Human life would be unbearably complicated if we had
to think out every little decision. Like, for example, whether it's safe to
ride subways or airplanes, or to walk by day or night in certain sections of
town. Based on what we know through experience (ours or other people's), we
make general rules of thumb about such things, sometimes relying on
analogous experiences (or simply hunches) if we must act without enough
information for a good rule of thumb. And based on new experience--like whether
a neighborhood we walk through has "gone to the dogs"--we sometimes have to
revise our rules of thumb.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee by Iburiedpaul
Tweedledum and Tweedledee by Iburiedpaul
Mainstream politics has never been Mr. Rogers' neighborhood, but it was once tolerably safe to walk through. Under the influence of ever-worsening economic inequality and corporate bribery, it clearly has gone to the dogs--but we've been insanely slow in revising our rule of thumb concerning this daily more treacherous neighborhood. We clearly need a political movement--the equivalent of a national Neighborhood Watch--dedicated to alerting Americans to the growing danger and steering them away from mainstream politicians. Who, with corporate-payola deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the works, deserve as much trust as drug lords.
I've already
proposed a new movement, tentatively called Democracy Unchained, based on this
changed rule of thumb. While I don't insist on the name--that should be up to
movement participants--I hope people will take its central principle of distrusting
the political mainstream VERY seriously. Since the political mainstream consists
of the corrupt Democrat-Republican duopoly, the quickest way of framing this is
an "anti-duopoly" movement. In fact, it's because the initials DU of Democracy
Unchained are the first two letters of "duopoly" that I've become so attached
to the name. I've also grown quite fond of "Undo the Duopoly" as a slogan--and it
doesn't take much of an advertising mind to transform that first word into "UN-DU."
So how would the new principle of distrusting the "mainstream
political neighborhood" work in practice? Quite like the rule of thumb we
follow in regard to bad neighborhoods: we simply don't go there. In other
words, the new movement would be based on participants taking a pledge
NEVER to vote for mainstream Democrat or Republican pols UNLESS specifically
endorsed by the movement. And movement endorsement would be based largely
(though not exclusively) on a candidate's refusal to take donations from
anybody but individuals EXCEPT as specified by the movement. Let me explain the
exceptions.
The point of the new anti-duopoly movement is NOT to
make statements about political purity but to get candidates elected who'll
serve "We the People." Of course, it's also to forcefully pressure duopoly politicians
to initiate reform by proving we're ready to inflict heavy political pain on
them for not doing so. To be sure, serious campaign (and lobbying) reform must
be a central part of our agenda. But until reform purging the influence of
corporate dollars from politics is in place, we must realistically accept
infusions of corporate money that AREN'T likely to corrupt our policy.
Consider, for example, what I call the "green money is clean money" exception.
Since a rapid phasing out of fossil fuels is essential to arresting deadly
climate change, this will be a policy commitment we'll demand from our
candidates even if we don't receive a penny from renewables-industry companies
or venture capitalists. But it's hard to believe they WOULDN'T wish to donate
to a movement whose agenda so favors their products. And as long as there are
no quid-pro-quos involved (like, say, favoring wind over solar or vice versa),
I see no harm in accepting this money, since our policy is already inflexibly
pro-renewables. But science and economics alone must decide the renewables mix.
I'd likewise entertain making an exception if
someone enduringly public-spirited like Ralph Nader, pursuing one of his own
pet ideas, were to persuade some civic-minded rich people to donate to the
movement. But this would have to be on a no-strings-attached basis. Their
ability to influence movement policy would have to be the same as everyone else's--based
solely on the merit of their ideas for fostering democracy. Limiting the
influence of such donors would probably be trickier in practice than in the
renewable-industries case, so I advise caution in allowing this exception. But
nor would I reject it out of hand.
Much detail remains to be decided about such a new
movement; for example, whether it would seek to form its own political party or
simply support a broad nonpartisan agenda and leave participants free to work
out the politics from their own place in the political spectrum. I personally
favor the second approach, since I see the movement's foremost purpose as
raising consciousness--in a nonpartisan way--about how bad the duopoly is and the
real power we have to change that. For a rough sketch of how this second
approach--a nonpartisan movement with partisan branches--would work, see my
earlier OEN article "Democracy Unchained--Blueprint for a Revitalized Occupy."
Anyone who reads that article will see that the
proposed successor movement to Occupy intends to improve on Occupy by making
political demands and pursuing electoral strategies for enforcing them. So
another issue to be worked out is the nature of the demands, like whether the
anti-duopoly movement focuses on the single issue of corporate money in
politics, or whether it pushes a small, coherent platform. (Obviously, if this
movement is to attract bipartisan support, the range of demands MUST be small.)
Myself, I favor the small, coherent platform. By that I mean the central issue
of corporate money in politics--both campaign finance and lobbying money--and two
other absolutely crucial issues that are practically corollaries of undue Big
Money influence: clamping down on the fossil-fuel industry and the
military-industrial-surveillance complex. The almost incestuous relationships
of these two industry complexes with government are obviously branches of the "money
in politics" problem--branches we'd better lop from our national tree before
they strangle our climate and environment (fossil fuels) or our privacy and democracy
(the military-industrial-surveillance complex.) And in the latter case, we're
also talking a VAST, unnecessary waste of resources that would be far better
spent improving our domestic lives and infrastructure than making foreign
enemies.
Anyway, those are my latest practical thoughts on
enforcing a "guilty till proven innocent approach" toward our deeply
dysfunctional political mainstream. These thoughts are my own and not the
official position of Time to Restore Democracy, but anyone interested will find
the TTRD Facebook page ( https://www.facebook.com/WhoseVoiceOurVoice?fref=ts )
an excellent, nonpartisan place for discussing our lost democracy and practical
schemes for restoring it.
