The World According to Ash

Oh, and here is a link to the speech I gave. Beware: bad audio.

I spoke yesterday at the University of Maryland. When I looked out into the crowd, I realized that one of my journalism heroes, Jim Ridgeway, was there. (Jim Ridgeway published Nader’s first pieces on the Corvair, and has been a writer for The New Republic, Mother Jones, and The Guardian. He is also in the Unreasonable Man documentary, and happens to represent all that is honest and rough in take-it-to-the-streets journalism.) When I finished, I went into the hall, where Ridgeway approached me and said my speech was excellent. He asked if he could interview me for The Guardian, and I said yes (surprise). After the interview, we talked about how I wanted to be a journalist, and I asked if he had any thoughts. “Yes,” he said, and pulled his card out of his wallet. “Call or email me with your ideas.” I was, um, how do you say, really happy.

Here is the interview. If you click on it and think, “Oh no, this couldn’t be it, this is obviously footage of an emotional refugee or someone who just broke up with her boyfriend and recently polished off a tub of double chocolate chip ice cream,” well then, I can only blame it on the lighting.

I want to take this moment to salute Chris Hedges, who has just now written an article that contains all the things that are missing from modern journalism: interpretation, outrage, and a discussion of suffering rather than a praising of policy. Chris Hedges has dared to do what most journalists will not. He has reminded us that behind our strategic political games are people who die, suffer and starve. He insists that politics is not us versus them, but we are we. It should not be hard to acknowledge the suffering behind the political rhetoric, especially for journalists who see the killing and the despair firsthand. But for some reason it’s too difficult for most to make the connection. It is so refreshing to hear a journalist write this way that I must end now and post the article:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081103_only_nader_is_right_on_the_issues/

That being said, I agree that there are systemic changes that need to be effected to move our country closer to being a democracy.  But is it the role of the president to lead the nation in that regard?  Nader is decidedly left of center in America.  Our country was founded on a discourse of individual freedoms, and this continues to resonate with most of America, even on the liberal end.  The nature of the office of president is such that the president will never stray very far from the center; she or he has to persuade the majority of Americans to vote for her or him.  This involves doing exactly what Obama is currently doing, building a coalition of interested parties that don’t drive the others out.  That is why he supports corn-based ethanol–it’s somewhat forgivable (not to me, it makes me not want to vote for him) to those concerned about global warming, but it gains him a lot of votes in Iowa.  A big difference between Obama and Nader is that Obama is running to actually gain the office of president, while Nader is running to make a statement.  Is it your goal to have Nader become the president?  That’s an honest, not a rhetorical, question.  Consider the fact that Nader has a hard time winning friends in Washington; who in Congress would support him to accomplish any of his campaign goals? 

I do not believe that Nader is to the left of the progressives in America, and I know that he is often very popular with true conservatives-people who inveigh against illegal war, bloated military spending, corporate welfare and who advocate for health issues and election reform. I do not think that a centrist would vote for Nader (although I can think of many good reasons one might, Read the rest of this entry »

Now.  I understand the heart of your position to be the point that our government has entrenched systemic problems that Obama does not address, choosing instead to smooth out some of the wrinkles to make people happy so we don’t demand the reform of the systemic problems themselves. 

I agree that our government is threatened by undue corporate interest, hence my Nader vote in ‘04.  But at this point in history, are the reforms that Obama stands for nothing more than meaningless concessions?  (I will take this opportunity to highlight the differences between Obama and McCain’s policies).  Some 50 million people are without health insurance.  McCain’s website lists some abstract, non-conceived plan of using competition to reform healthcare.  Israel recently engaged in a military exercise that was said to be training for an attack on Iran.  Israel wouldn’t dare attack Iran without US support.  Who is more likely to offer the unequivocal support to Israel that they would need: the senator who has supported, even in an AIPAC address, a two-state solution, who has stated his intention to meet with the leader of Iran or North Korea, or a senator who joked about bombing Iran to a Beach Boys song?  McCain will not repeal the Bush tax cuts, which will increase our federal deficit and force us to continue borrowing money from other nations.  Obama has proposed an increased tax on those who make over $250,000/year.  McCain has said that he doesn’t know much about economics, making him a poor help for people who are suffering under increasing gas and food prices and joblessness in the current recession.  McCain has said that he envisions US presence in Iraq for the next 100 years (no permanent bases, huh?), and he had the poor judgment to support the contrived War in Iraq in its beginning.  Obama has promised withdrawal within Read the rest of this entry »

