I have a potential solution to the moral dilemma (voting for HRC) that I wrote about in my last, well-received (sarcasm) diary. I think it is a logical solution, although probably completely politically unobtainable — a Swiftian “modest proposal”, if you will. (In the interest of brevity, I strongly suggest you skip the introductory philosophizing and go straight to the proposal — by skipping to the <********> marker below.)
The Bottom Line: one specific action
For purposes of this discussion, let me stipulate that I am willing to vote for HRC if I can get surety* that she will not take one (and only one) very specific action that would irreversibly harm our democracy. That action, which is hers and hers alone to take or to not take if she is President, is signing off on any of these corporate coup d'etat trade deals (TPP,TTIP, TISA) or any future such deals or any weasel-worded non-changes to existing deals. There is no way for her to hide such a sellout behind some party hack like DWS, or her Secretary of State, or the Congress. She is the only person who can sign the deal.
* surety — noun. Money that you give as a guarantee that you will do what you are legally required to do (such as to appear in court).
- Merriam Webster Dictionary
But, wait, you say. HRC has already said she will not sign TPP "in its current form". And there lies a hole big enough to drive the planet Jupiter through. Again, for purposes of discussion, I must point out the fact that huge numbers of people simply do not trust HRC/WJC to stick to any political talking point - much less any deal - any longer than their personal success requires. This lack of trust is poll-tested, anecdote-tested - as close to fact as one can get in politics.
Before you say I'm being partisan, this concern goes even more for Donald Trump, the other presumptive nominee. He is even worse, because Mr. Art of the Deal does not even remember having made a deal. He will screw you over in his sleep.
The Perennial Question
The perennial question in representative politics is "how can I trust a politician, once elected, to follow through on the promises he/she made to get elected". For example, one might remember voting for Obama and getting even worse persecution of whistle-blowers than under W, the normalization of drone-strike assassinations by the President on his say so alone, an ever increasing military budget, bailouts and non-prosecution of bankster criminals, and the re-blowing of the Wall St. Bubble. I think you get the picture. The standard cop-outs are "circumstances have changed" or "it was all we could get".
Back to the Bottom Line
Well, when it comes to the heinous "Investor-State-Dispute-Settlement" clauses of these so-called trade treaties, there is no circumstance under which I would accept any president signing away forever our Constitution and our country to a bunch of corporate lawyers — self-serving lawyers with no accountability to countries, only accountability to corporations. There is no cop-out that justifies that bullet to the heart of democracy.
We don't need more trade deals; we have plenty already. That is why the idea that these are trade deals is a lie. These are backdoor amendments to our Constitution that empower corporate rule. These amendments are brought to the public under the rules of minimal debate, no opportunity for changes, and a mere majority to pass — a much lower bar than the Constitution sets for amendments. Anyone who tries to minimize or hide these facts is not on my side.
My one demand (Sadly, at this point, I will tolerate just about any other predictable sellout.) is that we simply stop giving away our sovereignty for bullshit promises of economic gain - said promises having been proven to be lies ever since NAFTA. That's all I need to vote for HRC. If we still have a democracy after four years, we can vote her out and try to fix the damage, barring a nuclear war. But we will have survived as a democracy.
The solution involves money
The question is how to bell this cat. Now, I am not going to claim I will make politicians into moral beings. Rather, my solution goes in the other direction. My solution involves money, significant amounts of money, which ought to commend it to the corporately minded members of the party. I think of it as the opposite of bribery.
For me, and for a lot of people, democracy in the U.S. has been bought out by big money. Well-paying sinecures await corporate lapdog regulators. Corporate-friendly elected officials can look forward to lucrative board memberships and speaking fees. Citizens United has made bribery by anyone, foreign or domestic, completely legal and even secret. Everyone knows the only way to get things done in American politics has to do with money. Money trumps morality. Money talks and democracy walks.
A serendipitous book buy
In this mindset, I happened upon the book "Debt: the First 5,000 Years" by David Graeber, the noted anarchist faculty member of the London School of Economics. Anyone who can justify being an anarchist at the LSE puts generations of Jesuits to shame and gets my immediate attention.
