freedom and reason

I think we need to be frank with people. Most of us are atheists not merely because theists haven’t met their burden of proof. We are atheists because we think theism is a bad idea and we would like to see it go away.

Of course, we should be honest and admit that not all theisms are created equal. Some are more oppressive and acutely dangerous than others (the Abrahamic traditions fall in this camp—yet even here there are different intensities). At the same time, they are—all of them—at the very least pernicious.

However, many atheists want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want to be personally free from religious sentiment without rattling their religious brothers and sisters. Humans need company (atheists are a minority, after all). So they have that ecumenical spirit. I get it. Most of my friends and relatives are religious, too.

But atheists should know what that term really means and where it takes us. Because it doesn’t just take you there. It takes me there, too. I don’t think we can have both of those things. That’s why I’m a militant atheist. At the same time, I’m well rehearsed in the art of accommodation. You learn that skill when you are in a minority.

I regret that this attitude makes me seem obnoxious to some people. Please know that I love you and I have no interest in personally confronting you about your beliefs in casual or professional interactions. In the end, I wish to leave you free to believe what you want to believe. For those who are suspicious of my assurances, it should come as some comfort that I don’t have any power.

But I will be over here in my corner of the room making arguments all the same.

Donald Trump is not the cause of racism and xenophobia. Progressives and liberals who want to overcome racism and xenophobia must be careful not deceive themselves by symbolically loading up Trump with the enduring problems of US society and then boasting that they made these problems go away by casting a vote against Trump or pushing for his impeachment. Without fundamental change, those who flocked to Trump because of their white nationalism will remain, their ranks will multiply, and the sentiments that moved them will continue to metastasize.

Every generation confronts the legacy of the past. How each new generation confronts this past shapes the future. Figures like Trump can appear because too few people who claim to stand against racism and xenophobia practice a politics that addresses the undying dynamics generating these cancers, a politics grounded in the struggle for social justice and economic security. Indeed, most Americans across the ideological spectrum practice a politics that unwittingly perpetuates injustice and insecurity by reproducing the prevailing ideological hegemony and elite power structure.

This politics, rooted in fear, personality, and identity, and often reinforced by an almost reflexive impulse, is not merely an inadequate substitute for a politics based on scientific understanding of shared material interests and common humanity; a politics based on these things – defensive, irrational, reactive, superficial, unfocused – fragments consciousness and derails the collective struggle for equality, security, and well-being.

Walter Benjamin, in his 1936 essay, “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” writes that

Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life. The violation of the masses, whom Fascism, with its Führer cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into the production of ritual values.

Fascism is not the only politics that can fulfill the need of the capitalist class to manage the population. Providing personalities over whom the masses can fawn, preselecting the means through which masses can find personally satisfying expression, conditioning the masses to act habitually by sensitizing them to symbolic cues – all these things are features of mainstream corporate party programming. In inverted totalitarianism (see Sheldon Wolin), the strategy of fascism is superseded by dissimulated and efficient versions of parallel techniques of manipulation, techniques that even come with a progressive veneer. The corporate elite deftly produces highly sellable political commodities. Fascism is old school in comparison.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the partisan political means Americans have for decades found comforting to use and convenient to engage are designed to perpetuate the corporate status quo (exploitation, war, and environmental devastation) and that they function to prepare the ground for divisive and reactionary politics. The strongly unfavorable assessment of the leading corporate candidate in the 2016 presidential election (Hillary Clinton) is one indication of the rapidly eroding legitimacy of the hegemonic order of things.

Donald Trump should be an entirely unsympathetic figure to those who care about justice and equality; one should feel hard pressed to stow the revulsion that can function to diminish the capacity to reason. He is meant to produce a visceral response in persons with sufficient levels of empathy. Nonetheless, obsessive focusing on Trump is an act of scapegoating that serves to reproduce the conditions of human misery he is said to represent – not just at home, but across the planet. These conditions of misery are capitalism and imperialism.

Remarkable bluster and egoism aside, Trump is a rather ordinary liberal New York business man cast in the role of the obvious fascist by a corporate order desperately trying to distract the public from the neoliberal devolution of republic institutions and rollback of the democratic gains that our predecessors fought to bring into existence. This observation is not intended to convey an opinion that Trump is a neutral figure or blank canvas. He holds repugnant views. I am making a point about function.

