Some men see things as they are and ask why?
In 1968 I was working as a volunteer campaign worker for RFK in Torrance, California, I was thirteen. I was an envelope stuffer, precinct walker, phone answerer, and on fire for Bobby. My mother approved, my step-father didn't, Torrance, at that time, was a blue collar town, riven over desegragation, the Viet Nam War, the "Great Society" and passions ran high. I thought Bobby would be the answer, would bring America together, then he was assassinated and my hopes were crushed.
In the Spring I had watched Bobby ask the nation to bear the unbearable when Martin Luther King was assassinated and I thought: "only this white man, who had known the painful loss of his brother to the assassin's bullet could speak to this tragedy without seeming false or condescending to the black community." Then, in June, they were both gone.
I have worked for other Democrats, never in any other capacity than a volunteer, Jimmy Carter, Leo Mc Carthy, Ted Kennedy, Pat Brown, Jerry Brown, Barbara Boxer, Bill Clinton in '92, and many others in local campaigns; however, as the years passed, no matter who won, I watched the narrative drift ever right-ward.
I measured them all against the messages of my first campaign: peace, progress, prosperity for the American people, equal opportunity, equal justice, not a perfect America, but an America striving for a better, freer future for all.
I measure the Democratic Party of today against that vision. I measure the America I live in today against that vision. It seems a blurred, wavery, fun-house mirror of a reflection fading into the past. Dim and distant seems the call to "see things that never were and ask why not?"
My first campaign was characterized by a country violently split by war and racial divides, women's rights and environmental concerns were emerging, culture war arising, economic uncertainty, abuse of government power and corporate power rising darkly over the political landscape, sound familiar?
Commie, Fag, "America, Love it or Leave it," Fascist, Hippie, Pig, Warmonger, Nigger, Cracker, "Welfare Queen", bile and hate encouraged by the right and reacted to by the left until civil discourse is shattered and no one listens to anyone but those they agree with. Tit for tat, "an eye for an eye making the world blind" as Gandhi once said. The words have changed, the intensity and lack of constructive debate hasn't.
At President Obama's election night victory, my oldest friend wept, "maybe it's finally over" he said, "maybe America's grown up at last." He died in June, for lack of access to healthcare and an improper diagnosis unconfirmed by tests he couldn't afford. I wept.
I understand the President's desire to move beyond the cacaphony of competing "memes", the dissonance of nonsense and bile filled reaction, the non-discussion that paralyzes us and divides America. I honestly wish him well and support him completely in this quest. We have to find a way to speak to each other without the "memes", change the frame and move ahead for to quote Benjamin Franklin, "if we don't hang together, we all hang separately."
I believe America still has a chance. I believe Democrats still have an opportunity to bring "change we can believe in", but the window is closing, people are weary, alienated, afraid and cynical about government. They are angry and discouraged, we need to help them see our vision of America, but first we have to agree on one. I like RFK's a freer, more equal, healthier, more prosperous America at peace.