While there is no "None of the Above" box on the Maine ballot, Romney and Obama are not the only options in the presidential race.
There are actually six candidates for president this year. In addition to Obama and Romney, there is Gary Johnson (Libertarian), Virgil Goode (Constitution Party), Rocky Anderson (the newly-created Justice Party) and Green Jill Stein. Stein and Johnson are definitely on the ballot in Maine. (I am not as certain about Anderson and Goode. Either way, you are still dealing with four candidates rather than two.)
My point is, if all candidates from all parties were given equal time in the national and local media (there is, not surprisingly, no mention of any of these third-party candidates in this article), maybe there would not be so many "undecided" voters a week before the election.
I do have to take issue, however, with Mr. Peruffo's assertion that, "It is the duty of the American citizens to support the president." It is...? I'm sorry--kindly point out to me the exact section of the Constitution that contains this authoritarian mandate. This guy reminds me of Britney Spears in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.
I visited my alma mater, Colby-Sawyer
College, the other day. I was invited to speak with a class of seniors about
life after college in the “real world.” It is always fun to return to college and catch up with some of my undergraduate professors.
I have had a number of different jobs
since graduating from college. I have written for some newspapers, I worked in
a record store, I was a music critic—I even dabbled in marketing for a while,
but I hated it.
Marketers are glorified car-salesmen.
Those who work in advertising or public relations use their writing and
videography talents to convince consumers to buy things they do not need—hardly
a noble profession, if you ask me.
These advertisers play on consumers’
emotions to persuade them their lives will be meaningless unless they drive a
Honda, own an iPhone or drink Coca-Cola. Noam Chomsky correctly stated in a
2008 speech shortly after Barack Obama’s election (“What Next? The Election,
the Economy and the World,”) “The point of advertising is to delude
people… To create uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices.”
Modern day advertising has become so
sophisticated in its power of mass persuasion, marketers no longer emphasize
the actual product being advertised, focusing instead on the company’s brand.
They make us believe, for example, that Nike does not sell mere sneakers, but
athleticism, sportsmanship, and the Olympian ideal of the human body.
This focus on brand identity over the
product itself creates a stronger, more intimate relationship with the
consumer—one that, advertisers ultimately hope, will instill within the buyer a
sense of brand loyalty. “With this wave of brand mania has come a new breed of businessman,”
journalist Naomi Klein writes in her seminal book, No Logo, “one who will proudly inform you that Brand X is not a
product but a way of life, an attitude, a set of values, a look, an idea…”
Consider this current ad for the Honda
Accord.
The clip features a montage of seemingly ordinary people engaged in their
daily routines. One woman runs with her small dog to her Accord to escape a
downpour; a middle-aged man struggles to retrieve his car keys from his young
child. At one point, a driver brakes abruptly, narrowly avoiding a collision.
He then turns to check on his two children in the backseat and smiles, knowing
they are safe.
“We know you,” the announcer states
paternally. “We know how hard you have to work….and that you don’t get enough
sleep.” All the while, a sentimental piano underscores the intimacy of these
images—and the Accord’s vital role in them.
What is curious—though certainly not
uncommon--about the commercial is it offers absolutely zero information about
the car. All we really need to know, the ad assures us, is that the car was
specifically designed for you. It is
your car for your life. “The best way to make a car is to know you—the people
who use it,” the announcer says. The spot plays entirely on audiences’ emotions
and feelings about the car, ignoring the vehicle’s practical uses. This is the
essence of brand marketing.
Most graduates of my major
(Communication Studies) go into marketing and public relations. That is where
the money is. Journalism, filmmaking, media studies, and radio may be fun
hobbies, but they will not make anyone rich, so most Communication majors
dismiss careers in them. Their parents and business-oriented professors (of
which there are more than I think people realize; the stereotype of the
radical, anti-capitalist professor is just that) push them into the lucrative,
“practical” career paths.
Young people who pursue jobs in
marketing, business, public relations or Wall Street are not interested in
critiquing or questioning society, let alone capitalism. Indeed, they like
capitalism, so long as it can benefit them personally. The moral, legal or
environmental ethics of their professions are not concerns for them. Their job
is merely to service a tiny, narrow sector of industry. These individuals are
what Chris Hedges calls “systems managers,” unable to see beyond the narrow
confines of their day-to-day work life. They become, he writes in Empire of Illusion, “products of a moral
void.”
