Author’s Note: This article was written before I discovered recent pieces by John Pilger (The Warlords of America) and Gabriel Kolko (Alliances and the American Election) advancing similar analysis of the Bush/Kerry question.

One thing that I am consistently puzzled by is the irrationality of partisan politics. In 1992, I was coming off a stretch of having been submerged in the subculture of the radical left for a number of years. That was, of course, the year of the Clinton-Bush-Perot election and nearly one hundred percent of my cohorts in the “progressive”, “peace and justice” milieu were drooling at the possibility of un-electing the Reagan-Bush regime that had reigned for the previous twelve years. Clinton was their man. This was true not only of ordinary liberals but also of many others much further to the left including Marxists, radical socialists, fellow anarchists and IWW members. I even knew professed “anarchists” who had never voted in their lives who went out and registered just so they could assist in putting Clinton into the White House.

I declined to join them. Unlike many anarchists, I have no principled objection to voting or participating in electoral politics. I have voted when I thought it appropriate to do so, although I have not entered a voting booth in ten years and have since let my registration lapse, mostly as a means of evading the jury draft. (1) On questions of political strategy, I am a Machiavellian pragmatist, not any kind of purist or moralist. Yet voting is a political action that I rarely see any value in. I was annoyed by the way so many people fell in line behind Clinton in ‘92. I used to tell everyone that the man was no good, that he was a two-faced backstabber and would only hasten America’s descent into tyranny. I had read of Clinton’s record as governor of Arkansas, where he had virtually handed his brother over to the narcs in order to appear tough on drugs (my code of ethics was formed during my days in gangster and prison culture, where no one is lower than a snitch), left the campaign trail to return to Arkansas in time to sign the death warrant of a retarded prisoner in order to appear tough on crime and chose Al “The Bore” Gore, husband of the anti-pop music inquisitor Tipper Gore(2), as his running mate. My leftist friends assured me that Clinton was a real cool guy, as he smoked dope, protested the Vietnam War, had a wife who didn’t believe in the conventional nuclear family, favored abortion and gay rights, and was into the environment. Whatever.

Of course, I turned out to be right. A mere three months into Clinton’s regime, his attorney general Janet Reno presided over the worst domestic massacre of civilians by the US federal regime in decades-the wipe out of the Branch Davidians at Waco. When Tim McVeigh retaliated by taking down the federal building at Oklahoma City two years later(an action I opposed, then and now), Clinton gave a pious, indignant speech denouncing anti-government “extremists” for having the gall to characterize the federal regime as tyrannical. Throughout the course of the 1990s, more Americans than ever went to prison under the supposedly liberal Clinton presidency. The ACLU criticized the Clinton regime as the worst for civil liberties since that of Woodrow Wilson eighty years earlier, this being the same Wilson regime that lied America into the first of the world wars, imposed the disastrous Versailles Treaty and presided over the Red Scare, the Palmer Raids, the prosecution of Eugene V. Debs, the deportation of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, the creation of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, the enactment of alcohol prohibition, the income tax and the military draft. When I pointed out to liberals who hailed Clinton as a great health care reformer that Clinton’s health care program was modeled almost perfectly on Mussolini’s corporate socialism and was nothing more than a set of proposed subsidies and monopoly privileges for politically connected insurance companies and HMOs, they just didn’t know what to think.

Clinton was no prize on foreign policy either, eagerly implementing the provisions of NAFTA and GATT and intervening militarily in Haiti, Iraq, the Sudan, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo. No, there were no major wars under Clinton like Vietnam or Gulf Wars One and Two, just lots of minor ones. Then there was the ongoing war crime against Iraq, the genocidal sanctions cheerfully championed by Madeleine Albright. Indeed, there seemed to be a tremendous continuity in foreign policy in the period between the regimes of Ronald Reagan to George H. W. Bush to Clinton to George W. Bush. During the 1990s I drifted from the political left to the political right. My actual views, those of a Stirner-Proudhon-Bakunin classical anarchist, remained the same, but as I saw the left cozying up to the Clintonian liberals, I started looking for allies on the right, and I found them, first in the libertarian milieu, then among the paleoconservatives and right-wing populists who comprised most of the militia movement, and finally among various tendencies seeking to move past the conventional left and conventional right.(3)

I saw much of the same stupidity on the right that I saw on the left. In 1994, when a mass of incumbents were voted out of office in favor of corporate Republicans pretending to be populists, I pointed out to my conservative and libertarian friends that the business of the state would continue as usual and there were be no change toward smaller government. The universal response was “But they haven’t even taken office yet!”. My response would be along the lines of “Just wait and see!”. Of course, I was right.

