Why this Election Actually is About Defining the "Real America"

Sarah Palin is right about one thing: this election is in fact a battle between the "real America" and a pretender. But it's not quite the battle she imagines. Palin couldn't be more wrong when she asserts that one group of Americans is more "American" than another -- or when she implies that "real Americans" favor division and fear, or the right of one person to "make it" at the expense of his neighbors. And her soul mate Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (MN-6th) was downright frightening when she called on the media to root out "anti-Americans" -- whoever they may be.

Division and fear are not American values. In fact the "real" American values are the traditional progressive values that have defined the soul of America from the moment that Thomas Jefferson crafted the words of the Declaration of Independence.

In the election thirteen days from now, Americans will make a choice of leaders. But they will also determine whether those traditional progressive American values will replace the radical conservatism that has usurped their position as the defining frame of American politics.

From 1932 until the mid 1970s (with some aberrations) progressive values generally defined right and wrong in American politics.

But since the mid 1970s the radical conservatives have defined the values at the center of the political dialogue and progressives have been on the ideological defensive. Even during the Clinton years, conservatives controlled the broad value frame for the nation's political debate.

The Clinton presidency provided major pushback and achieved important successes -- but only in the face of the dominant conservative values. When Clinton was President, at least there were two teams on the ideological field. But even then, Progressives always played the role of the underdog.

In 13 days, that could change.

What are traditional progressive values? Here are some examples.

Unity vs. Division. John McCain and Sarah Palin have explicitly attempted to divide America between "real Americans" and everyone else. McCain's entire campaign is now premised on the argument that Obama is "not like you". "Watch out," say the chain-letter-emails, "he's a Muslim". Of course that's a lie -- Obama is a devout Christian. But as General Colin Powell pointed out on last Sunday's Meet the Press: so what if he were a Muslim. In America every kid -- whether he is Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim - or like Thomas Jefferson a Deist -- has the right to aspire to be President. And the reason is simple. The foundational premise of America is that it is the land of opportunity for everyone. It is all about unity. We are ALL Americans.

Obama's introduction to the nation was his 2004 Democratic convention speech where he said: There is no red America or blue America -- only the United States of America.

Hope vs. Fear. Traditional progressive American values celebrate hope - not its opposite, fear. Roosevelt affirmed this belief in his first inaugural address: So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

For eight years the Bush Administration has generated an orgy of fear -- fear of terrorism; fear of people who are "un-American"; fear of "defeat". McCain's campaign has picked up the drum beat and done everything it can to get people to fear that Obama will withdraw our troops in "defeat"; is "associated with Terrorists" -- that he hangs out with people we should fear. Fear and division go hand in hand.

The right feeds off of fear because it is paralyzing -- and distracting. It allows small elites to dominate everyone else by making them afraid of each other. It helps people ignore that all of the last eight year's economic growth (such as it is) has been appropriated by two percent of the population.

From the beginning, the entire Obama campaign has been built on the belief that hope trumps fear -- that people are hungry for hope and optimism and possibility -- that hope is empowering.

People are not "economic inputs"; they are the point of the economy. Traditional progressive values understand that people are not commodities. Progressives believe that you don't set someone's wages entirely through supply and demand like corn and beans. We believe that every human deserves a living wage that allows him or her to live in dignity. People are not "economic inputs"; they are the point of the economy.

That's why traditional progressive values stand for a bottom up, not top down economy. For McCain and Palin that's "socialism". So it appears is the progressive income tax -- but not, it seems, the partial nationalization of our biggest banks.

In Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, Kevin Phillips summarizes his case against "trickle-down economics."

He argues that the economic history of the 20th century demonstrates that economic growth happens from the bottom up, not the top down. He points out that:

• From 1933 to the early 1970s, real disposable income increased by over 130% for average Americans. Gross domestic product grew virtually continuously. That growth occurred on the strength of a broader and broader distribution of wealth and income -- more consumers who could buy products. This was the same time when hundreds of new protections for average Americans were passed by our Congress -- Social Security, Medicare, the Wagner Act that allowed serious labor organizing, and the minimum wage. 1968 marked the century's peak of purchasing power for the federal minimum wage.

• During the same period, the percentage of wealth on the top 1% of the population shrunk from a high in 1929 -- the year of the stock market crash -- to a low in 1976.

• Since the early 1970s, the percentage of wealth on the top 1% has once again skyrocketed to 1929 levels -- all as part of the new "supply side" philosophy that claimed that the increased wealth of a few would "trickle down" to everyone else.

• But today, the median income of the typical American family is right now almost the same as it was in 1969.

McCain and Palin stand squarely in the radical conservative Bush "trickle down tradition". The choice could not be clearer.

