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...through "lesser of two evil" governments, during the '90s, to true leftist and socialist democracies today, but I don't think our situation is exactly parallel in this respect, and I would hesitate to draw any lesson from it for our situation.
The U.S. supported rightwing dictatorships in Latin America were heinous dictatorships--they tortured and murdered thousands of people. The jackboot repression was truly terrible. The way out of it was to restore constitutional government, but, as here, this does not mean fair or leftist or socialist government; it merely means the "rule of law"--more respect for human life and for human and civil rights. The wealth and power of the elite--enhanced, of course, during the dictatorship periods--remained the controlling factor in politics and government, and these elites proceeded to ally with U.S. corporate rulers and banksters on "neo-liberal" policy that caused catastrophic failures of Latin American economies.
When this occurred, in the '90s, the elites were lucky that the poor didn't rise up and slit their throats. It is rather a miracle that they did not. Instead, they got organized, using the tools available in a semi-democracy--free speech, protest, marches, infrastructure shutdowns, electoral politics--seeking a peaceful, democratic solution to the abject poverty that "neo-liberalism" had created (poverty that also affected the middle class and small businesses). This struggle was not without violence and bloodshed--all of it on the government side, against protestors.* But the perseverance of grass roots groups, and the diligent, on-going civic work on honest elections, paid off.
I am generalizing a lot of different situations and countries, but I think this is an accurate general description of what occurred in the many countries that today have leftist or socialist governments in Latin America (with focus on South America). All of them had the problem of "lesser of two evil" governments and of entrenched rich elites controlling Tweedle dee-Tweedle-dum political parties. These parties essentially self-destructed--by failure to represent workers and the poor--and in most cases new parties were formed that represented the majority (except in Brazil, where the Workers Party has persisted through it all). Constitutional reform (which Latin Americans undertake more easily than we do) was also a factor. New constitutions were written and debated and submitted to the voters and were overwhelmingly approved. These established or strengthened human and civil rights and reorganized governments with the aim of breaking untoward power by entrenched rich elites and foreign (mostly U.S. corporate/war profiteer) control.
Repercussions from the period of heinous, bloody-handed, fascist dictatorships continue to this day. At first, during the period when people were struggling merely to re-establish constitutional government, the perps were mostly protected. Today, with democracy on a firmer footing, investigations, prosecutions and trials are going forward. In fact, Argentina just requested the U.S. government to open its secret files, so that babies who were stolen from their murdered leftist parents during the dictatorship period, can be identified and learn who their parents were. The Obama government refused, no doubt because the U.S. was complicit in those atrocities.
This ON-GOING reminder of how bad the U.S.-supported, fascist dictatorships were, re-enforces Latin Americans' devotion to democracy, sovereignty, cooperation amongst themselves (collective clout of the region) and social justice. This is a history that we do not have and also the U.S. role in inflicting these horrors on our neighbors in the hemisphere has mostly been hidden from our people. We do NOT have a history of leftists being thrown out of airplanes, or thousands packed into stadiums and shot, or babies stolen from pregnant women who were murdered, or hundreds of protestors slaughtered, nor the struggle for constitutional government (rule of law) that ensued and that was greatly influenced by these events. The "lesser of two evils" that at first resulted WAS better than what went before. It provided the political space for real democracy to be established.
Our situation is unique in this respect, in that our country has been SLOWLY turned into a dangerous security state, with an humongous war profiteering aspect to it, and our laws have been GRADUALLY changed to benefit the super-rich and transglobal corporations, with, I think, very special attention paid to preserving the ILLUSION of democracy HERE. The Latin Americans have NO illusions about the dictatorships that ripped into their societies with such murderous methods.
But our people DO have illusions--not because they're stupid but because the illusions are more clever. Even I have the delusion that my vote may count for something, even though I know that ES&S/Diebold--a far rightwing corporation--has an 80% monopoly on the 'TRADE SECRET' voting systems in this country--and, even in my progressive state, is likely throwing my vote away when it suits them. I know the whole story of the rightwing/corporate coup d'etat in our voting system, and I still vote. Maybe it will help, I think. I vote for alternatives in the primaries. I hold my nose and vote for the Corporate Democrat of the day in the general election. If ES&S/Diebold is looking the other way, in some electoral situation, maybe my vote will help a good person to slip unnoticed into limited power.
I also, simply, WILL NOT give up my right to vote--even if it is exercised in futility. To me, it is sacred--was achieved by the blood of many martyrs of democracy. I don't vote blindly, though, as many people do, not realizing that, if their vote doesn't suit the corporate/war profiteer powers and whatever narrative they are running, it will be--and can EASILY be--tossed by these corporate-run, 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines.
