Onward, Ever Upward

Football, hockey, soccer, basketball….pigskin, puck, and bouncy-balls. Team A versus team B…. all played against team C……the clock. Winning often comes down to managing the little hand. The final seconds could take minutes that seem like hours with a barrage of commercials.

Baseball, alone, is a counter-clockwise board game defying time. An inning might be a decade; a game simulating a lifetime. (Games are longer now than ever before as stadium seating inches onto the playing field to sell more premium tickets. As a consequence what was formerly catchable is now just a foul ball).  A few of us even go into extra innings. Each season is long enough to streak, slump and streak again, just like life.

Back in the day when I knew everything life seemed measurable and linear, at least on the sports pages. Stats ruled. Records were set. Some seemed insurmountable and still are. Others were illusive but attainable. Nobody has hit .400 since Ted Williams in 1941. No one had run a four-minute mile until 1954. A year before that Edmund Hilary of New Zealand, along with Tenzing Norgay, climbed Mt. Everest…because it was there. Even if the British Empire was no longer.

Milers came within a second or two of that magic number but couldn’t quite break the barrier. An Oxford medical student named Roger Bannister rose to the challenge by clocking in under four minutes by 0.3 of a second. Three months later he bettered that mark by a full 2 seconds plus. Since then over 1300 others routinely run under four minutes and over 3,000 have climbed Everest.  Progress confirmed.

Too bad social progress hasn’t followed the same narrative. Older, and less knowing, I have come, more and more, to expect less and less. Our high court is dismantling voting rights achieved 50 years ago. Congress has become irrelevant. Xenophobia is sweeping Europe and threatens the great promise of the European Union. The Russian Bear is growling after its brief hibernation. Science is under attack from the Bible thumpers. At this rate we will soon wonder if the mile can ever be run under five minutes.... running downhill on the Himalayas.

Why the gap between physical achievement and our (d)evolution as custodians of the planet? The former seems progressive and the latter either cyclic or glacially slow. Whether we are witnessing the final gasp of the 19^th century warrior/privilege mentality here in the 21^st or an irreversible great leap backward, is hard to discern. There are days when it seems we are climbing, not Everest, but into our own abyss.

Which is why I take refuge in the alternative universe of the sports section. More drama. Less murky. The players have evolved faster, taller, stronger and certainly richer. At the same time they seem more fragile, arrogant and not a bit smarter. When an alien civilization discovers our planet a few light years from now they may reconstruct our society from out of the debris on the baseball diamond. In among the bones will be sticks of wood, a few pillows (bases) and mitts which will puzzle our visitors. They may conclude we had slept on grass and clubbed each other to death with our oversize hands. It may help to explain how we bulldozed our forests even as oceans rose and all that’s left of Everest is a pitching mound.

On a more positive note it seems that athletic performances are a function of technology with leaps evident due to advances in equipment and training. They are less evident in team sports because the defensive improvements blur offensive ones. In terms of societal gains there will always be push-back as the power elite increases exponentially. However world wars have been averted through the threat of mutually assured destruction. Literacy and health are vastly improved in the developing world. We are a work-in-progress. I shall cling on to that word, Progress.   

To Be Or Be Had

Most polls now show a divided electorate with about 94% of voters committed to the good guy or the bad guy which leaves the election in the hands of these undecided 6 percent. Woe is we.

Who are these equivocal folks? Are they semi-comatose, incorrigibly cynical or truly wrestling with their better angels? My guess is all of the above. I’ve tried to imagine the three types I will call Chuck, Charley and Charles.
Chuck minds his own business which is mostly just getting by. He paints houses or repairs bicycles out of his garage. His mind is occupied with the blue-plate special at Smity’s Diner. The tune of last Sunday’s hymn is humming in his head. He read something about one of the candidates in the barber shop last week but can’t remember what. Any ideas about political parties get shredded in his head like severe tire damage. He says he’ll probably vote and make up his mind behind the curtain. He always says that. The last time he actually bothered was back in the 90s when he heard that Clinton liked Garth Brooks and Dole listened to Dolly Parton…or was it the other way around? He’s getting fed up with all these political ads on TV. He’s going to rent a horror movie tonight and knock off a six-pack which keeps inching up in price. Whose fault is that, he wonders.

Charley has no use for any of them, not since our founding fathers. There are no statesmen anymore above the fray, just whores from special-interests groups. Charley chokes on anything less than rarefied air. He’s never met a bumper sticker he didn’t want to rear-end. He lets his dog pee on lawn signs. They’re all crooks, he says. A litany of hollow promises betrayed as soon as they’re elected. He denounces them with the fury of a lover scorned. He’s been hurt too often and now there is no forgiveness left in him. Maybe he sees from a distant perch where no hands get dirty. Perhaps his favorite subject was math; nothing measures up to the elegance of numbers. Maybe he is a fallen-Catholic still looking for saints.
Charles might be a Westside attorney. He’s a registered Democrat but can list half dozen reasons why he can’t trust them any longer starting with Israel and ending with immigration. Of the former, he bristles at every perceived slight. He would agree with Gilbert & Sullivan’s piece from Iolanthe. The Law is the true embodiment / of everything that’s excellent. / It has no kind of fault or flaw / and I, my Lords, embody the law. Charles vacillates which is not the way of an advocate. His colleagues on the elevator have already moved their allegiance. He squirms with both candidates. He knows that the Conservatives have been overrun by imbeciles, Neo-Cons, evangelists, and the privileged one percent for whom greed is their creed. Too many bleeding-heart liberals, he says. Can he feel his own heart clotted and closing? Who will get his vote? Will he sit out the most important election in several generations, the one that will either shame our nation or reinvigorate it?

Unconventional Notes

The Republican convention was a circus complete with clowns, legerdemain, acrobatic flip-flops, high wire lies, disappearing acts and elephant excrement requiring a nuclear-powered shovel to clean it up. All the puppeteers in Tampa couldn’t breathe life into wooden Mitt even as he talked out of both sides of his mouth.

Paul Ryan spoke on behalf of Ayn Rand whose simplistic catechism of Greed is Good, now translates into painting non-believers with a brush as wide as mother Russia. And if your opponent doesn’t fit your doctrinaire portrait, just fabricate his birth, his narrative, his position to make it fit. The Republicans are not running against President Obama; they are running against an imagined creation of their fevered minds. It is as if they have photo-shopped his programs and mastered the technique of assigning their own blunders onto him.

A new ad accuses Obama of changing Medicare. They must believe the American people are morons and they may be right about that. Welcome to Wonderland written by Mad Hatters at a tea party. Was that Mitt overheard saying, I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, Sir, because I'm not myself you see... Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Carl Rove seems to have scripted Mitt as the Mock Turtle believing in education as he knows it with Reeling and Writhing, to begin with, and then the different branches of arithmetic -- Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.

