The news from Gaza continues to be unspeakably disturbing. The UN’s humanitarian agencies haven’t even been able to get enough data to compile their longstanding weekly info-roundup from Gaza. The images, the news that we are able to get all add up to a vile record of a deliberate– sometimes even gleefully pursued– campaign by Israel’s military to destroy the lives and life-supporting infrastructure of the enclave’s whole Palestinian population.
And this genocide is being pursued with the unstinting support (military, financial, political) of my government here in the United States, and other like-minded “Western” governments.
So we have this presidential election going on here this week. For the longest time I was in a complete funk about it. In our political system here, there are only two “plausible” options to vote for. And either of these two candidates will, if elected, most likely bring only continued– or perhaps even exacerbated– misery to the indigenous peoples of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and the rest of West Asia. I have long felt unable to vote for either of them.
Hence, the funk.
One of my progeny started needling me about this. “But Mom! Think about how how long women in America fought to get the right to vote and how important voting has always been in our family! Think about your grandchildren and the kind of world we are all building for them!”
Alright, alright, daughter mine. I’ve thought about all that. BUT GENOCIDE.
Anyway, this daughter’s needling prompted me to think more deeply and intentionally about the kind of world I want to bequeath to the grandkids. We are blessed to have six of them: all loving, thoughtful, smart, fun young people aged from six to 16. G-d willing they’ll all be around for many decades after I’m gone. What kind of a world do I want them to be living in, 20, 30, 40 years from now? Absolutely not one in which our country’s participation in an ongoing genocide has been completely normalized.
There are other considerations, too. I want them to live in a United States in which:
- income disparities between rich and poor are very much less than at present, and society as a whole assures that all residents have the basics of a secure and dignified life;
- there is sensible (preferably very strict) gun control;
- women have full rights, including the right to control their own bodies;
- money of all kinds is completely barred from the electoral system– probably through public financing of elections… and more…
I also want the grandkids to know that they’ll be living in a world in which USA-ians have to interact constantly and on a basis of mutual respect and human equality with other peoples from all round the world. And that the best way to resolve political differences– whether at home or abroad– is through reasoned dialogue and shared compassion, not through brute force.
They’ll be living in a world that– thanks in large part to my generation’s lack of forethought, laziness, complacency, and greed– faces two, eerily looming existential threats: the continuing threat of nuclear war and nuclear obliteration and the alarmingly mounting set of threats posed by climate change.
If you put all these factors together, there is only any differentiation between the two major presidential candidates on two of them (domestic gun control, and women’s reproductive freedom.) On all the others, there is very little to choose between them. And on some “foreign policy” issues, Trump’s reluctance to engage in foreign wars may even be better than Harris’s gung-ho embrace of militarism and the maintenance (or enhancement) of America’s global hegemony.
And on the burning matter of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, I see no meaningful distinction between them.
So, given the promise I made to my daughter that I would come out of my funk and cast an actual ballot, what will I do?
My decision has been to cast a vote in support of Drs. Jill Stein and Butch Ware of the U.S. Green Party– a body that, it should be noted, is far more authentically “green” and anti-militarist than the so-called Green Parties of Germany and some other European countries.
The platform of the USGP is generally very well thought out, including on vital aspects of the United States’ role in the world. It calls for halving the current military budget (though the numbers it has in that portion of the platform are woefully out of date.) On Palestine/Israel and other specific foreign-policy issues, its priorities are very sound. Atop the Palestine/Israel section it states that, “Our Green values oblige us to stand against oppression, against settler colonialism and against the International crime of apartheid.”
The whole of the foreign-policy section of the platform is worth reading. I don’t agree with absolutely everything in it, but the USGP’s commitment to U.N. bodies and the global “rule of law” shines through it all.
One small problem for me is that I live and vote in the District of Columbia, and Drs Stein and Ware are not even on the ballot here. I shall write them in.
Another “problem” is that DC is so strongly (big-D) Democratic that my vote for a third candidate won’t directly affect anything: the Democratic ticket will get all three of DC’s seats in the (weirdly structured, deeply un-democratic) Electoral College, and my little vote for the Greens won’t change anything.
But still. We are heading for a period of deep political uncertainty here in the United States. At some point in the not-distant future, the Greens or a similar anti-militarist, anti-hegemonic, pro-ecology political movement may want to look back at the 2024 vote and say, “Hey, look! Back in 2024, Drs. Stein and Ware managed to get XXX number of votes nationwide– including many in jurisdictions where they weren’t even on the ballot! So that gives us a base to work on as we build a much more powerful Green or Green-type Party here in the USA.” And my little vote could contribute to that. I hope so!