Reading Adolph Reed, Jr.’s Common Dreams essay of August 18, Vote for the Lying Neoliberal Warmonger: It’s Important, in which he advocates for a Clinton presidency while going after Stein and the Greens, made me feel like I was reading an article in the People’s World Weekly (except the sort I occasionally write for them). Take a look at paragraph eleven:

Jill Stein and Greens typically proceed from a quite different view of electoral politics, one that has much more in common with bearing witness or taking a personal stand on principle than with seeing it as an essentially instrumental activity. The Greens’ approach generally, and Stein has shown that she is no exception, is that all that is necessary to make a substantial electoral impact is to have a strong and coherent progressive program and to lay it out in public. That view is fundamentally anti-political; it seeks to provide voters an opportunity to be righteous rather than to try to build deep alliances or even short-term coalitions. It’s naïve in the sense that its notion of organizing support reduces in effect to saying “It’s simple: if we all would just…” without stopping to consider why the simple solutions haven’t already been adopted. This is a politics that appeals to the technicistic inclinations of the professional-managerial strata, a politics, that is, in which class and other contradictions and their entailments disappear into what seems to be the universally smart program, and it has little prospect for reaching more broadly into the society. And Stein and her followers have demonstrated that this sort of politics is tone-deaf to what a Trump victory would mean, the many ways it could seriously deepen the hole we are already in. I get the point that Clinton and Trump are both evil, but voting isn’t about determining who goes to Heaven or choosing between good people and bad people. Indeed, that personalistic, ultimately soap-operatic take on electoral politics is what set so many people up to be suckered by Obama. (And does anyone really believe that a President Trump, who routinely spews multiple, contradictory lies in a single compound sentence, would actually block the Trans Pacific Partnership or retract the imperialist war machine?)

If one takes the time to learn about the actual impact a vote has on determining the outcome of an election, he will surely find it difficult to claim with any sincerity that a vote is an “instrumental activity” (essential or otherwise). I understand that my fear of flying is irrational. Believing that your vote can be used strategically is to wildly exaggerate its power and therefore to fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of voting in an election in which literally tens of millions of votes will be cast out of habitual party loyalty.

Voting really is about personally expressing one’s politics – her principles, values, aspirations, and so forth. Voting is one of the actions a person makes that indicates her politics in a society that allows for such an action to occur. In that sense it is an expression of solidarity with everybody participating in democratic action. She is even allowed to keep her act secret so she can express her choice without fear. 

Stein and the Greens have not only considered why the simple solutions haven’t already been adopted, but lay out a detailed critique of the matter. One of the biggest reasons is the strategy Reed lays out, the prevailing logic of voting in America: lesser evilism. There are other reasons, such as corporate financing of major party politics. But Reed knows all those other reasons so why rehearse them here? The point is that his characterization of the Green Party is a straw man, which is reduced to spitting by the last paragraph. 

The notion that supporters of the Green Party are not social activists is also a straw man. What would Reed suggest that a strong and coherent progressive program is unimportant? Or that it should be kept secret from the public? Does he think we should or should not have a conversation about our future? Because the purpose of this sort of essay is really a call for the closing of minds. This bit about “the technicistic inclinations of the professional-managerial strata….” Because the professional-managerial strata is dominated by young indebted Americans and community activists? What is the evidence for that? 

As for Heaven and good and bad people – not people, but principles, ideas, and values. But what would a Trump victory mean over against what a Clinton victory would mean? If one is going to shill for the Clinton campaign, shouldn’t he spend some time laying out what a Clinton victory would mean? Anything that would make her look, crude rhetoric aside, significantly better than Trump?

Reed said in 2014 that we are left with a choice “between two neoliberal parties, one of which distinguishes itself by being actively in favor of multiculturalism and diversity and the other of which distinguishes itself as being actively opposed to multiculturalism and diversity. But on 80 percent of the issues on which 80 percent of the population is concerned 80 percent of the time there is no real difference between them.” Can Reed take some time to elaborate the gap so we can know how Clinton will benefit us? And, frankly, twenty percent is rather generous.