When the Bush-Gore election came up in 2000, I consistently snickered at all of the fools, on both the left and right, who saw anything of value in either candidate. I would point out that Gore was an incompetent charlatan and that Bush was a brainless submediocrity fronting for third-rate recycled Reaganites. I paid no attention to the Florida voting controversy or the subsequent Supreme Court decision. I didn’t read a single article or watch a single news broadcast on the subject, just as I had paid no attention to the Clinton impeachment controversy.(4) I didn’t regard either event as being of any importance whatsoever.

In the early months of the George W. Bush regime, I was dismayed that even ordinarily sensible people on the right, like Lew Rockwell, Pat Buchanan and Charley Reese, expressed admiration for Bush’s alleged high level of character, whatever his political weaknesses. Yeah, a cokehead turned Armageddonist who ran every business he ever owned into the ground (he even traded away Sammy Sosa when he owned the Texas Rangers!) is really the type of guy who ought to hold the most powerful political office in history. When the September 11 debacle went down, one of my first thoughts was of a line from the Tim Rice classic “Morning Dew” (recorded by artists ranging from the Grateful Dead to the Allman Brothers): “What they’ve been saying all these years has come true”. I figured the Bush regime would do exactly what it did-use the attacks as an excuse to wage an all-out war against the Muslim nations for the purpose of stealing their oil reserves and making the Middle East safe for a Greater Israel, all the while settling scores between the Bush and Hussein families and consolidating the New World Order envisioned by Poppy Bush.

This brings us to the current “contest” between Bush and his Skull and Bones fraternity brother, John Kerry. Both the left and right are spouting the same old crap. Know-nothing jingoism on the right and knee-jerk liberal hysteria on the left. Even some on the dissident right are considering supporting Bush. Yeah, he lied and cheated the country into one of the greatest military and foreign policy disasters in its history but, hey, he did oppose the Kyoto Treaty. Well, whoop-de-do! Even some ordinarily sensible people on the left, among them some of my greatest intellectual influences, like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Norman Mailer are jumping on the Kerry bandwagon, although Chomsky and Zinn claim they will vote for Nader as their home state of Massachusetts is a safe state for the Democrats.(5) Whhhaaaattttt!!!! More shallow folks on the left are saying, yeah, well, maybe Kerry is an admitted war criminal (6) who has already announced his plans to extend the war in the Middle East but, hey, he’s for gay marriage, uh, excuse me, “civil unions”, so he can’t be all bad, right? Yeah, give the man a lollipop!

What the hell is wrong with all of these people? In a society of morally, intellectually and psychologically healthy people, opinion leaders would be calling for putting both of these sociopathic fruitcake Yale boys in front of a firing squad for being the war criminals that they are. Where are the various “third party” outfits in all of this? With the honorable exception of the Reform Party, which has been sensible enough to accept Ralph Nader as its candidate, all of the major minors have nominated namely nobodies chosen mostly for their ideological purity, with not one in a zillion chance of getting any media coverage worth mentioning, much less actually winning the election. It would appear that the primary purpose of the Libertarian, Constitution and Green parties these days is to shoot themselves in the ass.

American elections are rapidly coming to resemble Soviet elections just as the American media is rapidly coming to resemble the Soviet media in its sycophancy. After all, what’s the real difference between an election with only one party and an election with two parties offering the same agenda? Nowadays, there is really only one party in American politics, the Fascist Party, with its two factions, the Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats are fascists in the tradition of the Perons (whom the Clintons closely resembled), a type of fascism with a leftist-populist cover. Meanwhile, the Republicans are fascists in the style of the German National Socialists, a nationalist-imperialist-expansionist-militarist form of fascism driven by crackpot millenarian ideology, messianism, apocalyptism and racial nationalism (i.e., Anglo-Zionism).

