Moral Intelligence, the imperative not only to be informed but to remember
On the cusp of the 2024 presidential election, I reflect on how we arrived at this Hobson’s Choice. The very notion that the people of the United States are presented with the perceived choice between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, both despised by large segments of the country, is a spit in our collective face. Even more astounding is that there are people again ramping up and suspending reality so that they can either back the Republican or Democratic nominee. There could be no better exemplification of this current reality than Albert Einstein's definition of insanity:
“Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Harkening back to the buildup to the election of President Barack Obama and the optimism generated by the “hope and change” rhetoric coming from a black man poised to be the first African American president in U.S. history. This patter was backed by the real political capital generated from this potentially unprecedented and historic time. Thus, leaving the electorate in a receptive state easily susceptible to the lies officially ushering in this new era of identity politics.
As a leftist, how did I know NOT to vote for Obama twice, which if I had done in today's climate would be called racist? Simply by utilizing and engaging my short-term memory. It was widely known that Senator Barack Obama was a staunch critic of the surveillance efforts put forth by the Patriot Act after 9/11. During his 2008 presidential campaign he vowed to end “illegal wiretapping,” characterizing the question of liberty versus security as a “false choice.” [1]
December 24, 2007, Des Moines Register: When I am president, there will be no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war.
Just a few months prior to the convention on June 20th, 2008, Senator Obama broke with his promise, voting for the FISA Amendments Act. On August 25th, 2008, Denver was chosen for the Democratic National Convention where Barack Obama was nominated as the first African American Democratic candidate for president. AT&T, one of telecoms implicated in the domestic spying program initiated through the National Security Agency, hosted lavish parties at the Convention sponsoring at least 14 events and receptions. [2]
This betrayal should have been the starting point for millions of Americans to leave the Democratic party forever, but it was not. The ease and confidence to which the above example along with the wide array of other betrayals of the Obama presidency were memory holed are why we find ourselves in this same ludicrous situation again and again. We have been able to assume for over a decade now that if a black man can be just as ruthless and sociopathic as all the previous white men occupying the oval office, a black woman can also seamlessly step into this role.
This is currently illustrated by the rapid deployment of identity politics, in its most recent iteration, woke ideology. The desperate attempts by capitalism to use any form of manipulation and propaganda that will allow it to maintain its present course with barely a sprinkling of legitimacy should be obvious. Black faces in high places presiding over the same neoliberalism has pacified the liberal and progressive gooey blob. Neoliberalism and neoconservatism peaceful coexistence now openly brandishing its partnership under a potential Harris Presidency. LGBTQIA+ terminology and iconography have been co-opted and commandeered by the full spectrum of liberalism and proclaimed manifest by Democratic Party. Utilizing these symbols as a signal to low information voters on where they should stand. This phenomenon is akin to the Evangelical Christians firmly affixed to the two George W. Bush administrations because of the worn bible he carried for photo ops.
What we are seeing within voting constituents on both sides of the two-party duopoly in the United States is a last-ditch effort to be able to place at least a modicum of faith into a political personality, so they can continue living in an American Dream no longer available. The voting populace is coming up against the margins of debate in their extreme attempts to mend the shreds of their own political propaganda into anything resembling reality. The boundaries of this paradigm are marked along its edges by the terrifying acceptance that we all are going to have to sacrifice now and pulling a lever for a candidate is no longer a viable course of action for change.
Activism and avenues for change in the United States today are shrinking rapidly. State tolerance towards our right to assemble and protest is shrinking before our eyes as exemplified by the recent militarization and lockdown of the city of Chicago for the 2024 Democratic National Convention. The Occupy Wall Street movement was squashed under an unprecedented federally coordinated violent action perpetrated under a Democratic presidency. The truth and passionate fire behind the Black Lives Matter movement was doused under a flood of Ford Foundation money. [3] Belief in the legitimacy of electoral outcomes is dwindling and rightly so.
The only path yet to tread is to immediately force change in the United States of America. It might still be possible for us to avert civil unrest and war if collective individual sacrifice allows us to tip the scales into nothing less than revolution. Such a revolution would involve: general strike demanding a complete cessation of war and all military intervention; immediate removal of financial contribution to the United States’ endless wars through collective war tax resistance; and demanding removal of participation within the credit debt global financial systems through medical, private, and student loan debt strikes.
When a person takes radical moral action positioning their life to the extent possible outside the capitalist systems that has appears existential the difficulty and sacrifice is met and eclipsed with the most profound sense of relief. Relief from the compromise that corrodes our collective souls, always knowing the endless war, destruction of the planet, and domination that has always accompanied modern western civilization does not have to be monolithic and can be fought!
CITATIONS:
Timeline of NSA Domestic Spying 1791-2015 | Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org)
Watchdogs decry AT&T spending at DNC - UPI.com
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/ford-foundation/