So Obama wasn’t the lesser evil I should have voted for instead of Stein in 2012? How did we go from a soap-operative vote for Stein to beliefs that Trump will block the TPP or retract the imperialist war machine? We know Clinton won’t. That’s what gets my attention. “Elections are much more likely to be effective as vehicles for consolidating victories won on the plane of social movement organizing than as shortcuts or catalysts to jumpstart movements.” Like the electoral history that followed the Civil Rights movement? You know, mass incarceration and police militarization and violence?

For political and economic elites in a capitalist society, that is, from their perspective, democracy is not, or at least shouldn’t be, a process whereby people organize and vote for political leaders that represent their organic class or other interests. Democracy practiced this way does not serve their interests. It would mean that power was somewhere else, and that would mean they couldn’t have what they always want: everything.

For capitalist elites, democracy is an exercise in legitimation, the engineering of popular consent around their broad agenda, which is, in most respects, the antithesis of the public interest. By dissimulating class power through ideological and practical hegemonic control techniques, elites rule society by convincing a majority that elite interests are popular interests.

It therefore behooves elites to dissuade citizens who would organize voters on the basis of organic interests and deter those who would be alternatively organized and vote on the basis of their material situation. Elites accomplish this through control over the political process (the key advantage here is established property arrangements), ideological command (patriotism, militarism, religion, racism, etc.), and production and distribution of information (as well as disinformation). Fear mongering is a obvious part of this strategy, with imagined threat sources to be “found” in both domestic and foreign spheres.

Sheldon Wolin, in Democracy, Inc.: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, published in 2010, identifies another source of misdirection of popular consciousness in the American system. “Inverted totalitarianism [his characterization of the American system], although at times capable of harassing or discrediting critics, has instead cultivated a loyal intelligentsia of its own,” He writes. “Through a combination of governmental contracts, corporate and foundation fronts, joint projects involving university and corporate researchers, and wealthy individual donors, universities (especially so-called research universities), intellectuals, scholars, and researchers have been seamless integrated into the system.” He concludes: “The Academy has become self-pacifying.” This conclusion echoes conclusions in Paul Diesing’s 1992 How Does Social Science Work?

Noam Chomsky anticipated this interpretation by observing that the target of sophisticated propaganda campaign is not the eighty percent of the population that is apathetic, marginalized, or terrified into either non-participation or participating in a prescriptive way out of habit or ignorance, but rather it is the twenty percent of society that is relatively affluent and reasonably well-educated that draws the most attention from elites. This stratum must be specially cultivated, Chomsky contends, since it serves as a network of functionaries charged with keeping the rest of the population occupied with apparent-popular opinion (one of these opinions being that it is elitist to be told what’s going on). These are the so-called experts who claim authority in various fields of knowledge. (That Chomsky has, from a capitalist point of view, carried out this function admirably does not obviate the point he is making.)

As Chomsky puts it in the documentary Manufacturing Consent (released in 1992):

We can get into more detail, but at the first level of approximation, there’s two targets for propaganda. One is what is sometimes called the political class. There’s maybe 20 per cent of the population which is relatively educated, more or less articulate. They’ll play some kind of role in decision making. They’re supposed to sort of participate in social life, either as managers, or cultural managers, like, say, teachers, and writers, and so on. They’re supposed to vote. They’re supposed to play some role in the way economic and political and cultural life goes on. Now, their consent is crucial. That’s one group that has to be deeply indoctrinated. Then there’s maybe 80 per cent of the population whose main function is to follow orders, and not to think, you know. Not to pay attention to anything. And they’re the ones who usually pay the costs.

I oppose war and other forms of belligerence (such as the use of assassination, drones, and no-fly zones). I oppose the unsustainable levels of current military funding and the development of new weapons system, especially small-scale nuclear weapons. I oppose the global arms trade and proxy warfare. I oppose logistical and material support for monarchies and dictatorships. I oppose Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza. I oppose government surveillance and the suppression of free speech and dissent and the persecution of whistleblowers. I oppose aggressive policing, the drug war, police militarization, and mass incarceration. I reject the glorification of the military and police. I condemn the failure of governments to adequately protect and defend civil rights and liberties. I oppose corporate control over our regulatory agencies and special legal protection for corporations. I oppose government collusion with the financial sector to increase consumer debt and prey on vulnerable populations. I oppose trade agreements that hurt workers and the environment. I oppose fracking, offshore drilling, and other destructive extractive energy practices. I oppose the health insurance industry and private control of medical services. I oppose devolution of public functions–the government, military, schools, corrections, and policing.