We're All in This Together -- Not All in This Alone. This best sums up the difference in world view represented by the McCain-Obama electoral battle. It appears in the contrast between McCain's proposal to privatize Social Security and Obama's commitment to guaranteed benefits. You can see it in the difference between the McCain health care plan that puts individuals at the mercy of private health insurance companies, and Obama's plan that begins with the premise that health care is human right.

The decision voters face November 4th is in fact a choice of what will be the "real America". It is a decision about the vision and values that define what America will be in the future.

Barack Obama understands that society is not a zero sum game. He understands that you don't have to be poor for me to by rich; that you don't have to be sick for me to be healthy; that by giving every child a good education, the growing store of human knowledge will make all of us smarter.

In his 2004 Democratic Convention speech he put it this way:

.....it's not enough for just some of us to prosper -- for alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we're all connected as one people. If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there is a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription drugs, and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandparent. If there's an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.

It is that fundamental belief -- It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.
E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one."

That is not the vision of, George Bush, John McCain, or Sarah Palin. But it is the vision that has always defined what is best in America. On November 4th, we have the opportunity make it the American vision once again.

Robert Creamer is a long time political organizer and strategist and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight. How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.

Comments

[LightningJoe]

As to the logical basis of the economy, Neo-Cons and Chicago Boys love to compare the flow of the economy with blood-flow through an organism, efficiently transporting the resources the body needs, and dealing with the wastes in the process. Need oxygen to power the cell's ATP energy cycle? Get it from the lungs and take it where it's needed. Too much nitrogen and lactates building up in the muscle cells, impeding free function? Get it into the bloodstream and flush it out the kidneys. Resources where they are needed. The Invisible Hand.

But our current economic model acts nothing like the bloodstream. You don't see some organs hoarding blood away from others, do you? Our brains use lots of energy, but (except in injurious circumstances) they don't withhold the sugar and oxygen the rest of the body needs.

The bloodstream, in fact, operates much more like classic socialism, than like modern capitalism. Every part of the body does its job, and contributes to the health of the whole. Those parts handling wastes are not isolated and left to their own devices, but are nourished by the body corporate.

This body-level cooperative principle also operates on the higher level of (naive) human cultures; where all members contribute as they can, and take benefit from their membership in the group.

To act in support of one's fellows is not a disease, as the propagandists would have us think; but the very expression of human solidarity (values).

[LightningJoe]

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little death that brings total annihilation.

I will face my fear, and go through it,

And when I look back, I will see

Nothing.

---
ZSSssst! This is your brain, on teevee.

[LightningJoe]

Good roster of Progressive values. Only thing is, the appreciation of those values, and of the good they can do our society, relies on reasoned thought, and the Republican prop is doing it's damndest to keep reasoned thought out of the picture.

Unity is of course the enemy of those who wish to divide and conquer. And Fear is indeed the enemy of Hope -- such a clear enemy, that the very concept of hope is ridiculed as a terrorist/socialist (take your pick) plot, in Faux Nooz propaganda. When fear is well-instilled in people, who needs a real enemy? No thought whatsoever can occur, so long as fear lasts.

In this, their Propaganda has taken a genius turn, building on the normal human brain's "orientation response" on seeing a new field of vision, such as a changed picture on the boob tube. This response could more practically be called a "suspension response," since it arrests normal forebrain "decision" thinking entirely; until some critical issue is resolved (evolutionarily: "Is that something good to eat, that just jumped out of that bush, or is that something that eats good?" (neandertal grammar, sorry)).

Propaganda's triumph is to tie the brain's rationality into loops of circular logic, that each lead to a perceived critical threat -- in the end leaving only fear, to rule the subject's responses. The subject is then immune to logic; since he then operates only in "crisis mode," where everything is life-or-death.

[deminmo]

McCain/Palin did not start this "fear everything and everyone, terrorists threaten
us all the time, tell on your neighbor" mentality. This has been growing over the
last 4 years. It took a black candidate to bring out the ugly. He represents the
ultimate "unknown" factor. He represents the end of unchecked unbalanced
government. He represents the change from the top 5% getting everything to the
bottom 40% getting something. He represents the change from knowing the poor
exist and actually doing something for the poor. Senator Obama is a ray of some
hope for people who right now, right this minute live below at or at the poverty line.
And not everyone in that catagory is sitting at home getting welfare checks, despite
what McCain/Palin and the Republicans believe.
I just fear now what will happen after Senator Obama wins, considering the resurgence
of fear.

