Ralph Nader’s Flight of Fantasy
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Ralph Nader has charted a utopian fictional flight out of the dystopia he sees all around him on the ground. In conversation I’m trying to figure whether Ralph has written a happy ending to his career, or a scream of despair.
Citizen Nader is feeling isolated and stymied these days in the Age of Obama. It’s been 50 years now of his reform drive for home virtues and people power, and there have been many victories along the way for safer cars and cleaner air and water. Leaving aside the fact that his third-party presidential campaigns have left him a pariah in the Democratic Party (and the Obama White House), the healthcare fight and others tell him that money power rules Congress as never before.
So in a sort of novel, “Only the Super-Rich can Save Us,” Nader has fantasized that the money is in his pocket. It’s a sort of dream that Ralph’s lifelong agenda has been bought out by Warren Buffett, Yoko Ono, Ted Turner, Bill Cosby, Ross Perot and a dozen other patriotic billionaires. With their money, his whole program has been enacted. Ralph speaks (a little disconcertingly, perhaps) as if it’s actually happened. But if it had, would we call it good news or bad? Democracy, or Bloombergism — built like so much else in our world on the charisma of money?
download an mp3RN: The problem is the nature of power, and the corporate entity controlling government, which Franklin Roosevelt, in 1938, called fascism… The global corporate model is all powerful, has no competition in terms of a model… They have nationalized the savings of the American people. They are too big to fail, so that they are bailed out, as Wall Street is bailed out. They have monetized elections, nullifying effectively people’s votes. They select the politicians, put them in office, and when they retire they hire them and give them a half a million dollars or more a year as lobbyists. It is the most clever, dynamic, creative system of controlling power in the history of the world. And they give people entertainment, and they allow people to confuse personal freedom with civic freedom. So you’ve got a lot of people in this country who say, “what do you mean we don’t live in a free country?” That’s right, you have personal freedom, you can eat what you want, buy whatever clothes you want, date who you want, divorce who you want, choose the friends you want, pick the music you want, get the bicycle you want, get into a five-thousand pound vehicle and go three blocks and buy chiclets if you want. That is personal freedom. It’s not civic freedom. Civic freedom is what’s been shredded. As Cicero said “freedom is participation in power.” What kind of freedom do we have by that standard?
… Right now we have a dystopia on the ground. It’s called the liberal progressive intelligentsia and their flock. They think if they keep writing more books (the way Bill Greider and Bob Kuttner and Jim Hightower and Ralph Nader and others keep writing, exposing, proposing, diagnosing, denouncing and suggesting) that something is going to happen. We have hit a stone wall — one reason I ran for President three times. Congress has shut down. Washington is corporate-occupied territory. That’s the dystopia on the ground… Between that real life dystopia of the progressive liberal intelligentsia and their world, and their least-worst voting for the Democrats over the Republicans and never pulling the Democrats in their direction — between that and my practical utopia I’ll take my proposal as more realistic.
CL: That’s a very serious question you’re talking about. And we all know it intuitively around health care. We all know that what Congress is doing has almost nothing to do with what people want, or even what the wonks say are the best provisions of the best policy. it’s about what the healthcare industry will let us have.
RN: That’s been documented in books from A to Z. Here’s where this book kicks in. Let’s say ten elderly super-billionaries get together and they say look, enough is enough. 45,000 Americans are dying every year because they can’t afford health insurance. Trillions of dollars lost, claims denied, anxiety, grieving, it’s an incredible mess, a pay or die system in the richest country in the world. Suppose these guys get together at the Four Seasons. They’re on their third martini. They say, “you know, I met a couple of great organizers… and they said if they had a billion dollars they could organize every congressional district and move the thirty-percent of congress who’s already privately for single-payer health insurance to a majority. Obama will sign it because he’s for single-payer, but wasn’t willing to take on the drug and health-insurance companies. That’ll happen in eighteen months.”
You wanna argue that with me? A billion dollars organizing the congressional districts the way Donald Ross and others know how to do it. Eighteen months, we’d have single-payer. Eighteen months. No one will die in America because they can’t afford health insurance. Just like no one dies in England, Germany, France, Sweden or Canada because they’re insured from day one when they’re born. That’s what I mean about money. You’ve got people all over the country — the majority support single payer; a majority of doctors support it; even larger majority of nurses support it. And it’s going nowhere because there isn’t one full-time lobbyist on Capitol Hill for single payer, and there are 2000 corporate lobbyists for the drug companies and the Aetnas and the hospital chains. When are we going to face up to the money issue? Money is not enough. You have to have smarts, strategy, determination, humanity, time, diligence — but you can have all those, and if you do not have money it goes nowhere.
Ralph Nader with Chris Lydon in Cambridge, October 30, 2009.