Given these opinions (and I hope that you stand with me on most or all of these issues), it would be contradictory for me to support the nominee of the Democratic Party Hillary Clinton. As is Barack Obama (who I opposed in 2008 and 2012), Clinton has been on the opposite side of all these issues. Clinton is a hawk, eager to use the military to shape the world in the direction her corporate backers desire (Hillary the Hawk). The ideology that guides her foreign policy is neoconservatism and she is garnering the support of the same right-wing policymakers who designed George W. Bush’s foreign policy (Robert Kagan and Other Neocons Are Backing Hillary Clinton). Clinton voted to authorize Bush’s use of force in Iraq and as Secretary of State led the Obama administration in the use of force, for example in Libya (Clinton defends her Iraq War vote; The Libya Gamble: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Push for War & the Making of a Failed State). She is a dedicated and uncritical supporter of Israel’s brutal occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza (Where does Hillary Clinton stand on Israel?). As Secretary of State she organized arms deals with Saudi Arabia and other belligerent nations and subnational groups (Hillary Clinton Oversaw US Arms Deals to Clinton Foundation Donors). And her stance towards Iran has been belligerent, portending war if elected (Clinton says U.S. could “totally obliterate” Iran).

Clinton is a vocal supporter of security walls and fences and increased and more aggressive border patrol (Hillary: I Voted for Border Fence to Keep Out Illegal Immigrants). The rise in immigration at our souther border is in large measure attributable to the support of Clinton for right-wing regimes in Central America, for example in Honduras, where she supported the coup that overthrew a democratically-elected government (Hillary Clinton’s dodgy answers on Honduras coup). Clinton has been a steadfast supporter of government surveillance and suppression of dissent and persecution of whistleblowers (Hillary’s Evasive Views on the NSA). Her record in support of aggressive policing, the drug war, and mass incarceration is longstanding. She has characterized black youth as “super predators” who need “to be brought to heel” (Why Hillary’s Super-Predator Comment Matters). She has also been a longtime supporter of welfare reform, which is code for the dismantling of major support structures for poor families (Why it Matters that Hillary Clinton Championed Welfare Reform). Her defense of civil rights and liberties is far from robust–at points condescending and even contemptuous (Hillary Clinton Talks With BlackLives Matter; Black Lives Matter Activist Interrupts Hillary Clinton “I am NOT a Superpredator.”)–and has only emerged in light of Sander’s campaign and protests of her campaign events by Black Lives Matter activists. There is nothing in her history that suggests that her lip service to Black Lives Matter will inform her presidency.

Clinton’s devotion to corporate control over regulatory agencies and financial policies is notorious. She is Wall Street’s candidate (Hillary Clinton is Wall Street’s preferred candidate). She was an enthusiastic advocate for NAFTA (Hillary Clinton on NAFTA) and for other trade deals (Hillary Clinton Emails: Secret Negotiations With New York Times, Trade Bill Lobbying Revealed In Latest State Department Release), and while taking a position against TPP in the primary, if she does not change her position during the general election, her support for the trade deal as president is considered to be all but guaranteed (Will Hillary Clinton Flip-Flop Again on TPP After Election Day?). She is an advocate of fracking and other extractive energy industries, believing that these practices can be environmentally-sound (How Hillary Clinton’s State Department Sold Fracking to the World).

She is a defender of the Affordable Care Act, which is an insurance industry scheme to advance the privatization of the health care system (Why Hillary Clinton and Obamacare Will Not Solve the Health Care Crisis). During her tenure as First Lady, she designed a health care scheme of managed competition. Her past and present positions reflect her opposition to single payer universal health care system. Her New Democrat philosophy is represented in the political figures she surrounds herself with, politicians and policymakers who have been aggressively pushing for and have secured significant and growing privatization of the education system (Hillary’s Family Ties to School Privatizers).

Her recent change of mind on gay marriage (she steadfastly opposed it until it was clear to most that it was going to happen) (Hillary Clinton’s Gay-Marriage Problem), her support for reproductive freedom (which is uncertain given her promise to Republicans to support a constitutional solution to late-term abortions if they would compromise the life of the mother–Hillary Clinton: I Could Compromise on Abortion If It Included Exceptions For Mother’s Health), her status as a woman (Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, was a woman, etc.), and the presence of a clown (and Clinton associate) heading the ticket for the other political party are not things that negate a principled opposition to Hillary Clinton the politician. A Clinton presidency means more war, more inequality, more privatization, and more surveillance.

