| by Paul Craig Roberts
( October 2, 2012, Washington DC, Sri Lanka Guardian ) Those
who have followed the Republican campaign for the presidential nomination and
current contest between Romney and Obama know that the United States has no
political leadership in Washington.
 |
| Republican candidate Mitt Romney speaks at a rally in Virginia. However, analyst Larry Sabato thinks the state will go to Obama. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty |
Billions of dollars have been spent on political
propaganda, but not a single important issue has been addressed. The closest
the campaign has come to a political issue is which candidate can grovel the
lowest at the feet of Israeli prime minister Netanyahu. Romney won that
contest. But for the rest, well, it is like two elementary school children sticking
their tongues out at one another.
The question of US political leadership has been on my
mind for some time. I can remember when political leadership still existed and
when bipartisan cooperation could be mustered on enough issues to keep the
country and the government functioning.
But no more. It might have been Newt Gingrich who, as
Speaker of the House, destroyed bipartisan cooperation by making war on the
Democratic Party, warfare that Karl Rove has taken to a new height.
When a country loses leadership, how does a country
get leadership back? This is an important question. Without leadership, there
is only violence. Once the Romans lost their republic, there was no one to lead
them and they were ruled by violence. Will this
be our fate?
be our fate?
These thoughts were in my mind when I happened to hear
Cynthia McKinney speak. Here was a leader, a person with sufficient fire,
knowledge, and compassion for others. Cynthia McKinney served six terms in the
House of Representatives as a Democrat from Georgia. In 2008 she was the Green
Party’s candidate for president. As a US Representative, Cynthia McKinney
defied the cowardly Nancy Pelosi and introduced articles of impeachment against
President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
If there had been any leadership in Congress in
addition to that of Cynthia McKinney and Dennis Kucinich, the executive branch
criminals who violated US law, international law, the US Constitution, and
committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, would have been impeached,
and today American citizens would be safe in their civil liberties protected by
the US Constitution.
But as McKinney and Kucinich stood alone in their
leadership, the Constitution is eviscerated and the executive branch is above
the law. The US government now routinely commits war crimes and violates all of
the traditional, but no longer extant, rights of US citizens.
Cynthia McKinney survived brickbats, but she did not
survive the Israel Lobby. She spoke up for the Palestinians, a taboo in
American politics, and Israeli money got her evicted from the House of
Representatives.
Recently, I had an opportunity to speak with Cynthia
McKinney, and I asked her about leadership. She replied that at the local level
in the black communities there is leadership. It no longer gets media coverage,
but it is there.
At the elected political level, she said the public
confuses leadership with election to office. But many elected politicians are
sycophants for the powers who control the existing order. Real leaders are
those with the courage to dissent and to resist. It is the act of resistance
that transforms an elected person into a leader.
What Cynthia McKinney was telling me is that politics
is a virtual reality, full of paper cutout props, pretending to be leaders,
while the few real leaders are demonized, redistricted, and disposed of.
McKinney, who was brave enough to take on all the forces of evil, also took on
Israel for its crimes against the Palestinians.
This shamed almost every other member of Congress,
both House and Senate, cowards who sit silently while Israel oppresses the
Palestinians and steals their land. McKinney’s moral conscience resulted in the
Israel Lobby putting her on the extermination list. McKinney’s constituents had
not seen a leader in so long that they were unable to recognize one, and the
Israel Lobby got away with it. She told me: “The Anti-Defamation League wanted
me out of Congress and filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case to
dismantle the District that sent me to Washington, D.C.”
From the Washington Establishment’s point of view,
Cynthia McKinney’s was extremely dangerous. She spoke for the people, not for
the monied interest groups. In Washington, this is impermissible behavior. And
on top of it all, she challenged the government’s official story about 9/11.
I remember when black Americans had stepped up to the
demands of leadership. In the 21st century this leadership has disappeared. I
asked Cynthia McKinney if the black leadership had been bought off with corporate
directorships, speaking fees, and executive branch appointments, or was it
simply no longer reported by the concentrated corporate ownership of the media,
which serves only Washington. In her reply she differentiated between
“positional authority” and leadership:
“This is a very good question. Glen Ford now calls
them the “misleadership class” because what is being provided by those with
positional authority is not leadership. it is the opposite of leadership.
Leadership is not about positional authority or media acceptance: it is about
what one does and who one serves and the vision, sense of mission, one inspires
in others. Going along to get along and sycophancy in abandonment of one’s
professed values are not leadership. Individuals paraded on “mainstream”
television and radio are not leaders. These are people who have accommodated
themselves to the objectives of the current power wielders and shapers of US
policy. The father of a close friend of mine described them as blacks who have
sold their blackness.’
I asked Cynthia McKinney where are the real leaders as
contrasted with the politically ambitious, how are they produced? Why are there
so few? Why are they cast aside? Here are her answers:
This is an interesting question because there has raged
a debate for quite some time now on whether leaders are born or made. I happen
to believe that all of us have the stuff to be leaders, but it is the extent to
which and how we use the stuff we have that determines the character of our
leadership. Some people choose to not use their stuff at all and remain
bystanders in the face of injustice. Other people choose to use their stuff in
service to injustice as perpetrators. And then there’s the rest of us who have
a moral impulsion to speak up when we see wrong; in fact, Teddy Kennedy said it
best when eulogizing his brother, Bobby: “He saw wrong and tried to right it;
he saw suffering and tried to heal it. Saw war and tried to stop it.” That’s
leadership. This country has had authentic, servant leaders on the national
level and many of them were targeted for assassination by the State. This
country has a deep reservoir of such capable leaders today, but the system as
it is currently configured smothers them, making it difficult for them to
breathe. We need to change this system and I believe that the people of this
country still can change it.
