Editor,
When John Edwards, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were asked at the end of the Democratic presidential debate at Myrtle Beach in South Carolina on Jan. 21 (this year's Martin Luther King Jr. holiday) whom King would endorse, Obama had the honesty to admit "I don't think Dr. King would endorse any of us." The recognition of this insight put him morally ahead of Edwards and Clinton. However, not even he had the decency to say what all three candidates should have acknowledged - that the most likely candidate King would have endorsed, Dennis Kucinich, had been excluded from this and other debates to avoid the most pressing issues that ail this nation.
Such violation of democracy has become a trademark of America's dollar democracy. With no substantial challenge to fear from more trustworthy contenders, it has been easy for all involved in the presidential race, the media and the two-party dictatorship to designate the trivial and unimportant as political essentials. Race, gender and character are the main ingredients that turn political events into a sports spectacle. Endless poll numbers, personal oddities, anecdotes and the most vicious and desperate lies are suited to entertain the populace and to trivialize the event to the lowest degree of political enlightenment.
The intended effect is one that Ralph Nader identified as "protective imitation." In the end, the candidates become virtually indistinguishable were it not for race, age and gender. There is no substantial reason why Clinton should not be the Democratic nominee. When the unessential reigns, the whole thing becomes contingent on chance. Obama understands the delicacy of the matter. He avoids race but invokes King in voice and rhetoric, which led Clinton to the remark that Obama speaks "only words."
Obama has yet to prove that he can walk the talk. But for that, he still has to do some talking. It is his political misfortune that he does not get challenged and pushed by the prophetic voices of our times, which continue to be excluded from the political discourse. The staged and scripted debates have been a farce and a demonstration of what "protective imitation" is and does to the candidates.
Appearance and pretension are key to success, together with the mysterious quality of "electability." Unless one subscribes, unquestionably, to the death penalty, militarism, capitalism, nationalism or its milder version of patriotism, and some domesticated version of the Christian faith, one has already lost the race. Obama supporters now claim - including Jesse Jackson - that King would have supported the war against Afghanistan. This turns the prophetic peacemaker into a warmonger.
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Hence, Obama is challenged to portray himself, alongside John McCain, as an imperial militarist and capitalist who also happens to have the compassionate heart of a Christian. At least he, unlike his opponents, is honest enough to admit that he will exclude the Sermon on the Mount from his code of conduct as the future commander in chief.
Consequently, the race has become tighter than it need be. It is the race the media and the two-party system wanted to have.
Nevertheless, Obama should win in a landslide. And if Obama wins, which most expect, he needs to take threats on his life seriously. A failed political lynching (election fraud) may materialize to the actual thing given the anger we have witnessed so far.
With this (s)election, the people of this country face a desolate choice between militarism and fascism. With the prospect of Sarah Palin only one heartbeat away from the nuclear button of Armageddon, we should specify the latter properly as "Christian fascism." Given the choice and the fact that the race has been fixed by the media, millions of corporate dollars, voter purges and Republican election computer hackers, it is surprising that so many people - barely 50 percent - still care to vote.
In the face of the horrific alternative of Palin, the lesser of the two evils, Obama appears so moderate that he has been anointed as the American savior, the new messiah and the hero all have been waiting for. Palin's evangelicalism has made this election a question of survival not only for the American people but the whole world. Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales should remind Obama that race and ethnicity will not protect him from committing war crimes. He should heed Bertolt Brecht's famous lamentation: "Pity the nation that is in need of heroes." This may assist him well in the oval office.
Joachim L. Oberst
UNM faculty
