Thursday, March 10, 2016

Sanders, Sandinistas, Clinton, and Contras in Context

I did not see the March 9 Democratic debate, but I have seen clips of the exchange Clinton and Sanders had over Sanders's support for the Sandinistas. 
When I was an undergraduate, I spent a year researching and writing a ninety page thesis on Central American Solidarity activism--what Sanders is being maligned for participating in. As a result of this, I'd like to put Sander's activism in a historical context.
Between the Sandinista revolution and 1986 100,000 US citizens visited Nicaragua as part of solidarity activism.
One hundred thousand. 
That is a large number of U.S. citizens to visit any foreign country for politically motivated reasons. 
It is especially impressive considering they did so at great personal risk. In 1985, 29 activists with Witness for Peace were kidnapped by the Contras. In 1987, U.S. solidarity activist Benjamin Linder was murdered by the Contras--with the full support of the Reagan Regime in Washington. 
Fifty thousand Americas took a "Pledge of Resistance" to engage in civil disobedience should the Reagan Regime in Washington invade Nicaragua
Even if you don't want to extrapolate from the number of people who were willing to take great personal risks to oppose U.S. foreign policy in Nicaragua, opinion polls from the time show that Reagan's foreign policy in Central America was deeply unpopular--the most unpopular of any U.S. President up until that time. He received more letters to the White House about Central America than any other issue. 
Benjamin Linder (1959-1987) was a U.S. Central American solidarity
activist, who at the age of 27 was murdered by the U.S. back Contras.
And the Reagan Regime in Washington blamed Central American Solidarity activists, especially those who had traveled to the region, for the unpopularity of their wars, including the Contra war. A State Department official noted they were losing the war of information, because in every town in the U.S. small or large they visited there was someone giving a presentation about what they had first hand witnessed in Central America. The Regan Regime tried to counter this by setting up the The Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean, which devoted its full time to providing correct information about the region. It was shut down by the Government Accountability Office for being an illegal form of domestic propaganda, but not before booking 1,400 speaking engagements in 1,000 U.S. towns.
And why were so many people so concerned? 
The Contras were a terrorist organization. 
They deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure like health clinics and adult literacy centers. The Reagan Regime had the wonderful idea that since the Sandinistas's popularity rested in their promise of social programs that would improve the lives of poor people, if they violently eradicated those programs the Sandinistas wold be less popular! Oxfam called this the "fear of a good example."
The Contras also, in addition to being just general murderers, routinely engaged in rape and amputation of body parts against civilians in a systematic way in order to terrorize them into submission.
The Sandinistas, for whatever their faults, stood in democratic elections in 1984, elections which the UN and most Western European governments found to be fair, elections which the Contras, on the advice of the Reagan Regime, refused to participate in.
And how did the the Sandinistas lose power? 
They lost an election and left. 
Some dictatorship.
So in short, there are no words in the English language, or probably any other, to describe the pure visceral rage I feel for Clinton's attack on those who opposed the Contras.

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Open Letter to Those Who Disagree With Scalia, but "Respect' his "Opinions"


 File:Justice Antonin Scalia Speaks with Staff at the U.S. Mission in Geneva (1).jpg


Hello Everyone,

I would just like to point out to all the people saying laudatory things about Scalia, on the whole liberal respect of other opinions grounds, that he wasn't just some guy with bad opinions--like a racist, but otherwise lovable uncle.

He was someone who was in an actual position of power over actual people's lives. How he wielded said power had tremendous consequences for actual people, like literally life or death consequences in things like decisions about the death penalty.

He used that power to try to make sure that torture was legal, to argue that there was no constitutional right not to be executed just because you were factually innocent, to uphold the right of states to jail LGBT people for consensual sexual acts, to overturn prohibitions on sex discrimination, and deny women the right to make decisions about their bodies.

This is not about respecting someone with whom you disagree, this about resenting the actual damage that the reprehensible actions of a person did.

It isn't zany, but admirable when someone argues there is nothing to prohibit states from flogging people or amputating ears when said person has the actual power to determine whether such a thing does or does not happen.

So no, no one has to respect his brilliance (which is questionable anyways, since in spite of the fact that he was a talented writer if anyone who was not a Supreme Court justice uttered some of his beliefs they almost certainly would be considered unserious or ludicrous, not a gifted purveyor of legal reasoning, by the same people singing his praise. This is to say nothing of the fact that he spent much of his time pondering why Satan had stopped tossing goats off of cliffs), when said brilliance was used for evil.

His actions had consequences for millions of people, I don't see why he shouldn't be one of them.

Monday, February 15, 2016

Hillary Clinton's "Experience" is Largely a Vapid, Politically Meaningless Argument

As Bernie Sanders has risen in the polls and had an unexpected degree of success in Iowa and New Hampshire, thus posing a potential problem for Hillary Clinton’s coronations, it has been immensely enjoyable watching the Clinton campaign and its many co-conspirators panic. This has ranged from the very bizarre, such as comparing the demand of tuition free college, something that was in the past accomplished in both California and New York City (to say nothing other many countries where it is still a reality) to the redistribution of ponies, to the really rather shameless, like the number of professional pundits attacking Sanders support of single payer, when they themselves supported single payer until it became politically pragmatic to attack Sanders.