As a result, the three Colby-Sawyer alumni
that joined me on the panel all work in the corporate sector. They talked to
the students about the importance of networking, and “creating personal bonds,”
with their customers (see the aforementioned Honda ad above). And they spent
the majority of their time before and after the talk on their cellphones, or
responding to text-messages from clients.
They are the living embodiment of the
modern advertising executive—always connected, constantly on the go, and
perpetually engaged in the techno-trend façade known as “multitasking.” This
lifestyle of non-stop distraction prevents them from ever reflecting on the utter
deceit and immorality of their profession. These advertisers effectively
perpetuate the consumer society which, in addition to creating a culture of
greed and hedonism, threatens to deplete the ecosystem that supports life on
the planet. The self-serving business mindset and the seemingly insatiable
thirst for ever greater profits exhibited by the corporations that employee PR
agents see everything—including human lives and the environment—as a potential
commodity.
“Human life is not commodity, figures,
statistics, or make believe!” The Refused loudly proclaim on their masterpiece
album, The Shape of Punk to Come.
When I started college, I made a
conscious effort not to take any Business courses. I was afraid they would
somehow poison and corrupt my young, artistic mind. The more business people I
interact with, the more I am convinced I made the right choice.
In my last article I wrote, "[L]iberals...do not really care about issues. Their one and only prerogative is to prevent the Republican from winning..."
(For the record, I do not believe conservatives care about issues either, though both sides will tell you they do. Americans on both sides of the political spectrum vote for personalities and perennial "wedge" issues like abortion, gay rights, immigration, Supreme Court nominations, etc. Anyone who doubts this needs to read Joe McGinniss' 1968 book, The Selling of the President.)
For further evidence of this claim, I offer Esther B. Clenott's letter to the editor in today's Portland Press Herald ("Readers compare senate qualifications of Dill, King," 10/23/2012).
She writes, "...the overriding necessity in this election is that we Democrats re-elect President Obama and that we defeat Charlie Summers."
To be clear, I have no desire to see Summers become Maine's next senator. But I am not going to vote for Angus King simply because he is perceived as having the best chance of winning, or as Clenott puts it, because "we can trust him." (Yeah--trust him keep unjustified tax-cuts for the rich while refusing to raise the pathetic minimum wage for the rest of us.)
I vote for the candidate that best represents my positions on the issues. In this case, that happens to be the Democrat. If Summers ends up winning because I had the audacity to actually vote for the candidate I like best (heaven forbid!), then so be it. The same goes for the presidential election in which I will be supporting Jill Stein.
Incidentally, Dill is absolutely correct that there are too many old, rich, white men in both the Senate and the House. I always find it ironic when self-described "feminists" inform me that anyone who truly cares about women's issues needs to vote for Obama. As if Obama knows more about what it's like to be female than Stein--who is both a doctor and a woman.
For more about why I refuse to vote for Angus King, click here.
And for more about why I reject liberals' fear of voting for what they want, click here.
Finally, if you like what you read here on Guerrilla Press, become a "Follower." If there is an article you particularly liked, please share it with a friend. And comments or constructive criticism are always welcome.
Baring some massive effort by Maine
Republicans at suppressing the vote on Nov. 6, Angus King is all but assured to
become Maine’s next U.S. Senator.
Indeed, the only scenario in which I can
envision a different outcome to this race is if King and Maine State Senator, Cynthia
Dill split the progressive vote, and inadvertently end up boosting Secretary of
State Charlie Summers to victory, a la LePage’s 2010 win. However, Maine
liberals and the national Democratic Party are so scared of this outcome they
collectively threw their support behind King months ago.
(Incidentally, this so-called
“spoiler” effect would be easily avoided if we instituted instant run-off
voting for all state races. Maine’s Democrats, however, refuse to touch the
issue.)