Why are there so few leaders?
They see what happens to people like me who stand up.
Greg Palast says in American Blackout that after I spoke up on the
inconsistencies of the Bush Administration story on 9/11/01, I was lynched as a
signal to what would happen to others if they dared ask questions and follow
me. I’m still swinging from that poplar tree that he mentioned. Who would walk
down that path except the bravest hearts?
Why are they cast aside?
We have an increasingly authoritarian structure that
countenances no dissent. The only thing is that we, the people, don’t know who
really operates the structures. The ones we elect to represent us provide no
leadership and tell us no truths. Their names appear on the ballot, but they
are not the ones in charge calling the shots. Everything has become a joke that
is not even funny. The repercussions for those of us who try and inject love,
vision, compassion and common sense into the political discourse are quickly
discredited, chewed up, and expectorated. Only those with the biggest hearts
will take this path. Now, why are people like me cast aside? Because we know
that we can win this titanic struggle. We know that the people can overcome
this tyranny. We know that the true power lies with the people and that we are
the majority. That’s why the others have to work so hard with their propaganda,
psychological operations, disinformation, and mind control tactics. Heaven
forbid if the people would actually turn off the television and think. There
would be a revolution tomorrow. And the rest of the world could finally live in
peace and Mother Earth could reclaim her dignity. All of that depends on the
voters of the United States to accept their responsibility to change the
policies in Washington, DC, that are killing hope here and killing people
abroad.
I asked Cynthia McKinney why people acquiesce to the
casting aside of their leaders.
Her reply:
Bob Marley sang, “How long shall they kill our
prophets while we stand aside and look?” I wish I could answer that question. I
am not one who has accepted injustice quietly. I don’t understand the bystander
mentality. Election fraud right inside the Democratic Convention on two
platform issues and there was no press conference of complaint, no protest, no
sit-in, no nothing. The meeting is gaveled adjourned and the people are just
left staring. Had I been there, of course, I would have done more than stare.
In a room of 20,000 people, where were the leaders? The good news is that new
leaders are being made every day. With the excesses of the State, more and more
people are waking up. And I am glad to reach out to Independents, Republicans,
Democrats, Constitutionalists, and every political stripe in-between to find
some common ground so we can advance on that ground together. It’s crazy that
the Department of Homeland Security is going to tell me who I should fear and
not talk to. As a Southerner, I know that people can come together; I know that
people can hear and listen and adapt to each other if someone is willing to
start the conversation. As the values of the policy makers become more and more
distant from those on whose behalf policy is made, we have no choice but to
come together and save each other from the growing threat of our own elected
officials quietly ripping the Bill of Rights to shreds.
I asked McKinney why some Americans can recognize a
leader and others cannot:
Leadership, it seems, frightens some people. It holds
them up to a standard that they could never attain. And they know it.
Therefore, that’s something better ignored. When one person sacrifices for you
and you have rationalized away the need to sacrifice for anyone or any
principle other than yourself, you’ve set a pretty low standard for humanity.
On the other hand, persons who stand on conviction, and suffer the slings and
arrows that come with that, evoke awe in some.
I asked Cynthia McKinney why President Obama had
deserted the leadership role bestowed upon him by the American people and
instead had fallen into the agenda of the Bush/Cheney/neoconservative
Republicans. She replied that:
the policy of killing that is being carried out by
President Obama has wiped out all of the moral credit that Black America
accrued over their years of resistance to slavery, Jim Crow, racism, poverty,
and militarism. The world understood that Black Americans had a different set
of values. That they were against wars, against interference in the affairs of
other countries, against imperialism, against colonialism, and against White
Supremacy. Now, too many Black Americans cheer a President who defends targeted
assassination, drone wars in Africa and elsewhere around the world, boots on
the ground globally for the military-industrial-complex, and even torture.
Sadly, now much of Black America has chosen to abdicate its moral
responsibility and spend whatever moral credit they have earned globally in
support of an African descendant President who has ripped to shreds the Bill of
Rights, damaged life for tens of thousands of innocent individuals here and
abroad hurt by the policies of this Administration, not to mention those who
have been killed and will be deformed due to the massive depleted uranium being
used.
I asked Cynthia McKinney if Washington’s doctrine that
“might makes right” would bring “freedom and democracy” to the world. She
replied that:
The military might of the US is being used to benefit
a very small group of men and women who have the rest of humankind hoodwinked
as to the true nature of what is going on. The rest of humankind can’t imagine
that amount of greed and willingness to kill and so, are easily fooled and
tricked by the individuals who control the new system that is being created. It
is, sadly, a case of “willful blindness.”
McKinney, an extremely realistic and well-informed
person, unlike anyone in Washington or the media, remains confident that truth
and justice will prevail. Her final words were:
We don’t have to go very far to find the authentic
leadership that this country needs at this very moment. The leaders we need
already walk among us. In th! Black and Brown communities, we have always had
tremendous leaders who give their all for dignity and justice. I see them every
day. They are ubiquitous around us. Given the right context, they will thrive
and they will help us to thrive. What we must do is create the environment that
will allow them to find their voice and thrive in positions of authority.
All of us must work to create the environment in which
decent, compassionate people can become our leaders. America and the
Constitution will be safe the day Cynthia McKinney or a similar person is
president of the United States. Until then, we are in
great peril.
great peril.
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