Don’t wait for certain words to be aired at political conventions; not in Tampa, not in Charlotte. Geo-politics is mostly off the table. Even if China and India will be the new super powers in the world by 2050, their names are not likely to be heard. I doubt if the European debt crisis will be mentioned. Nor will anyone mention Africa, which boasts 6 of the top 10 fastest growing economies in the world in 2012 according to the I.M.F. Nor will there be any discussion of our irrational drug war which has drained a trillion dollars from the budget over the last forty years at the same time that our prison population has swelled from 300,000 to 7.2 million under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail or prison).

Tuesday:

Tonight the Democrats have their turn. I expect some of the orations to also be full of tired phrases I’ve already heard on the stump. Speechifying is my least favorite way of receiving information. Too many words falling limp, too much rhetoric designed to incite the herd. Yet I’ve now heard two speeches this afternoon before writing this and they have both been substantive. My only wish is that they may get a bounce in the polls by waking up some of the undecided. At least they will get real and I won’t be carried away by a Jaberwocky.

It is now Thursday morning. Last night Bill Clinton showed how it’s done. With Arkansas folksiness and Rhodes scholar smarts he made the case. Clinton is equal parts preacher, professor and purveyor. If he knocked on my door I’d probably buy his set of Fuller brushes or encyclopedias, maybe even the Brooklyn Bridge. He has a way of seeming to speak to each person in a packed hall and making complex issues within the grasp of a simple phrase. Obama has a tough act to follow.

And now it is Thursday night and Obama met the challenge, seized the narrative and reminded America who is responsible for change in a democracy………us. His words were directed at the cynics and the constituency he may have lost from 20008. He delivered a brilliant speech, referencing Lincoln’s humility and asserting his role as commander-in-chief with all the burdens and leadership that office entails.

Blanks

I’m trying hard not to write about the election but the blank page keeps bringing me back to the Republican ticket, white as Mitt’s shirt, blank as his tax returns and vacuous as he often appears when unscripted.

Most of us have made up our minds by now but there remain about a million probable voters who have a mind that can’t make itself up, lots of blank space between the ears. One wonders on which planet they live.

A recent survey focused on the 35% of Americans who either probably will not vote or who never vote. Reasons given were, It won’t matter or I’m too busy or They’re all the same. 40% didn’t know the difference between the two parties. When pressed with the hypothetical that their vote will decide the election, almost 70% said they favor Obama. It’s safe to say that Obama has the vote of those who won’t vote. Imagine the uproar if we made voting mndatory as in Australia (of all places).

The cynics among the non-voters are disappointed idealists who cannot get over their dream deferred or punctured. They are the lovers scorned. No half-loaves for them. The real world is too messy, too grey, too squiggly. It won’t behave. The vicissitudes of life deny them the tidy society they insist upon. They would rather gripe like spectators than join the fray.

If Mitt should win it will be because he persuaded millions of Americans that they can be mini-Mitts. If you wish hard enough…. fill in the blank. These must be the folks who buy magazines from Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes. It reminds me of the story of two guys at a racetrack. One of them notices that the group sitting in front of them had won every race. He told his friend to follow them, get in line right behind and buy whatever they buy. Half an hour later he came back with four hot dogs, three beers and a coke.

How else do the Repugnants appeal to a general population? Only by presenting a shell of man to whose business success the average guy aspires, that is to say, shameless greed.

Not for several decades has the blank space between candidates been so stark. A Romney /Ryan victory would not only be seen as an endorsement to set our clocks back a century it could also sweep into power a parade of misogynists, Neo-Cons and evangelicals as well as a Supreme Court at the ready to secure a new American oligarchy. Given this scenario the blank page will look more like a Canadian winter.

On the other hand we could also be looking at a new chapter in our nation’s history in which the forces of nescience are repudiated, the shrill noise from the new confederacy hushed, a Congress that mirrors our diversity and the essential role of government restored.

Decisions, Decisions

Judgments don’t come easily for us Hamlets of the world, at least in human relations. I often suffer from excess empathy in my bloodstream. I seem to walk, too readily, in others' shoes even if they pinch or flop.

I could lose my place in line at Baskin-Robins equivocating over whether I want one scoop of pumpkin ice cream on a waffle cone or two scoops of Rum Raisin in a cup. It took me over three years to leave Part One of my life and enter into Part Two, needlessly vacillating. I would have had trouble being on a jury with Joni Mitchell’s, looking at life from both sides now, running through my head…

…which may be why I feel so decisive about issues once or twice removed. There’s no waffling over matters of policy or candidates. I have no patience with the undecided whose grasp of geo-politics is feeble and fickle.

John Roberts sided with the majority of the Supreme Court in a historic decision which restores my faith in the institution. They reasoned well, threaded the needle, finessed it, ceded a little bit of ground but landed on their collective feet. As a result Roberts may lose his entre into the good old boy’s club and not get invited to many dinner parties with Scalia, Thomas, etc…

He chose not to betray his sworn testimony given at the Senate confirmation hearings at which time he vowed not to legislate from the bench as an activist judge. We’ll never know if he agonized, lost sleep and wrestled with his angels. His rationale was apolitical, based solely on whether the law was constitutional. He transcended his ideology. Kagan and Breyer also crossed over to the other side striking down a portion of the Medicaid provision. This was a memorable day for integrity and suggests a new template and possible path for both Conservatives and Liberals.

The Affordable Healthcare Act is, after all, a Republican plan, an alternative to Single Payer. Regrettably, its full implementation has been delayed until 2014. How ironic that all we have to look at is Romney’s plan in Massachusetts with 98% participation.

That voice of conciliation from the right has been muffled, if not muzzled, for the past few years. It needs to be wakened and provided a model. The shrill sounds we’ve been subjected to about an over-reaching government are the mindless rhetoric of right-wing extremist money. With John Roberts’ decision, we finally have a Republican to quiet the noise.

I wonder if Roberts deliberates over a menu, giving full weight to the chicken club and egg salad sandwich. Both are constitutional but he’d have to decide which came first the chicken or the egg.

Us And Them

Imagine a room with ten people, half of them Tea Partiers and half normal people like us. Suppose the conversation was limited to Mom and apple pie, expanded perhaps to all relatives and recipes. Would political affiliations be revealed? Possibly not if we tried hard to contain ourselves. What if we added movies or books? My guess is that values would slip out which translate into political persuasion.

It calls into question the differences, not just in policy, but in mind-set, even language, between the two parties. What makes those who don’t live in the big house on the hill vote Conservative? Why do they continue trying to de-legitimatize the President, suppress voter turnout and saturate the media with lies? Can it be traced back to family dynamics early on or is it, as Woody Allen suggested facetiously, a brain tumor?

Clearly, if people voted in their best interests, Democrats would win every election in a landslide. Why they do not is a fair question. Class consciousness is such a taboo in this country, close to a third of union members align themselves with their corporate bosses. Marx would turn over.

There are those, raised by strong patriarchs, who listen for that authoritarian voice their entire lives. Bertrand Russell once said, The problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves and wiser people so full of doubt. Tea Partiers are the folks who see deliberation as weakness. Fear is their default position whether it is fear of God, fear of immigrants, terrorists or anyone who just doesn’t look like one of us.

