No. 171 – Grievance

Performer: Pearl Jam

Songwriter: Eddie Vedder

Original Release: Binaural

Year: 2000

Definitive Version: The Late Show with David Letterman, 2000.

I liked this song from the moment I heard it the first time, on The Late Show, just before Binaural came out. I might have said this before, but I’m going to again. I don’t get how Binaural wasn’t bigger than it was. Until further notice, it’s Pearl Jam’s best collection of songs top to bottom since their 1991-1994 heyday. That’s one man’s opinion.

I’m about to spool off another political rant, so if that’s not your cup of tea, tune back in tomorrow when I’m sure I’ll have more madcap tales of sex and funky vacations to recount. But given the song, I don’t see how I can help ranting here.

Protest music has been around since the first time a musician was told to zip it. I was attuned to protest music long before Pearl Jam, but something about this song struck a particular chord—probably because of what happened after it was released.

Pearl Jam has said this song was about the greater political process and corporate power, but I don’t see how you can’t look at that through the prism of the Battle in Seattle, the World Trade Organization protests that rocked Emerald City in 1999. If EV wasn’t writing specifically about that when he penned this song, he at least had to have had it rattling around in his dome.

Maybe I hadn’t been paying close enough attention, but the WTO protests were the first ones in my life where corporate and financial philosophy in general—capitalism—was the target, rather than, say, a specific policy. Being the good liberal, I climbed aboard the anti-big-business bandwagon in 2000. By that, I mean that I voted for Ralph Nader for president. Pearl Jam would have been proud.

There are liberals who even now still shy away from admitting they voted for Nader because of how everything turned out. That’s their problem. I have no problem admitting it for three reasons.

The first one is a simple one: I didn’t like Al Gore. I didn’t like when Tipper was heading up the PMRC in the Eighties. I didn’t like when Bill Clinton named Gore as his vice presidential candidate in 1992.

And I sure as Hell didn’t like Gore’s 2000 campaign. If it wasn’t the most ineptly run U.S. presidential campaign in history, I’d like you to show me a worse one. I mean, this wasn’t some schlub running a seventh-party candidacy. It was the vice president who ran away from his own administration’s eight-year record of peace and prosperity, because he didn’t want to be too closely associated with his boss.

Meaning no more disrespect to George Bush than usual (and, admittedly, I have a lot), the election never should have been close enough for it to sink into the Florida muck. Gore should’ve mopped the floor with Bush, but because Gore chose not to run on his record, he had to run on his personality (aloof) and his vision (inaccessible).

Am I sorry Bush won in 2000? Of course I am, but while Gore undoubtedly would’ve been better, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t as though we missed out on electing the next Roosevelt (TR or FDR).

The second reason I’m not sorry I voted my conscience and voted for Nader is a practical one. I lived in Ohio at the time, and there was never any indication that Gore was going to win that state, so my vote wasn’t strategically important. I COULD vote my conscience with a clear conscience.

And that’s exactly how it turned out. Bush won Ohio by 165,019 votes. Nader received 117,857 votes in Ohio. If everyone who voted for Nader in Ohio had voted for Gore instead—heck if everyone who voted for ANYONE not named George Bush—Bush would have won the state and thus the election anyway. In other words, my vote made no difference in the ultimate outcome.

Finally, and most important, the system produced the election result that we had to live with. There’s a simple truth about the 2000 presidential election that many people either forget or overlook: The guy who had the most votes didn’t win.

Forget Florida and all of the various machinations that turned it into a quagmire. Gore received more votes for president from U.S. voters than Bush regardless. However, because the United States isn’t a democracy when it comes to electing its presidents, Bush won the 2000 election.

I was at The Dispatch the night of the election. As chaos began to break out in Florida on Nov. 7, 2000, I got a call from Dave asking whether I were watching all this. Of course I was; I was at work. Then he said that if this were to continue, “the people of the country should march on Washington.”

What’s amusing about that in hindsight is that, at the time, he assumed that Gore was going to win the election despite Bush winning the popular vote. In other words, Dave—a Republican’s Republican—was ready to rise up in protest, because “the will of the people” wasn’t being followed. When it turned out exactly the opposite, Dave’s cries of mass protest mysteriously fell silent. I guess the system is broken only when YOUR GUY doesn’t benefit.

So, yeah, 13 years later, I have no regrets. I “pledged my grievance to the flag,” and I’d do it again. In fact, other than John Kerry in 2004 (another conscience vote and no regrets there, either), I’ve voted Green Party every presidential election since. (Really? Obama might need my vote to win ILLINOIS?) I will continue to do so.

I suppose you could argue that my form of protest has been ineffectual. Big business continues to rule the world, as it has for a long time, and this country is no different. In fact, when you consider the original U.S. government, one could argue that our nation ALWAYS was set up so the landowners and businessmen made the policy while the workers toiled in the fields and factories.

Maybe, like those folks in Seattle, I’m just fooling myself that things can change. But you know the difference between an idealist and a cynic? A bad day. If no one’s said that before, they sure as heck should have.

So you have to try. You know what changes if you don’t try? Nothing.