It's clear by now that the GOP wants a return to the robber baron era of the 1890's. They want to roll back the 20th century. And they've already succeeded in echoing the robber barons to a considerable extent. We've got oil magnates in power, corporate control over much of Congress, the erosion of civil liberties, millions of working poor with not enough to eat, and imperialist warfare.
Consider what Emma Goldman said of the war in the Philippines:
But when the smoke was over, the dead buried, and the cost of the war came back to the people in an increase in the price of commodities and rent-- that is, when we sobered up from our patriotic spree-- it suddenly dawned on us that the cause of the Spanish-American war was the price of sugar.
The parallel with the Gilded Age is hardly new. But if this is old hat, then why can't we follow through with this analogy and realize that the vote is not going to restore our liberal democracy?
Direct action, as it was then, is now required. Why are we still spending so much time on electoral politics?
To quote Goldman again, "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."
When I first read "A People's History of the United States" I was shocked to learn that a kind of workers' revolution had taken place in the 1930s, which was never covered in any of my school textbooks.
Striking miners got into gun battles with the national guard. Striking women and children were clubbed by police. WWI veterans camped out in Washington DC until they were driven out by tanks at Hoover's command. Seattle and San Francisco each held general strikes, and in 1937 there were 477 sit-down strikes in diverse industries.
Which is all to illustrate that the people did not get the New Deal because they voted for Roosevelt. Nor will we turn back the tide of corporate fascism by electoral means.
Some of my favorite women in history were ambivalent toward women's suffrage. For instance, Helen Keller wrote this to a UK suffragette:
You ask for votes for women. What good can votes do when ten-elevenths of the land of Great Britain belongs to 200,000 and only one-eleventh to the rest of the 40,000,000? Have your men with their millions of votes freed themselves from this injustice?
And Emma Goldman wrote:
The history of political activities of man proves that they have given him absolutely nothing that he could not have achieved in a more direct, less costly, and more lasting manner. As a matter of fact, every inch of ground he has gained has been through a constant fight, a ceaseless struggle for self-assertion, and not through suffrage.
I'd love it if we could devote a greater part of the dKos discussion to direct actions we might take. I think we need to start wielding economic power. How about a buy-nothing day on January 20, combined with the Blue Flu? How about forging a real alliance with the poor, and setting up protests to demand a higher minimum wage? Or how about innovative publicity for spreading a progressive message-- a la the Freeway Blogger, Code Pink, Michael Moore and his giant chicken?
Call me a cynic, but after Florida, Georgia, and Ohio, it seems downright silly to even be thinking about the election in 2008. My response to that is, "What election?" At first this made me despair, but hey, people all over the world have no vote, and they still effect changes in their countries. We've got to get over it, realize we are up against a brutal fascist take-over attempt, and start thinking outside this damned electoral box.