2012 is the new 2008

TW: racism, heterosexism

“For a long time, right-wingers — and some pundits — have peddled the notion that the ‘real America’, all that really counted, was the land of non-urban white people, to which both parties must abase themselves. Meanwhile, the actual electorate was getting racially and ethnically diverse, and increasingly tolerant too. The 2008 Obama coalition wasn’t a fluke; it was the country we are becoming.“

– Paul Krugman, in an article written in the wake of the election Tuesday

I’m not sure why, but people often seem very eager to declare major events as the ‘end of history’ or something similar. Whether it was academics talking about the containment and disintegration of the Soviet Bloc creating a post-conflict world or political strategists arguing that Republican-brand conservatism is the end-all-be-all of US politics, we’re all quite quick to declare temporary changes to be permanent, irreversible trends. That being said, I think Krugman is in the right here. 2008 was the first sight of something new on the political landscape, and 2012 is a clear sign that it’s not going away with any speed. What I desperately hope, however, is that it keeps growing and changing and improving itself, because 2012 might not look it, but it’s been a much sturdier and impacting victory for less powerful Americans.

This goes against the simplest electoral math, of course, since in 2008 the Democrats (and Senate independents) swept the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. But did liberals? The House was notoriously full of “blue dog” Democrats that leaned rightward enough that they helped the Republican Party water down and then almost destroy health care reform. The Senate was and to this day remains impotent as a result of the filibuster. The President who was elected was unfortunately quite beholden to his campaign contributors from the financial industry that donated to him quite handsomely.

This year’s election, admittedly doesn’t necessarily fix these problems, as the House is still under Republican control, which may prove worse than the mixed bag of Democratic rule, and Obama shed a few electoral votes. Still, we could always pull out the nuclear or constitutional option in the Senate and its notable that this year Obama won without the strings attached by Wall Street. If this year has been a limited victory, it seems about as constrained as 2008 was. Both years have honestly been a bit of a wash in terms of the means progressives acquired to implement their vision for the country, but 2012 has seen a small but important improvement over 2008 in terms of what that vision was: solidarity-driven.

I’ve written ranted here before about the central place that we have to provide solidarity in modern progressive politics, but I think nowhere is that more obvious than in comparing the 2008 and 2012 elections. 2008 was, from its primaries onward, marinated in denying the existence of intersectionality or the need for solidarity. For far too many voters, the choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for Democratic Presidential Nominee was equated with choosing between combating sexism or racism. A small but vocal number of Clinton supporters treated Obama’s eventual victory as a sign that racism was seen as more serious than sexism.

Then, in the aftermath of California’s narrow approval of Proposition 8, which added to the constitution the definition of marriage as “between a man and a woman”, Dan Savage and other pundits argued that Black voters (and occasionally Latin@ voters as well) were fundamentally responsible. Savage even directly stated that he was “done pretending” that anti-Black racism was “a bigger problem for African Americans, gay and straight, than the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans are for gay Americans, whatever their color”. One of the most prominent responses from the Black community to this insulting argument contained the admission “I had some personal misgivings before casting my vote against. Perhaps gay rights activists needed to better explain […] how a No vote wouldn’t affect schools or teach children about gay marriage.” Apparently, allowing same-sex marriage was apparently just within the lines, but having schools acknowledge the existence of LGBT* people was beyond the pale. Just as Savage required Black voters to prove their worth to him, Roker lamented that marriage equality advocates hadn’t done a good enough job proving their worth to straight audiences (of various races).

From start to finish the elections in 2008 seemed to butt into this dynamic time and time again: of different disenfranchised groups competing for acknowledgement of their struggles and assistance in overcoming them. In some ways, it’s a miracle that 2008 wasn’t a disaster and progressives were able to be unified enough to challenge conservatives in many contexts.

2012 was completely different. Obama’s presidential reelection was driven by many issues, but among them was his administration’s attention to the needs of women. Repeatedly, he or his campaign would reiterate that they perceived abortion and contraception as the choice of each woman, not of politicians. Likewise, they highlighted his effort to end wage discrimination both with better laws and stronger enforcement of them. And of course, this graphic came up frequently as well:

(Originally from here.)

But this was more than a phenomenon playing out on the national stage – there were a number of local elections that provided us in 2012 with smaller but more varied “first” Senators or Representatives in comparison to the also historic first Black President in 2008. In almost every case, what created these landmark elections was that the elected officials belonged to multiple groups. In 2012, we saw intersectional candidates begin to win, whose own identities challenged the bitter rivalries that were so prevalent in 2008.

Until very recently there were virtually no women in the Senate or House, and while the 2012 elections helped improve that, there’s still a ways to go before the representation in federal government is actually representative. Among the women elected on Tuesday, however, were Tammy Baldwin, Mazie Hirono, Tulsi Gabbard, and Tammy Duckworth. But those four are all members of other chronically underrepresented groups in Congress as well. Baldwin is also the first openly LGBT* Senator in US history. Hirono is the first Buddhist Senator and Gabbard is the first Hindu to ever be elected into Congress. Tammy Duckworth is the first disabled woman and disabled person of color to have the honor and duty of representing constituents in the federal government. Joining her in the House of Representatives is also Mark Takano, the first LGBT* person of color to hold office in either legislative body of Congress.

I’ve already quote Krugman once, but let me do it again: this is “the country we are becoming”. We are and have been diverse, and not just in terms of a variety of identities, but also combinations of those identities. Finally, our political process has stuck its toe in the pool and tried representing that, just a little bit. I, for one, say we should go forward even more.