I posted the first round of exchanges between Nate Housley and me under Correspondence, Inc. Please read that and then read the second round of our exchange, which I will divide up in sections according to topic. I have resisted the urge to go back and include information that would bring them up to date, and I left them as-is to show that many of my arguments came true. I do not say that to gloat, but rather to reaffirm the urgency of my arguments that Obama will not magically change when he gets into office–that if he has changed this much since I first wrote this letter, and the changes were based on corporate influence, then he is not going to morph into some dream candidate after election day. So please read before you vote, and feel free to pass this around. No proprietaryship here….

Hi Nate,

Thanks for your response. I am glad we are having this conversation. I think I’ll Read the rest of this entry »

For the last three weeks, I have been traveling around the country talking to college students about Ralph Nader and the state of our democracy.

As far as I can tell, there are two main camps of college students: the disillusioned and the illusioned. The disillusioned students have had too much of George W. Bush to try anymore. They know how bad things are and they listen to Nader’s solutions patiently, but in the end they want me to risk-proof reform, show them that it is inevitable and will require nothing from them. If not, they are not interested. Their classic cop-out is a compliment: “I admire your idealism. We need more people like you.”

I tell them I don’t want their admiration. I want their effort. I agree that we need more idealists, and that they could start by adding their names to the list. These disillusioned students are responsible for their self-fulfilling prophecies; they are sure nothing will change and-surprise-nothing does. They take comfort in the fact that a cynic is always right.

The second group of students is illusioned. At first this sounds better than the alternative, but in fact it is much more dangerous. These students have seen eight years of Bush, concluded something was wrong, and decided Barack Obama was the solution to all ills. They have not experienced a ‘hope and change’ campaign Read the rest of this entry »

A characteristically excellent article by Matt Gonzalez, urging people to reconsider their Obama vote (particularly in light of an overwhelming Obama victory).

Be a good boy or girl and read the article in its entirety. No scrimping, now.

No, not the gospel. Howard Zinn. As in, Howard Zinn read the good book of reality and decided to vote for Nader. Said so himself in an email to our campaign.

Paging Noam Chomsky…

Time was when the disenfranchised and leading leftist intellectuals were on the same page—the power for the people page. Now most of them are still on the same page, but it reads quite differently: power for the lesser evil. Ignoring years of the very history they lived through and wrote about, the disenfranchised and intellectual left are lining up for it all over again, arguing for the very incremental changes and mainstream candidates they know don’t work. All this bloviating is done in the name of the ‘movement’ staying strong—a movement they are eviscerating even as they call for it. As Zinn ironically reminds us, real change won’t come in the form of electoral politics. That has been Ralph Nader’s point for years. The change will come from an outraged grassroots movement that won’t accept inequality any longer. But the arguments made by Zinn and Chomsky would continue right through a Democratic presidency because they have no logical stopping point. If Obama didn’t become the progressive they wanted him to be, there would always be “later,” and we would still be required to bolster support for him by being quiet. Once again, Mickey Z offers a blistering analysis of the modern progressive movement…

Chomsky, Zinn and Obama

You don’t stick a knife in a man’s back nine inches, and then pull it out six inches, and say you’re making progress.

– Malcolm X

Another Election Day approaches and I’m reminded of something the late Pakistani dissident, Eqbal Ahmad said about Noam Chomsky in the book, Confronting Empire (2000): “He (Chomsky) has never wavered. He has never fallen into the trap of saying, ‘Clinton will do better.’ Or ‘Nixon was bad but Carter at least had a human rights presidency.’ There is a consistency of substance, of posture, of outlook in his work.”

But along came 2004…when Chomsky said stuff like this: “Anyone who says ‘I don’t care if Bush gets elected’ is basically telling poor and working people in the country, ‘I don’t care if your lives are destroyed’.” And like this: “Despite the limited differences [between Bush and Kerry] both domestically and internationally, there are differences. In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes.”

Standing alongside Chomsky was Howard Zinn, saying stuff like this: Read the rest of this entry »