In the coming weeks, there will be four political conventions happening in America.
That’s right, four.
You’ll see two on television — two well-scripted production numbers spouting Demoblican propaganda. The TV spectacles for Bore and Gush will make the Oscars look like a poorly-planned frat party. These conventions will feature carefully-coiffed candidates offering nothing but simplistic platitudes.
The Republicans have nothing to present except the usual tax cuts for the wealthy, corporate handouts and protection of power for the rich and conforming. They’ll package it to look like an inclusive, multicolored platform of compassion, but the legislation behind it only hurts the average American.
The Democrats only seem to believe in staying in power. They haven’t had a new idea in years, their candidates are nothing more than Republicans who like taxes and they will desperately appeal to the “mushy middle” voters, regardless of who they have to sell out in the process. They, too, will pretend to embrace causes that they’ll never back up with legislation.
Unfortunately for democracy and voter participation, the only coverage of the other two conventions — the conventions actually engaging in spirited discussion of issues that affect the average American — that you’ll see will be police officers in the streets of Philadelphia and Los Angeles “cracking down” on the “Eugene anarchists” and “protesters.”
That’s right, mass counter-conventions will be happening during the major party galas. In fact, they’ll be happening right outside the door. These people wouldn’t have to “protest” if they were actually represented by our so-called political system.
Many of us disaffected by the endless corporate politics will agree with much of what the People’s Convention and Direct Action Network are espousing. Check out both counter-conventions’ Web sites at www.directactionnetwork.org and peoplesconvention.com. Progressives will find the ideas of these “protesters” commonplace. Not-so-progressives may find that they make sense.
Destroying property to get attention is not the point of these conventions. Discussing social justice, environmental protection, health care, education and global capitalism is. But like the WTO protests, having TV cameras filming something, filming any part of these ideas holds the possibility of Americans seeing and thinking about them. Media outlets won’t discuss these issues.
The media barrage instead will be histrionic: Must cover empty sound bites and superficial photo-ops! No time for covering issues during the busy election cycle! Hillary said bad words! Bush snorted coke!
Many progressives and hard-left liberals will complain about the tactics of some of the “protesters,” saying that vandalism is violence, saying that we can’t create fear if our ideas are to be accepted. Maybe. But the corporate politics of Bore and Gush give me fear. The notion of a two-party political system dominated by big lies and no ideas gives me fear.
The possibility that the rich will keep getting richer, the poor will keep getting poorer and the mainstream American voters will keep getting suckered and fleeced by politicians with pretty things to say really, really gives me fear.
Has anyone (especially the progressive naysayers of anarchists’ tactics) stopped to think that maybe we’re running out of options? I condemn violence; don’t get me wrong. But I neither condone nor condemn corporate vandalism. I think that’s a personal choice. No matter how many people say otherwise, the strength of the message and the vandalism in Seattle made the powers that be take notice. And when you’re left out of the political process, ignored and pushed aside as if your concerns and ideas aren’t as important as big corporate donors and nicely worded slogans, what should you do?
Perhaps if the media and the politicians spent some time addressing the issues and concerns of the working class in America, there would be no need for news outlets to cover broken windows and marches in the streets, and no need for politicians to decry the lawlessness of “fringe groups.”
If the media and the government would engage in a dialogue with the disaffected masses about our society, instead of using sleight-of-hand ad campaigns to sell something vaguely representing politics, we wouldn’t have such unrest.
More and more of us aren’t represented by the two-party system. We’re taxed, but not represented. More and more of us are represented by “fringe groups.” Those groups are finally joining forces to try to rally disaffected voters and represent a growing ideology in American politics. Some appropriate media attention is required — now.