The Morning After the Election:
The Promise of Change…and the Change We Need
You couldn't miss it on Election Night. People actually pouring into the
streets to celebrate the election of a president. Emotions ran high, and tears
flowed.
And in the days after: people talking to friends and strangers alike of hope.
Hope for a coming era of change from the horrors of the Bush years. Hope for
overcoming racism. Hope for a new era of service to the common good.
Hope—hope that is founded on the real possibilities for fundamental change in
this world—is indeed precious. Dedicating your life to something higher than
the ethic of "I-want-mine" is so vital that the future of humanity actually
depends on it. And overcoming—truly overcoming—the divisions of society based
on inequality and oppression must be at the heart of any real movement for
social change.
But now, in the dawn of the morning after, one must ask and honestly grapple
with some basic and very serious questions.
Hope for what?
Service to what?
Unity around what goals and what values?
And victory for whom?
The Change He Has Promised
"I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank
screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own
views." —Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope
Most of those who celebrated in the streets oppose the string of wars that Bush
has launched and the threats of more war. Yet Obama through his campaign
promised to send more troops to Afghanistan. He floated the idea of attacks on
Pakistan, threatened Iran, and pledged to back Israel—which to this day
continues to torment the people of Palestine—to the hilt. He established his
reputation by opposing the launching of the war on Iraq—but has already
backtracked on this during his campaign, with talk of "listening to the
generals" and determining when Iraq was "stable" and its troops "sufficiently
trained."
Most of those celebrating in the streets hate the fascism of the Bush years:
the spying, the evisceration of fundamental legal rights, and the torture. Yet
as a senator, Obama voted for the renewal of the Patriot Act (which abolished
or seriously cut key legal rights), and for immunity for telecommunications
companies which illegally spied on people at White House behest.
Most of those celebrating in the streets yearn to see an end to racism, and to
the oppression of Black people and other oppressed nationalities. Yet Obama did
not speak in his campaign of ending the discrimination and oppression that
continues in a Black unemployment rate that is more than double that of whites,
discrimination in housing and health care and the legal system, and an
incarceration rate of Black and other minority people that is the scandal of
the world. No, instead he spoke against his former minister, Jeremiah Wright,
because Wright had "a view that sees white racism as endemic." Obama in that
speech went on to say that such thinking is "divisive" and draws people away
from the problems of "two wars, a terrorist threat, a failing economy, a
chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change"—thereby,
in a phrase, covering over how systematic discrimination is embedded in every
problem in America and negating both the
bitter ongoing oppression of Black people as a people and the deep structural
problems in American society that sustain this.
Many of those in the streets also see Obama as sharing their values on ending
the oppression of women and of gay people. Have they noted that Obama routinely
characterizes abortion itself as a bad thing, even if he does not oppose the
right to abortion, or how rarely he even mentioned defending this right? Or how
Obama, at a time when the right of gay people to marry was being attacked in
electoral referendums, said that while he did not support that referendum, he
at the same time opposed gay marriage itself—on the basis of his own religious
beliefs?
Obama has said he is bringing change. He has called on you—most recently in his
victory speech on election night—to both put your efforts behind him and to be
patient with his administration. The question is this: judging from Obama's
actual statements and not from what you think he must believe deep down, is the
change that he is promising and trying to enlist you in the change we need?
Or are you being enlisted in something that will end up actually opposed to
your best aspirations and a morality based on the common good of humanity?
Redeeming the Dream?
"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place
where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders
is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight
is your answer." —Barack Obama, in his victory speech
Well, many things certainly are possible in America. It is possible in America
for European settlers to commit genocide against the Native American Indians
who lived here and to then declare themselves to be builders of a "shining city
on a hill" and "the last best hope of mankind." It is possible in America to
kidnap over ten million Africans and hold them and their descendants in slavery
for 250 years, exploiting them as the foundation of the great wealth of this
country, and then maintaining their descendants in new forms of oppression and
super-exploitation, and to simultaneously brag that "the dream of our founders"
is based on the principle that "all men are created equal." It is possible in
America to wage and sponsor wars and military coups over the past 150 years
that have taken a toll on humanity unmatched by any of the fabled monstrous
empires of the past, and to then routinely declare, as Barack Obama did in his
speech, that this same country
is the world's great guarantor of "peace and security"—even as he preceded
that by assuring anybody who opposed what he called the "new dawn of American
leadership" that "we will defeat you." It is possible in America to
subordinate the economies of entire nations to the demands and dictates of U.S.
capital; and it is possible to then both super-exploit impoverished people from
those countries who then desperately seek work in the U.S. and at the same time
to demonize them and scapegoat them as the cause of everyone else's hard times.
