In a comment on my short diary
The Fourth of July. 2005, RabidNation wrote:
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the sky isn't falling.
the sky is gone.
it's over.
even IF "progressives" (tm) somehow wrest control of america back from the criminally insane, there really isn't much to save, is there?
sure, the constitution, all that. and vestigal "democracy." but what we've basically got here: a nation of television-addled, self-obsessed, pleasure-fixated, fear-driven idiots whose lives are completely ruled by the corporatocracy. Bush may go away, but TeeVee and the Fortune 500? Never.
America is so over. Which really is too bad. It's the Terri Schaivo of "democracies." Didn't have to turn out that way, but it did.
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Below...my extensive answer.
I feel your pain, RabidNation.
I really do.
I hope you are wrong.
In fact, I am sure that you are wrong.
But if you ARE wrong, it will be by the hairs of our collective chinny chin chins.
We are THIS CLOSE to failing.
This close.
But we have not failed yet.
In my opinion, the reaction to Howard Dean's candidacy in 2003 proved that. There IS a committed portion of the people of this country...mostly fairly young, mostly white, mostly middle and upper middle class, mostly college educated...around which a movement to reclaim the soul of the country could begin. If that group could successfully ally itself with:
1-The Black population
2-The Hispanic population
and
3-The disaffected white working class, at least that portion of it that is not totally right-wing churched out...and that is no small number of people, because not ALL country and working-class white people are the stereotypical beer drinkin', Nascar hootin' yahoos that they have been painted to be by the mass media...
Then yes...it could be done.
We are not completely a "nation of television-addled, self-obsessed, pleasure-fixated, fear-driven idiots whose lives are completely ruled by the corporatocracy."
Just about 51% of the voters are that. Maybe less, if the vote frauding charges are true. (Which I believe they are.) Or...maybe more, if you look at for whom the Democratic voters were voting.
But out in the field, where the PEOPLE live?
Nope.
Ain't like that.
I spend a great deal of time in the various bellies of this complicated beast, and I'm telling you...there are PEOPLE on down in there.
I play, write and teach the American music known as "jazz" (Whatever the hell that word really means...) for a living. Music with Black and Hispanic roots. I live in the Bronx, in a totally mixed race working class neighborhood. I am white, and spend probably 25 weeks a year...more, some years...traveling through the heartland of this nation.Sometimes by car, sometimes on a band bus, sometimes by air. I usually stay in moderately inexpensive motels, although occasionally in really expensive hotels in the downtowns of big cities. I also have relatives who are working class white semi-rural people (New England division), and a son who is going to a fine college full of young people who are really looking around trying to find an honorable way to make a life here.
So I travel through almost all the sections of this culture, blending in fairly well wherever I am, and I get to hear and see the truth of the matter unfiltered by the media.
And I'm here to tell you...there are PEOPLE down in there.
I see and meet them everywhere.
Maids working in hotels.
Most of the non-front desk staff of all hotels. And restaurants, too.
In fact...most of the working-class people I meet WHEREVER I go.
The female cop on the corner in Pittsburgh who recognized me from the concert the night before and beamed when I stopped to ask for directions. I didn't recognize her, but one of the other musicians did. "Remember that FINE woman all done up in a backless gown with the fly hair who came to the reception afterward? That's her, minus the wig and makeup." And it was.
The truck drivers at the road stops. Fine folks, most of them. Friendly, just lookin' to get by...
People who work at gas stations.
Taxi and bus drivers.
Almost everybody working at airports, from the janitors and porters right on up through the ticket takers and TSA people, the fight attendants and the pilots and the baggage handlers. Had two black female flight attendants on a fairly small jet from Atlanta to Key West a short while back have an attack of the giggles as they tried to make the announcement at the beginning of the flight...just flat out happy...and by the time they were finished the entire plane was having a good time.
The people who come to the concerts and club gigs I play. HUNGRY for something real, and standing ovation happy when they get it. Just about every gig, for just about every type of audience.
White, black, hispanic, young, old, working class, middle class, richer than SHIT class, urban, suburban, rural, north south east west mid-west and all points in between.
The students at colleges and high schools. Millions of them. Hip to the bullshit, but discouraged...like you, RabidNation...by the falseness that surrounds them. I give clinics and masterclasses to these kids, and I am here to tell you...they are ALIVE AND KICKING.
ALL of these people are alive and kicking.