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:12 pm
My mother had a raging crush on Ralph Nader, and I do too. Many lovely things in this conversation, not least Chris’ combative presence. He doesn’t usually give himself such free reign. Nader’s comments about Obama damning. How the f is it that health-care execs go golfing with Putter In Chief while Nader is ignored? Obama begins to seem a ghastly imposter. I’d ignore him if I could.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:25 pm
We need more of Ralph Nader. I don’t know why his arguments don’t grab more traction. I agree with him regarding Obama not nurturing his base.
Ralph reminds us that this country really is in our hands if we would only decide to do something. I want to read his book. It sounds very hopeful.
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:45 pm
I would like to thank Mr. Nader for the two terms of the raging fun machine known to citizens of earth as the F-ing BUSH ADMINISTRATION. I am sure Nader is missed on his home planet.
Corvair was a good car.
November 4th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Once more unto the breach. The notion — you can’t call it an idea — that Nader cost Gore the election a canard that keeps on quack-quacking, never mind all the political fois gras. Ralph Nader a hero — not a word that often springs to mind. As for Gore, take a look at Joe Lieberman’s antics of late. We’d be better with Ralph Nader, To hell with this studied, rancid, liberal equipoise. Death, or life? Ralph Nader always for life. More new life. I salute him.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Not only did Nader cost Gore the election, but what followed. Nader shot himself, us and his, a worthy cause in the foot… after repeated warning of what would happen.
Anyway- agree or not I share this concern that we have lost our democracy to big money.
An Object Lesson in Governmental Failure:Derivatives Reform -Ken Silverstein, Harper’s
November 5th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
It’s wonderful to see that time hasn’t diminished Ralph’s passion.
November 5th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Al Gore cost Ralph Nader the election. Had he shifted his positions even one fraction of an inch towards truly progressive reform, he would have won over enough votes to have (more) clearly won over Bush. Instead he chose to cling to the corporate agenda, continuing to throw the American people under the bus…which appears to be the Obama plan as well. Nader has been the only candidate in recent memory to truly stand up for the values and positions supported by the majority of the American people. Throughout his long career in Washington he has managed to slow the decay of our government into corporate occupied territory, and he has shown a clear, though tremendously difficult, path towards reclaiming that territory. Ralph is for justice, why would you choose any other option?
November 5th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Blaming Nader for the Bush decade is deserved. But awful Bush also led to the quick trust of Obama – the first African American for President. Should Nader not take credit for that I wonder? In other words, had there been no Bush presidency there might not have been such a national LUNGE for someone as different as Obama.
But it is also true that the country would actually be just as bad off with a Democrat in the white house during those years according to Nader and I agree. Nader’s unending issue is unfettered capitalism and its control over our government.
Bush, bad as he was, is a mere footnote in this long, slow death of civil freedom. Yes, Nader is a hero.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Almost a decade has passed since the (s)election of George W. Bush as President of the United States and—like the WMD’s in Iraq—evidence that Nader “cost Gore the election” has yet to materialize. All we have is a few weak assumptions, broad generalizations, and “what if’s.” Nader is truly a hero and it’s disappointing that so many Democrats would stoop to smearing such a man rather than taking responsibility for the deficiencies in their own party and candidates.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Hello Shaman-
You make a good point. Change one thing in history and everything else has to change. And it’s possibly true that if SO MUCH damage had not been done we would not have Obama. Two things ( or more) about that: I don’t know what we have in Obama yet, nor if he would not also have risen and appealed in any case after Gore. And you can decide if the damage done was worth it. I doubt it. Also if Nader’s issue is unfettered capitalism-and I agree about that- what was the best way to get at it? Nader had big ideas about himself I am afraid, There was never any way that he could have won the presidency. In my eyes he was only a spoiler in the service of his issue. I agree with his issue. I don’t agree that he did his issue any justice…. as you can see. And he negated himself.
That Bush is or will be a footnote to history is small consolation. And he may not be a footnote for the damage he has done. He will be notorious.
One argument that I can agree with that has not been made is that things had to get very bad before they could improve. Nader helped that along by helping Bush to win. I suppose you could also say that Al Gore would not have been able to flower with his global warming campaign. But I also think how much and how much earlier he might have moved us along as President in that area alone. Don’t forget also he was against the Iraq invasion.
I do hope things will improve with Obama even though they don’t seem to be improving as fast and radically as some would like. And they don’t seem to be improving much with regard to corporatism/money interests running this country more than it’s citizens.
Be well,best wishes- I do remember you from the “old days”.
November 7th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
RN: We have hit a stone wall — one reason I ran for President three times. Congress has shut down. Washington is corporate-occupied territory. That’s the dystopia on the ground… Between that real life dystopia of the progressive liberal intelligentsia and their world, and their least-worst voting for the Democrats over the Republicans and never pulling the Democrats in their direction — between that and my practical utopia I’ll take my proposal as more realistic.