Conservatives are also afraid of change. They are the push-back against progressive social programs. Of course not all change is progress but as Groucho, that other Marx, sang, Whatever it Is, I’m against it. This has been the Republican mantra. Gridlock is not dysfunction for these people; it is their goal.

Technology is much more than gadgetry. It causes a disequilibrium in the way we live, at least until we come to terms with it. In this age of unimaginably accelerated innovation those with a Conservative bent tend to fall back on traditional institutions like the church and other real or imagined myths and these familiar images trump class in the voting booth.

And then there are guns; another function of fear. Republicans are terrorists in the way they keep the threat on a front burner. Bush used red alerts to win support and placate the Pentagon. The Karl Rove’s of the country may one day be seen, metaphorically, as terrorists who flew their plane into the towers of Wall St., crashing the economy and subverting national interests.

A corollary to fear is punishment. They think in punitive terms. Death penalty, water-boarding, assault rifles, bloated arsenal of weaponry, Quantanamo are all part of it as if our mission is to eradicate the satanic worm from the sin-sick soul.

Liberals are more likely to come from families which model empathy. They question authority and live with the tension doubt creates. They are more concerned with equal opportunity, social justice and environmental degradation. They ponder. They reason. And they call their mother.

Of course Republicans also call their Moms and even return their library books. We probably share more than we know on a personal basis. If those original ten people were stuck in an elevator between floors some new alliances might be forged. Cooperation, I submit, would be more fruitful than competition. Damning the government won’t get them to the next landing; in fact one or two may find a new appreciation for government inspectors.

This country co-exists with the two strains but has never been so divided since Civil War days. To the extent they can be reconciled we will persevere. As long as Conservatives chose a non-negotiating position the nation will fall further into disrepair. Maybe they are too busy salivating over the flood of corporate cash, hoping to elect their shell of a man who echoes Groucho’s lines, These are my principles and if you don’t like them, I have others.

Post Mortem

Yet another morning-after Wednesday in the doldrums; I should be inured by now to the folly of voters but the misalignment is unsettling. No matter how we spin it the results augur an ill-wind for November.

To think it was a mere 3 ½ years ago when I was drunk with Obama and what seemed like the death of the Republican Party. His victory was resounding. The demographics appeared to have introduced a new generation of minority voters and a tide of new consciousness. The opposition, with aged McCain and lunatic fringe Palin, was regarded as irrelevant and insubstantial.

What happened is one of those perfect storms of a stagnant economy, virulent racism, and a fiercely, emboldened Conservative block in Congress along with possibly the most right-wing Supreme Court majority of the past century which unleashed an obscene amount of corporate money into state and local elections.

The inundation of political financing, floods the Internet, radio and T.V. with commercials never seen before. The old Hidden Persuaders are at work with truth-bending and repetitive deceit. Elections have become an exercise in consumerism. Candidates are bought into the same way we buy brand names over generics. Never under estimate the gullibility of the general public. Just get the name out there often enough and it worms its way into the psyche. If Coca Cola pulled their entire advertising budget its absence would be palpably felt.

Obama promised change, whatever that means, and clearly it meant different things to different folks. It has translated into business as usual on Wall St. having retained Bernanke and Summers and installed Geithner. Change has been imperceptible in terms of our Rendition policy and renewal of the Patriot Act, with drone attacks ratcheted up at the risk of a diplomatic breach with Pakistan. Quantanamo remains due to Republican intransigence.

Change from the previous administration came in a new spirit of conciliation, a reaching toward the opposition party as if they were a reasonable, rational, responsible body. Every extension of the hand got slapped, if not bitten off. Even when he adapted moderate Republican positions they were rejected. Liberals gnashed their teeth. Independents turned their back and now assign equal blame to both parties for a gridlocked Congress.

He got no points for killing the bad guys and points off when he attempted healthcare reform. He now finds himself presiding over a falling Dow due mainly to the maxed out credit in Southern Europe. Most importantly, he has taken a hit for the failed Bush economy and impossibility of moving corrective legislation through an implacable Congress.

At the end of the day I’m feeling those familiar post-mortem blues; out of sync with the winds that can bring us to port. What will it take to waken the slumbering undecided? Where have all the flowering students gone? Will the non-white population vote only their wallets? Are we witnessing the numbing effect of sensory overload ... along with intellectual impoverishment? I’d like to believe Wisconsin was an apparition but it may be that I am the apparition and vanishing fast.

Pledges

A modest proposal: Arrest every Republican in Congress. The charge is sedition for pledging allegiance to Grover Norquist in lieu of his/her country.

I pledge allegiance to the flag and the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands: one nation indivisible, under God, with liberty and justice for all.

The Pledge was first adapted by Congress in 1942. It has been modified four times since its composition in 1892 by Rev. Frances Bellamy. Don’t tell Boehner and McConnell but Bellamy was that dreaded S word, a Socialist. He was also the cousin of socialist utopian novelist, Edward Bellamy.

The Pledge was supposed to be quick and to the point. Bellamy designed it to be recited in 15 seconds. As a socialist, he had initially also considered using the words equality and fraternity but decided against it - knowing that the powers-that-be were against equality for women and African Americans.

The true reason for allegiance to the flag is the Republic for which it stands. A republican form of government is legitimized both by our constitution and popular suffrage. It is a form of representative government unlike a democracy which legislates by direct vote. Yet our upper chamber of Congress is wildly disproportionate with some senators elected by 37 million voters and others by half a million.

Republicans in Congress have not only vowed to vote against taxes which support every modern industrial state but they have subverted their role as legislators by advocating a dismantling of the Agencies of Environmental Protection, Housing and Urban Affairs and Education, tailoring their rhetoric accordingly to their audience. Their mission is to destroy the government they pledge allegiance to.

While singing the anthem and waving their flags they need to be reminded about, one nation, indivisible, a concept they have militated against with their obstructionist vetoes and polarizing stands. As the Democrats move even to the right of what was the middle, the party of privilege stakes out a polarizing position unthinkable even ten years ago. They have regressed to rhetoric of the Antebellum South bent on splitting this indivisible nation.

Justice for all is not on their agenda. They would deny voting rights to the marginalized, block a path toward citizenship for the undocumented who serve in the military, defund agencies which protect us against food and water contamination as well as opposing restraints on Wall St.,same sex marriage and woman’s issues. They rejoice as the economy sputters. Their oath is to an unfettered oligarchy, their allegiance to their corporate patrons to whose drum they march.

What's In A Name?

Many years ago a story went around about one of my all-time favorite rado comedians. His name was Henry Morgan. His humor was droll and he got himself in trouble with his sponser, Murine eye drops.He said on the air that if you take away the first letter it spelled the contents of the product, Urine.

Much as I love words, their elasticity, itinerary and longevity, I’ve never had a fondness for anagrams. However with MITT ROMNEY and BARACK OBAMA, I make an exception.

