It’s no longer inflated rhetoric to refer to the Talibanisation of the United States: the right to basic reproductive health services for women curbed, violence against protesters, and the explicit threat — ironically from Clarence Thomas — that the right to contraception, same-sex relationships and marriage equality were next on the hit list.
It should be clear what lengths the fundamentalist right in the US will go to to impose its reactionary will on the majority of Americans. Not merely were they prepared to tolerate Donald Trump on the basis that he could deliver the stacking of the US Supreme Court with religious fanatics, they embraced him, even claiming he was a divinely appointed leader.
The appointed fanatics lied to Congress about the settled nature of Roe v Wade. But this is a movement that does not regard law, or democracy, or the constitution, or tradition, as impediments to their imposing theocracy on their fellow citizens. God wills it. That is the only law.
Despite a number of high-profile businesses announcing they’ll extend their health coverage of their employees to travelling out of state (something that anti-choice states will start banning), this Talibanisation has been financed by US corporations both at the state and national level, with big business backing Trump because he promised to deliver on their deregulatory, low-tax agenda, which he promptly did. The Trump presidency thus represented state capture both by corporate interests and Christian fundamentalists (specifically, white Christian fundamentalists).
Whether Trump is prosecuted or jailed for his role in the January 6 insurrection, or runs for president again, his greatest legacy is already in place — a fundamentalist majority on the Supreme Court that will be there for decades to come, allowing theocratic oppression, reversal of what little gun control exists, and enabling voter suppression and the overthrowing of election wins deemed unacceptable.
All from the disaster of 2016, when Hillary Clinton ran a poor campaign that failed to detect, let alone campaign for, the economic disillusion of low-income Americans in the United States’ hollowed-out manufacturing capacity. Clinton was a bad candidate, running because she felt she was entitled to be president, backed by an elite Democratic establishment, offering business as usual.
But she was also the only other serious candidate on the ballot against Trump, and she also won a majority of the popular vote by some considerable margin. Democracy is always a battle between least-worst options. Occasionally, apparently ideal candidates come along, like Obama in 2008, but the realities of office expose them as flawed like every other politician.
Clinton’s failure to win the Electoral College was exacerbated by the failure of many progressives to vote for her. Large numbers of Bernie Sanders supporters, in particular, refused to vote for her. Some — the estimated 12% of Sanders supporters who ended up voting for Trump — were likely not traditional Democrats anyway. But another 10% of Sanders voters simply refused to vote for Clinton. The Greens’ Jill Stein also drew enough votes away from Clinton to see her lose in at least two states — though whether the absence of Stein would have seen those voters simply switch straight to a Democrat isn’t clear. But either way, the perception of Clinton as an unacceptable neoliberal was enough to deter large numbers of progressives from voting for her — perhaps sufficient to deprive her already poor campaign of victory.
“Bernie would have won” say some progressives to this day. But Bernie wasn’t on the ballot. Democracy is not your preferred candidate against a political opponent, it’s whoever gets on the ballot. The failure to get Clinton over the line will have deadly consequences for American women.
The lesson is that, in the face of determined evil — theocratic fundamentalists who want to impose a medieval society in the name of God, financed by large corporations eager to control the state — effective politics is about accepting the flawed and compromised nature of democracy, and voting for someone you might bitterly oppose because they’re the only realistic option for stopping a profound evil.
The lessons apply equally here, even if abortion isn’t the political touchstone it is in the US — though access to reproductive health services remains dangerously uneven for Australian women. If progressives prefer to engage in perfection politics and elevate purity above political effectiveness, and celebrate ticking the correct identity politics boxes over delivering real change, the right will laugh all the way into power. Progressives will be arguing over the rules of engagement while their opponents trample all over rules, customs, traditions, and anything else that gets in their way.
No doubt this view will be slammed as that of an old white hetero male, and, sure, privilege/misogyny/racism/transphobia is the water I swim in, I don’t get it, I’m out of touch, etc. But when one side of politics is playing for keeps, the other must as well.
I agree with this deduction: perfection politics rather than political effectiveness is the Achilles heel for progressives.
At the risk of sounding alarmist, last week’s decision was a reminder of why The Handmaid’s Tale cannot be dismissed as pure fiction.
Indeed. Margaret Atwood herself wrote a piece on it in The Atlantic after the draft decision was leaked last month. It’s well worth finding.
In France they managed to pull it off thanks to mutiple parties – Macron won over Le Pen whilst lost ground in parliament as the left voted strategically…
Let’s just hope the Greens here work strategically with Labor to ensure progressives make ground…
Rigorous Proportional Representation nationally (rather than per state as in our Senate) is the only true indication of public will.
Chirac beat Marine’s father le Pen due to the widespread slogan “vote for the crook,not the fascist!”.
The Macaroon, a gallic Blair clone, may be marginally preferable to le Pen fille but not to Melenchon who missed by <2% being the 2nd round contender.
Small hope as the two of them want to fight each other instead or taking advantage of their combined power as a left wing progressive bloc
Putin must be so happy that his very inexpensive bit of ‘kaos’ in 2016 tipping the scales to Trump has worked out so well- fragmenting the USA with a possibility of civil insurrection/war in the coming years if the democrats and sane GOP members don’t get their act together.
