If "Liberal" means "we can," then "we can't" is not liberal and certainly not progressive, either.
Over 50 years ago, speaking at Rice University in Houston, Texas, President John F. Kennedy proclaimed an American identity characterized by a restless desire for progress. He reminded his audiences that our “can do” spirit grew from seeds of character sown in our nation’s history of territorial conquest and expansion, industrial growth, scientific research, and technological advance. Standing at the threshold of space exploration, Kennedy argued that impossible, improbable dreams must always be pursued—not even though “they are hard” but “because.”
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
In its entirety, Kennedy’s speech makes two key points:
- Our pursuit of grand designs has created our national greatness, has made us the world’s leader, pre-eminent among all its nations.
- Perpetuating our national greatness requires us to continue doing “the other things” that will also be seen as too hard to achieve, as impossible as a moon landing seemed in 1962.
Fast-forward 54 years—47 years after humanity’s first steps on the moon—to the 2016 presidential campaign, but note, first, how intervening decades spent critically re-examining the manifold failings of American “exceptionalism” and struggling to confront “the truth about ourselves” (Greider) have undermined Kennedy’s assertive vision. We have wallowed in itemizing all that has been destroyed by “progress” (e.g. native cultures and land rights, ecosystems), all that was done in contradiction of our ideals (e.g. slavery, segragation), all that has undermined our government (e.g. Vietnam, Iran-Contra, Bush II’s Iraq, Watergate, Citizens United), and more. Years of mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa have wounded our collective psyche, forcing ideological rifts between self-defensive reactionaries who condemn excavation of our national sins as “America-hating liberalism” and unapologetic idealists who seek national redemption in material redress of wrongs and pefected realization of American values—equality and justice for all. Kennedy speaks from the latter camp when he reminds us that our choices “become a force for good or ill”: thus, rather than recoiling from the “ills,” “ignorance,” and “problems” exposed by excruciating self-examination, we might welcome these challenges as the “hard” “things” that need our best energies, brightest minds, and most dedicated skills to “win.” Scanning the 2016 American cultural landscape scarred by seemingly intractable ecological, economic, political, and social crises, I realize I’ve been listening for the voice that echoes JFK’s stirring and successful call to risk, courage, and service. We need these qualities, now more than ever, but whose vision will best inspire them in us, Hillary Clinton’s pragmatism or Bernie Sanders’ progressivism?
That question received its first test Monday night with the Iowa caucuses and was fought to a draw, with less than three-tenths of a percent separating Clinton’s “victory” from Sanders’ “loss.” These results did not produce the repudiation of progressive idealism that Clinton desires: in fact, she has since denied her own night-of-the-caucus claim to be “a progressive who gets things done for people” by stating clearly, “We've got to get back to the middle. We've got to get back to the big center and solving problems. That's how we make progress in America.” We should have no illusions about Clinton’s hostility to the progressive “left”: her message going forward—“We can’t have ideologues hurling rhetoric”—reveals in its own subtle allusion to violence the significant extent to which her thinking about political change is consumed by its hazards, real and imagined. It is no stretch of an observer’s imagination to conclude that Clinton’s past political shellackings, emotionally traumatic situations of public abuse of sustained in the course of trying to do good, have driven her to play victim and psychologically conditioned her “No, we can’t” as a self-protective reaction to policy fights—like universal single-payer health care—she tried, and failed, to win.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Claiming the mantel of pragmatism—and all the elitism this position implies of knowing better than the rest of us “what is real” and “what is not”—Clinton’s confidence masks fear for the future. Her chosen presidential role, defender of the Obama legacy, is designed both to “’stop the Republicans from ripping all our progress away’” and to stifle dissatisfaction and complaint about limited or stalled reforms that, she worries, could strengthen Republican attacks on the Affordable Care Act and other Obama achievements. The most charitable acknowledgement of Clinton’s stance might come from President Kennedy: “So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait.” Cringing—or primal screaming—in the face of challenges is understandably human, but as Kennedy goes on to say, “the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward.” He knew that the “breathtaking pace” of the “other things” bearing down on us—crises we recognize now as global climate change, food and water insecurity, international conflict, accelerating wealth inequality between our nation’s and the world’s 1% “haves” and 99% “have nots,” growing oligarchic corruption of our legislative and judicial systems—makes incremental change, Clinton’s promised modus operandi, an ironically improbable and predictably unsuccessful means of securing our (America’s, humanity’s, the planet’s) future.
Once, Hillary and Bernie shared a single vision on “real health care access.”