Give then someone and something to vote for...not BushCo Lite, not the usual poll-driven rich boy Democratic dullards who are so afraid of losing that they cannot win, not someone running AGAINST someone or something else...and we WILL win.
But the Democratic Party is still largely in the hands of the kinds of people who have lost and lost and lost again over the past 40 years or so. And if THEY are the ones to choose who gets the nomination to run for President and we get more of the same...another out of touch motherfucker who really doesn't know or trust the on-the-ground, line-level working people of America...then they are not going to trust HIM, and will vote in abstentia. That is...they will ABSTAIN from voting, just like they did last time.
Right now, there is only one Democrat with national recognition who fits that description.
Howard Dean.
When I read about him traveling with no entourage, carrying his own bags, flying coach, taking buses, having grass roots level meetings with people in places that have no media glitz recognition factor whatsoever...I see someone who is IN TOUCH WITH THE AMERICA THAT I KNOW.
The America that I have experienced over my 30+ year career as a musician.
From Howard Deans' book, You Have the Power: How to Take Back Our Country and Restore Democracy in America.
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Jim Jordan, John Kerry's former campaign manager, called me "an unemployed doctor with no responsibilities." The New York Times mocked me for my lack of foreign-policy experience. Everyone went on about my so-called intemperate way of speaking ("mad-mouth disease," James Carville called it).
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(AG) Jim Jordan, the New York Times and James Carville. I LOVE a man with the right enemies. More from the book.
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But ordinary people didn't listen. Ordinary people started to think that having an ordinary guy run for president wasn't such a bad idea.
I realized in New York, and in Portland and Seattle -- in all the places where I'd get up to speak and face a sea of people stretching back as far as I could see -- that if you had something to say, people would come out to listen. I realized that people were hungry to listen if they came across a politician who really had something to say.
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(AG) The same realization that I have had about real music. EXACTLY the same.
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I realized, too, that people were thrilled to find a politician who reminded them of themselves. Someone who lived a normal life, with a wife and a family, who struggled to balance work and family, and sometimes got it right and sometimes didn't. Who shouted too loudly at hockey games and didn't always know the right thing to say. Who made "gaffes." Who disliked the media -- and showed it. Who wore an old cheap suit and liked it, and traveled coach class and stood in line, and took the subway and ate too many doughnuts.
People felt they were like me. They felt they knew me. They followed my progress around the country on the blog entries that my campaign aide Kate O'Connor updated every day. If she wrote that we were eating too much junk food, people would show up at events with home-cooked meals. If I had a cold, they'd show up with cold medicines. They worried about me. If I misspoke, they scolded me. On the blog, they addressed me as "Guv."
They loved my wife, Judy, who kept up her medical practice while I toured the country. She chose to stay home to work and be with our 17-year-old son, Paul, a high school senior. To the media, this was poor campaign strategy. "Physician, heal thy spouse," wrote The New York Times's Maureen Dowd. But to regular people, it was great. They understood Judy because she was a normal person. Because, like them, she led a life filled with competing commitments and responsibilities. They understood her priorities: that you can't simply walk away from a job or a teenager at the drop of a hat, because children -- and for her, patients -- need you to be around. People got that.
Having a candidate who was like them clicked on a profound level with people. It suggested to them that they weren't alone. It made them feel listened to, as though they counted. And it made them feel, for the first time in a long time, that there was hope in a political landscape that, for as long as they could remember, had seemed all but closed to them and their concerns. To them, politicians seemed to care only about the interests of big-money donors. This flicker of hope, which the campaign ignited, soon turned into something more like a lightning bolt. It jolted people out of feeling disenfranchised and depressed. It made them feel empowered.
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(AG) Once again: "Having a candidate who was like them clicked on a profound level with people. It suggested to them that they weren't alone."
And that is my point.
If we want this country to survive, we need to involve the people of America on a PERSONAL level.
The great Jimmy Breslin often said "ALL politics is local."
Well...all politics is PERSONAL too.
You say "America is so over. Which really is too bad. It's the Terri Schaivo of 'democracies.' Didn't have to turn out that way, but it did."
It HASN'T turned out that way.
Not yet.
The Democratic Party has a true visionary at its head. We've got one more shot at it before it's time to pack up the old feeding tubes and head for the cemetery.
Let's see what we can do,
Howard Dean for President!!!
And a HAPPY Fourth of July for many years afterward if this comes about.
If it doesn't...
"Last call...!!!"
Later...
AG