Voices on the Issues That Really Matter

The Democratic National Convention (DNC) begins today in Chicago amidst protests against the unconditional supplying of military aid to Israel by the current Biden/Harris administration and a potential Harris/Walz administration.

Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel, the U.S. has given the far right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu over $20 billion dollars in unconditional military aid, including direct arms sales. These weapons are U.S.-made. Also, most of the financial military aid is used by Israel to purchase additional U.S.-made weaponry. Not surprisingly, profits are soaring for U.S. “defense” contractors and weapons manufacturers, in particular RTX Corporation, formerly Raytheon Technologies. For its part, the Israeli government is using these U.S.-made weapons in its ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza, a war that has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and which is viewed by many as a “genocidal project.”

I briefly thought about traveling to Chicago with a contingent of local justice and peace activites to participate in the DNC protests but ultimately chose not to. Although I’ll watch some news so as to follow the protests, I doubt I’ll follow the actual convention, just as I didn’t tune-in to any great extent to the Republican National Convention back in July. I dare say I’ll check Democracy Now!’s coverage of the convention, and maybe Rising’s, but I’ll be passing on the corporate mainstream media’s coverage. Why? Because corporate media outlets will be taking their cues from the Democratic Party establishment and focusing on what the late, great historian Howard Zinn once referred to as “election madness,” complete this time around with, in Paul Street words, “big notes of spurious identitarian (race, gender, and age) harmony.”

What we won’t hear from the heavily scripted speakers on the DNC stage, and thus from corporate media, is anything about radical system change, anything about the corporate capture of our democracy, anything about the climate emergency before us. This is both tragic and frustrating, as these deeper realties are what most need to be named and seriously and meaningfully addressed.


Sharing voices

So what I’ve decided to do during this week of the DNC is to share voices that do name and address the issues that really matter. In this sharing there will be no “vibe politics” at the expense of “policy politics,” no rhapsodizing over certain political personalities, no emphasis on identity politics at the expense of the broader issues of classism and economic justice. And most importantly, there’ll be no pandering to working Americans with mere platitudes, progressive buzzwords, and economic plans that fail to acknowledge and challenge both the reality that corporate money has, for all intents and purposes, replaced the vote of citizens and thus their voice in congress, and that a morally bankrupt neoliberal establishment (which has coronated one of its own) continues to pave the way for authoritarianism and fascism.

After all, when the machinary of government (regardless of whether this government is Republican- or Democratic-led) has been seized by a corporate cabal committed to empire and war-profiteering for its own enrichment and empowerment at the expense of the rest of the citizenry, one inevitable consequence is, in the words of author and former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson (left), “large groups of desperate people.” Such groups, says Williamson “have always been and should always be considered a national security risk, a petri dish full of citizens dangerously vulnerable to ideological capture by genuinely psychotic forces.”

“No one should be that shocked by the emergence of Donald Trump in 2016,” continues Williamsom, “and no one should be naïve about the danger that is still lurking [now and moving forward] if the Democrats don’t fundamentally alter the patterns of economic injustice that still plague our society. And incremental change does not represent a fundamental alteration.”

Will presidential nominee Kamala Harris and the Democratic establishment that selected her move beyond “incremental change” and commit instead to “fundamentally alter[ing] the patterns of economic injustice”? I sure do hope so, but at the same time I and many others have serious questions and doubts – none of which I sense will be acknowledged or discussed at the DNC. All the more reason, then, to lift up voices that do talk about the need for fundamental economic change and the radical (in the truest and best sense of the word*) transformation of our political system.

Ralph Nader on the 2024 election

I start this week-long series with an insightful 25-minute interview with Ralph Nader, renowned consumer advocate, tireless corporate critic, and arguably the most famous third-party candidate in United States election history, having run for president four times.

In this interview, conducted August 13 by Alexandra Locke of Al Jazeera’s podcast The Take, Nader discusses why third-party candidates are so crucial for the positive transformation of the U.S. political system. He also shares his thoughts on both the 2000 Gore/Bush controversy (in which he was labeled a “spoiler”) and this year’s presidential race.






FYI: Ralph Nader has a new book out, Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country that Works for the People (Skyhorse Publishing, 2024).


* All too often the word “radical” is erroneously equated with extremism of one kind or another. Yet that’s not what “radical” actually means. It means to go to the root, to recognize and address the underlying essence of a given reality, along with deep-seated issues, questions and/or problems associated with this reality.


