Mark Robinowitz: Choose the bus that gets us closer to the big picture

Mark Robinowitz: As we are all on the cusp of the 2024 presidential election in the United States of America, the biggest issues are not being discussed by any candidate. We are causing the sixth mass extinction of life here on Spaceship Earth.

[00:00:22] No politician dares admit the earth is abundant yet finite. And this omission persists across political spectrums, despite the fact that limits to growth is a root cause for economic crises, immigration patterns—overshoot is when an ecology can no longer sustain a population, whether of wildlife or to keep an advanced industrial economy going.

[00:00:55] Some people call this the polycrisis, which is a combination of climate chaos, peak everything and limits to growth, resource depletion, habitat destruction, toxic pollution, emerging diseases, zoonosis—diseases that come from wildlife, economic stratification. And underlying all of this is the psychology of the mass denial of reality.

[00:01:23] But we’re fond of addressing symptoms and not root causes. So all the discussion about immigration usually ignores how we could stop destabilizing other countries if you don’t want their citizens to relocate en masse. And many of the anti-immigration voices don’t even want to admit that climate change and desertification are real. And these are not on the ballot for Nov. 5.

[00:01:52] That is the big picture that should be the discussion for everybody: how we’re going to be affected by it, what we can do to mitigate it, or even reverse it, but this hasn’t been close to a topic of conversation, not even among the minor party candidates.

[00:02:11] The Greens have nominated three times Dr. Jill Stein, and I do not think that third time will be the charm. I heard her speak in Corvallis in 2012 and 2016. I was not impressed and I did not vote for her. I was appreciative to hear her in person but I wish I’d known in 2016 that the previous year she had flown to Moscow, Russia to have dinner with Vladimir Putin.

[00:02:41] Recently, AOC in Congress challenged Stein, saying she has done virtually nothing to increase local presence of the Green Party around the country. Not even to focus on local races, city council races, dog catcher, you know, various boards.

[00:03:01] She also is totally unqualified for the job. She was recently asked in a podcast interview how many members of Congress there are.

[00:03:11] Angela Rye (Breakfast Club, Sept. 12, 2024): How many voting members in the United States House of Representatives, Republican, Democrat, and Independent? How many total?

[00:03:18] Jill Stein (Green Party presidential candidate): How many total are there? What is it, 600-some?

[00:03:22] Angela Rye (Breakfast Club): No, it’s 435.

[00:03:24] Mark Robinowitz: She didn’t know. That’s pretty basic. That’s elementary school civics class, and she didn’t know.

[00:03:32] If the election was only on Gaza, I would vote for the Greens, no question. Unfortunately, the Greens haven’t been much involved in anything practical. Just appearing every four years isn’t very inspiring.

[00:03:49] Another aspect of the election, which is now a fading, is the rise and fall of Robert Kennedy Jr., the MAGA Trojan horse. I think it is good that he endorsed Trump, because it makes it official, because he has always been part of MAGA as part of this campaign.

[00:04:12] There is also the independent campaign of Cornel West, who was an interesting advocate for peace, especially in Israel and Palestine, but it’s impossible to take his campaign seriously. So, great rhetoric, but I’m not voting for him.

[00:04:28] And perhaps the most important reason not to vote for Stein or West is Project 2025 and the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling in July. Project 2025 has gotten a lot of attention from the Democrats, as it should. It would hurt a lot of people. It would wreck our health care system, destroy what protections we have for public lands and resource extraction and other environmental deregulation, getting rid of various firewalls that kept Trump from imposing his will unrestrained the last time. And the forces behind Project 2025 have learned from their discombobulation last time and they don’t want to make the same mistake again. They want to be unrestrained on day one.

[00:05:21] Perhaps even worse is the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision at the end of their last term where they said that the president can do anything he wants as long as it’s called under official acts.

[00:05:38] In other words, the president could set up death squads and call it an official act and that would be exempt from judicial oversight. That is scary beyond words, and that is really what is up for consideration of the choice.

[00:05:58] Putting the Democrats into the White House again in November is 1% of what’s needed for peace. Democracy is far more than elections, but if we have a government that rounds up the leaders of Congress and the media and federal agencies and incarcerates them without trial, then the illusion of democracy goes out the window.

[00:06:28] There are many problems with U.S. democracy versus the reality, but this would be a brand new shift in our society, literally unprecedented, and that is the scale of what we’re dealing with, with the election in November.

[00:06:48] (Vice President Kamala) Harris or even (Sen.) Bernie Sanders would not be close to what would be needed, but it’s a step in the right direction. There’s a meme floating on the internet that voting is not like getting married. It’s more like waiting for the bus. You wait for the bus that will take you closer to your destination as opposed to looking for perfection. This is not going to be a perfection election, not that any election is a perfection election, but the risk of what Trump 2.0 could be, I have no problem voting for the Democrats and then protesting the decisions I disagree with for the next four years.

Mark Robinowitz is a politically homeless former Green voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. References used to produce this article: