Drones, the drug war and income inequality are important. But a vote against Obama only makes other issues worse
Editor’s Note: We present this article, “the other side of the contra Obama argument” because we do not pretend to absolutism in our “certainties” (itself an absolutism), and because Coyote’s plea is among the best we have found of its kind. Actually he’s so “reasonable” that he comes close to winning his case. Indeed, he makes a compelling argument up to a point…and then the structure sort of collapses. Leaving aside the fact that Coyote in his current incarnation is a self-professed “Buddhist priest”, and I have no use for any type of religion, even Buddhism (which, admittedly, seems less harmful than most), I found some of Coyote’s assertions and equations rankling, superficial, conventional, and hard to accept. (Mother Theresa an example of goodness balancing the universal evil of Hitler? Apparently Coyote never read Hitchens’ able deconstruction of the “beatified nun” or else he would have looked for a more formidable angel. But these are really quibbles. Coyote is a lifelong leftwinger and his heart is obviously on the, let’s call it, “the healing side of humanity.”)
For the record, let me say at the outset that we do have an important point of agreement, namely his objection to what he regards as Stoller’s “reductionism”. Obama, despite his many flaws, including Olympian opportunism, can’t be held accountable for all that is wrong with America today (an argument, incidentally that Stoller does not make). For that he’d have to be a Caesar, and the American executive, for all his/her bloated powers, occupies a position far more diluted than that. Much larger forces, unchecked class forces, acting on longer horizons than his tenure, have created much of the criminal mess we inhabit. In fact the plutocratic propaganda project which facilitated this development is of very old standing. Self-flattering myths and outrageous fabrications have trapped the American mind in a cocoon of unreality practically from the moment the nation was born, but have taken a decisively more professional, self-conscious and cynical edge in the postwar period. Is it an exaggeration to say that at least for the last 40 years the nation has been governed by a shadow government bent on implementing an oligarchic agenda while hiding behind an elaborate PR curtain of dessicated democratic formality? As Coyote puts it, “capital and its minions have been working carefully and closely behind the scenes for decades, disenfranchising workers, voters, women and minorities.” The upshot of all this has been the scarcely denied arrival of the age of “Finance Capitalism”, the dreaded “financiation” stage, a natural development of global capitalism already envisioned by Lenin. That said, Obama, as Stoller and others have efficiently pointed out, has actively participated in the entrenchement of this malevolent new order. His hands are plenty dirty by now. He’s no innocent bystander.
Perhaps the real problem I have with Peter Coyote is the prism he uses to see the world. Obviously, despite his long countercultural past and his possible toying with Marxism at some point, not to mention his subtle intellect, Coyote remains an idealist (these days religious) and, at best, a left-liberal. Concordant with that, his examples and signposts denote a rather superficial and therefore limited understanding of the actual forces that shape history. Thus, while elegantly couched, some of his concluding warnings disintegrate into platitudes. (“We leak anger, jealousy, competitiveness on a daily basis and if we are not careful and do not monitor ourselves, our best intentions become murderous to others.”) That is true as far as it goes but it simply doesn’t go far enough. Who is this “we”? If he means the US and its cynical foreign policy, I have trouble believing that a man of Coyote’s sophistication still buys into and repeats the establishment’s mendacious rationale for its adventures, an “explanation” relentlessly peddled by its apologists in the media. Are we expected to believe, in 2012, after all that has transpired and all the revelations that only obstinate low-info types manage to avoid, that all these transparently murderous interventions across the planet—Guatemala, Iran, Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, Iraq, Libya, just to mention a sample—were done by our imperial governors “with the best intentions”? Here Coyote’s line blurs with that of Bushie2 and of course Obama’s. Well, after all, that is the mainstream liberal line.
In the final analysis, Coyote winds up endorsing the same tired old LOTE script, a path that, by postponing the inevitable, can only lead to a far more intractable and destructive confrontation at a later date, a date that the oncoming ecological crisis can ill accommodate. On these grounds alone, and considering the copious and irrefutable evidence furnished by history that temporizing with evil is rarely a good idea, it is our turn to ask: Who is really being delusional?
We look forward to your comments.—P. Greanville
There is the rub-capitalism, avaricious,acquisitive,brutal and dehumanising is the central problem facing this planet’s social organisation.As a young man I dodged this aspect of reality for years, hoping that some sort of middle ground might be struck between the social needs and the “legal’ protection of property.I am now an extremist-property IS theft, particularly when so many die and suffer as capital destroys our only planet. The President is not the problem, nor the Congress, nor the Bilderbergers, nor the shape shifting aliens from Alpha Centari. The problem is valuing things over life, leading to one becoming no more than… Read more »