The Obama administration officially needs to buy a calendar already

TW: political killings, marginalization of and violence against indigenous peoples, military coups

I mentioned late last week the unfortunate anniversary of the US-backed 1973 Chilean coup which coincided almost exactly with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s declaration that the United States is a clear force for global liberation. What I left out of that discussion was the later American support for the brutal regime, namely the apparent complacency between at least one US-based bank and former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in hiding illegally obtained funds which he intended to access after fleeing Chile. While the US government armed and otherwise assisted his violent take over of the country, its role in the 2005 probe which uncovered the bank’s unsavory deal was a bit of a fig leaf. Although it didn’t exactly correcting the past mistake, it at least made some gesture of reparation. No domestic suits were filed, but the revealed information assisted prosecution efforts in Chile.

A few years later, then presidential candidate Barack Obama would deliver a rather impacting speech on flaws in the United States’ policies with regards to Latin America, saying:

“From the right, we hear about violent insurgents. From the left, we hear about paramilitaries. This is the predictable debate that seems frozen in time from the 1980s. You’re either soft on Communism or soft on death squads. […] The person living in fear of violence doesn’t care if they’re threatened by a right-wing paramilitary or a left-wing terrorist; they don’t care if they’re being threatened by a drug cartel or a corrupt police force. They just care that they’re being threatened, and that their families can’t live and work in peace. That is why there will never be true security unless we focus our efforts on targeting every source of fear in the Americas. That’s what I’ll do as President of the United States.“

And yet, his administration just refused to extradite or permit domestic legal cases against the former Presidents of Mexico and Bolivia, who are charged with killing or permitting the killing of civilians who held opposing political views. This from the administration that justified the assassination of multiple targets (sometimes US citizens) in other countries often with little or no involvement of the territories’ legitimate governments. Evidently, jurisdictions only exist for other countries.

The case against former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo has been widely publicized, with The Economist and Bloomberg News both fairly explicitly calling the Connecticut-based civil suit a sham, potentially motivated by historic political rivalries. Given the dissolution of the same case against Zedillo in Mexico amid accusations that the plaintiffs were fabricated evidence, it’s necessary to not reject these claims outright. That being said, declassified US intelligence shores up the claims that Zedillo and his government either exhibited criminal negligence of government-trained paramilitaries, deliberately used them against Zapatista-supportive civilians, or did both.

While Zedillo’s and his administration’s culpability in a 1997 massacre could arguably have been adequately examined in Mexican courts and this case is only a shameful circumvention of double jeopardy restrictions (common to both Mexico and the United States), the case is much clearer against the former Bolivian President. Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada has been charged by Bolivian courts with legally condoning violence against indigenous protesters, which left 60 dead and at least 400 injured. As the current Bolivian government sees those protests as being legitimate opposition to efforts to erase the social and economic viability of indigenous communities among other groups which then faced excessive police violence, he has been charged with genocide. He has not stood trial for this actions anywhere, and the request of the Bolivian government is for him to be extradited so he could stand trial there, rather than a suit being brought to him in the United States.

(Left, police violence against protesters in Bolivia, October 2003. Right, protests for the extradition of Former President Gonzalo “Goni” Sánchez de Lozada, June 2007.)

Earlier in President Obama’s term in office, Human Rights advocates, many of them based in the United States, were optimistic about the possibility of Obama’s new commitment to reducing all forms of violence in Latin America driving an extradition of the former Bolivian president, now six years after the killings. Last Tuesday, however, his administration’s Department of State made clear that extradition was not an option for either of these former heads of state. Again, this statement was made on the anniversary of the US-backed Chilean coup in 1973 – showing a hint of ignorance or malice in the policy decision. As with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s remarks, the timing could not have been worse, let alone the substance of her statements or the State Department’s release.

Clinton probably should have double checked her calendar

TW: torture, political killings, neo-colonialism

Yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke about the violence in Benghazi, Libya, which caused the death of four foreign service members, including the United States’ ambassador to Libya.

Clinton made one rather interesting point:

“How could this happen? How could this happen in a country we helped liberate in a city we helped save from destruction? This question reflects just how complicated and at times how confounding the world can be.“

She then proceeds to make the case that the provisional Libyan government and the majority of the Libyan people are grateful to the United States. Specifically she mentions, “when the attack came yesterday, Libyans stood and fought to defend our post.” She makes an excellent case, but she leads with a declaration – that the United States was a force of liberation. While I don’t contest that conclusion, it’s not my place, the US Secretary of State’s place, or any American’s place to proclaim ourselves liberators.

Clinton notes that significance of the day of the attack – the anniversary of the terrifying Islamist attack that continues to influence the United State’s policies towards the entire Islamic world. Perhaps less well known is that the eleventh day in September is also the anniversary of the brutal US-backed coup against the democratically elected Allende Presidency in Chile, in 1973. A few days later in that same year, Henry Kissinger, then the National Security Adviser but who would hold in only a few days more the same position as Clinton does today, gruffly told then President Nixon, “we helped them,” nearly going so far as that the United States had liberated Chile.

Even as the current Chilean government seeks to ignore its history of repression, several thousand protesters took to the streets of Santiago on the same day as the attack in Libya. They commemorated the coup against Salvador Allende, painfully demanding that their country remember the thousands killed, tens of thousands tortured, and the democratic system destroyed as a result. The protest was an insistence that what they faced was a counterfeit liberation, disguising repression – a judgment which only Chileans can accurately make.

The next day, Clinton would call the United States “the greatest [global] force for peace, prosperity, and progress; and a force that has always stood for human dignity, the greatest force the world has ever known”.

(Civilian administrators being detained during the Chilean coup, September 11, 1973. Image originally posted here.)

Thomas Friedman once famously joked that American Exceptionalism was imperiled as Americans no longer “seem to understand that you can’t declare yourself ‘exceptional,’ only others can bestow that adjective upon you.” Perhaps even more damning is that we’ve forgotten that “liberator” is a description which only others can decide refers to you.