As a life-long socialist, I have never been a member of the Democratic Party or any other bourgeois party. I never donated any money to any Democratic candidate at any level. However I have voted for Democrats in the past. John Kerry was the last Democrat who got my vote for president. I voted for Ralph Nader in 2008 (and regret not voting for him in 2000 and 2004). I voted for Jill Stein in 2012. In casting votes for Democrats I had to tell myself things to negotiate action that compromised principle and truth. Things like: A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. And: A presidential election is just one vote every four years; it’s what you do in the meantime that changes things.

What lay beneath these rationalizations was fear of Republicans. Democrats were the lesser of two evils. This irrational way of thinking was rooted in early socialization, functioning a lot like deep religious sentiment. Indeed, the two-party system functions like a theological system, a cosmology with good and evil, goods guys and bad guys, ready saints and persistent devils. Thankfully, although not immune from the tactics, my socialism – and atheism – kept me from being a member of the congregation.

There was a time before 2008 that I couldn’t bring myself to compromise my values in this way. My double consciousness gave way to principle. In 1996, after the Clintons – and make no mistake, they are a team – pushed through a draconian crime bill, ended the major public support program for children living in poverty, and secured NAFTA, I boycotted the election. Maybe I didn’t think Bob Dole was scary enough. But then I returned to my pattern and voted for Gore and Kerry. George W. Bush was plenty scary.

What became clear to me in 2007-2008, as the United States was sinking into the deepest recession since the Great Depression era, is that it was the neoliberal direction of the Democrats that was a principle cause of the economic crisis and that, moreover, these policies were creating the context for the rise of neofascism in the United States. The policies of both parties had also created a radical backlash, and anti war and anti corporate movements proliferated. So there was promise. But not with Democrats. Obama was an elite project to repackage corporate rule and American empire, a handsome multicultural face to absorb radical energy on the left and neutralize it with identity politics.

Rather than taking the crisis created by his predecessors as an opportunity to launch a new New Deal and to ratchet down the global war on Third World populations, Obama did what I predicted he would do: he used the situation to further entrench corporate power and expand imperialism. His actions advanced the circumstances that constituted part of the proximate cause of the rise of the Tea Party that led to the candidacy of Donald Trump. And Trump is not the worst of the worst. He’s no Ted Cruz.

Much like Obama, Sanders channeled the returning and growing discontents on the left. This is why I said from the beginning that I was not supporting him for president. I always suspected he would function as a Judas goat. And, in any case, the Democratic Party is a deadend. I pushed his candidacy in the primaries hoping to take away some votes from Clinton, to use the conversation as means of exposing the truly vile character of the Clintons. Those of us who were suspicious have been vindicated.

I have (hopefully finally) purged my consciousness of the irrational and self-defeating habit of voting out of fear of Republicans. This will be the third presidential election cycle that I won’t be lending my consent to corporate rule and imperialism. I won’t be voting for a warmonger. I won’t be voting for a racist. I won’t be voting for a lying and corrupt politician. I won’t be voting for an agent of Wall Street.

I will be casting my vote alongside millions of principled and forward looking Americans for Jill Stein. I’m with her. It’s a step in a new direction, the path out of the neoliberal state and towards democratic socialism. She may not win, but no struggle is advanced by supporting the status quo. Change is made by acting on principle and an adequate theory of the world. It is made when peoples abandon their self-defeating habits. It must begin somewhere. I urge you, do not give into fear manufactured by the corporate war party. Do be tricked by illusions. Withdraw consent from the corporate two-party system for a better future.

It would be nice not to have to say this, but so many people believe it, I feel the need to say it: Hell is a mythical place those who designed Christianity and Islam created to coerce people through fear into believing in their god and his alleged earthly manifestation Jesus or his messenger Muhammad.

There is no horrible place full of torture and misery waiting for you after you die for refusing to believe such a ridiculous and hateful thing. Hell is a human invention (just as god is). It is, moreover, the invention of sadistic and manipulative minds carried forward by ignorant and irrational thinking.

