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I hate to break up these confabs by intruding with business kids but there it is. The light we need does not come from the fire of a political campaign or from a burning issue. I can't blame some of you young wippersnappers who never saw troops on the corner when you woke up or knew for real what we are up against after the only leader post war US ever had was assassinated in Memphis. We thought we had our eyes on the prize but the light was directly in front of us in the bonfires of revolution.
Not that these are not historic times, but they aren't historic enough, by far.
We've been reamed, steamed and dry cleaned. Most of you are shell shocked and don't really know how to react to a person who has betrayed you. Like when LBJ looked into our eyes and lied about V.N. and we knew it that second. What can you say? Nuthin’, that’s the pisser. He was a Democrat. And for the most part, he did what Dems. are supposed to do. Compromise. Then, he accommodated. Sound familiar? Welcome to the famously false assumption of the ‘real world’.
I thought the rhetoric of change superseded the campaign promises that BO made in order to get votes. I was wrong that BO did also. Nevertheless, I've had my heart broken so many times that I can do the five stages of grief in 48 hours flat. I'd rather go through that than yield to cynicism which I fear, many of you will do.
There is nothing special about this, except to me. Others perfect their craft, do their shtick, pay their dues, seal their fate, break a nail, bust their knuckles and then say dumb shit. Then, based on that, I make unfair judgments about them. I see that sometimes people get to a certain point and believe that there is nothing else to know, learn or see. That is when the old pot head in me comes out and says, ''Like, I don't know man. Wow, this is bullshit.'' Why is that?
I have found in my own experience of striving to come to grips with doing my thinking with words, be those words of emotion, of sensation or words expressing my imagination, that my choice of using words is action. That freedom means being free to think, which is the same as being free to be human. Anything less is slavery. Not exactly wage slavery but close.
In America, the conservative movement and corporate interests attempt to restrict the freedom to be human by massively displacing thought with propaganda and junk narratives. This does not represent a marketplace of ideas but an emporium of tourist schlock. As has been eloquently expressed, ”There is a hog in the stream of life, and that hog-uh, is-uh pollutin' that stream.”
All recently broadcast political strategizing on health reform, finance reform, civil rights for gays, climate change and energy independence is an acceptance of the status quo. The so-called real world. Behind this is the idea that politics solves these issues in a hurricane of deals and words, a storm front that somehow happens and that vaguely involves pro forma elections. Politics is not treated like a tool that can be used by individuals to improve humanity but that is how the story is told, stupidly, slavishly, everywhere.
It is pretty clear from the partial discussion (debate? I don’t think so.) of health reform, that the effects of voting is a farce. It has taken since the presidential election of 2000 to confirm this for me. I have never wanted to believe that. I thought that was a cynical point of view but it is only cynical if I supported a cynical process and I do not.
Widespread resistance to progress by conservatives prevents a just American political balance. (After all, Ronald Reagan was never feted by the right for having abolished totalitarianism or cronyism or for working to establish social justice and fairness, quite the opposite. He wanted to abolish social security but it was not politically feasible, even for an easy ridin' pop hero. He was only one of a long line of mediocre hacks to take that office. Now, it appears Obama has sadly and more dramatically, followed suit).
Towards the end of his life, Dr. King began to work to change the social and economic iniquities that go beyond race. These iniquities were present at the founding of the country. The widespread support for MLK awakened people to their humanity.
The constitution was written for an elite privileged few, mainly to protect their interests. Conservatives at that time supported King George. They had extensive property, bequeathed to them by Royal grants. After the Revolution, they never left their property or gave up their status, they are still with us.
Hamilton himself wanted a monarchy and preferred that to a presidency. Were it not for a Bill of Rights and representative government, how would the colonists have raised an army or tolerated another king? As it was, unpaid volunteers led by obscenely wealthy and privileged officers did the fighting.
As a result, the protection of property, not the protection of people and the use of property, is the basis of our civil and constitutional law.
Political balance does not mean; The words right and left separated from each other by a line and at the center of the line, a fulcrum called the center. That is just stupid.
It is not all we have. This idea is not even incrementally progressive. It is stupid because it only works when one pipe out of hundreds is fixed in the broken political sewer system. The clean water never gets to us and we are not even the underprivileged.
