The DNC, The Mainstream Media, and the Train Wreck

I wrote this in March 2017, after the election of the latest DNC chair.

Funny how little has changed.

The DNC, The Mainstream Media, and the Train Wreck

I watched the election of the new DNC chair a few weeks ago, cringing the way you do when you see the train bearing down on the car stuck on the tracks but can’t do anything to stop it. When I finally took my hands away from my eyes I winced the way you do when you’re staring at the plume of smoke rising from the wreck. And then I watched the mainstream media cover this coronation with their expected earnest approval, and…sigh.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/27/politics/tom-perez-profile/index.html

The Democratic Party has it right on any number of things. Their devotion to the truth that hatred and bigotry is wrong is commendable, and their emphatic embrace of civil liberties is righteous. They understand the importance of both healthcare and education, and that’s reassuring.

But on the matter of the economy, both the hierarchy of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media seem determined not to get it. Don’t get me wrong – I believe they want the middle class and working people of this country to be okay, just not if it involves the terrifying specter of standing up to Goldman Sachs, or any sacrifice of their own power and position. If it could just sort of happen without them having to take any real risk that’d be great, but if not, they’d rather talk about anything else. And so they do.

They talk about problems and suggest solutions that go absolutely nowhere. They point at bad things and frown and pontificate. They gabble like turkeys and cluck like chickens, and seem completely incapable of doing a single useful thing. And this was true the entire time they had maximum political power; I suppose now that they’re the minority they have an excuse, but – sigh.

And apparently they learned nothing from the election. After spending fourteen months trying to cram Hillary Clinton down the people’s throats despite the outraged protests of those who wanted real change – after blatantly eighty-sixing the one guy who was willing to take on the power structure – after being presented with incontrovertible proof that the people are sick and tired of the status quo – they select as the party’s new leader an establishment factotum, Tom Perez.

Since the election a great deal has been written and said about the future of the Democratic Party and the Left in general. There seems to be a sharp dichotomy between those who think the Party ought to move further to the Left and those who think it ought to move to the center. The Party hierarchy has predictably chosen the allegedly center route. Personally, I think neither camp is right.

The issue really isn’t further Left or center, and the very fact the choice is being parsed this way only shows how little the Party understands the people these days. (And those who believe that the fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote indicates the party has some kind of mandate are deluded; her popular vote victory only indicates more people than not were frightened of Donald Trump as president.)

For forty years the people of this country have had political corruption shut them out of any real say in what actually happens in this country. They’ve seen the media substitute a kind of puppet show for the voices of real people. And they’ve seen multinational and transnational corporations vacuum up the wealth and income that was once theirs like a Hoover on steroids.

They want their government back. They want the free press back. And they want the orgy of corporate greed that has left them in constant terror of penury stopped – preferably without an orgy of ill-conceived regulations slapped together in a hurry without any real thought of their consequence, and preferably without an orgy of government spending that simply throws money at a problem (and a slew of bureaucrats and special interest groups in the bargain).

The hierarchy of the Democratic Party has zero intention of actually doing any of this, of course, and if you doubt that all you really need to listen to is Mr. Perez’ first statement as DNC chair: our first priority must be to send the message that you vote for a Democrat if you want a good job.

Note the wording: “send the message.”

Not we must create policies that deal firmly and courageously with the pattern of economic predation that is destroying the middle class. Not the well-being of the majority of the American people is more important than our own well-feathered nests. Not we are determined to root out the causes of your misery and change them.

No, it was we’re going to do what we always do: ask for your money so we can talk a good game and do absolutely nothing to fix the problem.

What the DNC really should have offered was an apology, one that would sound something like this:

We the Democratic Party wish to apologize to every working man and woman in America for abandoning you to the wolves these past forty years, for our shameful cowardice in being more interested in protecting our careers than serving you and taking on the powers that have destroyed your wealth and income. We apologize for throwing the Democratic Primary to the candidate we favored and completely ignoring your wishes as the people. And we apologize for using our chums in the media to force a choice on you that wasn’t yours.

We apologize for spending so much time sucking up to special interests and lobbyists and ignoring your problems. We apologize for selling out, again and again, to Wall Street and Greed Incorporated. We apologize for dismissing anyone who didn’t agree with us as ignorant, crazy, mean, or unenlightened. We apologize for thinking that talking is a substitute for doing.

We apologize for all the harm we have done you by sitting in our little self-satisfied circle and ignoring your needs, and we swear to you from this moment on you come first, not us. We swear we will fight with matchless courage against any power that seeks to harm you, that we will do, not simply talk, and that from this day forward we will make in action the well-being of the common people our first and main priority.

Every night I go to sleep and dream I wake to that. Were that it were so, I could stop cringing at the wreck.

What Kind of Leader Do You Want?

Time again to pick a leader.

Time again to try to put aside the babbling voices of bought-and-paid-for pundits and decide who will stand up for the people of this nation.  Time again to think of the future.  Time again to find someone who will not simply talk a good game on ensuring your future, but actually do it.