That people would feel compelled to teach their children this terrifying myth testifies to the irrationality ubiquitous in Christianity and Islam. I am so lucky to have had somebody in my life who had the good sense and common decency to catch me at a young age and free me from a terror that my immature mind might has assimilated into its core before I was cognitively able to see the ridiculousness of such a notion.

Why smart people believe nonsense is the consequence of letting adults, themselves victims of mythology, inject things into developing brains.

Another of the objectionable features of Christianity and Islam, and this is tied to the previous objection, is the way belief in these myths dispossess people of common moral sense. No proper guardian with the extensive control over his domain claimed by the followers of this god (the latter is a plagiarism of the former) would punish forever those he says he loves for refusing to accept that which his followers not only have neither evidence nor reason to believe, but which contradicts everything a thinking person could know about the universe she actually lives in.

To think such a terrible thing—to love an abusive father, to revere a psychopath—expresses damage to one’s capacity to love. Is it any wonder that so many Christians and Muslims are so incredibly hateful and judgmental of those who not only don’t believe their hogwash but—and this one falls especially on Christians—believers who fall short of the glory of which they claim everybody falls short?

When a person is told to believe something on faith, that person is being told to put aside their critical faculties and believe in the unbelievable. It sets people up to accept all manner of absurdities on faith. Faith teaches that there exists beyond this world something more important than this world, that something exists beyond humanity that is more important than human beings.

Faith-belief prepares the ground for perpetrating and tolerating all manner of terrible things, from shaming and stifling young and impressionable minds to burning bodies at the stake to free their souls. Asking that we accept the promise of a life that extends beyond the one we have is an invitation to limit our lives by fear and unreason. That a perfect being who says he loves us would test us in the flesh before judging whether we should enjoy eternal life. What a truly immoral notion.

Some think I should be happy that I escaped it and leave it there. That’s like leaving people to drown when you know how to swim.

Throughout history, the ruling classes and their functionaries and scribes have operated with what we might call the Big Person theory of history – that is, history as the telling of biographies that legitimizes their rule (Pharaoh, etc.), makes the social order appear open and progressive (Obama, etc.), or hides asymmetries of power behind the failure of weak leaders or the horror of terrible ones (Stalin is socialism, yet Hitler was anomalous). It’s the stories of firsts and singular accomplishments, personalities and prophets, heroes and foes, individual winners and losers. It’s hard to resist the lure of celebrity. The master statuses of the famous and infamous draw our attention. Sometimes we live through them. The cult of personality is the result of socialization in a hierarchical society.

In A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn writes, “To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to de-emphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity [the selection, simplification, and emphasis of fact that is inevitable for both cartographers and historians] but an ideological choice. It serves-unwittingly-to justify what was done.” Zinn contends that, as a scholarly and a moral matter, we must highlight and condemn “the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress.” 

“One reason these atrocities are still with us,” Zinn writes, ”is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. We have learned to give them exactly the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often give them in the most respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press conferences. It is therefore more deadly.” 

In a famous passage he writes, 

The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks) – the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress – is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they – the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court – represent the nation as a whole.

I have long embraced Zinn’s point of view – even before I read his words! This is why I bristle at the corporate media and liberal academics pushing the line that Clinton’s inevitable run for president represents a great moment in the history of equality. A member of the elite is held up as breaking barriers that still remain in place for millions of women. It’s liberal feminism as branding. It shouldn’t impress us.

We saw a similar thing during the Obama presidential campaign. All the while he was denying that his race was significant (quite the contrast with Clinton’s claim that the mere fact that she is a woman carries historic significance), the media nonetheless guided the public to support Obama by appealing to his identity as a black man, insisting of course on a whitewashed version of black identity (“Denounce your former pastor Jeremiah Wright – and even your own grandmother – as bigots”), so that spectators could feel part for a “historic moment,” one that allowed them to tell themselves that they had played a role in breaking down the barriers that reproduce inequality and that put black citizens at risk for police brutality and violent street crime. 

In reality, the public participated in a corporate propaganda campaign to repackage American empire. A black Democrat with an Arabic name who denies there is a black America. He couldn’t have been more perfect. “We’re glad that nasty business of racism is behind us,” the public could say while wrenching their shoulders out of joint to pat themselves on the back. And then, “What’s this Tea Party deal?” And now, “Trump!”Celebrating as a special moment the fact that Clinton will be a female presidential candidate not only neglects all the women who have already been female presidential candidates, but masks the misery and corruption that follow her from office to office. And the blood dripping from her hands.