Consider Romney’s letters as if you were stuck with them in a game of Scrabble. Right away MONEY jumps out and MORE and ME…….and TRIM, as in services and TINY as in taxes. Then there is ENMITY, REMIT and ROTTEN. Let’s not forget those two Is which might also signify the 1%. All very telling, I submit. I’m sure there are many others which I bequeath to the puzzlers.

Our POTUS, on the other hand, has embedded within, MBA (higher education), and ROCK ((as in He Rocks), If you throw in his middle name, Hussein, I see that BOHEMIAN lies within. If we add the word President, an anagram is COME PLAN BETTER IDEAS or BEST MAN POETIC LEADER. The last two come from a website submitted by folks who must labor over these things while waiting for the bus or hanging on trying to reach customer service as the company is experiencing heavy call volume…which is always.

Maybe he should have changed his name to ROCKY ALABAMA long ago to pick up a few votes from behind the enemy lines.

There is no need to rearrange the letters in anagrams, only to listen to their programs. If the ex-Governor who enjoys firing people (in order to create jobs) and hides his money abroad (It's the American way?) and whose answer to college loan debt is to borrow the money from your family… is elected it will be because the cynics stayed home and students didn’t show up; a victory for the disgraced Supreme Court having released gazillons of dollars in ads and a doleful note that the apparatus of our government is in grave disrepair. It will also be an indicator that people pay no attention to anagrams.

Why scramble the letters when they spell what is obvious? This is a contest between fairness and opportunity versus the aspiration to privilege. If Romney wins it will be from the vote of millions of mini-Mitts who think they, too, will someday own seven houses.

If he loses it will not be from the letters of his name but the hyphen between the letters of what he represents: flip-flop, off-shore and out-source.

The Arrow of History

For many of us coming into political awareness in the 30s, 40s and 50s, the arc of social progress now in retrograde is hard to witness. Is our promised orbit ready for an obit? Is the wound self-inflicted, forensically speaking? Who are the killers of the dream?

FDR’s New Deal yielded needed programs for both urban and rural poor along with collective bargaining rights which arguably saved capitalism from the perceived threat of communism. The principle of a safety-net was established with Social Security.

After our entrance into the war anti-fascism united the country. Briefly, Russia was our friend. Who knew these were the glory days? We grew up with a common cause and common enemy. The G.I. Bill extended the role of government as a guarantor of certain rights and privileges which, to a large measure, created the middle-class and the promise of an American dream.

Lyndon Johnson was the last New Dealer to occupy the White House. Medicare and his war on poverty extended the reach of Roosevelt’s vision even as he tragically plunged us into a wrong war. The misadventure in Vietnam engendered a social upheaval which, along with a redress of racial grievances, began to polarize the country.

During the Cold War years the allure of the Soviet Union turned into a dreadful and dreaded opposition. When the U.S.S.R. crumbled a new narrative emerged. Republicans seized the opportunity to capitalize on the incompetence and abuse of strong central governments.

In the absence of any powerful model for further social programs and with the supremacy of the U.S. on the world stage, the Liberal paradigm fell out of favor. Anti-government rhetoric became the norm under Reagan in an era that saw the rise of evangelicals consolidating around conservative values. To a certain extent Regan Republicanism was a reaction against the anti-war and civil rights movements of the sixties and seventies.

The move to dismantle progressive initiatives is well underway. With diminishing push-back from Liberals the far right agenda prevails. Elections have become exercises in fund-raising. Democrats now feed at the same trough as their opponents. Bush II stoked fear and revenge giving free rein to the Neo-Cons, off the ledger, while dooming the country with financial recklessness.

Obama’s presidency, full of promise with a changing demography, has further incited racism from latent to blatant. The beast is un-caged. Our founding precepts are under attack with calls from the right for restoration of child labor, our declaration as a Christian nation, anti-contraception laws, voter restrictions, Nativism , fake science, abolition of income tax and other issues seemingly settled a century ago.

It doesn’t take a master sleuth to smell a corpus delicti. With heedless hegemony abroad and a semi-moribund electorate shooting themselves in the foot we have a body politic on life support. There is blood on corporate hands; having been defined as people, they are therefore culpable. Motive: greed and privilege, Weapon: demagoguery and a slumbering public, Accomplice: bought politicians, Casualties: resources wasted, lives squandered, Verdict: democracy subverted.

History is not an arrow; more like a pencil, first writing pages of progress, now flipped and leading by erasure. It is less a projectile than a football game with ground gained and lost.

A death rattle can be heard in the land; the noise of errant drones, of words gone limp on politician’s lips, the sound that lies make, an imperial army in retreat, the silence of shuttered factories and maybe the last gasp of resistance from the old boys club clinging to an imagined life where everyone knew their place.

The South

In Pharmacy College we learned about certain botanical substances classified as excrescences. Ergot is one. It is a fungus growing on certain grains. An excrescence could be a wart or tumor, an abnormal proliferation of tissue. John Dean famously said to Richard Nixon that the Watergate skullduggery was a cancer on his presidency. This is the way I feel about the South; an excrescence, a barnacle on the body politic.

Why don’t they just secede, and declare themselves another Third World country, another planet, another species? With their guns and gospel they speak the language of unreason, blame and punishment. These are the haters of government, of intellect and science. Their head is filled with Rush and his feral Foxes. Why are they still fighting the Civil War which they call, Mr. Lincoln’s War? Honestly Abe, you should have freed those in bondage and let the states go their way.

Without the South as our underbelly this country would continue the Enlightenment, elect Deists, champion reproductive rights, properly fund stem cell research, teach real as opposed to fake Science, encourage full participation in elections.

I know they gave us novelists like Faulkner, Wolfe, Reynolds Price and Carson McCullers, and playwrights, Horton Foote and Tennessee Williams. They had stories to tell of race, repression, aberrant behavior and deranged bible-thumpers. Why, then, are Southerners so malevolent and gullible? Why do they murder abortion doctors, fire-bomb Black churches and care more about the un-born than the born?

They are still the old Confederacy. Solid as they were when FDR made a Faustian pact to let them lynch, burn crosses and maintain Apartheid in return for their vote. They are a region descended from pathological racists, still infected and taking aim at our president.

They stained our nation with the abomination of slavery and now shame us in this new century dragging us back to an imagined time when everybody knew their place. As a voting block they oppose unions, environmental standards, gender equality, full enfranchisement and fair taxes.

When Rush Limbaugh spews his bigotry and misogynist rants no one denounces him. Advertisers flee this virulent buffoon yet the Red State Republicans give their tacit approval because he apparently speaks for good ole Dixie. If Afghanistan has stood still for 1500 years, the American South seems also to be stuck in a time warp of its own, since our inception. Fundamentalists shake hands with Fundamentalists.

Y’all go, ya here! You brought us Bush and Rove, Perry and Huckabee and Sarah Palin. Don’t you know when you are being pandered and lied to? Iraq was not responsible for 9-11. Obama is not a Muslim born in Kenya. He did not raise gasoline prices or taxes. He is not taking away your Medicare or Social Security. He did not bail out the banks. He is drilling now more than ever before. He is one of us; one of our best and brightest.

