Wall to Walz Distraction

Tim Walz was in 2015 part of the successful public campaign to pressure then-President Obama not to bomb every inch of Syria. Tim Walz does not hate China. That seems to be his direct antiwar record.

His pro-war record is longer: He has not opposed any war once it started. He’s not supported any treaty, international law, international court, or sought to hold any U.S. war criminals accountable. He’s famously claimed to support the mass murder and destruction of Iraq even at the height of public opposition to it, even as he excused himself from it to run for Congress. There’s a grand debate raging over whether he does or does not have a good excuse for not having taken part in that catastrophic orgy of violence and horror, and he’s not muttered one word about the war’s immorality or illegality or its disastrous and predictable and predicted consequences. He supports, among other wars, the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza.

He and his top-of-ticket running mate are campaigning for the job of running the world’s biggest war machine, and neither of them has any opinion on what the federal budget should look like, how much of it should go to war, whether any bases should be closed or opened, whether any wars should be started or avoided.

Of course, Walz is expected to do what Harris wants, and Harris is expected to do what people can best make out that Biden wants. But that excuse is also a recipe for electoral defeat and consequently not having to really care what any of these people want.

Minnesota has developed into a relatively progressive place in terms of the war machine’s side-hustle of domestic affairs. Walz’s state taxes the super-wealthy at one of the highest rates in the country. Its minimum wage is so-so but at least it’s tied to keep pace with the cost of living. Minnesota has done its part to abolish the Electoral College. It has made voter registration automatic. It has abolished the death penalty. And we’ve heard how Walz has signed legislation creating paid family and medical leave and free college, providing free breakfast and lunch in schools, legalizing marijuana, allowing all residents to get drivers’ licenses, restoring voting rights to felons, protecting abortion rights and LGBTQ rights, creating minor gun protections. This is all fantastic. By U.S. standards this could almost be defined as impossible off-the-charts socialism and decency. But the fact that it’s at odds with military spending simply because a fraction of military spending could pay for it all does not tell us anything reliable about what a Harris-Walz government would do.

Were a popular movement or a Congress with a pulse or a United Nations General Assembly with some self-respect to put a halt to the U.S. weapons shipments to Israel or Ukraine, and were that movement or body to show signs of staying active, THAT would tell us something. Its absence tells us something. The rest is fluff and nonsense.

I don’t care if politicians are nice or friendly or old or young or black or white or male or female or honest or dishonest. I care what they’ll do to the lives of billions of people. And what they’ll do can best be judged by what forces will make them do it, and by what they are doing right now. Right now, Harris and Walz are campaigning to continue the rule of a government engaged in a livestreamed genocide opposed by most of the people they hope will vote for them — and pretending it doesn’t exist. That’s what matters.