[Bloggerrogr]

Good post, deminmo! Except, the “fear everything…” mindset actually dates back to 1968 and the Presidency of another disgraced Republican, Richard M. Nixon. In that year, a little-known anti-semitic speechwriter named Pat Buchanan presented a tactic to the President as, roughly, “…we’ll divide this country in half but we’ll get the bigger half…”!
The strategy was to paint America as divided between two elite groups, the cultural elites and the economic elites, then to constantly focus on the ‘cultural elites’ and portray these as being somehow anti-American. With the national attention directed toward these straw men, the right could then quietly redirect the wealth to the economic elites, the Republican party, by and large, to the detriment of the working and middle classes. Just like magic, it is based on mis-direction. Get people stirred up about social issues while you proceed to plunder the treasury. And, it has worked very well for the past forty years. It has taken a second Depression to wake Americans up to the truth that our country’s productive capacity and therefore much of it’s wealth has been redistributed to the rich, the powerful and the well-connected; the corporatocracy, if you will.
There was another article on this here in Huffpost a few months back. I should have saved the URL, but, as that baseball guy would famously say, “you could look it up…”!

[notwosocialism]

Yes, what is scary is how excited people seem to be willing to give up their freedoms to enter into a new world of socialism. Just look at Chicago, high murder rate,highest tax rates, all democrats including senator Hussein obama and that's what you people are looking forward to. Scary!!!!

[arvay]

The idea that Chicago is a socialist city is hilarious!

[idest]

Oh my god so scary! When my health care costs decrease, how will I ever survive??? And I am simply terrified of getting a tax break! Whatever will I do?! And the President's name will be Barack Hussain Obama! OH MY GOD WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO!!!

/sarcasm off

[LightningJoe]

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? You are.

That's just what this whole "socialist" scare is: a fairytale, to scare us all under our beds.

-----
Teevee == brain programming.

[MadAs]

Yesterday Palin was once again touting her “executive experience” as the mainstay of her VP credentials. Well let’s see:

She took federal monies to build a bridge but used them on other projects instead. Is that the executive experience we need in DC?

She hauled her kids all over the country to functions they weren’t invited to and charged the people of Alaska for the kids’ air fares and expensive hotel rooms (something no other Alaskan governor has done). Is that the executive experience we need in DC?

She has all but abandoned the Governor’s Mansion, preferring to remain largely in her own home in Wasilla where she secretly was charging the state per diem for every night spent at home (something no other Alaskan governor has done). Is that the executive experience we need in DC?

She used her executive powers to intervene in a personal matter and, without executive order, tacitly involved her husband, not only in the general duties of the Governor, but to apply governor’s office authority to exert pressure in that personal matter, all of which per the state’s legislative investigation, violated the state’s ethics law. Is that the executive experience we need in DC?

So let’s see, those are the hallmarks of her executive experience: Are you kidding me???

[jaygirl]

What does it mean to be an American? It means being a citizen of a country that was founded by bloodshed and war. An indigenous people were all but obliterated. Native people had lived on this soil for hundreds of generations. This country was fresh and ripe with trees, game, minerals and natural fuels. The rivers were clean and the oceans were packed with fish. Wild animals roamed in freedom and flourished. In a little over 200 years the new inhabitants of America have sullied all the natural resources, destroyed much of the wildlife, polluted the rivers and oceans, while the population has increased beyond all expectations. The very air is rank and fetid. Political parties have cheated, stolen, lied and fought for the accumulation of power and money. The saying about being "my brother's keeper" is a joke. Just listen to the rhetoric of McCain and Palin, two troubled politicians who will say or do anything to hide their inferiority. Listen to the evangelists spewing superstitious references about the Christian spirits and devils. I think it is the nature of man to crave power and social position. Can we control the need for excess? Personally I doubt it, but our only chance for survival is to keep trying.

[arvay]

I wouldn't be too hard on us. Most nations are founded by bloodshed and war. Native people can be cruel, brutal and superstitious also -- have a look at Mel Gibson's Apocalypto for an excellent dramatization of Mayan inhumanity.

The sad, but enlightening fact is that we are all the bearers of a majestic and also sometimes inhuman human nature. I'd guess that virtually all of us are descendants of rapacious conquerors and the conquered. Italians, for example, result from the intermingling of Romans and their numerous slaves. Italian culture isn't a bad outcome!

It's really up to us how we deal with the prejudices we inherit and possibly inborn rapacious urges. Given certain circumstances, any of us should be able to see ourselves in the docket at Nuremberg. Or not.

Right now, the Americans seem to be rejecting fear and bigotry and embracing hope. True, we needed to be battered economically to get here, but at least we're learning.

[quest44]

Well said Mr Creamer !

[songbird02]

Mr. Creamer, I just read your post and couldn't agree with you more. Deepak Chopra wrote a psychological analysis of Palin's effect on voters. It was very interesting and in many ways said many of the same things you said in your article. I feel like the fate of our country rests in the outcome of this election. I would find it so disheartening if McCain & Palin won... I see Obama's Presidency as a chance to put this country back on the right track. We were derailed by the Bush Administration... I will be glad when the election is over... I only pray that the mentality that voted GW in for his second term doesn't prevail in the 2008 election. If it does, I may have to consider will joining Tina Fey's exodus to Canada.

[Akacia]

"It is that fundamental belief -- It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family. E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one."
The agrument that only one political sphere has access to giving back is completely childish and unfounded. Try to take a deep breath and review the little ticket items that have a big impact on the world. Like Christian giving/churches. The redistribution of wealth to be the only answer would imply and gurantee some govenemntal beaurocrat could make decisions better than the people of our country, My brother's/sister's keeper is not on the left or on the right it is as the quote says " Out of many, one."

[wolfgangmo]

Exactly, which is why the way the Republican platform has been saying that only we have an answer, that only churchy giving is good, that only private schools are good and that government has no place at the table is wrong, wrong, wrong. The current republican view is that governments job is to get out of the way of the corporations, crooks, and thieves and let them do whatever they want, that government should only go to the rich and that only corporations deserve help, that the least of us is only there to be used like a dirty rag and then tossed aside.

That is what we are saying and that is why we support Mr. Obama. He seems to get that and the nuts in charge of the Republican party don't.

[pbley68]

Sarah Palin says its alright to sh*t on your neighbor, while she shouts from the rooftops about her Christianity, wasn't she ever taught to love thy neighbor.

[wolfgangmo]

Yah, but we aren't her neighbors, and if she has her way, we never will be.

[pbley68]

McCain and Palin appeal only to fear,hate and hypocrisy.

[EmmJay1025]

Thank you for reminding us who we are as a nation and as a people. I found your article to be uplifting, which was a nice change, since most of the things I've been reading about how the RNC is running this election have made me feel sad. I truly believe in Obama and that he lives in integrity. My hope is that his example will bring this country back to the country we know it is

[Francis Parker Yockey]

Traditionally in the "Real" America success came to those who worked hard and assimilated themselves into the majority culture. Many Japanese, Italian, German, Polish Americans, to name but a few, have joined the mainstream American culture and become real Americans. We are a traditionally Protestant, Anglo-Saxon & Scotch-Irish nation, culturally speaking. If that does not suite your tastes, then why would you come here in the first place? And if already here, why not leave and go someplace that reflects your personal values?

[RC1]

Are these the only folks you listed, you consider "REAL" Americans? If so then you and those who think as you do are the "REAL" problem.
Millions of people were brought to this country not of their chosing, they were enslaved, worked hard , got no pay. After gaining freedom these folks were denied rights others took for granted. Through perservati­on/determi­nation their descendents were able to make gains, however slow those gins were.
From 1865 til the present we slave descendents made great improvements in our lives, we worked just as hard as those you say are "REAL" Americans. Many of these slave descendents served and died in all wars this United States of America was involved in. There are "MANY" people of African heritage who made great improvements in America and themselves, for you to say "REAL" Americans who came here, I don't think they had to work on plantations from sun up to sun down, fed slop, whipped, women raped, men lynched.
You say "REAL" Americans who came and worked hard and assimilated themselves into the majority culture" shows how ignorant of facts you are about those Americans you left out from your "REAL" Americans.

GO BARACK OBAMA
DON'T LET THE NEGATIVE RETHORIC AND THE EVEILNESS OF SOME SPOIL THE MOMENT

[TomTheAlmostUgly]

So welfare for poor people is wrong, but welfare for Wall Street fatcats is okay? How curious.

BTW Yucky, WASPs are now a _minority_. But I've glad to know that you won't be whining for any equal-opportunity gimmees in the years ahead.

Thirteen days from now, _you_ might strongly consider emigrating. You're not going to like being a laughingstock.

[tomas0808]

If this election gets stolen as well I'm calling it a day. Basically my entire life the country has been headed in the wrong direction and if Democratic values don't prevail this time, with the economy as bad as it is, we can figure they never will. If that happens I'm just going to be a bum. My vote doesn't count, elections are rigged, and the only control I have over anything would be to not spend money, not put anything back into the system. If they steal this one too I would urge others to do the same.

[wolfgangmo]

Tomas,

Have hope. The curtain won't come down until the last words are spoken.

That hasn't happened yet and it won't until you and others like us decide it does. That curtain will not come down until I stop breathing.