Case in point, the section on Maine at
the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s (DSCC) website does not mention
Dill until the “Key Facts,” section at the very bottom. The main paragraph instead
talks about “Obama supporter” Angus King. And while there are indeed many Maine
voters who will be elated about the former governor replacing outgoing
“moderate” Senator Olympia Snowe, I am not one of them.
I am voting for Cynthia Dill. She is not
a Green, but she is the closest thing to one. Dill is an unapologetic progressive with strong views on labor and the environment. She is also
antiwar, which is a major factor in my decision to support her. In fact, I
suspect Dill’s progressive views are the real reason her own party has
abandoned her. The Democratic Party has a long history of throwing its own
members under the bus. Just look at what happened to Dennis Kucinich who was
essentially re-districted out of his own House seat.
I have been quite vocal on this site
about my dislike of Angus King. In casual conversation, however, people still
seem perplexed about why I am not supporting him. So let me try to clear things
up.
I think the biggest misperception about
King is that he is a progressive. He is not. And contrary to the assertion of Portland Press Herald columnist Alan
Caron, the issues on which King and Dill part ways are hardly, “minor policy
differences” (“D.C. money crowd keeps spending on a lost cause,” 10/18/2012).
For instance, Dill supports creating a
single-payer health care system. King stands by the Affordable Care Act, but
does not support single-payer. (A call to King’s Portland campaign office
confirms his preference for maintaining the pay-or-die, for-profit health care system.)
Likewise, Angus King, who casts himself
as an environmentalist, supports the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline. While
President Obama denied the Canadian oil company, TransCanada the permit for the
proposed pipeline which would pump dirty, unrefined Canadian tar-sands oil into
the U.S., the company has since reapplied for the permit. Leading climate-change
scientist James Hansen warns the pipeline would be a “carbon bomb,”
accelerating the effects of global-warming exponentially. The NASA scientist
goes so far as to tell The New Yorker’s
Jane Mayer (11/28/2011) the XL Pipeline, if built, would be “game over for the
climate.”
Additionally, King supports “fracking”
(or hydraulic fracturing, a controversial natural gas drilling procedure) and
increased domestic oil-drilling. And while it is certainly encouraging that the
former governor understands and acknowledges the science of global-warming
(unlike Summers who believes it’s caused by volcanos), it makes his support for
the aforementioned policies all the more baffling. The fact is King is a
businessman first, environmentalist second.
On the economic front, King would
maintain the Bush tax-cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Like Summers and
austerity-pushing Republicans, King remains fixated on the federal deficit,
rather than infusing the weak economy with additional stimulus spending in
order to generate growth and get people back to work. (I’m with Keynes and Paul
Krugman: The way out of a recession is more government spending—not less.)
As governor, King infamously vetoed increases
to Maine’s minimum wage on multiple occasions. At the time he adopted GOP
talking points, claiming such wage increases would “scare businesses away” from
Maine. Get real. If businesses want to be successful they should be willing to
pay their employees what they are worth. Minimum wage is currently $7.50 an
hour. Nobody can make a living on that. But, once again, Angus King has shown
where his true allegiance lies—and it’s not with Maine’s workers.
The one issue where I will cut King some
slack is on foreign policy. He supports a (gradual) withdrawal from Afghanistan
and notes, on his campaign website, “clearly, our policy is not working…” Well,
that much we can both agree on. Unfortunately, he goes on to state, “One threat
we currently face is the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, which is a threat to
our ally Israel, the U.S. and the world.” Sigh…
Finally, beyond the man himself, I take
issue with what Angus King claims to represents. King’s entire reason for
running is because Congress is “broken” due to constant partisan bickering.
According to this narrative—which has been repeated ad nauseam by the
mainstream media—“both parties” have become too ideologically “extreme.” As a
result, only politically “moderate” centrists (like King) can break the
“gridlock” in Washington.
Except that there is nothing “moderate”
about King. He is basically GOP-lite. He supports the vast majority of
conservative, pro-corporate policies. Sure, he likes gays and supports
abortion. But those are two positive positions among the preceding five
paragraph’s worth of right-wing agenda items.
Furthermore, the accusation that “both
parties” are to blame for the Washington gridlock is nonsense, more a product
of misplaced, “blame-both-sides” journalism than objective reality. The truth
is there is one party of far-right obstructionists calling most of the shots,
and another of timid, spineless sell-outs too craven to stand up to the other.
