legitimate approach-you can't jump over the difficult task of explaining what is wrong with what Israel is doing by using incendiary language that actually can be refuted. Moreover, you can't really win over Westerners with a simplistic account-because many in the West remember that Israel was created in the wake of eighteen hundred years of global anti-Semitism and a twentieth century genocided that murdered one out of three Jews alive. We at Tikkun do not believe that that suffering is reason to excuse Israeli treatment of Palestinians, but we do believe it is a reason why the world had a right to return those Jews who wished to return to their ancient homeland from which they had been expelled by force, violence and repression, in an instance of global affirmative action which, unfortunately, displaced (in our view, unjustly) hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. This story too is too complicated to try to summarize here, but it must be told with compassion for both sides, recognizing that both sides have a legitimate story to tell, and both sides have been cruel and violent toward the other side (as for example when Jews were climbing out of the crematoria and gas chambers of Europe and Palestinian leadership refused to allow them to enter Palestine because they were Jews, while allowing non-Jews to come to Palestine). Every part of this story has two sides at least, and it doesn't help to label one side the "evil other" and the other "the righteous victim," but to develop a sense of compassion for both sides-if the goal is to seek peace and reconciliation, rather than simply to achieve some rhetorical advance. As one who sometimes falls into this mistake, I understand the frustration felt by all who are outraged at Israeli behavior-and I believe that outrage is legitimate-but I think that the prophetic condemnation is only one part of the story, and we also need to act strategically and with generosity of spirit if we want to change the situation and alleviate the current suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians.
Inside the West Bank and Gaza there's a totally different story, and there the conditions do resemble apartheid. Jews who settle on the West Bank have a totally different set of laws, roads, water, and much else. But again, that discrimination is not based on being Arabs so much as being part of a society that has tolerated violent attacks on Israeli civilians. I do not think that that argument is sufficient to justify Israeli behavior, but neither do I think that the Israeli behavior stems from racism as much as from fear.
How could they fear when they are so much more powerful than the Arabs they dominate? Well, if you were part of a people who had been traumatized by 1800 years of discrimination, oppression, murder and rape, and then had 1 out of every three of you murdered in the twentieth century, you too might have a difficulty in seeing things straight and recognizing yourself as the powerful one. If the US can have a majority of its citizens think that the outrageous and immoral attack on the Twin Towers provides evidence that the US itself is in danger of being destroyed by terrorists, when the US is the most powerful military force in the world, how can you doubt that the Jews could be so traumatized by our history to be acting out of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder rather than out of racism and a desire to dominate others for the sake of domination and lust for power?
My point is that it doesn't help move things toward peace to be demeaning the Jewish people, or the State of Israel, though it is perfectly legitimate to oppose its policies and do what we can to change them (including using the full power of the US to do so). We at Tikkun fully support the call by the Goldstone report for an international inquiry into Israeli and Hamas war crimes if each party does not itself engage in such an inquiry in an objective and credible way. And we believe it fully appropriate for the peoples of the world to do what they can to end the Occupation of the West Bank, as long as they also use similar methods to end the occupation of Tibet by China, the end of repression in Iran, the end of the occupation of Chechnya by Russia, the end of the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by the US, the end of the genocide in Darfur, and other such moral outrages. For a fuller discussion of this issue, please read my book Healing Israel/Palestine.
4. It is not a mistake for people to be demanding of Obama that he BE the Obama they voted for. But what would be a mistake is to think that such a demand is going to be given credence until we form a powerful movement of our own that is ready to take action and bring people into the streets and into nonviolent civil disobedience against the policies of the Obama Administration that are most abhorrent (e.g. the escalation of war or the funding of the banks and investment companies or its willingness to allow foreclosures on homes to continue or the give-aways to pharmaceuticals and health insurance profiteers). The huge mistake is to have treated Obama as a messiah and then expected him to deliver for us. Obama never named or targeted corporate power, and we need to do so, not just by saying what we are against, but by fighting for what we are FOR-e.g. the Global Marshall Plan and the Environmental and Ethical Amendments to the Constitution about which you can read at http://www.spiritualprogressives.org. We need to be more self-critical about not having built such a movement, and not as much at Obama who, facing the corporate power structure without the help of such a movement, could have been predicted to have caved as he did.
5. It is a mistake to allow Obama to face the wild charges of the right-wingers and Republican opportunists (who will oppose everything Obama calls for because they believe that his failure will bring them electoral victory in 2010) without the support and defense from people in the liberal and progressive world. Chris Hedges is correct in saying that the intensity of that assault has been aided by the failure of Obama and Congressional Democrats to passionately advocate for a different ethical vision, but instead to seem to be in bed with the corporate interests. But we should also acknowledge that at least some part of the anger against Obama stems from the same racism that has led many Americans to hate Obama with passionate intensity far out of proportion to anything he has done or failed to do. I do not minimize the impact of the humiliation that many faced who hoped for a different set of possibilities and Obama's betrayal of that hope, but I also do not believe that that accounts for all or even a majority of those who ruthlessly and unceasingly and irrationally attack everything he does.
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