And time again, apparently, to watch the corporate titans of this land race to install a leader they can bend to their will.  A leader who will, when asked to, quietly maintain the status quo.

Corporate power has become a gale force wind that for forty years has decimated everything in its path – your wages, your savings, your healthcare, your voice.  It has bent your government to its will, reduced your free press to a billboard for its interests, and slowly but steadily eroded your power.  It has changed the United States of America to the United Corporation of America, an institution in which you are not a stockholder.

Whom do you trust to stand up to that power?

We’ve been deprived of true leadership for so long we no longer remember what it sounds like.

It sounds like this: whatever is oppressing you, I will stand up to it.  Whatever is harming you, I will make it stop.  Whoever cheats you, lies to you, steals from you, I will put a end to it.

The job of a leader is to have the courage you don’t.  It’s to fight the fights you can’t.  It’s to sacrifice their comfort for yours, and not give in to whatever threatens you, no matter how big its claws are.  A leader’s job is to have your back no matter how difficult that might be.

If you can’t do that, you have no business leading.

So what do you want?

Another leader whose personal best is to tell you everything you want to hear, then quietly capitulate once again to those powers while telling you that’s all they can do?

Another ineffectual “centrist” who will talk a good game on your economic well-being and then secure their war chest by selling you out?  Another blandly likeable drone whose idea of victory is letting it get only a little worse?  Who will tell you that standing up to that which has taken everything from you is radical, unrealistic, or even dangerous?

Standing up to bully is always a radical idea to a coward.  The thing is, leadership requires exactly that courage.  A real leader is not afraid of a bully.

Or in bed with one.

You cannot stand up to a power you’re in bed with.  You can’t be supported by corporate power and fight it.  You can’t hitch your wagon to the very thing destroying the middle class and then oppose it.

Wall Street has grown fat by keeping wages low, by ballooning the cost of medical care, by making the cost of a college education ten years of indenture.  It has turned your children’s schools into a factory for fat contracts and done the same to our military.  It’s taken your pension and your savings and it’s kept its tax rate low by raising yours.  It’s skyrocketed the cost of living while making sure you live hand-to-mouth.

And to keep the gravy train rolling it has hand-picked leaders either too stupid or too cowardly to ever say no.

Think of this nation’s economy as a tree bent all the way to the ground by that gale force wind.  To bend it back straight and true what do you need?  A timid breeze or a force as strong as that gale – one that will blow against it with equal power and force it upright again?

That wind isn’t going anywhere; the only question is how much more it will be allowed to destroy, and who will stand against it, and bring it into alignment with the needs and the rights of the people again.

The leader you pick will be the one standing against that gale.  That requires the courage of a lion and a backbone of steel.  It requires someone who does not believe victory is only letting the hole get a little deeper, but pulling you out of it entirely – and bending that tree back to a straight and even keel again.

Choose wisely, and choose well.

Two Nations, Under Chaos

The streets are frothing now with what’s been coming for five decades:  the eventual fracturing of this country into two halves.  This one’s a commie and this one’s a fascist; this one’s a bigot and this one’s an animal; this one’s a godless traitor and this one’s a judgmental inbred.  This has been coming for a long, long time.

It began in the ‘60’s as a simple difference of opinion between the traditional and the new, and exploded into a Civil War that has shredded the country for fifty years.

More than anything else, this is about how we have to come to fear and mistrust each other, to see each other as the basest of stereotypes.  This is about how we have managed to make our fellow citizens into monsters.

The following list of misperceptions might sound extreme, but as you consider them, ask yourself this question:  in the very bottom of my heart, have I or have I not at times feared these very things?

The Blue Faction believes the Red Faction wants Protestant Christianity to be the only valid religion in this country and its official religion.  The Red Faction believes the Blue Faction wants every religion but Protestant Christianity to be considered valid.

The Red Faction believes the Blue Faction wants to turn this country into a socialist paradise, where the government takes everybody’s property away and hands it out to anyone who asks for it.  The Blue Faction believes the Red Faction wants to turn this country into Mussolini’s fascist paradise, where corporations run the country, not the citizens.

The Blue Faction believes the Red Faction is entirely composed of illiterate, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals wandering through trailers in wife-beater t-shirts, swilling down Schlitz and gearing up to beat their dogs.  The Red Faction believes the Blue Faction consists entirely of pretentious artsy-fartsy elitists drifting through million-dollar lofts in natural-fiber unisex chemises, sipping Chardonnay and gearing up to replace football with badminton on grounds that football is just not nice.

The Red Faction believes the Blue Faction wants to make it mandatory for kids to learn Swahili, Urdu or Mandarin Chinese in school; the Blue Faction believes the Red Faction wants to make it a crime to speak any language but English.

The Blue Faction believes the Red Faction wants every woman in American to be required to wear an apron at all times, not vote unless their husband or father says it’s okay, and be required to compete in Beauty Pageants; the Red Faction believes the Blue Faction wants it to be the law that all women must work outside the home, wear suits, and that lipstick should be outlawed.