Woe betide those who question Hillary Clinton’s “proven” vision. Her stern parental scolding of critics—an implicit “I know what is best for you” set on her embattled lifetime of political experience—finds ample support from “the political establishment” among surrogates like Nancy Pelosi and supporters like Paul Krugman and Chris Matthews. (Apparently, it takes a village—or a “Northern strategy”—to keep us alienated progressives in line.) This “better than you” stance infantalizes voters: in Matthews’ diatribe, we are “kids” who must be “taught… how it works in our system.” Protecting this system, Clinton’s rejections of Democrats’ overwhelming demand for single-payer health care border on emotional abuse and neglect: Hillary’s “never, ever” betrays an authoritarian parent’s angry exasperation that ignores the need, pain, and suffering fueling that demand. Such unruly children! Why do we not see that her “No!” is for our own good? Perhaps, as adult critical thinkers, we see that Clinton’s actions—taking $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs; speaking at a meeting of Golden Tree Asset Management for $275,000; attending a “deep-pocket fundraiser” sponsored by Franklin Square, a hedge fund already under investigation by non-profit regulator FINRA (examples from the very tip of the gargantuan iceberg that is “the Clinton System” of political fundraising and influence peddling)—create material conflicts of interest that shed glaring light on her refusals of our desires. Audre Lord, 37 years ago, saw this light: “For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” That game, its statistics tracked in the Clinton Global Initiative’s donor records and in candidate Clinton’s financial disclosures, gives millions of reasons to doubt the efficacy of Hillary’s promises to reform and regulate the banking, investment, and insurance services that destroyed our Main Street economy. Why not ask if her “No, we can’t” really means “No, I can’t”—or, “No, my corporate masters don’t want me to”—and look elsewhere for the leader with sure optimism and confidence?
Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders’ vision of what is possible is not crowded or limited or narrowed by Wall Street’s towering altars to shareholder value. His conviction that America can accomplish “big” things only seems like “puppies and rainbows” to those who forget—or do not know—“the benefits of optimism.” President Kennedy tapped these benefits, using his Rice University speech to encourage Americans to imagine “opening the vistas of space,” taking part in leading “one of the greatest adventures of all time,” and “reap[ing] the harvest” in “knowledge,” “understanding,” technological advance, and industrial and economic growth produced by chasing the dream of walking on the moon. As JFK spoke in 1962, manned extraterrestial exploration was pure fiction, more unreal than Sanders’ “Medicare for all” proposal, and NASA had no practical plan—only competing ideas—of how to build a lunar lander. This president knew his role was to expand people’s thinking about what is possible, thereby energizing our support for the work and costs to come of planning and implementing the objective. Kennedy achieved his rhetorical objective by demonstrating that Americans had the right and responsibility to lead humanity’s forays into space.
Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. (Kennedy)
Apollo 11 lifts off on July 16, 1969, carrying astronauts Michael Collins, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong into lunar orbit.
Like Kennedy’s campaign for space exploration, Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic nomination and the U.S. presidency is grounded in a clear vision of Americans’ rights to progress. As “an unreconstructed New Dealer,” Sanders understands that 40 years of expanding corporate influence in politics have engineered the steady erosion of Americans’ rights to earn fair wages as a fair share of our nation’s economic growth and productivity increases, our rights to participate in elections and elect public servants uncorrupted by big-moneyed interests, our rights to demand our government to promote our general welfare and to change that government when it serves the richest 1% with tax breaks and loop holes at the expense of the 99%’s needs for modern infrastructure, fossil-fuel-free energy, environmental protection, global warming mitigation and preparedness, and, yes, universal health care. Like President Kennedy before him, presidential candidate Sanders knows that redirecting government expenditures to new programs requires “faith and vision, for we do not know now what benefits await us” (Kennedy). Like Kennedy, Sanders knows that, “If and when Americans believe that [we] have the power to command [our] own government, his message will be [sic] resonate” and constructive, progressive change “will follow.” Like Kennedy, Sanders knows that change brings “new ignorance, new problems, new dangers” and that, despite our fears of the unknown, we cannot reap the future’s “high reward” without accepting the risk of “high costs and hardships.” Finally, like Kennedy, Sanders knows that we cannot allow fear to cause us to abandon the obligations we bear to future generations, to act bravely now so that our children’s children’s children can enjoy their full measure of human freedom.
Freedom includes revolution—the will to change—as much as evolution, the fits and starts, the leaps and bounds, the steps and stalls, the paces forward and back and forward again whereby change happens. Given the interlocking necessity of both change mechanisms, the much-debated argument that “only revolution is dangerous” can only be disingenuous and politically motivated. It begs the question: Whose will to change is being silenced by this judgment?
Set that “progressives” label aside for the moment. We who chafe against the status quo, who reject privatization’s claims to be a public good, who rail against the vampire economy’s enrichment of clueless billionaires with the life’s blood of the American middle class, who question entrenched interests’ sense of entitlement to their fiefdoms, who strive to reclaim political power and restore equality of opportunity and equal justice for all—we are the ones being silenced by Hillary Clinton’s “No, we can’t!” In our rejection, we are asked, nonetheless, to admire her accomplishments in public service—so I will grant that some of her efforts have improved the lives of some Americans, some of these even working poor and middle class. But I reject her vision of America’s future, a future of our diminished accomplishments, determined and limited by the possibilities allowed us by our political opponents (Republicans) and our socio-economic betters (corporatocracy). I support Bernie Sanders’ “revolution”: the “great (re)awakening” of a voting majority no longer willing to be silenced and ignored by our elected officials nor to feed off the crumbs dropped from their money-grubbing hands.
We, the People: we are at our best when we are shooting for the moon.
[And now, I’m going for walk, collecting union cards. I’ll check on the discussion here when I return.]
