Reply #75: That also deserves a response

[Jack Rabbit]

No, these are not reasonable times and the 2004 election is not politics as usual. The fight in 2004 is not to bring about a new American Golden Age; it is to stop America from going into an abyss. If Bush were just another conservative president with a pro-corprorate agenda, that would be different. If he were, the Left might be justified in trying to set its own agenda independent of teh Democratic Party. However, Bush is something else. He is a genuine threat to American democratic institutions.

Let's not delude ourselves that putting a Democrat in the White House in 2004 is going to solve all our problems. It won't. However, we will again be able to discuss our problems rationally.

Again, to make the analogy with the Nazi occupation of France, throwing the Nazis out did not bring about a utopian state. What it allowed was Frenchmen to determine their own destiny once again. France as again governed by Frenchmen, not Germans. As long as the Nazis occupied France, it was not possible or even meaningful for Frenchmen to discuss their differing views of how France was to be governed. It is easy to understand how the Communists aligned themselves with de Gaulle, who would have fit nicely into the Republican Party of his time had he been an American.

The Bush junta renders meaningless the differences the Left has in a two-party system. If he and his aides gain a greater grip on power than they already have, we will be without a voice. Bush will have his crooked colonial wars and not fear opposition, because Ashcroft will be reading the opposition's e-mail and sending them to prison on whatever trivial charges he can make stick. Failing that, he'll just send dissidents to prison without trial. We're already too close to that state of affairs for comfort.

What a Democratic victory would do is alleviate that unfortunate situation. Perhaps a Democratic president will see fit to continue to persue a free trade agenda contrary to the interests of working people around the world, but he won't suggest that Americans who dissent are terrorists. We can present our program without fear that someone at DOJ is scheming to strip each of us of his citizenship and have him disappear into Guantanamo.

This is about saving our democratic insitutions from obliteration. With them we can at least engage in a dialog with those who differ and try to persuade them that our way is better. Without those institutions, we have no voice at all. Under Bush, we will be marginalized and villified.

It may only be a small victory. However, if it is a voctory that assures open dialogue, then that will be sufficient. If I am wrong and Bush loses, we will be no worse off. However, if I am right and Bush wins, then we will lose everything.