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Tuesday November 25, 2008 22:49 by Scott Neigh - Common Cause - Linchpin 6
Election season. It's a sad time. Elections are neither nothing nor everything. Within narrow bounds, we get to choose -- criminally narrow bounds that mean they cannot touch the things that mean life or death, more suffering or less suffering, for many, but can make small but real changes that mean life or death, more suffering or less suffering, for others. It would be politically foolish and morally dubious to ignore that. In the U.S., the choice is between a neoliberal and a complete maniac -- not good and evil, but not quite tweedledum and tweedledee. It may not matter in exactly the way the hype machine claims that Obama is the first African American nominee for a major party – perhaps the first African American president, a single generation after the fall of Jim Crow – but it definitely matters. In terms of policy impacts, a modest drop in people who lack health care; management of empire that might result in a small decrease in body count; small efforts to safeguard the ability some women in the U.S. currently have to get an abortion when they need one; small but non-trivial efforts to reduce some kinds of poverty for some people; a few of the intrusions by the national security state (but only a few) rolled back; maybe even small reductions in the barriers workers' face in organizing: I doubt all of these things will happen, but I suspect a few will if Obama is elected. Small in comparison to the scale of the problems? Sure. Real impacts on real lives despite that? Yup. And because of that, it matters. At the same time, empire will roll on undisturbed, the bodies of poor and working-class people of colour in the so-called third world will continue to be sacrificed on the alter of capitalism, rising poverty will increase suffering and early death in the global north as well, workers and communities will still have little control over our work and the economy, sexual violence will remain endemic, and white supremacy and patriarchy will continue to be fundamental organizing principles of our lives even if Obama wins. And that matters too. A lot. |
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