Piper's Pit: Fear No Evil

Saab Lofton - September 2008

"Fear of Bush functions like fear of right-wing judicial nominations - a tool for keeping progressives in a box… if we are going to eschew a third party candidacy when the Republican option is scary, it follows that we should permanently abandon such efforts." - page 145 of Ralph's Revolt: The Case for Joining Nader's Rebellion by Greg Bates

"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." - Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

Remember the 1993 Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day? It was about someone caught in a temporal causality loop; in the case of Murray's character, the same 24 hour period kept repeating itself over and over and over and over.

That's exactly what it's like dealing with the Democratic Party. Every presidential election, we the people are subject to the same, chickenshit excuse: Vote for the lesser-of-two-evils, lest we suffer The Apocalypse (those who claim this seem to forget that a Democrat got us into Vietnam and a Republican got us out).

I for one ain't falling for it anymore. The only reason Barack Obama is considered a "legitimate candidate" is because of the high cost of advertising. We don't have free speech; we have expensive speech, which means if third party candidates can't afford a lot of TV commercials, they might as well be imprisoned in Soviet gulags (in other words, Big Business equals Big Brother). Logic dictates one cannot choose an option if one doesn't know that option exists, so the name of the game is fame.

And of course, since Obama panders to the rich and powerful, the rich and powerful will pay for his airtime. This is not a conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, this is conspiracy reality.

It's time to break this sick, lesser-of-two-evils cycle, which is why I'm endorsing Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, formerly a Democratic member of the House of Representatives (Georgia's 4th Congressional District). On Saturday, June 14th, 2008, I met McKinney when she came to Seattle's Cafe Vega, where a documentary about her campaign and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was played. We talked for a few minutes and I proposed that I be picked as her vice presidential candidate on the grounds that - like the samurai of ancient Japan - I'd rather die than sell out. How often have we heard it in political circles? "I can't publicly support that; I don't want to end up like J.F.K. or Dr. King..."

Even the commies are coming out for McKinney! "Workers World newspaper in the past has supported the candidates of Workers World Party running for national office in the U.S. presidential elections and who have put forward a revolutionary socialist program. This time we are taking the unusual step of endorsing the candidacy of Cynthia McKinney because these are unique times and this is a unique candidate."

Do your homework before claiming McKinney will split the vote and spoil the election! As Amy Goodman of Democracy Now put it so well, "Many continue to believe that the election was thrown to George W. Bush by Ralph Nader, who got about 97,000 votes in Florida. Ten times that number of Floridians are prevented from voting at all."

Ten times that number adds up to about a million, but does the Democratic Party blame Florida's white supremacy for what happened in 2000? No, they continue to scapegoat Nader!

Speaking of, Nader's a good man - one of the best, but he's in his mid-seventies, and if I'm going to get on Reagan's or McCain's case about being too old, in contrast, McKinney is a healthy 53 years old. If anything, Nader should join McKinney's campaign with the understanding that he'd be appointed Attorney General - can you imagine HIM of all people with a position like that?

But even if Nader and/or McKinney do throw the election to McCain, so what? The Democratic Party should've thought of that before they treated Dennis Kucinich like a redheaded stepchild from an old English melodrama during the primaries. If you want left-wing votes, nominate left-wingers! It's that simple!

As far as the all-too-often heard refrain about how the so-called "average American" wouldn't vote for a far left presidential candidate, Oscar-winner Michael Moore nailed it in his book, Dude, Where's My Country?: "If the Democrats would stop watering down their beliefs to appeal to all the dumb white guys out there, they'd win. Women of all colors are 53 percent of the electorate. Black and Hispanic men make up nearly 8 percent of the vote. That means that women and these minority men represent about 60 percent of the entire nation, an overwhelming majority and a powerful winning combination."

A case could easily be made that the Democratic Party is less concerned with alienating the woefully ignorant American masses and more concerned with alienating its corporate sponsors (since Nader, McKinney and Kucinich would tax the rich), but let's explore that fear of America's ignorance: Once upon a time, the majority of whites believed blacks were inferior - what if the myth of black inferiority was allowed to persist because some fool was AFRAID of hurting the feelings of those whites?