Confronted with her move from progressive to corporatist right-wing positions following her aborted 2020 primary campaign, Kamala Harris repeatedly countered that, though her policies had changed, her values had not. But she didn’t tell us what her values were.
The Value of Values
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Catch “Bob the Angry Flower” at gocomics dot com / bob – the – angry – flower / 2024 / 09 / 09 to understand where Ted and Scott Stantis and the Fickles fail to git life.
The Cheney/Bush administration deftly used the slippery value of the “values” rap to cover over, distract from and, in rare tough spots, justify its extensive program of full-spectrum atrocities.
We can only infer that Cheney’s recent endorsement of Harris, AND her gracious acceptance of it, signifies that he considers her best qualified to emulate and, (OUR) god-willing, even surpass (!!!) his impressive record of mass murder of the ruddy-skinned abroad and pulverization, domestically, of the “values” embodied in the US constitution.
Note: today, 9/11, is the 23rd anniversary of the greatest “achievement,” by far, of the Cheney/Bush administration.
How that administration remained in power for another 7.75 years thereafter is a true testament to American values.
I invite readers to name said values.
I thought the debate, hyped to the point where the Second Coming would have gotten a bottom-of-the-page jump mention, was a lot of meh.
Kamala had one job: Tell voters her policies. She didn’t. She kept mentioning that it was time “to turn the page.” She turned more pages than a phone book proofreader, and she really doubled down on the promises-and-sunshine shtick while repeating herself a couple times about Trump’s “tired rhetoric,” but she never got specific at any point. Read the transcript: she never answered the first question she was asked. I doubt she won any new voters.
Trump was little better. His “they kill babies after their born” was actually alarming for its detachment from reality. But all the touts were sure Trump was going to be incoherent. I didn’t agree with a lot of what he said, but he was there. He knew what he was saying. His mind’s still there. And that was, basically, all he had to do. Just show he hasn’t lost his marbles yet.
Don’t forget that the answer to almost every question, regardless of the topic, is that crime is very down in foreign countries because they are sending us their criminals. When the question topic was actually immigration, there was no answer from Trump for why he killed the Senate bill that would have done something about immigration. The issue that Trump apparently considers his strongest is one where his detachment from reality was quite apparent.
Harris wasn’t ever much progressive; always has been too corporatist. Because of this, Harris never made it to my top ten list in the 2020 Democratic primaries. So, yes, there are some very capable progressives I’d want instead of Harris. But until we get ranked-choice voting (in a combined primary and general election), my available candidates have boiled down to only two. Only in comparison to the likes of Trump can Harris said to be progressive, but that’s as good as I am going to get this time ’round. 🙁
I’d suggest that it would take no less time to vote existing, genuine progressive Green Party to build it to the point of getting federal campaign funding, thus better media/debate exposure, than it ever would to wait for the entrenched two-party system to relinquish its electoral strangle hold by affording us ranked-choice vot-ing
Like abortion, there has been little to no progress towards ranked-choice voting at the federal level. However, also like abortion, some states and municipalities are making great strides. Much like marriage equality, I am hoping for a tipping point where ranked-choice voting sweeps the nation in terms of implementation and popularity. How best to get there is the big question. I’m going to pinch my nose and vote for the less bad candidate, but that’s my preference over voting for a third-party. I have no strong argument against your approach.
One “value” Trump and Harris share is that it’s perfectly alright to aid and abet the mass abuse and murder of Palestinian women and children, and to give multiple standing ovations to the head perp of that effort when he shows up in Washington. School shootings in the USA? Bad! School bombings in Palestine? No problem! That’s one of the many reasons I will be voting for Jill Stein and not for either of these two amoral monsters, whose chief “value” seems to be, “whatever’s good for the mass murder weapons industry is good for me, and what’s good for me is more important than what’s good for the country and the world.”
Under US law, any and all criticism of Israel is illegal. The only genocide in Israel, under US law, was on 7 October when Palestinian terrorists killed more Jews than had ever been killed since the US liberated the last N@zi Concentration Camp.
The number that is bandied about, 1400, turns out to have been as much of an exaggeration as the “mass rapes” of Israeli women that allegedly occurred. The actual number of Israeli civilian deaths was less than 700. About 400 were military personnel. A great many of the civilian deaths were due to the Israeli government’s decision to kill Israelis rather than let them be taken hostage. The Palestinians were primarily interested in taking hostages, rather than killing people, because they were seeking leverage to free some of the thousands of Palestinian women, children, and men indefinitely imprisoned without charges by the Israelis.
BTW, I was brought up Jewish, and am outraged by what is being done in the name of a religion whose basic ethical tenet is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”