UMass shouldn't give degree to Card

By JONATHAN KLATE

Published on May 25, 2007

An honorary degree for Andrew Card? "What were they thinking?" I have heard more than one person exclaim, astonished at such a travesty being foisted upon the University of Massachusetts community.

But is there such mystery in this, really? This nomination simply emulates the manner of the Bush administration of bestowing the most elevated rewards, up to and including presidential medals, for loyalty above ethics or competence. I'm sure no serious resistance was anticipated by the trustees, as there has been so little opportunity to express any before.

Our democracy is eroding under this present administration at breathtaking speed. Even in national elections during times of fierce dissension, only a small percentage of those eligible exercise their right to vote, finding few meaningful choices among the candidates selected for us by the plutocratic power brokers. Beyond even this, the Bush administration has facilitated the undermining of representative democracy through failure to prevent electoral disenfranchisement, or alleged encouragement of it, as in Florida and Ohio in the last two presidential contests.

Still, voters managed an overwhelming refutation of the war in the last congressional election nationwide. But our president is scarcely persuaded by the will of the people in whose employ he theoretically serves. Now, lacking the confidence of nearly three out of four people, he plows ahead unfazed.

Outside the electoral rituals, direct expression of citizen opinion has been stifled in recent years by consolidation and conglomeration of the mass media, which is now largely controlled by a handful of conservative corporate syndicates.

Direct protest, effective as a way to challenge the institutions of power in the past, has also been obstructed as those who participated in massive ant-war protests have experienced when corralled into prison-like enclaves (Republican convention, Boston, 2004), prevented from coming together en masse (New York, 2003), or woefully undercounted (Washington, D.C., every time recently).

The president and his ruling cadre never venture out other than to military bases, conventions of their theocratic allies or similar protected venues. So we, the people, are afforded no opportunity to demonstrate our condemnation of their destructive policies. The consequence of all this is that we have a population that is opposed to this horrible state of perpetual and futile war seething with frustration at our undermined capacity to take effective democratic action to express our legitimate outrage.

Into this tumultuous terrain, and moreover in largely liberal and preponderantly anti-war western Massachusetts, the UMass trustees have chosen to deliver as a target for our repressed fury one of the most loyal and influential members of this disgraced president's inner circle and a tireless lieutenant in the propaganda front to thrust us into the Iraq invasion. And they expect us to respectfully sit on our hands and applaud demurely? To do so would be to relinquish our dignity as patriotic Americans heartbroken about the squandering of the precious lives of our fallen brethren sent to kill and be killed to no meaningful purpose in Iraq, and of our collective national treasure, and of positive regard in the eyes of most of the world.

The only ethical response as citizens in our failing democracy is to resist this travesty, pick up the gauntlet cavalierly tumbled at our feet, and carry it back to the occasion upon which this war criminal is to be undeservedly honored in our midst. This is an opportunity in a terrain where there have been few such to protest with fierce determination and creativity, in any and every nonviolent way local citizens can imagine, what Mr. Card represents.

Of course we will show up at commencement. What were they thinking?

Jonathan Klate, an Amherst resident, is a practitioner of acupuncture.