We have a different set of problems as a society and as a once great democracy than Latin Americans have. There are parallels and there are divergences. But there are most certainly lessons to be drawn from their success. I tend to sum the lessons up this way:
1. Transparent vote counting.
2. Grass roots organization.
3. Think big!
Transparent vote counting: The Latin Americans have had both venomously rightwing/corporate media and "big money" influencing elections (--billions of OUR money, for instance, to rightwing groups through agencies like the USAID). The grass roots can overcome bad media and bad money IF they have transparent vote counting. They've done it in Latin America. I don't know if that's true of us, right now, but without transparent vote counting, we will never know, will we? So that is No. 1 on my list--we MUST restore transparent vote counting (still a doable project, in my opinion--not easy, but doable). It is the bottom line of democracy, even if it results in only half-way decent, semi-democratic candidates being elected to office. Maybe we can convince that half-way decent, semi-democrat to start putting some controls on corporate money, or to support labor unions. Right now, with ES&S/Diebold's lock on our voting results, not even minor reform is possible. We are being run right off the cliff into fascism--and brutal fascism may not be far behind.
Grass roots organization: Very difficult in the U.S. I won't go into all of its difficulties here. I will just say that much of the design of the fascist plotters who have been destroying our progressive country over a period of several decades has recently been focused on DEMORALIZING grass roots efforts. I noticed this first in 2004, when the grass roots seriously mobilized to elect Kerry, and for instance, matched the Bush-Cheney money machine, dollar for dollar--and the huge deflation and demoralization that occurred when that election was stolen. Our grass roots did not have much of a solid foundation to fall back upon. It was a temporary mobilization, driven by the outrages of the Bush Junta, especially the war on Iraq--and it deflated like a popped balloon after that first major Diebold (s)election (abetted by a lot of racist vote suppression and other crimes, which isn't necessary any more, since ES&S--which recently bought out Diebold--now controls virtually the entire electronic 'TRADE SECRET' voting system in the U.S.).
This demoralization or weakness of the grass roots, following 2004, was partly due to the Reaganites' and Clintonites' prior work to smash labor unions. But it was also due to the gradualism of the fascist plot design. The Clintonites led us down the garden path, and no one was prepared for the Bush Junta. The Democratic Party just fell over and died, without a fight. The Democratic leadership's acquiescence to the corporate-run, 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting was the key moment, in my opinion. (Anthrax Congress, Oct. '02--same month as the Iraq War Resolution). The party of the working class--of labor, of the poor, of excluded minorities and of professionals and business people with a conscience--the party of FDR and the "New Deal"--was OVER. The party that used to rally the poor majority no longer exists, and whether or not the poor majority can reclaim it--or needs to suffer through MORE fascist government in order to organize a NEW party--is an open question. i really don't know the answer to that. And I don't think that the Latin American precedents are much help.
Our country is much bigger, and much more diverse, than any Latin American country, and is the capitol of an enormous empire of transglobal corporate and war profiteer interests, and very special efforts have been made to keep our basically progressive, democratic people asleep, and to gradually deprive us of our sovereign power as a people (even to the very counting of our votes--the chief mechanism by which we transfer portions of OUR sovereignty to our public SERVANTS ). And now all sorts of subtle and overt systems have been put in place to spy on us, propagandize us and to disrupt any serious national, or even local, grass roots organization. So it may really and truly be that the Democratic Party is our only option--that is, working to reclaim it. We do not HAVE the grass roots organization to do anything else, at the moment.
The ONLY potential grass roots movement that I can see truly affecting our situation is a widespread LOCAL movement against the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines. PUBLIC vote counting is so basic that it crosses virtually all political lines. It is also exemplary of our larger problem--the Corporate Rulers controlling everything, even the very counting of our votes, with "TRADE SECRET" code no less. This issue cannot easily be polarized. It is an American issue as opposed to a Democratic or Republican issue. And since the Anthrax Congress did NOT mandate corporate e-voting--but accomplished this coup d'etat through corruption ($3.9 billion e-voting boondoggle; filthy lobbying)--the power over voting systems still resides at the local/state level, where ordinary people have more of chance than they do in Washington DC. I can see such a movement catching fire throughout the country and resulting in a huge "throw ALL the bums out" movement. I can't think of any issue that is so potentially all-encompassing, and with such strategic value in actually returning some "power to the people."
3. Thinking big:
It's difficult to "think big" when the fascists are now bent upon destroying Social Security and Medicare. But we really need to think bigger than we have been. We need to think--as the Latin Americans have done--of turning things upside down. What would a real democracy look like and how to get there? The Latin Americans didn't accomplish their political revolutions overnight--nor can we. But it is important to formulate the goals--big, inspiring goals--and to persist in achieving them. They are not finished. No democracy's work ever is, really. And we are only beginning. Our first strategic goal may be transparent elections, and our second strategic goal may be clean elections (no corporate money) and our third may be curtailing or dismantling the corporate media monopolies, but what are our ultimate goals--for instance, merely to restore the democracy we once had in the 1930s to 1970s--a democracy with serious flaws--or to revolutionize the whole system--unto de-chartering and dismantling all big corporations and de-militarization (busting the war machine, down to true defensive posture)?