It is possible to torture in the name of "safety," even as you assure the world
you don't.
But apparently, other things are NOT so possible in America. It has NOT been
possible in America to actually do away with the structures of white supremacy
and the oppression of entire peoples. It has NOT been possible in America to
desist from sending troops, CIA spies, and commandos all over the world—nor has
it been possible to avoid things like killing 40 civilians at a wedding party
in Afghanistan on the day before the election which installed a man who has
promised to send more troops to invade that tortured, beleaguered country. It
has NOT been possible in America to actually overcome the subjugation of women
in every sphere of life, or to end the demonization and systematic
discrimination against gay people. It has NOT been possible for America to
refrain from the heedless plunder and spoliation of the very planet on which we
live. It has NOT been possible in America to overcome the deadening alienation
of everyday life for most people, or the
despair of seeing your best efforts come to naught for many of those who want
to dedicate themselves to making things better.
What has been proven to be possible—and what has proven to be NOT possible—has
nothing to do with "human nature" and everything to do with the system that was
put in place to ensure the "dreams of our founders." The name of that system is
imperialism—a stage of capitalism in which the majority of humanity are
consigned to short, bitter lives of almost indescribable exploitation,
humiliation and degradation. . . in which entire nations are subjugated to
deepen and extend that exploitation. . . and in which the entire world is
divided up amongst a handful of big imperialist powers (with the U.S. currently
at the head of that).
That is the system which actually determines what is, and what is not,
possible. That is the system Barack Obama is now stepping in to head. That is
the system to whose service he now summons you.
Stop Thinking Like Americans! Start Thinking About Humanity!
Imperialism has an ideology—a systematic way, even if unacknowledged, in which
people are trained to view every event in the world. When Barack Obama sings
songs of praise in his victory speech to the greatness of America—he is
training us in a way of understanding the world. When he goes so far as to not
just send best wishes to his opponent, but to gushingly praise this unrepentant
war criminal who dropped bombs on civilians over and over again in Vietnam as a
"brave and selfless leader"—he is doing that training in a particularly
nauseating, and frankly horrific, way. When Barack Obama tells us to "summon a
new spirit of patriotism" and overcome divisions—same thing.
This has to be called out for what it is: American chauvinism. This accepts as
a given the existence of imperialism. Many of those who celebrated on election
night are in effect hoping that Obama will lead to a "better" imperialism. But
there is no such thing– there is no "better" imperialist USA, no "good"
imperialism of any kind. What we need is to sweep away imperialism, and all
relations of oppression and exploitation.
Stop chanting USA, USA—and start thinking about what is really facing humanity
and what must urgently be done. Stop waving those flags, and start resisting
the crimes of that system, including the very real crimes of the Bush regime
that Obama not only is not going to prosecute but, yes, is determined, in large
part, to continue. STOP THINKING LIKE AMERICANS—and start thinking about, and
trying to proceed from, what humanity needs.
A Better Way
Does this mean, then, that there is no hope? That there is, in fact, nothing
one can do? Are we counseling cynicism or despair?
Far from it. In place of false hope, we offer hope based on a real foundation.
We offer hope based on the vision of a different society that draws on the fact
that humanity could today accomplish great things—starting with the elimination
of hunger and disease and homelessness—but is only held back by the economic
relations of exploitation in which it is fettered, and the machinery of
oppression that backs up those relations. We offer, in short, the hope of
revolution.
We offer hope evidenced in the accomplishments of the Russian and Chinese
revolutions—before those revolutions were reversed. Those revolutions made
leaps in the very things that are NOT possible in this system: the elimination
of exploitation and a rupture with the imperialist relations that strangle the
world; the uprooting of the subjugation of women, and of oppressed nations and
nationalities; the opening up to the oppressed of the spheres of running
society and working with ideas—spheres which they are today kept out of by both
the normal workings, and conscious policies, of capitalism; and the provision
of health care, education and many other basic needs to all of society, in ways
that narrowed and did not widen inequality.
In place of a "service" which can only end up reinforcing the very things you
oppose, we offer something which corresponds to your highest aspirations:
making revolution.
For there IS work to do—work that urgently cries out to be done. There is the
work of fighting for your best ideals and hopes for change. There is the work
of actually digging into how the world really works, into America's real place
and role in that world, and into what revolution is all about and how it might
be possible. There is the work of fighting the power, and transforming the
people, for revolution.
Let us break, finally, with deadly illusions and let us set about that work—the
ending of imperialism, and of all relations of exploitation and oppression, and
NOT their reinforcement, in a different package. Let us truly bring about a new
day.
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