A Wayback

I originally posted this as a comment at Winds of Change a while back. I still believe in it, more or less...

If the Democratic party must surrender to pragmatic venture capitalists with neo-liberal ideas born in their heads when they used to follow The Dead, the country will be the worse for it. I sincerely hope that leftists wanting to start up a think tank so they may sit around and pow-wow while trying to garner attention in trendy intellectual circles realize that think tanks are all around them: in their workplace, the bar, the schoolhouse (where help is truly needed), and the dining room table.

No, the Democratic party is not as lockstep as the Republican machine. There are no Prelates dictating their interpretation of scripture to novitiates. Democrats don't inspire a turn of events on a Saturday and spend all Sunday morning talking about it on television. Democrats are not made men with all the connections and with power in their fists. Who needs that self-righteous, supply-side-pseudo-religeous bullshit? There are still 100 million potential voters in the electorate that typically do not vote. 100 million!

Why do Democrats need to "wire their base" and double time it to the polls like cadets running extra laps for the drill sargeant? If there is a thing that may be called Clintonism (which is highly doubtful since his only real political legacy was survival) it may be simply "build a big tent." That is, find those voters who think the whole thing is a sham and goad them into voting. Give them a reason they can care about to show up. The whole reason conservatives need to keep zapping their base is that is the only way they can achieve anything as outnumbered as they are.

And how long before all those good Christian people in the Heartland with their Heartland Values realize how screwed they are? That clock is ticking, ticking. I am originally a farm boy from East Central Indiana and I can say that the place only barely resembles what it used to be. My elementary school turned into a county jail (a profit center as it takes in overflow from other counties); new prisons in broken down towns, farmers scraping by with next to nothing at all; Wal-Mart size churches sprung up everywhere to siphon off what spending money their is left, and rigid doctrines to follow at every step. There are loads of goodies for some boys and girls and perpetual austerity measures for the rest.

But it is dawning on them that something is'nt quite right. Some of them are going to turn on the Right because of the war. Some of them are going to turn because in four years they have been given nothing while much has been asked. A whole lotta people who never had a mind to vote because they think the whole game is fixed are going to show up out of curiosity's sake on election day. That is, unless, the Democratic party turns into a bunch of brutal fixers themselves who only inspire cynicism and fear.

Progressives are not doom and gloom. Progressives are not for blowing the budget on handouts. That is poorly spun myth. Hell, the Progressive era ended in 1914. The New Deal wasn't some sort of liberal-Socialist wet dream. It was an all out effort to restore economic activity as quickly as possible. Except for Social Security, most of FDR's programs were temporary in law and in scope. No one was ever even sure they would work, and afterwards is wasn't clear if they did. Maybe things just changed because another war came along.

But there is, I think, a new Progressive Era coming along where Populism will restore rights to individuals that have been taken over by ideologues and corporatists. While one may resent the "wackos" at Moveon.org for their wackiness. It started out as simply two people at a dining room table talking and is still only a tiny staff. They won't hurt you; they're friendly.

Democrats do not need to assume the model of the Conservative Right to gain leveredge at the polls. We will build a bigger tent and take pride that it is a big bunch of just about everybody. Union? Yes! (All 8% of the workforce, you) Minorities: "Hell yeahh, word to ya mutha!" Gays? "Loved your wedding, you both looked gorgeous." Christians? "Praise Jesus! The world's first liberal." Big Business? "Just tell Tiny Tim to scoot over and have you a seat right there!" Soldiers? "Our honored guests. Please follow us we have special accommodations for you." Women? "It's ladies night!" Skin heads, fascists, bigots, land rapers, and world exploiters? "Go on home now, git!" There's room and there is enough for most everyone. As Robert Penn Warren once said, "world enough, and time..."

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Impeach?

I don't know how to say this. I didn't give a hang about politics in any real way when Clinton was elected. I voted for him; 'thought it the right thing to do was all. Then the whole fiery impeachement battle started in and I tried to get my mind around it best I could.