The Democrats obsessively blaming Putin for their own failings is a big part of why their failing so badly again now.
It’s always someone else’s fault – Putin, Bernie, Obama, Jill Stein, Susan Sarandon – as to why they lost they unloseable election.
At least in Australia, Labor had the self-awareness & courage after their 2019 loss to to the brutal self-examinations about what they did wrong & what they could have done differently to win, rather than blaming it all on everyone else. And they’ve reaped the benefits.
The US Democrats are in for a world of pain again at the coming mid-term elections, because they went with the “we wuz robbed” explanation so stayed the same as they ever were after winning in 2020. Sadly, that world of pain includes a world all the rest of us part of.
Sandets WAS on the ballot. In the democratic primaries.’
There’s a disappointing failure here to point the finger squarely at the democratic establishment for failing to see that SANDERS was the candidate that could have saved us from all this. The above numbers clearly tell that story.
The reflexive institutional aversion to someone seriously questioning the neoliberal establishment from the left and with rigor exemplifies the hollowing out of major “left of centre” political parties worldwide as vessels capable of enacting social change at any significant level, while at the same time parties of the right have become captured by the ever more ideological.
That’s how you wind up with Trump. But that’s also where the resounding defeat of the Morrison Govt at least says there remains something more grounded about the Australian body politic, which mostly lacks the overlay of large scale fervent religionists for the right to appeal to en masse. Plus compulsory voting. God preserve these things.
And while I’m on it, you don’t need to dig too deep into the cycnical, dismissive and derisive attitudes towards those Trump supporters who legitimately feel shut out of the political and economic processes that govern their increasingly impoverished and shortened lives to be left with the impression that anybody is even interested in avoiding a second Trump Presidency.
Biden was as bad a candidate as Clinton, and the backlash when he’s up for election will mean nails in the coffin of American “liberalism”.
He’s too old to be up for election again. Hopefully this move on abortion will jolt non voters out of their apathy next time.
Not just compulsory voting, but preferential voting, so voters can have a bob each way. If the Green doesn’t get up, you can still get another progressive up.
Beat me to it. Sanders was the obvious choice of Democrat candidate to anyone paying attention (both Democrat loyalists in the US and half-interested observers in Australia). And he probably would have won. (One of the Michael Moore documentaries had some interesting stats showing that centre-left views were more prevalent in the US than everyone thinks – it’s just that their political system is so corrupt that no-one ever gets up to represent them. Bernie was the man.)
But having won, Bernie would have been done over by the kleptocrats (including the military-industrial kleptocrats) who actually run this ‘great democracy, the leader of the free world’. But he might al least have prevented Trump’s stacking of the Supreme Court.
Plus we don’t have the USA’s Stone Age first past the post voting system, so it enables voters to safely express a wider choice. (We also don’t have corrupt electoral administration, blatant voter suppression, etc which helps improve voter confidence in the system)
Stone age? One vote one value is stone age? Why should some voters have their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th etc choice examined while much larger groups of voters do not have their preferences considered. take a look at the preference distribution in close seats in the last election eg Brisbane where the second preferences of the largest group (LNP voters) were never considered. Look at how the Greens candidate drew ahead of the labor candidate: the final preferences of the rwnj voters. A #7 preference counts the same as a #1 preference because….well, it suits the major parties to channel preferences this way. I dislike being told that I must express a preference between antivaxxes, PHON, UAP, and a raft of rwnj independenst or my vote goes in the bin. Stone age? Think about your one vote and cast it, then live with the result.
The USA doesn’t really have one vote, one value either once you take into account the distortions of its bizarre electoral college, as well as voter suppression. Add the major democratic deficit of a one vote one value system which massively favours the two existing parties & distorts voter choice, and I feel Stone Age is a very apt description.
Preferential voting allows voters to express their real choice/s rather than having to vote/guess strategically as to who might be going to poll best, or else resign yourself to your vote being wasted.. In a single member electorate voting system, it’s the best one can hope for (although we should tweak the savings provisions to reduce unintentional informals).
In regards to your example of Brisbane, preferential voting enabled voters to choose their preferred outcome between the final two after all other preferences had been allocated. It was clear the majority of voters preferred not to have the Liberal win – the only questions was whether Greens or Labor would be the winner. The Greens drew ahead of Labor due to a very strong flow of preferences from voters for the Animal Justice Party – and whatever you might think of them, they are not right-wing nut jobs. A clear majority of the preferences of the right wing micros went to the Libs. Even if all them had gone to the Libs, the Greens would have clearly finished ahead of Labor.
The best outcome for any candidates is to not have their second preferences counted, as it means they haven’t been excluded from the count and still have a chance of winning.
It’s starting to look like the only paths available to US citizens are submission to tyranny or violence in defence of freedom, eh?
I fear that the country is now on a journey to its destruction.
Just the latest mark of descent – America is winding down – like a windlass down a dark mine shaft.
A windlass is usually connected to something to be useful.
If the US every had a purpose, apart from rapine – firstly of a continent from sea to shining sea then the globe – of which I remain unconvinced, then it is long past expiry date.
Whenever I hear ‘threats’ that it will turn isolationist I regard that as as unfulfilled promise and a thing devoutly to be wished.