In a previous article, I called for a new radicalism offering new ideological and strategic perspectives with fresh intellectual leadership. (7) It is likely that the ranks of political dissenters will increase substantially in the years to come if the current presidential campaigns are any kind of indication of where the country is heading. Essentially, we are faced with a choice between two ruling class candidates, one of them (Bush) being the candidate of Straussian imperialism, right-wing Zionism of the Likudnik variety, and utterly idiotic Christian fundamentalism of the “Left Behind” species, with the other candidate (Kerry) being the candidate of Wilsonian imperialism, left-wing Zionism of the Shimon Peres variety and utterly idiotic liberal-humanist fundamentalism of the “politically correct” species. Both of the Skull and Bones buddies have every intention of escalating the war with the Islamic world. Bush seems to have his sights on Iran while the Kerry crowd seems to be looking toward Saudi Arabia (perhaps this explains the obsession with the Saudis displayed in Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9-11″). The Sudan is starting to enter the picture as well.(8)

It is interesting to speculate on the motivations behind the strategic differences among the partisans of the New World Order. For the Bush crowd, the motivation is obvious enough-a simple repeat of Iraq and Afghanistan in Iran, Syria and elsewhere, culminating in the acquistion of still greater assets by Halliburton and the elimination of sources of support for Hezbollah, Hamas and other pro-Palestinian forces. The reasons for the interest of the Kerry crowd in Saudi Arabia and the Sudan are a little harder to discern. A combination of foreign policy realism and liberal ideology likely come into play. The soft imperialists and realists who surround the neoliberal Progressive Policy Institute, from which the agenda of the modern Democratic Party is largely drawn, likely regard the Bush crowd as reckless adventurists. Though no less committed to the consolidation of the New World Order, these Wilsonians also understand the limitations of brute militarism and the importance of international institutions, a veneer of legitimacy, effective propaganda, multilateralism, allies and stability. They lament the Bush regime’s squandering of the alleged “moral authority” and “credibility” of the United States. Unlike Bush, most of the Kerry crowd have no close personal ties to the Saudis and can criticize that regime more freely. It was, after all, Saudi Arabia that produced most of the 9-11 hijackers. Simply put, Saudi Arabia is an easier and more politically convenient target.

The universalist nature of liberal ideology cannot go unmentioned. Saudi Arabia and the Sudan are among the most reactionary nations on Earth. Saudi Arabia is a medieval feudal, theocratic monarchy and the Sudan has experienced years of religious and ethnic warfare, with chattel slavery still being practiced in regions of that country. The fact that such places exist anywhere in the world is probably too much for the liberal mind to handle. Mirroring Alexander’s Hellenized imperialism or Napolean’s Enlightenment-influenced imperialism, the liberal elite likely regard themselves as messiahs bringing modernity to the backward savages of the Islamic world.

Then there’s the oil. Direct possession of both Saudi and Sudanese oil reserves is no doubt an attractive prospect for certain sectors of the elites, particularly those factions of the petro-industrial complex lacking direct involvement with the Saudis in the manner of the Bushies. It is important to remember that “Big Oil” is not any sort of monolithic conspiracy. Indeed, Exxon and Mobile opposed war with Iraq. The norm in U.S. partisan politics is for certain companies in a particular industry to back one party while their competitors in the same industry back the other party. Perhaps the rivals of Halliburton and other Bushites are seeking to seize Saudi or Sudaneses oil for themselves, possibly to counter Halliburton’s annexation of Iraq.

Where does Israel fit into all of this? It is significant that the leading neoconservative voices (Norman Podhorez and Stephen Schwartz, for example) have consistently called for “regime change” in Saudi Arabia. Why? Because Saudi Arabia’s religious schools are a major means of spreading Islamic fundamentalism and anti-Zionism, to the outrage of the Israel Firsters.

Contemporary America has fallen into a bizarre and historically unique predicament. America’s historic use of client states in the pursuit of empire has been well documented by various scholars from the left and right. Yet, America currently finds itself in the position of being the most powerful state in history while functioning as a client state and proxy army for a tiny Middle Eastern nation.(9) A fantastic set of coincidences have combined to make such a scenario possible. The first of these is the overlapping of the military expansionist objectives of the Israeli regime with the business interests of certain sectors within the American petroleum and armaments industries. Secondly, ethnic and ideological partisans to Israel, possessing the passionate attachments warned against by early America leaders, are influential within the realms of American government, finance, media and academia. Third, proponents of hard-line Zionism have achieved ideological preeminence within the ranks of the present administration. Lastly and perhaps most incredibly, there exists among the more primitive layers of America society a cultic religious subculture possessing a fanatical theological attachment to Israel. Consequently, each of these elements combine with the liberal cultural chauvinism of the elites, the nationalist-tribalist sentiments of the commoners and the hysteria generated by the 9-11 disaster to serve as the support base for the broader expansionist ambitions of the imperial state.