NEXT:
Active Hope

Related Off-site Links:
“It’s the Democratic Party’s War”: Gaza Protests Planned Throughout Week as DNC Begins in Chicago – Democracy Now! (August 19, 2024).
Voices from the Streets of Chicago: DNC Protesters Call for Gaza Ceasefire and Economic Justice – Democracy Now! (August 19, 2024).
Kamala Harris Is Reaching Out to Arab American Leaders, But Will There Be Any Change in Gaza Policy? – Democracy Now! (August 19, 2024).
Clintons and Obamas to Speak at DNC; Party Taps “Celebrities” to Join – Rising (August 19, 2024).
Kamala Harris Is No Communist, Socialist, or Nixon – Jill Lawrence (The Bulwark, August 19, 2024).
The Problem With Kamala’s Economic Plan – Sabrina Salvati (Sabby Sabs, August 19, 2024).
Democracy Despises a Coronation – Hamiliton Nolan (In These Times, August 15, 2024).
Ralph Nader Would Like to Stop Having to Explain Why the Spoiler Coverage Is Stupid – Jacob Rosenberg (Mother Jones, April 15, 2024).
Ralph Nader at 90 on the “Genocidal War” in Gaza and Why Congress Is a Weapon of Mass Destruction – Democracy Now! (February 27, 2024).
Remembering Lewis Lapham, Who Opened America’s Mind – Ralph Nader (Common Dreams, August 15, 2024).
Ralph Nader: Biden’s First Year Proves He Is Still a “Corporate Socialist” Beholden to Big Business – Democracy Now! (January 20, 2022).
“Corporate Homicide”: Ralph Nader Demands Boeing Recall Jets After Ethiopia Crash Kills His Niece – Democracy Now! (April 5, 2019).
“To the Ramparts”: Ralph Nader on How Bush and Obama Paved the Way for the Trump Presidency – Democracy Now! (December 17, 2018).
Ralph Nader Denounces Trump Budget as Corporatist, Militarist and Racist: “The Mask is Off” – Democracy Now! (March 17, 2017).
Two-Party Tyranny: Ralph Nader on Exclusion of Third-Party Candidates from First Presidential Debate – Democracy Now! (September 19, 2016).
Ralph Nader: Bernie Sanders’ Opposition to Third Parties is Why His Movement is in Disarray – Democracy Now! (September 19, 2016).
Ralph Nader: Calling a Third-Party Candidate a “Spoiler” is a “Politically Bigoted Word” – Democracy Now! (September 19, 2016).
Ralph Nader: Sanders Should Stay in Democratic Race, Is Only Losing Due to Anti-Democratic System – Democracy Now! (May 10, 2016).
Ralph Nader: The U.S. Political and Media System Is Designed to Obstruct and Silence Third-Party Candidates – Democracy Now! (May 10, 2016).
No, Ralph Nader Did Not Hand the 2000 Presidential Election to George W. Bush – Anthony Fisker (Reason, August 3, 2016).

UPDATES: Corporate Greed Threatens the Health of Our Minds, Our Bodies, and Our Republic – Andrea Mazzarino (Common Dreams, August 21, 2024).
On DNC Sidelines, Progressives Push Democrats to Fight for the Working Class – Jessica Corbett (Common Dreams, August 21, 2024).
Capitalism Is Killing Us, But You Won’t Hear a Whisper of It at the Democratic Convention – Phil Wilson (Common Dreams, August 22, 2024).
Call the Greens an “Independent Party,” Not “Third Party”: Jill Stein – Rich Johnson (NewsNation, August 31, 2024).

For more of Ralph Nader at The Wild Reed, see:
• It’s Not Just Trump: Ralph Nader on the “Lawlessness” of Other U.S. Presidents
• Ralph Nader: Quote of the Day – January 20, 2022
• Ralph Nader: Quote of the Day – December 5, 2016
• Across America, “the Giant is Awake”
• Hope Over Fear: Voting Green

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• “Americans Deserve Choices”: Jill Stein on Breaking Points – 4/30/24
• Progressive Perspectives on an American Coronation
• On This Momentous Day in U.S. Politics, a Visit to the Prayer Tree
• Progressive Perspectives on the Crisis in U.S. Electoral Politics
• Something to Think About – August 15, 2024
• Just Imagine
• Centrist/Corporatist Democrats Have Just Launched “Left Punching” Season
• Marianne Williamson: “We Must Challenge the Entire System”
• A Deeper Perspective on What’s Really Attacking American Democracy
• Memes of the Times