The Red Faction believes the Blue Faction wants every gun in America melted down and cast into a gigantic statue of a dove for the National Mall; the Blue Faction believes the Red Faction wants every baby born in America issued a handgun at birth.

The Blue Faction believes the Red Faction wants an America where white Anglo-Saxons Protestants have their rightful place as true Americans and everyone else exists in their proper place as a servant; the Red Faction believes the Blue Faction wants an America where people of color finally get to rule over white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

The Red Faction believes the Blue Faction wants to lock up everyone in America who kisses a woman without her permission; the Blue Faction believes the Red Faction thinks rape is just boys being boys.

The Blue Faction believes the Red Faction thinks every last tree in the country ought to be cut down and the skies filled with coal smoke if business wants it that way; the Red Faction believes the Blue Faction believes the Western Four-Toed Salamander ought to be spared extinction even if it means thousands of people starve to death.

The Red Faction believes the Blue Faction thinks all people of color are angels and saints; the Blue Faction believes the Red Faction believes they are all demons and monsters.

The Blue Faction believes the Red Faction is composed of backwards, ignorant, racist morons; the Red Faction believes the Blue Faction is composed of effete, over-educated, idealistic dreamers.

The Red Faction believes the Blue Faction hates America, with its ideals of liberty, individualism, and independence; the Blue Faction believes the Red Faction hates America, with its ideals of equality, justice, and unity.

The Blue Faction believes the Red Faction wants religious tyranny, a complete revocation of all rights for anyone who isn’t white and male, corporate fascism, and to blow off the planet any nation they don’t like; the Red Faction believes the Blue Faction wants atheism, rights for minorities and women but no one else, rampant Marxism, and for the U.S. to roll over on its belly for all challengers in the interest of peace on earth.

The Red Faction believes the Blue Faction wants to destroy them, half of America.  The Blue Faction believes the Red Faction wants to destroy them, half of America.

All of this is ridiculous.  Instead of thinking for ourselves, we react from the blind fear we have of the stereotype we’ve made the other half into.  Our politics have become entirely about our apocalyptic fear of the other side’s bad intentions; each side believes the other side will take over and ruin the world.

We have come to see each other not as people, but cartoon heroes and villains.

Each side believes the other side is stupid, cruel, and downright dangerous, and moreover, doesn’t care about them.  And on that last matter I’m afraid both sides have a point.  We have come to see each other as enemies, people we hate, fear, and have no compassion for.

What’s happening now in the streets should surprise no one.  The Left really believes the Right intends to enslave women and minorities, make being gay illegal again, and basically destroy their lives.  I saw the same thing happen with the Right after President Obama was elected (although they didn’t take to the streets):  a fear that their personal property would be taken, their beliefs and values denied, and their lives destroyed.  They were terrified, and thus enraged (anger and fear are Siamese Twins).  And the Left was like this after the 2000 election too.

The only real question left is:  can you love America enough to find it in your heart to love and respect all of its citizens, even those who have very different ideas than you?

Can you love this country enough to understand that a house divided against itself cannot stand, can you love this country enough to realize that freedom of ideas, speech and religion mean just that, can you love this country enough to understand that it really, truly belongs to all of us?

Stop seeing the Baptist lady in Iowa as a bigoted, close-minded, pursed-lipped scold; see her as she prepares – with great love – a casserole for her neighbor who’s fighting cancer.  And don’t assume that neighbor is a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, either; you’d be amazed how far the kindness and charity of that community reaches, and how much love there is between neighbors there.

Stop seeing the avant-garde painter in SoHo as a pretentious, snobbish, cold-hearted trendoid; see her as she tutors kids in reading.  And don’t assume those kids are only people of color; there are plenty of poor white kids in the cities too.

Stop assuming the guy driving the pick-up truck hates gays and stop assuming that the guy driving the hybrid doesn’t love our veterans and stop assuming everyone, everywhere is one stereotype or another.  We’re so much more complex than that, so much more as a country!

And stop letting the media – right and left wing – tell you what your fellow Americans are like.  In this age of infotainment, news organizations will by definition pick the most extreme and dramatic of anything to show you.  It will by definition seek out and find the lurid and grotesque – even if it represents less than 1% of the whole – and say see?  Use your eyes and ears in your own community to see what’s real, and don’t see just what you want or expect to see.

Go out and find someone from the other side of the aisle.  Have coffee or a beer with them.  And don’t talk politics or religion.  Talk about life, and as you do, open your mind to this truth:  this is a human being.  This is a person, not a cartoon.  This is my fellow American.  Talk about the Cubs or your kids or movies or your dogs or what you’re doing for Thanksgiving.  Leave politics out of it, and simply begin with seeing people as people.

That’s the beginning.  If we begin to listen to each other as people – to understand the very real fears each of us has with compassion, to hear the plaintive cry of you’re not listening to me, you don’t care! and actually respond with caring, to understand we’re all concerned with where we’re going, for different reasons and in different ways, this country can be whole and be healed.

Love your country and your fellow Americans enough to do just that.