This is a woman – I identify her gender because she and her supporters do – who was put in charge by her then-governor husband of de-professionalizing public school teachers in Arkansas, humiliating them by forcing them to take tests, undermining their unions. She worked with her then-president husband to sell a crime bill to the public that played a key role in throwing hundreds of thousands of young black men into prison, slandering the targets as “super predators” who “must be brought to heel.” She stumped for the notorious trade deal NAFTA, which resulted in the loss of more than three-quarters of a million good paying jobs in America. She stood behind her husband who ended Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the New Deal-era program for poor children, thus throwing millions of poor people, disproportionately black, off of welfare. She stood by the Clinton administration’s sanctions against Iraq, which led to the deaths of half a million children under the age of five. Then-state secretary Madeline Albright, who stumps for Clinton, said the children’s deaths were “worth it.” Clinton advocated the bombing of Yugoslavia (by her own admission she called her husband and, in her words, “urged him to bomb”), which resulted in mass civilian casualties. 

This is a woman who, as Senator from New York, voted to authorize President Bush’s invasion of Iraq, a war crime that resulted in the deaths of more than a million people and led to the rise of ISIL. As senator, Clinton did nothing to stop the widespread torture program perpetrated by the Bush administration. She supported the Wall Street bailout. She supported the PATRIOT Act and its reauthorization. As senator and secretary, and now as candidate for president she supports the illegal annexation of Palestine by Israel and periodic invasions and massacres in Gaza. “We are here to show solidarity and support for Israel. We will stand with Israel, because Israel is standing for American values as well as Israeli ones,” she said of Israel illegal 2006 invasion of Lebanon. For years she blocked ways forward for gay and lesbian rights. “Marriage is a sacred bond between a man and woman.” 

As Secretary of State, Clinton supported Obama’s drone killing operations. She prevailed over Vice President Biden’s objection to sending 20,000 troops to Afghanistan. She played a key role in legitimizing the 2009 Honduran coup d’état that saw the installation of a fascist government. She persuaded Obama to bomb Libya. Upon hearing the news of the torture-murder of Muammar Qaddafi at the hand of US-backed “rebels,” she quipped “We can, we saw, he died,” and then cackled. Not only was the bombing of Libya illegal under international law, it wasn’t even approved by Congress. She was at the center of distorting the facts on the ground in Syria, urging the arming of the insurgents in Syria with a manifold increase in killing and destruction. Hillary Clinton signed an agreement committing millions of tax dollars to the building of the Caracol sweatshop assembly park in the north of Haiti. She sold her office to funnel money into the Clinton Foundation in exchange for arms sales to nations with terrible human rights records, including the Mecca of beheadings and suppression of women’s rights Saudi Arabia. The Saudis used the weapons to bomb Yemen. She described US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak and his wife, who used rape as a weapon, as “friends of the family.” She ordered American officials to spy on high ranking UN diplomats, including collecting their biometric information. She is on record threatening to “obliterate” Iran and opposed Obama’s peace agreement with Iran. She supports the death penalty. She aggressively supported the TPP under Obama (despite what she says today). Same with the Keystone XL pipeline. And then there is her enabling of her husband’s aggressive sexual and violent behavior towards women. 

Zinn writes,

My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been, The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.

The evidence is clear. Hillary Clinton is on the side of executioners. The corporate media and public liberal intellectuals are portraying Clinton’s rise to the Democratic Party’s candidate for president as a historic moment in the history of a nation that always does right in the end. In telling this story as the only story worth telling, they are blocking from view the suffering of millions of people caused by policies Clinton and her ilk have deployed and supported. They are portraying a functionary of the ruling class as a civil rights hero. 

Hillary Clinton is not a champion for women. She is not a champion for workers. She is not a champion for poor people. Clinton represents corporate power and wealthy families. She is not one of us. Just as Obama’s election did not change the suffering of black America, the election of Clinton will not ameliorate the suffering of women under capitalist patriarchy. It will just give it cover. 