In this book, I found his main argument to offer me an idea:
What does it mean to say that our sense of morality and justice is reduced to the language of a business deal? What does it mean when we reduce our moral obligations to debts? What changes when the one turns into the other?…On one level, the difference between an obligation and a debt is simple and obvious. A debt is the obligation to pay a certain sum of money. As a result, a debt, unlike any other form of obligation, can be precisely quantified. This allows debts to become simple, cold, and impersonal - which in turn allows them to be transferable.If one owes a favor, or one's life, to another human being, it is owned to that person specifically. But if one owes $40,000 at 12% interest, it doesn't really matter who the creditor is; neither does either of the two parties have to think much about what the other party needs, wants, is capable of doing - as they certainly wood if what was owed was a favor, or respect, or gratitude…
The crucial factor…is money's capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic - and by doing so, to justify things that would otherwise seem outrageous or obscene.
- David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years
The thing that caught my attention was the way morality has been turned into deals. America, the quintessential land of deal-making molds us from birth to not notice this pernicious moral reduction.
To my way of thinking, a vote is a mere matter of impersonal arithmetic. ("It's the math, stupid.) It is a moral reduction of why people join a political party — the party platform. Mere math strips away any moral obligation, any traditional sense of politics as an ongoing social activity, and reduces politics to a number. No horse-trading, no respect for the loser, no gratitude for assistance on other matters. The GOP have been a take-no-prisoners shop since Newt Gingrich. It seems that the Democratic Party is now also a corporate-funded, take-no-liberal-retard-prisoners shop as well. Today's Democratic Party politics is nothing but a money-fueled calculation of whom to buy out, sell out, or wipe out.
Given the completely mercenary nature of today's politics, I am not ashamed to offer a completely mercenary solution to my moral dilemma.
<********> A Political Prenup
I’m sorry, but you will have to figure out which parts of the following commentary are tongue in cheek and which are serious; I’m a little unclear on that myself. That uncertainty will make the ensuing free-for-all a little bit more interesting, as I can always cop out and say I was kidding on some detail or another (just like any other politician). Meanwhile, you can avoid engaging with logic simply by saying you refuse to argue with a delusional, ban-able, a Hillary-hater — whatever.
Here's the proposal:
HRC/WJC place 50% of their assets in a blind trust and sign a legally binding contract that says:
If HRC as President signs any ISDS provision of any trade deal, HRC/WJC forfeit the blind trust to either the U.S. Treasury or some other non-private entity that cannot turn around and hand the money straight back to the Clintons by some tricky deal, political shell-corporation, or speaking fee.
I picked 50% because it is the only "random" number between 0% and 100%. Any other number opens the proposal to a lot of distracting arguments about how much is “fair” to put at risk. I'm going with 50% because it is big enough to hurt; but it leaves half their assets - which would still be way more than 99.99% of Americans. (That’s the exponential math of the 0.01%. A different world.)
You might be outraged, and say this is a medieval proposal. But, hey, all the old political stuff is new again - racism, sexism, theocracy, debtors prisons, torture, mercenary armies. Why not some metaphorical form of hostage-taking? It was good enough for Christian Europe from about 1000 to about 1700 - all kinds of royal children were sent to the courts of enemy kings as surety. It was good enough for Tokugawa Japan, where nobles had to keep their families at court to guarantee they wouldn't go back to their provinces and revolt. When normal politics reaches the level of corruption we see in America today, hostage taking should be "on the table". Besides, there is no living, breathing hostage being taken. It is only money.
This contract is like a prenuptial agreement. Before I "marry" HRC, I want some guarantee that she won't turn around and divorce me, then sue me for half my net worth. So, the contract says that if she does that, the country gets half her net worth.
Another way to think of this contract is as a "peace bond". Progressives argue that they have been abused before (NAFTA, GATT, MFN for China), and they want the injuring party to post a bond against future abuse.
Finally, as per David Graeber, since morality is often reduced to monetary payments, this is really not an immoral deal. It's just an acceptably clear one.
All HRC has to do to get my vote is give me the surety (via a multi-$10M bond) that she will not screw America over by taking one extremely specific action that she and she alone has the power to take, that no one can coerce her to do. If she really means what she says, she should have no problem signing this deal. If she signs this deal, she could pick up a lot of hold-your-nose votes, including mine.
Of course, I am not a lawyer or a politician. If someone wants to create a scenario where she is forced to sign such a deal against her will by some devious plot to bankrupt her, I am willing to listen and modify the contract. But, I am now at the negotiating stage of the process. I am negotiating the wording of the contract that will get me to vote for HRC.
Let the fun begin.