I have decided that only the South really understands political theater. The Republicans are surpurb at it and the democrats suck. One of the things that FDR got from his eight years at Warm Springs before running for president was the South's use of political theater instead of education.
The fact that Liebermann's position has been publically explained as payback for his electoral defeat as a democrat is being done to judge just how much power and understanding we have developed in the last couple of years. To specifically name this site and others like it; is the equivalent to the Southern invitation to a duel.
I am in total support of Kos's position and I am in total agreement with thereisnospoon. This diary is an expansion on their perspectives. We are going to have to build support systems and it cannot take 30 years to do it.
When I look at the great man theory which The Return of the King attempted this week, I see a crisis that created a crucible that pared the man down to his core. FDR, Churchill, and JFK, MLK, and RFK all went to places of deep pain and emerged men who could absolutely stand and say this I believe, and this I will do. They were not right about everything but they were trusted for this authenticity. They also strove for the best rather than the perfect but they did not mince words about what they were doing.
Prior to his life and death struggle with polio and the death of his life as he knew it FDR was somewhat of a dilettante. When he first ran for vice president it was said he was feather duster Roosevelt just wanting to polish up the look. Spending time in Georgia, opened his eyes to the common people. It was there that he learned empathy for almost everyone. But he got also what he was up against.
The rich in the south wanted no taxes and they were not that civic minded. Thus, unlike the North, sharecropping and agribusiness produced no incentive for paved roads, public utilities, and an educated populace. It was Roosevelt who took federal tax money and started building the south. Almost all the big training basis for the war were built there. A lot of the factories for the manufacture of military support were built there. He knowlingly gave a lifeline to the South.
To overcome proventialism, draftees were sent from the area of their birth across the country to experience the other side of America. This was a deliberate outcome sought by his kitchen cabinet and after the war there were huge migrations of people across the country. Before a 50 mile trip was often a big exotic deal.
Churchill was a suvivor of what is often considered the beginning of the destruction of the British empire and the first time the British four square way of fighting their subjugated colonials failed in the Sudan. He was 25 and survived the retreat back across the dessert being picked off constantly by Arab hit and run fighting rather than intensive engagement. His reaction to this was to become a master planner of tactics.
Both he and Roosevelt in the first world war were navy tacticians who planned and executed the mining of the sea routs and the caravaning of supplies.
JFK had the last rites administered to him five times in his life before his assination. He lived in constant pain; he was careful with drug usage because he wanted to protect his brain. He used the endorphins of sex for pain control. His PT 109 experience changed him forever. These were no big glorious battles but the constant risking of your life which never seemed to have any significant impact. He shared that with all of his men and he never lost that since of bonding in the face of death.
It is for that reason he was deeply infuriated by the misinformation by the CIA and what the Dulles brothers considered the best course for foreign policy---congress be damned. We will never know the depths of his confrontations with the MIC.
MLK knew he would give his life for the cause. He lived fully in the now.
RFK learned humility from pain. He had some real nasty fights with some really nasty people and he learned to seek a third way. He might have succeeded.
Kos is right. He is taking the Reagan stance--trust but verify. Anything else is stupid. We have now experienced enough corruption in all professions to know if you are really making money doing what you are doing--you don't want regs and interference. There is no such thing as benign business management of any kind in the current environment.
Thereisspoon is right in that until we do the kinds of things the right has been doing for 30 years, consistently and now, we are all doomed and that is putting it mildly. The choice as I see it now is how much and how painfully do you want to suffer. Right now we have to do what the right has done and at least block them at every step now. We do not have their kind of money but they do not have our kind of creativity and competency. We need to organize with those aspects and keep the focus.
Tom Hartman made the observation that the right audience is basically 30 to 50 and the left audience is over 50 and under 30. We need to learn the lessons of survivors. Those who out wit, out last and out play--- do so by teaming up with the young for strength and speed and the old for strategy and endurance.
I campaigned for mayor of a southern California city in 1988. One woman against 9 men and I learned a lot. I consider it a campaign that was 20 years ahead of its time. I would like to do a three part series on it, and I am not into an act of futility. I am a loner on this site. I am brain damaged but making a remarkable recovery and learning all about neural plasticity. I have had people say terrible things that are just so over the top. But I stay here because this is the best there is. We need to start coming to ways of consensus. I am going to write for change as a form of spiritual practice. I need support and feedback to do so. I have given this a lot of thought and I would appreciate your taking time to vote a poll as feedback.