This diary is just some reflections on the state of politics and the world circa June 10th, 2007.
Here's my theme: I think people underestimate just what a significant turning point we are at right now...as a nation, as a political party and as a planet full of human beings.
My thesis is that the 2008 Presidential election will have to be, whatever the candidates on either side, about that turning point.
History is bigger than either party at this point.
I'm 38 years old. That gives me just enough perspective to know a few things up close and personal about America's past...and its future.
I remember as a child my dad driving me past a farm near where he grew up and pointing out a farmer plowing a field with a team of horses. "Remember that, Paul" my dad said, "you won't see that at all in a few years." And he was right.
My grandmother...my dad's mom...never did get running water in her farm house. When we stayed with her I learned how to fetch pails of water from the well and pour that well water into one basin for drinking and another separate basin for washing one's hands. When you look at the sky and see the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper...they are so called because people used to use dippers to pour well water into their drinking glasses. Water didn't come from a faucet. It still doesn't in many parts of the world.
My last living grandparent, my grandmother, turned 95 today. (She had a nice birthday by the way, but, like many 90 year olds, doesn't have much to recommend about turning 95.) When she was a little girl she used to love to run chase cows in the pasture. Her favorite thing in the world was home made ice cream made with fresh cream. If you ask most people her age, they will agree. That home made farm ice cream must have been really good.
My grandmother was Czech and spoke Bohemian; when she went to town with her parents where everybody spoke English, she felt exactly like young immigrants from Somalia and Mexico and Laos feel in our country today. If you've ever read the novel My Antonia by Willa Cather, well, that's the story of my grandmother's life. That's one thing that hasn't changed much in America. Hard-working immigrant families are still the subject of fears and animosity and resentment despite all the good they've done, and are doing, for this country. And poor immigrant girls...citizens born here in the USA...still peek out from behind their mother's knees and look out at the stern face of our society wondering how they will make a new life somewhere between their parent's ways and their own.
My dad's mom had postcards of Jack Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey on the wall. I remember many a neighbor's house on the block I grew up that had a photo of JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. Nobody much puts postcards of politicians on the wall anymore. Instead, on all sides, we pretty much spend most of our time tearing them down.
That makes sense. You can google enough dirt on anyone to provide fodder for the 24 hour "always on" news cycle and if Michael Dukakis looks goofy in a helmet then he sure as HELL shouldn't be president of the United States of America. Or if Barack Obama mishandled his Myspace volunteer...or John Edwards paid too much for a haircut...or some blogger somewhere thinks that Hillary Clinton is the antichrist personified...well, then it's so.
I mean, if enough people say it...if enough people say that the 2008 election is about x, then it IS so. Right? It HAS TO be. That's what's real. We make our own reality now...just like my grandmother used to make her own ice cream with fresh cream from her cows.
We make our reality with digital bytes. Mark Halperin said so, I think...and Maureen Dowd agreed...I think I saw David Broder nod his head. But, of course, that's not true. History is still bigger than all of us. History still makes our all of our efforts to change the direction of this country and this world look small in comparison.
We've become such a proud and egotistical nation. Our leaders think nothing of invading a country like Iraq on the fly. The political math behind the succesive Iraq war votes was the same political math that's been fueling the calculations in this country for the last forty years...back to a moment when America made its last great stand for the real ideals behind our country...equal rights, the pursuit of happiness, equality before the law...before we got embroiled in that other war. 1964 was back when a President would dare to do something simply because it was the right thing to do...and because there were thousands of righteous and organized voices demanding it be so.
Of course, that war, Viet Nam, broke so many things.
Martin Luther King Jr. was protesting that war and fighting poverty the year he was shot. That same year Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who was a white voice for civil rights before that was a popular stance, broke his campaign for President on that war as well. Viet Nam was bigger than Humphrey. The depth of the hate in America was bigger than Martin Luther King Jr. In 1968, America learned the hard way about what ideals can, and cannot, do.
We are at a new turning point. It might not happen this election. But it will soon.
Children in our nation are born into a world with no idea of what fresh farm ice cream tastes like...or what it's like to live on a farm in harmony with one's animals and nature itself in a balanced cycle of life and death. And nobody puts pictures of imperfect, idealistic politicians on the wall anymore. It just wouldn't make sense.
Instead, we live in a world somewhere between the real world you see everyday and the one you are reading now. Cell phone calls, text messages, blogs, instant communication and analysis. The only way to get out the message about global warming is to make a movie about and hope the DVD does well. That's an inconvenient truth, too. You gotta hit 35,000 views on YouTube or you are nobody.
Talking to our neighbors is such an old fashioned relic of the past...like water from a dipper. Who needs neighbors anyways? Which is a funny thing. Because the other day I got together with some neighbors and talked about local politics. It's funny what you can learn when you do that, the friends you can make. It's funny how it will change your mind about the kind of power you have at your fingertips when you actually, you know, start to do something.
These folks had something to do with this group called DFA that is based on that idea. Meeting up, talking about politics with your neighbors, inviting other people to get involved.
There's other groups like that. They all work on the same principle. Local politics is a way to stay sane and change this world...one block at a time. Getting organized locally is a powerful way we can live up to our ideals and make them count. From where I stand, it's also one of the the only ways we humans can confront the force of history...one community at a time. That's how we founded this country, and it's how Rev. King forged the Civil Rights movement. In fact, there was a guy who was popular last presidential election cycle. His name was Howard Dean. He wasn't perfect. Nobody is. But his message was similar to what I'm trying to convey tonight. We are living at a turning point. These are exciting, significant times. What we do and say makes a difference.
Now, let's get off our asses and do something about it.