If, in November, the South prevails with its malignant, antebellum agenda we shall become a nation, never more divided. One founded on rational, democratic principles, the other an excrescence.

Political Theater

How to bear witness to a play when you are in it? What we are witnessing this election year is theater of the absurd and we are all in the cast of millions. The Republican actors are crazed jesters beating each other up like the Three Stooges plus one, while they contort themselves, denouncing a president who bears no resemblance to the straw man of their fevered minds.

Some have time-traveled back centuries where they rightfully belong, conjuring a world of sweat shops, debtor’s prisons and grand inquisitors, those good old days when everyone knew his (and mostly her) place. These are the Fundamentalist fools, home-grown Taliban whose orthodoxy locates them in some Christian version of Waziristan.

Another, to the manor born, is unable to fake authenticity. He is a wind-up toy, a puppet with a Pinocchio nose which elongates with every flip of the flop. When he is not in the counting house counting his off-shore money he is backstage trying to memorize his script.

The fourth is the nihilist who would overthrow the government altogether so we might have food-fights at every corner to determine who has the right-of-way. Bodies may pile up on the street from foul air and poisoned food but who cares? We are tough hombres and the weak don’t deserve to survive anyway.

Let the curtain go down on the clowns. They have polluted the air with their noxious lies, played to the one gallery while the rest of us choke. As the cowboy, the manikin and two would-be Popes make their noise is anyone listening? Could it be that, with every repetition, their lunacy gains a bit of legitimacy in public discourse and moves the spectrum further yet to the right? However outrageous their prattling, it seeps into consciousness.

There is an element in our midst so poisoned with hatred toward Obama they have been deafened to reason. Let them go. Must we all endure this tragicomic drama much longer? One can only hope the so-called debates have revealed the vacancy of their agenda and the irrelevance of the issues raised.

Fortunately there will be another act where the Republican candidate will be forced to address the real matters of urgency. He will have to disown much of what he said to get the nod. Maybe then there will a real debate to determine if we want to live in the 21st century or the 15th, if we want a democracy or theocracy, if we want to lift the millions out of poverty, revitalize the middle class, return our manufacturing base, restore collective bargaining, and check the greed of the privileged few.

Democracy does not make an exciting movie or theater piece. The narrative is an open text, never entirely resolved and the curtain doesn’t go down. However if these months of circus are Act One, I expect the August Convention to be Act Two. My hunch is that the moneyed interests will declare all four clowns as unelectable and multiple ballots will ensue. This will, at least, break the tedium. Out will emerge another Bush or shrub like Daniels or even Christie. By that time he will have shed 100 pounds using the Huckabee diet in which all he eats is the communion wafer.

The Third Act will be the period after that, when Obama debates the real candidate. On Election night we shall either storm the Canadian border for asylum or rejoice that rationality and compassion have triumphed over imbecility and deceit.

The Political Divide

The Scalias party with the Ginsbergs every New Years Eve. Think all the things they must not talk about.

The two camps, like tribes, are sure of their righteousness. This probably describes 85% of the electorate. The undecided, generally low-information, fickle or cynical voters will determine our fate….if they bother to vote at all. We are in the hands of swing voters in swing states.

What moves these folks? Elections call into play the same function as buying a car or computer; associative images. Is this the man or message with whom I can identify? Will he quench my thirst, get me the beautiful woman or the house on the tree-lined street? Is he the guy who I want to look at for another four years or do I want a new face?

Americans are highly trained consumers sniffing out the hoax, the pretender, the hot air. Or we think we are. Then how did we end up with George W. Bush? The sellers more often than we’d like to think, out-think us. They know how to manipulate mass audiences using key words, repetitively, freighted with positives or negatives. Suddenly Saul Alinsky pours out of Gingrich’s mouth in every speech associating him with Obama as if he is test-marketing a new product. His audience never heard of Alinsky but knows he stands for Jewish, Russian, Trotsky, trouble-maker, not one of us.

We wait for our buzz words and they listen for theirs. We require a more compelling narrative. Everyone likes a good story. Republicans use the Puritan ethic fable; hard work is rewarded by God; idle hands are the devil’s tools. By extension this means that the unemployed are lazy and the handicapped are slackers, all taking advantage of a bleeding heart Liberal government. Crap galore, as my pharmacology professor use to say.

Liberals also have a story to tell which, I contend, has a more universal appeal. Rather than invoking Benjamin Franklin’s, God helps those who help themselves, which most Americans wrongly attribute to the Bible, we might remind others of Jesus’ words, to care for the least among us.

Americans are a compassionate people. We are taught to love our neighbors, to turn our other cheek, to accommodate diversity. We are charitable and empathic. And we do not have a truly meritorious ladder to climb. We have long recognized the role of government. I would argue that Republicans lie when they rant against government. Is that the same institution that grants fat Pentagon contracts, that sends troops abroad, overtly and covertly, to violate the sovereignty of other nations, the same government that offers oil and farm subsidies, the one that created our railroads and highways sprouting the Gilded Age, oil multinationals and giant automakers?

The Republican myth-makers obscure their greed and drive for un-bridled privilege, along with a twisted version of history which engenders fear and misdirected animus.

Can the great chasm between camps be closed or bridges erected? By any rational measure the 1% should not garner 50% support. The 99% who have been short-changed and deceived need to wake up and align themselves with their own Judeo-Christian values, if you will. The American model is an experiment in participatory government, not bestowed by the wealthy but acclaimed at the ballot box by the non-propertied, by woman and minorities…all of them denied, at first, by Conservatives. In time, the electorate/consumer will see that the house on the hill is not theirs.

Politics and Entertainment

Sometimes it seems as if political contests are a spectator sport along with Super Bowls, World Series, even Academy Awards. We love to watch the personalities, the betting and forecasts and the competition; what they wear, how they misspeak. We admire their narrative or mock it and expiate our aggressions. We get caught up in our favorite player’s charities, his brother’s handicap, his single mother’s hardships or his choir-boy faith.

Sports and movies are entertainment and celebrity. They are important as projections. They fill our fantasies, the myth of ourselves. They are my alternative universe. But if I don’t turn to those sections of the newspaper or flip on the TV, I can shut them out and live near-happily ever after.

The difference is that politics has real consequences in life. My Social Security and Medicare will depend on which Party prevails. The culture, affordability and curriculum of schools, availability of services, libraries, the air we breathe, encouragement of scientific research and degree of civility are all matters to be determined at the polls. Particularly now at this point in history when the noise is nasty and lies go viral at the speed of a click.

With Newt’s resounding victory practically on his home turf we are in for a long season of blood-letting. The pugnacious against the aristocrat from central casting; attack-dog Gingrich pitted against the show-dog Romney. Neither has anything to say about the economy, healthcare, foreign adventures or the mortgage crisis. Up to now we've been treated to a parade of clowns, tweedledumb and tweedledumber. Now we must endure a revisionist pseudo history teacher and a scripted robot. Both speak fluent fib and smear.