I recognize that argument and critique touch on subjects that can be very personal. But if we can’t agree to observe basic rules of rational discourse, then opportunities to discuss important issues are missed, even obstructed. A free society depends on the free expression of ideas in the context of rational public discourse. Jürgen Habermas identifies several presuppositions necessary for rational public discourse:

• participants use similar linguistic expression (some arguments may be about clarifying expressions);
• participants do not exclude or suppress relevant arguments;
• the only force in determining the outcome of the discussion is the superior validity/soundness of an argument (a goal of discussion should be that participants are motivated by a concern for better arguments);
• no rational claim is exempt from criticism.

We would do well to adopt these standards and the rules associated with them. For example, an argument may be sound or valid despite which side of the debate a person takes. A criticism of an argument hailing from a particular community can be valid even when the arguer is prejudiced with respect to that community or there is an asymmetry of power between members of communities. The argument stands on its own; its truth is not determined by the character of the arguer. It is valid if it follows the rules of logic and sound if supported by fact. 

Another basic rule is that a relevant and rational critique may be sound or valid even it offends members of the community advancing the position being criticized. That some are offended by relevant utterance has no bearing on the truth of the utterance. It is crucial that the utterances in question are relevant and rational. An utterance that demeans persons may be justifiably excluded or suppressed; however, excluding or suppressing speech requires explicit justification. It is not enough to claim to be offended. Moreover, a person’s identity or status is no reason for blanket exclusion or suppression of speech. The question is whether the speech is rational and relevant. 

I have to interject a pragmatic point here (some advice) that actions disrupting public events make protesting look bad and hurts their cause, however much I may agree with them. The conclusion many observers of such actions reach is that the disrupters don’t have a rational counterargument and that they suffer from authoritarian desire. The second assumption is true, but the first assumption may not be, and therefore an opportunity to engage the speaker and present the counter claim is lost. Observers may also suspect that the disrupters are more interested in engaging in behavior that draws attention to them or makes them feel empowered without actually affecting anything, in essence engaging in a type of egoism and recreation, not real political action. Most people see mob action and people don’t like mobs. Disrupting public events only serves to delegitimize the cause of protest they wish to advance. 

The demand that public forums which people are free to attend or to exit should be spaces safe from observations, opinions, and arguments that some may find offensive is an expression of authoritarian desire, even if that is not the intent. This demand flips free speech on its head. Public forums should be places safe for the free expression of arguments and opinions that some may find offensive – and this means demanding spaces that are free from disruption (this is true not only for speeches, but for concerts, art shows, plays, etc.). Shutting down discussion and debate is not a legitimate exercise of free speech; it is an act violating the right of free speech.

You have no right to silence a speaker because the speaker’s utterances offend you. You may wish to live in a world where you do not have to hear points of view with which you disagree or that offend you. To the extent that you can accomplish that by not interfering with the freedom of others to hear those points of view, have at it. But when you act to prevent others from hearing the expressions of others, you’re out of bounds.

Suppose a society in which women feel compelled to have surgery because of a standard of beauty imposed by the prevailing culture. The surgery are sought because they make women look more like the cultural images of women distributed by the culture industry. Suppose further an argument that this culture norm is oppressive and should be changed, that is it reflective of patriarchal conceptions of gender that should be overthrown.

Now suppose that those who have had surgery or who want to have surgery counter that, however wonderful eliminating the norm may be, it is not practically possible, that our society is marked by cultural notions of femininity and masculinity, therefore their choice to have the surgery is legitimately embraced, understood, and even part of a type of politics based around gender identity. Suppose they contend that criticisms of their politics is therefore a type of loathing and victim blaming, a form of bigotry.

Are we supposed to be content with a counterposition that takes offense at being confronted with the problem of culture and choice? Is it right that we should be accused of being bigots on the grounds that we raised an objection to an oppressive culture norm? Yet persons who have surgery to look more like the gender images produced by patriarchal culture will get angry with you if you criticize the culture that compels them to go under the knife and problematize the defensive politics rationalizing that choice.

Through a strange alchemy an argument that we should build a culture where people are not judged by the norms of the patriarchy is transformed into bigotry and, on this basis, marginalized, effectively inoculating from criticism the political expression of the internalization of an oppressive culture norm. 

The act of decrying rational criticism of culture and politics is a massive barrier to developing a politics that seeks to dismantle oppressive social and ideational structures.