Back in 1972 when I was attending school in Southern California, one of the several missives I found myself reading was “The Strawberry Statement” by James Simon Kunen. Inasmuch as I was draft age, the book held some interest for me… I’d recently lost a very good friend and fellow musician to the Vietnam meat grinder a bit earlier and my prospects weren’t particularly great at avoiding induction. The book was somewhat short in length- more like a paperback novelette - detailing Kunen’s observations and involvement in anti-war movement at Columbia University from 1966-through ’68.
I wouldn’t exactly characterize myself at the time as a “wild-eyed radical Yippie militant”, nor was I completely brimming over with idealism and rabidly desirous for “universal peace, love and brotherhood” either; I did in fact have a full grasp of the wide range of flaws and poisons imbedded in human nature, but somehow I always managed to try to see the good in people… sometimes at my own expense. Anyway, the book was somewhat illuminating to the wide gap between what young persons of that time in history regarded as “justice” and what the spawn of the “Greatest Generation” thought was just. The book revealed that the courage of one’s convictions it seems always comes at a price. But out of the entire missive, only one sentence stuck with me and has since borne out its own truth. It was in the introduction, which read (and I’m paraphrasing here):
“…and as for this ‘Don’t trust anybody over 30’ shit, I think they ought to drop the zero.”
I’ve had too many trips around the Sun to try fooling myself at this point that the Democratic Party has the clout, the money - the “stones’, if you will - to overcome or even prevent what is surely the handwriting on the wall. 53 years is one hell of a long time for any modern organization to refuse nearly every teaching moment and then suddenly wake up and realize it was infiltrated by fools, hucksters, DINOs and gutless wonders with no courage of their convictions.
At this moment in history we have Democratic Representatives retiring, even as the party’s majority had been made even smaller after the previous election (the usual party elite blamed the losses on the defeated Demo candidates who came off as “too liberal”: sound familiar?) In the Senate where for the first time in a decade the party had a slim voting plurality to advance crucial legislation, two senators who hung a “D” after their names to get elected have repeatedly publicly announced their intention to vote with the fascists against things like voting rights, D.C. Statehood, universal health care, mitigating the damage being done to the environment and a living wage.
53 years later I can look back on my own personal struggles to survive in an economy set up for the benefit of the fascists, by the fascists: the children of that “Greatest Generation” who grew up in the poverty of the 1930s and dealt with shortages and rationing in the 40s while their parents went to war. As newly minted conservative anti-communist politicians and industry titans in positions of leadership they got everything on their bucket list, paid for with lobbyist donations to reelection campaigns: frozen wages, busted unions, health care and retirement benefits all but eliminated, taxes on the Middle Class going through the roof while few people except those associated with the M.I.C. saw any financial gains or growth; laws that allowed for off-shoring of corporate profits for tax evasion and loopholes big enough to drive a Buick Electra through. Wars, insurgencies, law enforcement militarization, sanctioned torture, fascist legislative obstruction of a black President’s agenda, the rise of the evangelical religion of the “Jesus Trump” and conservative war on non-white citizens and their right to vote. The January 6th insurrection attempt pretty much made its own statement by this country’s domestic terrorists desire to implement a “4th Reich”. Hell, the old Confederate Stars and Bars might be their unspoken standard, but CPAC’s recent presentation stage was built in the shape of a Nazi Odal Rune: they no longer even put any effort in trying to hide it.
And Kunen thought that “…dropping the zero” was closer to the truth? Maybe ditching the “30” altogether is the better option: after all it’s pretty clear that teaching moments mean nothing.
Continuing at this rate, given human nature and the ongoing history of how well America historically deals with taking out it’s own intellectual trash, the probability of the fascists getting exactly what they’ve always wanted - a full scale race war - is growing higher with each and every DINO infiltration in the Democratic Party, every lost opportunity to bring health care under control, every racist bit of legislation codified into law and every half-hour rant by the conservative bigots in the media. Sooner or later the people of color in this country are going to find themselves bumping up against the boundary condition that has held them back from revolt for untold generations… that idea of “karma”: the notion that justice and good will can overcome the tyranny of racism and forced intellectual segregation through prayer, quiet strength and endurance. Problem is, Mohammad Ali adopted that notion once, calling it the “Rope A Dope” strategy… and all it got him was irreversible brain damage. That should have been a teaching lesson for everyone being crushed under the boot heels of Republican legislative rape of our fledgling Democracy, but Rush Limbaugh was speaking with a louder voice… so fear and powerlessness prevailed, as usual. Somehow Republican fascists always manage to find louder voices that grab the ears and attention of America… something that the Democratic Party seems to have either deliberately repressed or ignored. It’s difficult to imagine how this last election might have gone were it not for the efforts of The Lincoln Project, of all people. Ask yourself: why did it take a group of angry republicans to organize, produce and deliver hard-hitting messaging for the benefit of Democratic campaigns? That, friends and neighbors, is a problem - a huge internal problem that speaks volumes.
So when all those people - the Blacks, the Hispanics, the Pacific Islanders, the Middle Easterners, the Indians (both the indigenous tribes AND immigrants from India) and the Muslims - and yes, even American Jews in this country - finally come to the realization that their “thoughts and prayers” do just about as much good for their quality of life as those “thoughts and prayers” have done for the people who lost their lives to mass killings by deranged gun nuts with deviant agendas, that boundary condition will evaporate and all hell is going to break loose. Fascists never go down without blood and pain (Remember WW2? And remember the result of Neville Chamberlain’s agreement with Germany? Yeah, that worked out really great, didn’t it?). The American Revolution and the War Between The States weren’t settled through “bipartisan negotiations” and “diplomacy” either….
Throughout human history it’s been proven time and again that suppressed people kept in any form of bondage - physical, emotional or otherwise - will eventually revolt if the conditions deteriorate to the point of toxic revulsion when they come to the conclusion that, as the old Janis Joplin tune declared, when you have nothing left, then there’s nothing left to lose. So as the fascists and their corporate sympathizers in the Democratic Party help to enact more repressive legislation or obstruct efforts to repair the damage to our democracy (such as Munchin’s denial of D.C. statehood which is a direct slap on the face of black American citizens) they might well consider the impending future risks they create by doing so.