In the end we will be presented with a referendum on ourselves to determine just how gullible we are. Do we want to dissolve our government and install a multi-national corporate oligarchy, live with xenophobic fear, listen to the fundamentalist Bible-thumpers, relinquish our bedroom rights, ignore evidenced-based science and declare war on the disadvantaged?

Obama’s re-election will be decided not by dissuading the Romney supporters with their off-shore money or the Gingrich misguided rednecks who have un-caged the beast in each other. November’s outcome depends on getting the marginalized turned on and turned-out. 2008 was a triumph of minorities and students.

Those whose dream died must get real, reawakened and revitalized. Democracy tries one soul. Our constitutional government is messy, excruciatingly slow, exasperating and in profound disrepair. The Democratic Party’s enemy is, above all else, cynicism. To stay home is an abdication to McConnell and Boehner. Everything they have done since 2004 has been designed to promote disengagement.

There is an element of Obama supporters with good reason to be disenchanted. After all, both parties feed at the same trough. His embrace of the very financiers who brought about the crisis is indefensible. It may well be that very little will be accomplished if this association continues. However I would still argue that a Republican administration would be far worse. Unless Progressives take both Houses with a substantial majority in the Senate we are likely to remain in a holding pattern.

We can enjoy the spectacle of election night, even have friends over and order pizza but presidential elections are not simply a spectator sport. We are the players. Our votes are on the scoreboard. If we lose this time around I truly fear for our future.

Vox Populi

The quadrennial carnival of presidential campaigning is now upon us. Show me the way to get out of this world.

Ever since voting took place for milk monitor in the 2nd grade I’ve been wary of the process. Early on we raised our hands for the boy or girl with the most polished persona to head the class. The one in charge of money had the look of fiscal responsibility on a seven-year old face. Even then the system was rigged. Sorry Henry, no graham cracker and milk without your 2 cents.

Americans accept political enfranchisement in lieu of economic democracy. We swallow agreed-upon lies. We get our hopes and wishes stoked, our fears and anger channeled. On some level we must know we’re being pandered to. There are code words we wait for. We want our old ways justified, our slumber uninterrupted.

In the 30s and 40s, Frank Capra made films about Everyman. Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper came from the Aw Shucks, school of acting. They had prominent Adam’s apples, gulped a lot and were therefore incorruptible… like us. Meet John Doe. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

These were the Populists. Today we have Newt Gingrich, of all people, except he has no Adam’s apple. He barely has a neck. But in his zeal to be an Anti-Romney the former Speaker is speaking the unspeakable; namely, that Capitalism is avarice, institutionalized greed, indifferent to the plight of Everyman. The emperor has no heart. Rush Limbaugh almost falls out of his ample chair. Hush that heresy!

Every so often in our peculiar political history a Populist emerges. Robert la Follette and William Jennings Bryan were early 20th century progressive voices. Even Huey Long bucked the machine in Louisiana and abolished the Poll Tax… before he became his own machine. George Wallace spoke for White Trash. The early figures expressed the grievances of the farm belt, railing against banks and railroad interests. More recently Populism is a form of demagoguery emerging as a force of racism and antigovernment rhetoric. Gary Cooper has become Joe the Plummer, poster boy for guns, gospel and get-off-my-back.

But that is so yesterday. We may now be witnessing a new phenomena. Could it be that the Occupy Movement has legs and those legs have marched into Newt’s attack ads on Mitt? Does Obama dare assert what Gingrich has let fly? Politics makes for unimaginable coalitions. It took Nixon to open up China and George W. Bush to get a prescription drug program for seniors even if he gave away the treasury to Big Pharma.

The lop-sided privileges of the 1% in contrast to the plight of the 99%, now defines American life. The Democrats must carpe the diem particularly since Romney would fit Frank Capra’s casting for the manikin-face, rich man born on third base who thinks he hit a triple….and who bought the cookie factory, out-sourced the jobs to another time zone and made off with the dough.

Such a Deal

The New Deal happened under my very eyes but my eyes were just seven years in this world by 1940. Whatever hardships or remedies occurred, they entered my consciousness as normalcy, as mother’s milk.

I only knew that money matters were whispered about in the next room. My mother moaned and railed about the hard times with her gevalts. She had an enormous vocabulary for curses and an affinity for the woes of life, yet I never missed a meal or felt deprived. As she did combat with the world, I became a pacifist.

I just finished reading Michael Hiltzik’s book, The New Deal, which details the conditions of the thirties and FDR’s legislative agenda to turn it around; all the politics of the day which passed me by.

History brings another dimension to the present, the necessary antecedent in the continuum. Reading the public dicourse from back then makes me hum, I’ve heard that song before. The world hasn’t moved much in the alignment of opposing forces.

It is tempting to compare Roosevelt with Obama and make the case for that man as FDR was derisively called. The closer we look, the matter becomes a bit more muddled. Certainly he had a quality of voice, unequalled. It was, at once, warm and authoritative. He was the ultimate charmer. Obama was not to the manor born and lacks his patrician ease. Many folks feel un-met. However, our current president has a greater intellect and can be equally inspiring to a large audience. Justice Holmes assessed FDR, Second rate intellect, first rate temperament.

Both men practiced pragmatism, shunned ideology, made missteps, appeased the opposition, spoke contradictory statements and evoked the wrath of both the Left and Right. If Obama has the baggage of Tim Geithner at Treasury, FDR stuck himself with Henry Morgenthau whose call for a balanced budget never ceased.

By 1936, Roosevelt enjoyed a 5:1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans in the Senate and a 4:1 advantage in the House. Is it any wonder he was able to have his way with an alphabet of agencies? When the Supreme Court struck some of them down he had a tantrum which caused him to squander much political capital in Congress for a while. However, as the nine old men died off he was able to make key appointments who stayed on the bench well into the 50's and beyond. William O. Douglas remained until 1975.

The accomplishments of the W.P.A. are impressive by any measure. It produced 124,000 bridges, 8,000 parks and 24,000 schools, to name a few. The Tennessee Valley Authority brought rural electrification to millions of people. Locally, after the Long Beach earthquake of 1933, the federal government built or repaired 536 new schools. In NYC it constructed the Triborough Bridge. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment was Social Security which eventually led to Medicare. The Republicans can’t forgive him for that.

For most Americans the New Deal instilled the precept, in Hiltzik's words, economic security is a collective responsibility and therefore a function of government. That this notion is now under attack is unfathomable and tragic.

While Roosevelt prepared us for war and led us through it, Obama is trying to wind down our foreign adventures while still maintaining homeland security. Both have had to navigate between Hawks and Doves, between Keynesians and naysayers. If Obama has put too much faith in the engine of banks, FDR made a pact with the Devil in keeping the Solid South. He did not support anti-lynching laws or an end to the poll tax. The New Deal was more of the Old Deal for Blacks. Such are the shameful compromises of politics.

In certain ways Obama’s narrative is more compelling than Roosevelt’s. It is the chronicle of a struggle through humble beginnings, with no father in a foreign land, then raised by grandparents in a country still gripped by racism, all transcended with a meteoric rise to our highest office. FDR led a privileged life until he was struck by polio and overcame that hurdle by grit and the force of his personality.