To my mind, Clinton should have never been deposed in the Paula Jones case. It stank. It was like knocking on the door and asking the pilot of your commercial flight to hurry up and get you a beer. During the whole bit in the Lewinsky imbroglio when he said, "It depends on what your definition of is is", I suddenly woke up. From then on I had his back. I became a stone cold partisan in that instance, I suppose. I couldn't wait to unleash on anyone and everyone about how this was more than a vendetta of some crazy sort; this was a coup d'état and, well, fuck that in my democracy (I had suddenly become very possessive of that sort of thing). Let those that swell their chests and speak of moral degradation to the lot of us about this sort of thing eat their own filth. I was opposed to the very nature of letting a government fall, that was working perfectly swell for me, to punish the very sin that I knew full well that Clinton was capable of when I voted for him the first time. That whole Gennifer Flowers bit had proven to me that he was an adulterer, and I had cast my vote clear eyed and with not a dot of self conciousness. But I only had a passing care for the whole political realm up to then.

We are a more calloused and willful lot now, I suppose. An impeachment would bring the expected number of arrows from both sides and so be it. There is in fact a principal that must be worked out--perhaps even Constitutionally--whatever. When Clinton was doing his crazy pantomime that everyone took for a clamoring, scrabbling effort to save his own skin, I saw it different: he was trying with all his lawyerly might to preserve something of a republic while dragging the hideous mess he had made all the way through the village square. I felt for him. Shoot me.

Since then, I have witnessed such naked and willful aggression from the right to seize on whatever territory they think they may have gained, and I have seen such nauseating displays of statecraft as will serve to furrow the brows of any thinking political scholar in whatever time remains.

We've come a long way, baby. We now may be assured by our senses of logic that, in all likelyhood, Mr. George W. Bush is not at this moment receiving oral pleasure. We may rest ourselves of the notion of what kind of disgrace and blemish this would leave on our imaginings of high office. We simply know that he is not doing such a thing--even by his betrothed. What Bush has done with the office, however, must also find resonance somehow in our minds eye. We must see the deceit, the contrivance of facts, the demagoguery, the betrayal...and finally the treasonous acts of a wartime President who did not need to be one. We chose war on his counsel and advice and his words to us were littered with falsehood. We have not broken the bread of peace with any of the world's people since, and We have the blood of innocents on our hands as a result.

Yes, I was "there" when the terrorists attacked. We all felt that violent first volley. Then, it ceased. We have been fighting the disparate bands of guerillas mixed into a tribal, multi-generational civilian population since. The opposing factions, however vile to our senses they may be, are not cohered under a single banner by any means. In Iraq, we started off fighting an enemy way past its prime and neglected to begin with. In terms of true fighting capability, it has only become more desparate and diffuse in the face of all of our might. Beyond Afghanistan, we have attacked with increasingly indirect purpose. We are flailing wildly now. This man Bush does not know what he is doing. Yet such bravura.

While a focusing circle of rightist ideologues enjoy the antics of this administration in their pursuit of war for profit, the stomachs of decent people are sickening. It isn't fear--it never was, really; it is revulsion. We can cure this, but it takes bad medicine. Do we want it?

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News Roundup - The Media Reports

Secretary of "Defense" Donald Rumsfeld speaking to reporters in Singapore said today that China needlessly projects power.

Asked for comment, China rolled her eyes and murmered, "Oh, that is...rich.
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In other news, President Bush recently told reporters that Amnesty International's assertion that Guantanamo represents a "Gulag for our time" was "absurd".

Asked to comment, a detainee straining to speak with his neck under the heel of a soldier at Guantanamo said, "Unhuuhhah! [unintelligable....] Ahhh, unnnghh!"
* * *
Reached from beyond the grave, former President Richard M. Nixon asked to comment on the revelation of a former FBI official as "Deep Throat" and Jeb Magruder's past mention that the break-in of the DNC headquarters was ordered by the President himself said, "I guess I am a crook."
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Vice President Dick Cheney said of the recent violence in Iraq, "I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

May was the deadliest month of the Iraq war for part-time American servicemen.

Reached for comment in the Afterlife, Mark Twain mused, "The most outrageous lies that can be invented will find believers if a man only tells them with all his might."

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