A Tale of Two Chelseas

By David Simmons

There has been a lot of hype about the “historic” nomination of a woman for president by a major US political party, but it’s only one of many historic occurrences during a very unusual election period, still ongoing as I write this. I don’t place a lot of importance on the gender of politicians – as in so many other ways, the US is far behind other countries in putting a woman in charge, and most of those females who have become a president or prime minister elsewhere haven’t been a marked improvement over their male rivals.

To me, the “historic” influence of a social democrat, or “democratic socialist” as he prefers to call himself, is much more important. Bernie Sanders changed the conversation of the primary campaign, not just on the Democratic side but among Republicans, with Donald Trump winning his nomination largely on the back of Sanders’ economic talking points.

But there’s another interesting historic event, one that doesn’t get much mention. There is a strong possibility of Chelsea Clinton becoming the first two-administration First Daughter in history.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to spend one’s formative years in the White House, as Chelsea and the Obama girls have done. The system seems to be set up to protect presidents’ children from their unique situation as much as possible, including the media spotlight, and it seems to work pretty well – Chelsea is evidently none the worse for wear, Malia Obama is heading to Harvard next year, and even the Bush twins didn’t turn out badly.

At a mostly unimpressive Democratic National Convention in July, Chelsea did a commendable job introducing her mother ahead of Hillary Clinton formally accepting the nomination. Her presentation was poised and apparently sincere, without inordinate tear-jerkery. During her speech, she noted that she was aware she had been born into extraordinary privilege, and that with such privilege comes responsibility. I have no reason to doubt that in this, too, she was sincere.

Much of the US presidential campaign, like political campaigns in democracies around the world, has been focused on the grotesque inequality in economic status, and hope for betterment, that has increasingly plagued the Western world since the shift against the working class under Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and others in the early 1980s. This inequity extends far beyond people’s ability to put food on the table, or get a decent education for their kids. Many people are now unable to enjoy basic justice.

A symbol of this is another Chelsea, who when her name was Bradley Manning leaked embarrassing and politically damaging information about the misbehaviour of US troops in Iraq. Since then, she has languished in a prison, one of several whistleblowers who have felt the wrath of offended power. A higher-profile victim is of course Edward Snowden, who has had to flee his homeland to avoid the fate now suffered by Chelsea Manning, while Julian Assange, whose WikiLeaks distributed Manning’s information, is under virtual house arrest in London.

The huge price paid by the likes of Manning and Snowden for daring to challenge the power of empire is far from unprecedented. To the empire, the maintenance of its power supersedes all other considerations, even the values it claims to uphold such as justice. And peace.

To non-Americans, one of the aspects of the current presidential campaign that is most alarming is its jingoism. The low point was probably the rant at the DNC by retired General John Allen, who said among other things: “With Hillary Clinton as our commander-in-chief, the United States will continue to be that indispensable, transformational power in the world.... Our armed forces will be stronger. They will have the finest weapons, the greatest equipment.”

Apart from some muted cries of “No more war!” from the floor of the convention, there was very little negative reaction within the US to this call for even more aggression. One counterpunch (in CounterPunch) came from actress Margot Kidder. She wrote:

You people have no idea what it is like for people from other countries to hear you boast and cheer for your guns and your bombs and your soldiers and your murderous military leaders and your war criminals and your murdering and conscienceless Commander in Chief. All those soaring words are received by the rest of us, by us non-Americans, by all the cells in our body, as absolutely repugnant and obscene.

But that’s the whole point. We non-Americans – Kidder, like me, was raised in Canada – find it very difficult to understand how Americans think. You might as well ask why the peasants of ancient Gaul failed to appreciate the superiority of the Roman conquerors, with their advanced political system, high technology like roads and aqueducts, and the overwhelming efficiency and brutality of their military. We are mere serfs who, if we matter at all, provide some contribution to some aspect of the imperial system, such as labour or raw materials.

We criticize America’s foreign policy, its wars, its campaign of destabilization in the Middle East, its provocation of dangerous, nuclear-armed powers like Russia and China. We criticize its internal structure, its rejection of the concept of universally accessible health care, its use of capital punishment, its mass incarceration, its obsession with guns, none of which find any currency in other developed nations. But our criticisms don’t merit being argued against, or even sneered at. We are simply ignored.

That is the privilege of empire. And it is a privilege that must be defended at all costs.

There’s a famous bit from the Monty Python film Life of Brian titled “What Have the Romans EverDone for Us?” After a long argument about why Palestine must overthrow its Roman oppressors, the activists conclude:

Reg: All right ... all right ... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order ... what have the Romans done for us? 

Xerxes: Brought peace!

Reg: What!? Oh ... peace, yes ... shut up!

Apart from actual shooting wars like Vietnam and Iraq, arguably the worst crimes committed by the American Empire was its decades-long suppression of democratic progress in Latin America, with its backing of military coups and support of right-wing dictatorships and death squads. But the people who suffered the most during that period were those who resisted it. For the sullen but mostly quiet majority, life was mere drudgery, hardly distinguishable from what they now “enjoy” under democratically elected government.

Elsewhere, the developed democracies of Europe, Canada and Australasia, while they cannot avoid the effects of US dollar hegemony, crony capitalism, Wall Street’s excesses, and the political instability in the Middle East, Africa and Asia caused (deliberately or otherwise) by US foreign policy, manage reasonably well. There is far more to be gained – or less to be lost – by keeping their heads down than by opposing the empire. Even helping out in US military adventurism through such outfits as NATO makes more political sense than the alternative.

If we had a choice of which empire we belonged to, it would be a choice much like the one that will be faced by American voters in November: a known warmonger and supporter of the neoliberal economics that caused and has perpetuated the decimation of the middle class and worsened inequality, or a possibly unhinged loose cannon who has built his popularity on a campaign of intolerance, racism, misogyny and outright lies. If we could replace our imperial overlord with someone else, who would it be? Russia? China?

Best not even to ask the question. Better just to get on with our tiny little lives, in the relatively open world of a privileged Chelsea Clinton than in the dank cell of a Chelsea Manning.