Will Ralph Nader ever admit his fatal error? Will he go on ad nauseum justifying it? Yes he’s right- what he says now is right. And it’s not insight anymore either. Chris it’s not intuitive, not so mysterious anymore. It’s more common knowledge and people are angry. It’s taken a long time to sink in deeper and wider. It’s a shame though that Nader lost his voice, his voice is not out there, his voice cannot be heard out there. My husband’s words: he’s disqualified himself. He is STILL saying that there is no difference between progressive Democrats and Republicans- or if he is not saying that, he’s saying he is angry at those liberal progressives who voted for the least-worst, angry at us for not voting for him.
Chris I did not listen but just read the bit of transcript above. I probably will listen- but it’s also going to be heart-breaking. He coulda’ been a contenda’. Now. Now that so many more are awakened, he even could have been working on this idea of his. But like Icarus, he melted his wings.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
I listened with a sympathetic ear to this conversation. However, I am constantly surprised at how willing people are to vilify insurance and pharmaceutical companies, while absolving physicians – by far the wealthiest occupational group in the country – of fault. It is certainly true that insurers outside of not-for-profit Massachusetts get away with outrageous behavior. But it is also true that our insurers act as a pass-through to fund the local hospital industry. Physicians are the willing beneficiaries of this arrangement. Among the many things we need to accomplish as a society is the maturity to take our physical, spiritual and financial health in-hand, and start having honest conversations about how we’re going to change who gets paid what. The cult of the physician-God needs to end.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
To answer the question posed at the end of the program. I would post 1,000$ dollars to Naders save capitalism plan once he gained 50% of the funding, plus I would volunteer with the canvasing. But it has to be Nader in charge to ensure that the attempt follows through with the original ideals.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
I would post $2,000.
November 16th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Ralph quoted some minor, not well known ancient Greek philosopher on the subject of freedom in his reading before the Miami Book Fair yesterday, 11/15/9. The gist of his message? That freedom is political power.
“Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.”
Rosa Luxemburg, revolutionary
Freedom is not political power, Ralph. Shame on you.
For those of you fretting over the alleged health care fix (which has been debated for the majority of the lives of those of you who, demographics tell us, have been alive, no thanks to Ralph), you need to understand that the price-fixed system of health care rationing has underpinned decades of bioslavery. I’m not just speaking about Tuskegee, or the Philadelphia Survivor’s Network or the atomic veterans. I’m talking about a private industry-government collusion that has, according to their own plans and words, given us disaster medicine (a la Naomi Klein’s thesis in “Disaster Capitalism”) in which no disease will ever be cured (such as diabetes, which researchers know is caused by a virus but no doctor uses antivirals to treat it because the market for blood glucose monitors and other peripheral treatments is HUGE). And those curious epidemics that are beginning to crop up with the regularity of seasonal catastrophes? Ditto. All of the facts proving these things are in the public domain but neither Ralph (a proponent of more, not less, government in health care) acknowledges them. Not Noam Chomsky, either (who’s paycheck is signed by one of the oldest defense contractors in the country, one that has a “secret” lab in Lincoln, MA), nor Howard Zinn. They don’t talk about the biowarfare to which we have all been subjected because they’re not paid to tell you the truth about your government, and they know what will happen to them if they do. I’ve tried to talk to each of them about the very real, very provable, very explicit type of AIDS from which I have suffered and NONE of them has given me the time of day. This is fascism, folks. And a fascist government is not going to fix itself.
November 17th, 2009 at 10:46 am
Ralph’s critique is discussed in the context of transition culture, permaculture, and a silent revolution on the Agroinnovations Podcast.
http://tr.im/F591
November 24th, 2009 at 2:35 am
It’s crazy to blame Nader for Bush winning. Had Gore espoused ANY of Nader’s progressive platforms, which Nader openly and loudly invited him or any candidate to do during the campaign, then GORE would have gotten those votes. But he (Gore) chose to run on his corporate approved platform. Nader simply gave a voice to the voiceless. Nader repeatedly said “take my supporters – they’ll come to you if you embrace these platforms!” Gore did not.
And by now it is pretty clear that both Republicrats and Demopublicans are the same as far as serving corporations before people.
December 16th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
I just listened to the Chris Lydon/Ralph Nader discussion on 12/15, but was very impressed with Ralph’s responses to Chris’ ‘but seriously’ challenges to Nader’s premises, at least as Lydon saw them. What a combination of sharp wit, knowledge, and rollicking sense of humor came to the fore in this exchange! Bravo to R. N. for not getting stymied amidst thought-provoking challenges. Let’s have more of this sort of dialogue, well-informed, humanitarian, unflappable!