For now, this is just something to think about--thinking big. If we succeed at restoring PUBLIC vote counting, what do we ask of the candidates we might be able to elect? And if we succeed, ultimately, in electing, say, another FDR, what do we want him or her to do on our behalf? What is the best we can think of, on all issues--economic, political, government structure, equality, human and civil rights, taxation, etc.? What is our new charter? What is our new "social contract"? What--if we ever get there--would our new constitution look like?
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*(The exception is Colombia, where an armed leftist resistance continues to this day--a civil war that has been going on for 70 years. Much to say about this situation and the U.S. funding of the Colombian military ($7 BILLION), about the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs" and about Pentagon Big Dartboard plans in Latin America, which I will just sketch in here, as a rare example of continued brutal rightwing government in Latin America and the only example of continued armed resistance.
(Colombia was intended, by our war planners, as the stepping stool to Oil War IV--against Venezuela and Ecuador--and may still be, although I think Obama/Clinton/Panetta may have switched to economic rather than military objectives, due to the solidarity of the leftist governments in the region.
(The Colombian government was run as a criminal enterprise throughout the Bush Junta, with massive deaths of political leftists and civilians--a reign of terror probably mostly aimed at consolidation of the trillion dollar-plus cocaine trade into fewer hands and direction of this huge revenue stream to the Bush Cartel, U.S. banksters and others. War profiteering and oil wars may have been secondary objectives to the Bush Junta. (Granted, I'm just guessing on this--the cocaine trade is a hard thing to get real information on--but I think I'm guessing right).
(Colombia now has a CIA (Panetta) vetted president who has made dramatic moves toward peace with Venezuela and south-south trade but this is occurring in the context of a major coverup of the crimes of the Uribe/Bush juntas in Colombia, by the Obama administration. The Obama administration is also now pushing U.S. "free trade for the rich" in Colombia--a program that has utterly failed elsewhere in Latin America. The leftist guerillas in Colombia have committed violence but nothing even close to the violence of the Colombian military and its closely tied death squads. Amnesty International, for instance, attributes 92% of the murders of trade unionists in Colombia to the Colombian military itself (about half) and to its related rightwing paramilitary death squads (the other half).
(Colombia's "democracy," in summary, is a cruel farce. Fascist criminals governed it recently. A rich oligarchy governs it now. It has one of the worst rich/poor discrepancies in the region--while Venezuela, right next door, has THE best. (Venezuela is "THE most equal country in Latin America," according to a recent report by the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean.) This is one good measure of democracy--Colombia vs. Venezuela. Democracy benefits all. Oligarchy and fascism benefit only a few.
(Whatever you may think of armed resistance, you can understand why it has happened in Colombia, which has made NO effort to address vast poverty and inequality and where the efforts of the poor to organize in their own interest have been brutally thwarted. The rest of Latin America has rejected armed resistance, while yet, in some countries, electing former armed resistors as president of the country (Brazil, Uruguay, Venezuela, Nicaragua)--a remarkable development. The current president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, was imprisoned and tortured by the fascist dictatorship, for being a member of a guerrilla group. So Latin Americans don't necessarily consider armed resistance to be "terrorism." Otherwise, leaders like Rousseff would be permanently banned from office, and clearly they are not. They have been forgiven for, and are possibly even admired for, their courage in past times.
(The Colombian guerrillas seem a throwback to another era--but several of their efforts to disarm and broker a peace in the new democratic atmosphere of Latin America have been deliberately smashed--most recently by the Bush Junta in 2007-2008.
(The other least democratic country in Latin America is Honduras--where rightwing death squads are now operating, as they have been for a decade in Colombia--murdering trade unionists and others--purging leftists and decapitating grass roots organization. These U.S. supported fascist governments--Colombia and Honduras--are a stark contrast to the successful leftist democracy movement elsewhere in Latin America. The Honduran majority has remained entirely peaceful in the face of this brutality and a U.S.-contrived fraudulent election--and they have the political support of most Latin American governments in trying to turn their situation around peacefully. The U.S. has also directly interfered, using a fraudulent election, in Haiti. These Obama administration actions--covering up fascist crimes in Colombia, while intending U.S. corporations to profit from those crimes, and supporting fascists in Honduras and Haiti--are why I, and most of Latin America, have such a dim view of the Obama administration.)
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