Both are public men whose inner lives remain largely unknown. Roosevelt never wrote his memoir. His personal side has come down to us through letters and recollections from dozens of family, friends and historians. He was most certainly the right man for the time and arguably saved our system, for better or worse. Obama’s legacy remains to be seen. He has been dealt a Raw Deal from an unconscionable opposition. I suspect history will be kinder towards him than our current observers.

1904, T.R. spoke of a Square Deal when addressing a labor dispute. FDR offered the people a New Deal in 1933 and Harry Truman called for a Fair Deal. As divisions continue to grow between the privileged and disadvantaged, the deck, itself, needs to be re-examined.

Between Barack and a Hard Place

The hard place is the boulder of the emboldened, that group of congenital Progressives, impatient, unyielding and unforgiving. In their eyes Obama has drifted too far toward the center and beyond, into a Nixonian space.

In political terms he has taken them for granted and might get their vote but neither their wallet nor energy as campaign workers. Or, as in the case of the Anthony Weiner seat, not even their vote.

Obama has only conciliatory bones, down to his marrow. Aside from his skin shade the one quality that infuriates the descendants of the Confederacy most is his lack of zealotry. He has no brimstone. He hasn’t loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword. Even supporters who elected him because he plays well with others now want him to run with scissors.

He is who he is, not only by temperament but because the game is rigged. Our four year election cycle is a carnival (as in carnivorous) that never sleeps. It is a billion dollar media bonanza and as such, requires the players to feed at the same trough. Corporate America funds both parties and the boat must not be rocked too much to unsettle the benefactors.

There was a time when I thought I knew everything. In adolescence my simplistic mind worked this way: if the U.S. was stained by inequities, racism and imperialist designs then its enemy must be the embodiment of virtue. If we were bad, the Soviet Union must be good. This is a function of a mind without nuance; an inability to hold doubt or opposing ideas in one’s head without insisting on the full embrace of either one.

Low-Information (lazy) voters throw one person out of office assuming that the other will be better. They have implicitly accepted the terms of the contest as if the two parties represent the full spectrum of possibilities and the presiding leader has implemented his plan by executive fiat. If the country isn’t prospering under Obama then his opponent must surely have the answer.

As we know Obama has been stonewalled by a Congressional chorus of naysayers. They have even defeated their own proposals when offered by the president. Is this anything less than treason? In good times it would be dismissed as party games. In these hard times it is seditious.

If the phone rings and the question is whether the government is broken, I wouldn’t be sure how to answer. A YES reply is what the Republicans are looking for, but a NO means I’m satisfied with things as they are. The real question is, Who broke it? And the answer is McConnell,Boehner, Cantor et al.

However if he continues to woo the Independents at the expense of the disaffected he does so at his own peril. He seems not to get much traction with the fickle electorate anyway.

Since his speech before Congress last week he seems to have rediscovered his voice, in style if not in substance. He is taking his case directly to the American people to demand of their representatives that they enact his jobs bill. The problem is to find the pulse in the body politic. Is it moribund or too cynical to be engaged? If he were addressing a rational public his argument would be clearly evident but the voting public seems less inclined to think than to blame mindlessly.

He is better off making his case with the Democratic constituency rather seeking favor with Independents, even if his programs go nowhere in Congress. At very least he could articulate the principles of his followers and lay naked the treachery of the Far Right Conservatives. His legacy would be a one term president who gave voice to the disadvantaged, to those of us who yearn for an end to our foreign misadventures and to the 50 million living in poverty who have seen the export of their jobs and the ill-gotten gains of the privileged few.

I can only hope he retains the presidency at least to halt the corporate/nit-wit coalition stampeding us off the cliff. In this climate perhaps all we can expect is an attenuated version of the last gasp of an empire going down with its multitude.

The Wish As Father To The Thought

Forty years ago I drove along the coast for 9 hours straight. Feeling hungry and bleary-eyed I saw up ahead a sign saying Knishes. As I approached I had visions in my head of downing a couple of steamy potato knishes.I pulled up to the place and walked into a dimly lit room. Before I got the knish word out of my mouth I read the neon sign again over the bar. It said Black Knight. In my diminished state any kni word was good enough to eat. After 8 years of Bush-Cheney weren’t we all famished? Along came this tall man who announced his candidacy in Springfield, IL. I mistook him for Lincoln arriving to heal our house divided. I projected Honest Abe onto him. He was my Knish-Knight. I saw Raymond Massey. I saw Henry Fonda. I don’t blame Barack Obama; he never said he was the Great Emancipator. He is yet another Democratic politician in a long line that got de-railed decades ago. I won’t try to make the case against Truman since he has found his place in our history books and in the public imagination as the no-nonsense, buck-stops-here guy. Though I believe our wrong-headedness was seeded there with our bipartisan foreign policy. The Cold War made the two parties split only on domestic issues. But the toll of our foreign misadventures was a constraint and drain on domestic programs. The equivocation of the Democratic Party was sealed with Hubert Humphrey. His caving into the obscenity of Vietnam, with squandered lives and resources, was a prophetic moment. When Nixon overwhelmed McGovern the party of FDR had been rent asunder. I contend that no Democratic candidate or president since has stood up to the inexorable drift toward the right. Obama takes his place in this ignominy. Perhaps it is a function of our mass media society that elections are bought. As labor unions lost their numbers along with our manufacturing base, corporations with their international reach have prospered. Democrats and Republicans line up at the same feeding trough for their funding. Clinton, Gore, Kerry and Obama and their antecedents are all beholden to deep pockets, albeit, perhaps, a more enlightened corporate America. As an electorate we shall be the subject of sociological studies to fill libraries. What makes us tick? How can large numbers of voters be so mislead? Are we witnessing a palace coup? Why would the most distressed people turn against the only institution designed to help them? What can be said about our system which allows lobbyists to write legislation, which makes our representatives simple surrogates for their corporate clients, so misaligned with the concerns of its people? We vote as consumers, with snap impressions, swayed unconsciously by nearly imperceptible language designed to seduce, the same way we buy Coke rather than Pepsi or Honda over BMW. We are manipulated by hidden persuaders. Is it any wonder that candidates have learned the speak? Many voters thought they recognized themselves in George W Bush and that was good enough. Obama spoke in lofty terms and we imagined a promised land. The rose garden is a thorny place easily wilted not unlike the American Dream. But it became a global nightmare when Obama installed Clinton’s advisors, the very architects of the crime which gestated under Bush. Obama is no more the cause of the financial meltdown than Churchill was of WW II but the war must be waged and he has not rallied the country with words or deeds to meet the crisis. I thought I heard a great man in 2008. He is merely a good one, ceding ground against a sea of ignorance and avarice. It seems as if we elected a man who plays well with others and now many on the Left want one who runs with scissors. He is a deliberate man. He is not, by nature, John Wayne; more of a Gregory Peck with an ear for many voices and an instinct for conciliation. Some day I hope he sits on the Supreme Court. Right now I see him uneasy in the political arena.