What is most remarkable about all of this, is that even though those leading the attack on Sanders purport to be the guardians of all things very serious against Sanders and his supporters unrestrained un-seriousness, is that the arguments that Clinton supporters have resorted to are almost all extremely vapid. That is, while they have taken the most condescending of attitudes towards Sanders supporters, instructing them that support for Sanders is unacceptable given that his policy proposals are unrealistic, vague, short of specifics, etc., they have been relentless in trotting out arguments that are completely hollow, devoid of any underlying political content, and ultimately meaningless.

 Nowhere is this more on display then the fixation on Hillary Clinton’s experience. In case you have not recently been evangelized to on this point, not only is Clinton more “experienced” than Sanders, she is the most experienced candidate for President. Ever. Objectively so! Ignoring how one reaches the “objective” conclusion that Clinton is the most experienced candidate for President ever or that her sum time in public office consists of nine years as a Senator and six years as a Secretary of State and Sanders time in public office consists of eight years a mayor, 26 years as Representative, and nine years as a Senator, let’s examine this argument.

On its face it appears valid. After all, it is generally taken for granted that having experience for a “job” is a good thing. However, it is also important to take into account experience doing what. And more importantly, it is worth asking how one plans on using that experience.

Yet, that is precisely the opposite of what those relying on the experience argument do. There may be some vague comments about Clinton’s past positions, followed by how this will enable her to achieve the change we need. Essentially Clinton did stuff, and will continue to do stuff. Why “the stuff” part is usually so vague is a familiar story at this point. Clinton’s record of support for destroying welfare, supporting “tough on crime” policies, and aggressive wars is relatively inconvenient at this juncture in history when many potential Democratic primary voters are angered by income inequality and the vanishing Welfare State, racism and its relationship to the criminal justice system, and war. It is hard to see how said experience can be considered an asset, unless Clinton and company are claiming that after all these years she has experience, as what not to do. There is also the problem of what she will accomplish more generally. While Clinton and her supporters tout her proposals as being realistic alternatives to Sanders utopian dreaming, it is doubtful that very many people believe even if she did have a magic wand she would use it to achieve single payer healthcare. Clinton is not merely more realistic than Sanders and thus is proposing only policies she knows can be accomplished,; Clinton is fundamentally philosophically opposed to the type of social democratic project that Sanders is committed to. All of this is masked by an appeal that a general experience devoid of political content will equip her with a general competency devoid of political content.
Nowhere is this lack of politics more stunningly on display then in an exchange on Henry Kissinger that took place during a February 12, 2016 debate on Democracy Now! between Jeffery Sachs and Rep. Gregory Meeks. This came on the tail of Sanders eviscerating Clinton’s touting of Henry Kissinger’s support of her. Rep. Meeks defended Clinton’s Kissinger connection on the grounds that he talks to people with “expertise” regardless of their disagreements. He stated, “even if it’s a different party, you talk to your former colleagues to find out what they did and how they did it.”

This is all fine and dandy and has a ring of truth around it in an extremely generalized sense. Yet, when the position involves foreign policy you may want to rethink talking to someone who is unable to travel to many countries do to the fact that he is wanted for questioning pertaining to war crimes. Rep. Meeks is particularly exemplary of this phenomenon of giving answers devoid of political content. He ignores the fact that being Secretary of State isn’t just another job, it is an inherently political one, and thus getting advice from other individuals isn’t like how to figure a complex accounting problem or other technical task.

Yet, for those arguing in favor of Clinton have rendered not just being a Secretary of State into a rote, technical task, but the presidency, as well. It does not matter that Clinton supported the War in Iraq or the destruction of welfare, the presidency is merely a technocratic job for which these past experiences have left Clinton well-groomed.

Allowing an actual debate over politics to enter the mix here is doubly frightening for Clinton and those who defend her. First, her actual political choices appear very unsavory compared to Sanders’. However, there is something far more dangerous. The Clintons and much of the punditry assume that certain realms of policy are immune from serious political debate, that certain political criticisms are so far out of the framework of a bipartisan consensus that all serious people share they cannot even be considered. This is why a Democratic Senator can (and must) support a Republican initiated war. In fact, Bill Clinton’s policies towards Iraq, which included not just sanctions, but an explicit policy of regime change and regular bombing campaigns certainly paved for Bush’s escalation of U.S.-Iraq policy in the form of a full-scale invasion and occupation. This is why many of the figures responsible for implementing the Clinton-era policy supported, at least early on, Bush’s own policies. The same is true of a general consensus that serious people want to privatize or eviscerate swaths of the welfare state and only unserious people feel otherwise.

Once this technocratic worldview of U.S. policy is dropped, and actual policy comes back into the picture, the appeals to experience, expertise, ability to accomplish unspecified things all starts to appear pretty vapid. It is then becomes Clinton, not Sanders, whose campaign is short on meaningful specifics.