As Decision 2004 approaches, the apathetic masses rage through the streets

Submitted by prole cat:

As the official presidential election year approaches on the distant horizon, the jockeying of the candidates has begun. Bush stands unopposed , of course, but the Democratic hopefuls jostle and elbow to be first in line, to receive the coveted “front-runner” coronation at the hands of the media.

Politicos are well familiar with this American ritual. Much will be said and written, now and during the earliest primaries, about the relative (in)significance of the horse race so far in advance of the actual election.

At some point between now and November, 2004, another too-familiar American ritual will begin to be acted out, as the predictable litany of complaints are lodged against the American populace. The less-than-1-in-4 turnout of eligible American voters will be analyzed, and the causes mourned. On the editorial pages of newspapers across America the citizenry will be portrayed as too lazy, too apathetic to bother to stop by their local polling station and mark an X on a ballot. With great sanctimony, readers will be reminded of the blood that was shed to preserve the sacred right to select one’s leaders.

Rarely does anyone question this version of reality. It is a truism that only the most civically engaged will go to the trouble to vote, while those who don’t are a bunch of ignorant couch potatoes who are too engrossed in the latest episode of reality television to do their noble duty.

The mythology of a disengaged American citizenry is always mistaken. This time around, being presented in the midst of a continuing grassroots peace and global justice movement, it will be downright silly. In the context of 2004, the classical formulation of dignified public servants shabbily treated by self-absorbed multitudes will more resemble the tattered remnants of some traditional religious dogma that science has rendered laughable, than serious analysis. It will more resemble the doctrinaire intonations of some Marxist sect whose texts the sweep of history has left behind, than any keen observation of the realities of American social life. Yet in the face of all logic, the press will stick to the script.

Let us explore, in no very deep fashion, the most glaringly obvious contradictions to the myth of popular indifference. Let us begin by examining the historical record of grassroots political activity of the past 5 years. In November of 1999, a coalition of labor activists, environmentalists, and anarchists succeeded in shutting down a meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO). As stunning as the militancy and the audacity of this direct action was the breadth of support for such an arcane object of protest, support that reached well outside of traditional activist circles. Was this symptomatic of a disengaged populace?

Less than two years later came the World Trade Center attacks of September 11th , 2001, and with it the officially-declared end of the era of protest. The dawn of the age of patriotism was proclaimed by the media. Briefly, this appeared to indeed be the case.

Yet within another two short years, literally hundreds of thousands repeatedly turned out en masse, not to vote, but to protest against their “duly elected” government’s imperialist foreign policy. The conventional wisdom of the corporate media held that this movement was a cobbled-together mess, and that it agreed on nothing except opposition to the Bush invasion of Iraq. The sages noted that, failing a similar uniting circumstance, the masses would dissolve and disappear as soon as Iraq was pacified.

Again, the pundits were mistaken. Immediately following the invasion of Iraq, the peace movement showed itself to be not the disunited coalition-of-the-disgruntled portrayed by the media, but in fact an enlarged version of the global justice movement that had quarantined the WTO in Seattle. No sooner did the bombs start falling than, from San Francisco to Atlanta, masses marched straight to the cities’ business districts and filled the streets while proclaiming the slogan, “No more business as usual.” Streets were literally and figuratively barricaded, transportation blocked, and normal business operations brought to a standstill. Clearly, the peace movement had accepted not only the “previous” movement’s tactics, but it’s world view as well, that corporations are at the root of the world’s worst problems, including war.

(As if to prove them right, American soldiers immediately secured Iraq’s oil fields, while leaving major cultural artifacts unguarded. Soon after, Bush announced that plans for a Middle Eastern “free trade zone” were in the offing.)

Is this level of penetrating understanding and militant action indicative of a disengaged populace?

Rather than accepting the conventional wisdom of low voter-turnout as evidence of apathy or ignorance, it seems much more likely to suppose that most people fail to vote for the same reason that many people take to the streets: because they are convinced that voting never changes anything.

To support this claim I offer no “scientific” statistics, no polling results to show why Americans opt out of the electoral process in far greater numbers than those in which they participate. This lack of statistics is no great loss: were I to point to such a poll, my numbers could be quickly refuted by pointing to a different study conducted by a different think tank, with a (not coincidentally) different funding source. Instead, I offer the following informal and unscientific anecdote.

A few years ago, before I became politically active and quit voting, I was haranguing my fellow machinists about their neglect of their civic chores, their failure to vote. I anticipated an apology, an excuse, perhaps a promise to do better. Instead I received a defiant response, a point-blank reason for their refusal. To a man they informed me that, beyond all doubt, their vote “did not matter.” Further, they refused to participate in a charade, and pretend that their vote did matter. Unlike movement activists and leftist intellectuals, they offered no detailed critique of the influence of corporate money on legislation via contributions and lobbying, nor did they recommend an alternative vision of the political process. They did, however, almost intuitively recognize a raw deal when they were offered one, and refused to participate. In the parlance of the shop, “money talks and bullshit walks,” on election day as well as on court day, and they wanted no part of either.

America’s refusal to vote may well have more in common with a boycott, a great, unorganized wildcat strike, than with the accepted notion of laziness and disinterest. A more accurate portrayal of the American populace than the one offered by the mass media would show a nation deeply, bitterly divided. One the one hand are the fiercely patriotic, both workers and those of the middle class. The workers of this sort, with a fierce love of earth and hearth, transfer these noble emotions into a misguided loyalty to their “country,” the nation who so cruelly uses them. At their side- well, at a safe distance, anyway!- stand the supervisors and engineers, flags in hand, narcoticised by television and the promise of promotion, hypnotized by the logic of commodification, their very souls sold on the idea that their own best interests are served by staying one up on the workers. Doubtless, many of them once dreamed of a life imbued with true value, but the counsel of pragmatism has won out. (As consumer life becomes ever more banal, and as the prospect of ecological catastrophe moves from the realm of speculation to a mere question of “When?”, the loyalties of this class may prove to have been as misguided as those of the patriotic workers.)

These two groups, the patriotic workers and middle class, vote the most.

On the other side are the militant protestors, the most difficult to generalize about. Some vote every time the polls open, religiously. Others never vote, on principle.

And in the middle stands the majority, the great undecided. This is your neighbor who put a flag on her car after September 11, and left it on while America invaded Afghanistan, but took it off before the invasion of Iraq. This person may even show up at a protest, but insists on dragging her flag back out of the closet for the occasion, lest she expose herself to the attacks of the rabid right. She has an unfocused sense that something is wrong, but can’t quite shake the old habits, can’t look the great taboo in the face and say, “That flag does not represent me.” But she rarely votes, either, and when she does it leaves here feeling vaguely unclean.

This person is undecided, uncommitted, but she is hardly apathetic. She may have mixed emotions, but she is anything but unemotional. She cries for the victims, both in New York and in Baghdad. And for the media to say otherwise because she refuses to vote is a slap in the face, and a gross, self-serving misrepresentation.

In September of 2004, the Republican Party will be holding their convention in New York City. The protests outside are sure to be massive and volatile. Will the nation be treated to a repeat of Chicago in 1968? Or will it be even more violent, as the patriotic commemorators of September 11th spill into the streets to join the police in attacking the protestors, leaving no one to the role of disinterested observer? No one knows for sure. There are only three things that may be predicted with confidence: there will be a huge number of people in the street protesting, the actual number will be a topic of much discussion and debate… and the press will portray the American populace as lazy and out-of-touch.

Someone is surely lazy and out-of-touch, but I suspect it is the press, and not my neighbor.

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