On Obama, Drones, Deportation, Austerity, and the Vote

My last post, about why I voted for Obama-Biden in ’08 and will again, inspired some pretty strong criticism. Since most of the commentary has been off-line, and many points of criticism that deserve air time were raised, I’m taking another stab at this to get more of you in the discussion.

First, I have to admit that it was unfair to equate resistance to voting for the Obama ticket with simple disappointment based in unrealistic expectations.

I know there’s more to the protest against Obama from the left than that – much more. A strategy of countering terror with terror, “secret” drone wars, a record number of deportations, and massive expansion of the national security state, not to mention inaction on mass incarceration, and an austerity agenda are not small matters.

Moreover, the analysis that drives much of the critique from the left is not to be taken lightly. Folks aren’t just disappointed; they are concerned about Obama being, as Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report puts it, “not the lesser of two evils, but the more effective of two evils.”

In some respects, I agree. The combination of Obama’s relative social liberalism and the symbolic significance of his status as the first Black president has the affect of marginalizing critics of the repressive aspects of his agenda, especially among communities of color. And the right’s racist attacks on Obama aren’t helping matters.

And there’s more. Check this Democracy Now! video out for a taste of what’s being debated.

[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K0iEAWRkT4&w=560&h=315]

But, I’m still voting for Obama.

I respect that some of you will not. But I don’t believe that Obama is the “more effective of two evils.”

Here’s why.

First of all, I think that assessment may be based in an under-estimation the evil of the agenda of the other side, and just how effective they may become at institutionalizing it.

For instance, there’s that unaccounted for $2.1 trillion increase in defense spending proposed by Romney. That’s a major expansion of the war budget, and given the Ayn Rand inspired vision of the most insurgent faction of the GOP, my guess is that it won’t all be invested in the traditional military. A Romney-Ryan administration could, I believe, redefine what we mean when we say military industrial complex.

Moreover, that Randian vision I referenced takes the notion of elitism and corporate control of everything to all new levels. I’m pessimistic about the prospect that this brand of evil would inspire more effective opposition.

In place of that hopeful vision, I have the memory of hundreds of families I worked with as a social worker. I will never forget a girl whose father punished her for cutting school by putting her hand on a red hot electric stove element. What will become of people like her and her father, who suffered from mental illness but didn’t have the insurance coverage he needed to have it properly treated, if, say, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell were to become the Secretary of Health and Human Services?

And, on that subject of cabinet members, consider another Secretary of the Interior like James Watt, a Reagan appointee, who summed up his use-it-up-before-Jesus-returns approach to forest management with the statement, “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns…” Or, consider Mike Huckabee as Director of Homeland Security.

But beyond all my perhaps alarmist fears, there’s another reason I believe that Obama as president is the lesser of two evils. That’s my sense of where the two political parties and candidates fit within the context of other political factions, trends, and movements.

Among them there’s the right wing.

If you think evangelical and white nationalist rightists have revealed their whole agenda with racist anti-immigrant attacks, and campaigns to eliminate reproductive rights and human rights (like the right to be LGBT), you’re under-estimating them. The white nationalist faction has a far more radical racist agenda than “papers please” legislation. And to many of the religious right, Islam must be eradicated to make the world safe for Christianity, and support for Israel is based in the belief that the end times are triggered when Israel completely consumes Palestine.

Neither faction should be in a position to more directly influence federal policy.

And in terms of social trends, one of the most concerning is the one toward libertarianism among Gen Y. This tendency is the flip side of their broad support for same sex marriage rights, among other anti-authoritarian leanings.

The more powerful the libertarian right, the more likely it is that this tendency will become a dominant one among Gen Y. From positions of greater authority, it’s just plain easier to take exotic ideologies and turn them into common sense.

But there’s more.

There’s another reason I fear the GOP. That’s the disorganized state of the U.S. left which has yet to formulate a popular ideological alternative to either the cultural right’s traditional values nor to mainstream neo-liberalism. Leftists need to build a broader base and develop a popular language of protest, and one that doesn’t sideline race with a purely class based approach to justice. Until we do, I fear that allowing the GOP to take control will polarize the country around issues on which there are still too few on our side.