While both parties clearly intend to escalate the war against the Islamic nations, public sympathy for this ambition is already lagging. A number of polls have indicated that a slight majority of Americans now believe the attack on Iraq to have been a mistake. Although another major terrorist assault on the United States may well re-ignite war fever, the regime’s failures in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to undermine the effectiveness of future propaganda efforts aimed at generating enthusiasm for invading Iran, Syria, the Sudan or some other nation. Currently, the Bush crowd is aiming for a repeat of Iraq in Iran, making outrageous claims about nuclear weapon, links with Osama and all that, hoping that the public can be deceived once again through the use of the same tactics as before.

Much has been said about the stretching thin of American armed forces given the number of tasks those forces are involved with. Whatever party takes the White House in November will require considerable additional manpower to take the war to new fronts. Currently, both parties have introduced legistlation in Congress to revive military conscription, a necessity if the imperial program is to be implemented in full. If indeed the war continues to be expanded to other nations, a likely scenario, then the draft will indeed be revived and radicals will have new opportunities that they have not enjoyed in decades. Given the non-existence of a draft for over thirty years, and the already diminishing popularity of the war in the Middle East, resistance and rebellion will likely become more widespread with time. The draft was the fuel of the anti-Vietnam War movement. Once Nixon shrewdly ended the draft in 1971, the anti-war movement virtually disintegrated. The return of the draft will likely guarantee the emergence of a new generation of radicalized youth. The matter of what direction this new radicalism travels in will depend to a large degree on how well those of us with hard-core anti-state revolutionary views make the most of our opportunities.

Notes:

1) For those who are wondering how I, as a convicted felon, am allowed to vote, the whole story is that when I was in my early twenties a friend of my family who happened to be a state representative got the then-governor of Virginia to sign a paper restoring my “civil rights” like voting, jury service, eligibility for public office, etc. I’ve never been sure what the point of this was as, from what lawyers tell me, I still have a criminal record and am barred from firearms ownership.

2) During the mid-1980s, when Albert Gore Jr. was a U.S. Senator, his wife Tipper arranged for a hearing before a Senate committee on which her husband had a seat to call on the recording industry to label its products for content like violence, drug references, sexuality, blah, blah, blah. At the time, Frank Zappa (a highly prolific composer, producer and musician until his death from cancer in 1993) speculated that the hearings were a means of getting Gore’s name in the papers as he planned to run for President as some point in the future. Sure enough, Gore entered the Democratic presidential primaries in 1988, became Clinton’s running mate in ‘92, and ran for President himself in 2000. Frank Zappa was the kind of dissident there should be more of. He espoused a non-dogmatic, culturally moderate libertarianism and was an outspoken opponent of censorship, drug prohibition, income taxes, military adventurism, public schools and corporate oligopolies.

3) Within the militia movement, there were certain factions, particularly Ron Cole’s North American Liberation Army, that aimed to form a united front of all revolutionary forces against the U.S. regime, including militias, patriots, constitutionalists, separatists, tax resisters, militants among the minority ethnic groups, leftists and others. Some wished to make it an international effort, and attempted to forge ties with the Shining Path, Zapatistas, Hezbollah and others. Internationally, there are a number of tendencies, such as the eurasianists, national bolsheviks, national anarchists, third postionists, Euro-Islamists and others with similar ideas.

4) I confess that I did later read Richard Posner’s interesting dissection of both events.

5) Greg Bates, “Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn Plan to Vote for Ralph Nader” at http://www.counterpunch.org/bates06252004.html

6) Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, “What Kerry Really Did in Vietnam” at http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn07292004.html

7) Keith Preston, “Ronald Reagan and Me” at http://www.attackthesystem.com/reagan.html

Eric Margolis, “Tread Softly in Sudan” at http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2002/08/15/583447.html

9) Justin Raimondo, “Israel’s Amen Corner: Who, What and Why” at http://www.etherzone.com/2003/raim012403.shtml