What If...

A friend put the question to me….what if Hillary were sitting in Barack’s chair? No, not on his lap; that was husband Bill’s hobby. Would Hillary Clinton have had more balls than Obama dealing with the recalcitrant Congress? Would she have even generated the brainless barrage of bashing endured over the past 30 months?

Of course we’ll never know but it makes for good conversation over a beer or a mocha-dusted frappuccino. My guess is that she would be receiving just a slightly modified version of the scurrilous attacks we hear today; same lies, same virulence with misogyny instead of racism. Would she have had more savvy, be less conciliatory, more confrontational than Obama? I doubt it. I remember her crying on camera before the New Hampshire primary.

Obama has more cool even if his instincts lead him toward compromise. I submit that he has his own narrative largely undecipherable to the chattering class. Like it or not he is addressing the Independent voter noted for a mind that refuses to make itself up. His rhetoric attempts to align itself with this sector which swings according to last night’s dinner and the price of gas. These are the pragmatists among us, generally low-information voters with no ideology. I once worked with a colleague who voted for Clinton because he liked Garth Brooks over John Prine....or was it the other way around? They are more likely to be swayed according to character, or perception thereof, than issues. Independents seem not to understand the consequences of their acts. Our president is positioning himself as the parent presiding over squabbling children.

The fact that Hillary Clinton seems resolute in her role as Sec. of State does not convince me that she would stand up to the far right anymore than Obama. The office of the president is beyond any analogy. In fact the highest decibels heard during his presidency came from opponents of his health care mandate which was, in fact, Hillary’s campaign idea. I don’t buy the notion that the senseless outcry against it would be any less if it were part of Hillary-care.

For those who prefer John Wayne to Gregory Peck, join Netflix. It is not in our president's character. In 1824 Henry Clay, Mitch McConnell's antecedent, had a dispute with Senator Randolph which began a decade earlier when Randolph brought his dog into the Senate. As any macho man knows the occasion called for a duel with pistols. Though it had been banned in Kentucky they went ahead anyway in Washington.
Fortunately they both missed. Have we come to this place again?

To be sure there have been missteps by the administration under-estimating the virulence of his opposition. I believe this is part of the liberal consciousness; to assume the good faith of opponents. Obama is no FDR or LBJ in their power of persuasion but neither does he have majorities in both Houses and a closet full of skeletons to bargain with. When the Democrats controlled Congress it did so in name only. Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman were crypto-Republicans during the healthcare debate.

Furthermore I don’t believe the personality of the individual in the oval office determines the tenor of the times. It was Bill Clinton, not Obama, who allowed the Glass-Steagall Act to be subverted leading to the Wall St./Housing disaster. It was Clinton who caved to Gingrich on so-called Welfare reform, who pushed for NAFTA and other trade pacts which began the closing of American factories. Whether because of his peccadilloes which weakened the power of his office, or his advice from Dick Morris (now with Fox news) or just his abandoning of core Progressive values in order to be loved, Clinton began the drift of the party toward the center.

Obama has done little to halt this movement. What is left of the left? The Nation magazine, Noam Chomsky and the scattered voices heard on MSNBC. Much of their time is spent attacking Obama to remind him of the abandoned poor, the heritage of the Progressive movement and his own roots. Fine, these are needed voices but the result has been a chorus of discontent which skewers his approval rating in national polls and does little but sow seeds of cynicism. For those whose inclination is to assign blame let them look at themselves; the 75% of eligible voters who didn’t bother to vote in 2010 and, by default, delivered us the largest collection of nit-wits in Congress and Governor’s mansions in history.

Let the Repugnants gloat over the debt-ceiling agreement. The pact is nothing if not spin-able. Boehner says he got 98% of what he wanted. The White House also claims victory. Instead of revenue we got defense cuts. Let the lackeys choke on that and if the committee cannot agree on further cuts, with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security off the table, let them answer to their benefactors in the Pentagon or Grover Nordquist. Most of all we need to send home the screaming anarchists in 2012 and embark on a sensible path for the 21st century....what if?

News As Theater

Whether it’s the shenanigans in Washington or the drama unfolding with my beloved Dodgers, the stories read more and more like theatre of the absurd. Much of the sports section as well as the national news could easily be moved to the Entertainment pages.

The participants are players in every sense. Insiders in the Capital know the game and play it for keeps. Athletes play their sport as if it really matters but, consciously or not, they are players re-enacting again and again an ancient ritual sublimating their aggression for us. Without them we might have even more wars. At least they leave it on the field.

In both cases there seems to be a tacit acceptance of an agreed-upon lie. In the political realm we are meant to assume that the two parties answer to polar opposite constituencies. In fact both are funded largely by corporate America and as such are committed to no systemic changes. From FDR to Obama, with all stops in between, the script calls for the preservation of our system and expansion of power. The dance between the actors seems at times comic and other times tragic and it keeps cable stations humming. But greed and muscle prevail over the general welfare with just enough spillover to keep the lid on the working poor and unemployed.

The spectrum has moved so far to the right that the paleo-conservatives have ceded their place to a screaming horde of evangelical / racist / anarchists while the Democrats are indistinguishable from Richard Nixon in his foreign adventures and domestic social programs.

The current debate over raising the debt ceiling feels like a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta or Shakespearean comedy. Nothing receives much ado. What loomed large and unsolvable in the first act disappears in the next act. Deceit, bluster and buffoonery carry the day.

The Supreme Court, bending interpretation as they do, bears a strong resemblance to the judge in Trial By Jury. When our president correctly called for a removal of troops from Afghanistan I couldn’t help think of the song in The Gondoliers:

In enterprise of martial kind
when there was any fighting
he led his regiment from behind
he found it less exciting
but when, away, his regiment ran
his place was in the fore, O
that celebrated, cultivated, underrated nobleman
the Duke of Plaza-Toro.

The cast and scenario of the day’s headlines make our own imagination seem impoverished. Who could have imagined the demise of the Dodgers, over a marital squabble? Bankruptcy with seven homes? An empty stadium?

The actual far exceeds the fiction of our most fertile minds. Rush Limbaugh is a comic book character in appearance and deed along with Joe the Plumber. Spitzer and Weiner (who fumbled their balls on the one-yard line), Barry Bonds (he of the enlarged head), Clarence Thomas (who carries Scalia’s briefcase), Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman (dangerous fools), and Rupert (with his feral foxes) are all larger than life and more laughable than anything Dickens might have penned. Is there a novelist who could have conjured the scenario of a Court appointed George W. Bush followed by 9-11? The emergence of Barack Obama seems like a reject from Frank Capra. Is there a better paradigm for the avarice of Capitalism and the pyramidal structure of Wall St. than Bernie Madoff?

This is a line-up beyond any casting director’s wildest dream; a satire that writes itself. A tragedy of an empire’s decline and fall. Add a score and we’ve got a musical with an unlimited run. We are both in the chorus and watching from sixth row center.