Cynicism is the gravitational force that is tearing all ideologies apart. Conservatism is the most vulnerable because it is the most cynical but ultimately Liberalism is very cynical. The political black hole being created by cynicism will atomize all ideologies into their separate moral components and if progressives can resist acting like a political party then they can reform from the remnants of shredded intentions
Will people become sophisticated enough to develop a model for balance represented by; The constitution on the one hand and the bill of rights on the other with democracy as the fulcrum? If you want a simplistic, easy to learn paradigm, there it is. I doubt that any conservative will accept it, and certainly not the need for timely rebalancing.
The acceptance of a new political model has not arrived yet, namely that communism is where capitalism in mass society is heading or to state it differently and with its original theoretical intent, that communism is capitalism squared but in the public interest. Oh dear, now I've gone and said it and I'm not even part of the Liberal intelligentsia. This is the equivalent of Eliza Doolittle teaching Queen Victoria clitoral stimulation and birth control.
The declaration by the fearful right that Communism is taking over the US may be the one thing that they are correct about, even though their vitriol is misplaced. The political right represent the mirror image of same internal selfish interests that drove down the Soviet Union. They were believers and their received wisdom was Communism, they were crazed with power on the far left and they are at here today as Capitalists on the far right, crazed by money, Dixie driving down The United States. The same, the same, the same.
The elite profiteers on the right will accept social justice in pieces, when forced to and for the same appeasement value that they accepted the bill of rights and representative government.
Currently, the political balance can be described as; On the right, the weight of all memory and imagination representing the passive inertia of six thousand years of civilization and on the left, the weight of the last three hundred years of hard fought progressive achievement. In the conventional model of balance, it is as if an elephant is balancing a mouse which obviously shifts the center/fulcrum right. Impossibly right. That is what conservatives cynically call balance and pundits, right and left, euphemistically call ‘the real world’.
Life, is what you make it. Then it becomes real. The status quo is entropy and entropy is only part of reality. The part that politicians and pundits rely on to make a living. Apologies to friends. Grow up, people are fighting about God and that is dumb, it is not a human fight. How about Plato? We are all descendants of Western civilization, guess what, existence precedes essence?
The best teachers know that you have to make beauty, not find it. Beautiful things are mistaken for Beauty. Ta-da!
What we are looking at, in The United States today, is a status quo that supports a neo-fascist and corrupt political system. We can begin to address this by demanding laws making the acquisition of power by professional politicians subject to anti-trust laws. Ban powerful committee chairmen from sparsely populated states or having a senate representing disproportionate populations. I'm sure one of you Rhodes scholars can make a positive affirmation out of that. Pardon my pissyness. I apologize, you don't deserve it. You deserve worse than I an willing to dish out. I have to preserve my strength at my advanced age.
The fight for civil rights is not over. We must amend the Bill Of Rights to include freedom from the tyranny of corporate personhood. Corporations must not be permitted to make or arrange any political contributions in order to stop flagrant profiteering and unfair legislation.
We have a mass society where the Bill of Rights is more relevant today than the constitution. What exactly is a strict constitutional constructionist anyway but a person without a memory of suffering and a hobbled imagination? In other words, heartless, crippled souls.
Conservatives are not the only ones in the way of progressive politics. The cynical faction of the Democratic party has always held down the far Left out of self preservation, helped by the fact that it has been open season on the Left for the last 100 years. Now, the Right is contending with the tea party faction, not as dangerous as the John Birchers or the LaRouchers but virulent in its populism and stupidity. It is catchy but benign.
There are more social justice organizations, big and small than there are cities or houses of worship in The United States . There are more people working for social justice in some way or another than there are Republicans and Democrats. There are more people working for social justice than there are Progressives. All are potential progressive voters.
It was the Progressives that elected Obama and it was Progressives that Obama has jilted in favor of the political center. He doesn't believe in us but he needs us and we don't need him.
We must recognize that our progressive movement has to choose a leader from the existing corps of grassroots directors from father Dan in inner city Cleveland to the esteemed Howard Zinn. The Backbone campaign has a roster of cabinet selections. So is there a movement without a leader or a presidential campaign huffing about being hijacked?
That is how I think that we can push the elephant off the see-saw.
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