What is needed then, are not more “moderates,” but more progressives willing to
stand up to the radical right. (And, of course, more Greens.)
Alas, I fear this last-minute argument
will fall on deaf ears. As I stated at the beginning of this post, this race
was essentially over before it ever started. Besides which, liberals who are all
signing up for “Team Angus” do not really care about issues. Their one and only
prerogative is to prevent the Republican from winning—even if they have to
elect a center-right, pro-corporate, anti-taxes elite to do so.
In honor of Tuesday night's 30-second earthquake felt throughout most of southern Maine.
(Little known fact: I'm actually a really big fan of Tori Amos, which I think people find strange for some reason... I think there is this idea that Amos' music only appeals to bitter single women and lesbians, which, even if true, is childish. She is an innovative musician and an impressive singer. As it is, her productivity seems to have really dropped in the last twenty years or so. Her early stuff is still best.)
This is, apparently, what U.S. democracy looks like. Not only are Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala not allowed to participate in the debate at Hofstra University, but they are also prohibited from exercising their First Amendment right to protest their exclusion. Ridiculous.
Let's just say the timidity and overall lack of conviction of modern day liberals annoys the hell out of me. (For the record, while I consider my own political ideology "progressive," I reject both that label and the word "liberal" when identifying my politics. I am a democratic-socialist.)
Last week I wrote about liberals' insistence on working within the "political reality." Here is a prime, real-life example of what I am referring to.
Yesterday, I was canvassing for my friend and Maine state senate candidate, Asher Platts. I handed his campaign card, which contains his platform, to a middle-aged man at his apartment. For those unfamiliar with Asher or have not yet received his campaign literature, the front side outlines his five main issues. They are:
- Money out of politics.
- Universal college education.
- Single-payer health care.
- Create a state bank.
- Tax the rich.
The man proceeded to read, out-loud, all five issues in the following manner: "Money out of politics? That will never happen! Universal college education? That will never happen! Single-payer health care? That will never happen..."
He then handed the palm-card back to me (which is typically an indication of the person's refusal to support the candidate; most people will keep campaign literature even if only to throw it out as soon as the canvasser has left) and said, "I agree with all of these. But they are impossible."
And before I could even attempt to counter his insistence of the impossibility of these political goals (all of which, mind you, have been successfully implemented in other states or countries), he shut the door and was gone.
This negative, deterministic attitude of "This is impossible, so it's not even worth trying," would not bother me so much if I did not hear it from middle-aged, Democratic-loyalist liberals all the time.
This self-defeating mentality essentially amounts to Homer Simpson's advice to Bart that, "If something is too hard, just don't do it!" It is the same attitude that leads liberals to refuse to vote for a third-party candidate because she will "never win." Yet, the people who routinely make such remarks seem oblivious to their own complicity in preventing such a third-party win through their refusal to go against the grain and vote their values. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Liberals have zero political convictions and that is why the Democratic Party is viewed as weak and "spineless." They will not fight for the society they want, hiding instead behind cop-out excuses that such a society is simply unachievable. Say what you want about the Republicans, but at least they have ideals they are willing to fight for.
I am not suggesting that obtaining single-payer health care, or other such progressive gains will be easy. Far from it. It will take considerable work, effort and possibly a great deal of sacrifice on the part of proponents. But nothing that is worth achieving is ever easy. Liberals want to just vote for Democrats and then sit back for the next four years and wait for them to deliver. Alas, democracy does not function that away. It requires work. Recall Frederick Douglass's famous words:
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
Consider there was once a time in this country when equal rights for black Americans was considered "impossible," if not utterly absurd. Likewise, voting rights for women was deemed "impossible." In fact, every single progressive effort toward social advancement has originally run counter to the "political reality" of the time.
It's like Minor Threat's classic hardcore-punk anthem, "In My Eyes." "You tell me I'll make no difference," singer Ian MacKaye bellows. "At least I'm fucking trying!/What the fuck have you done?"
Perhaps more liberals should start listening to Minor Threat.
P.S. Vote for Asher Platts for State Senate, District #8 (Portland) on Nov. 6.
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