Educate & Act: for each 1 event, do the other.
Lately I’ve been ranting about Machines - old & new --- Our beleaguered republic needs the policy machine restored and how the Biggest, most dangerous of all our trouble is this:
Executive & Legislative Branches at all levels local through national have, in the 180 years since 1839, been turned into re-election machines instead of being the policy machine the Founders established along largely Scottish Enlightenment and Haudensaunee principles in the schematic diagram we United Statesans call “The Constitution”.
In the context of the 2019 domestic and global situation I ask you to reconsider the Complete Text and Audio of Jimmy Carter’s May 4, 1974 Georgia Law Day Speech (hope you’ll reread / listen [35 minutes] to it, made to Georgia Law School alumni [text version transcribed directly from audio; Hunter S. Thompson surreptitiously taped the “bastard of a speech” as well.]. Based on farmer populist Carter’s experience of Reinhold Niehbur (by 1928 a committed Pacifist Christian thinker who, from Union Theological Seminary, ran for Congress in 1932 as a Socialist), Bob Dylan’s (Elston Gunn) live in Manchester Free Trade Hall, Manchester, England, May 1965 recording of “Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll“, and his newly minted antipathy to Ted Kennedy (5 hours old at that time), the fire in Carter’s belly was stoked. He took seriously the mandates of “The Times, They Are a-Changing”, learning “to appreciate the dynamism of change in a modern society”.
Today we must “understand the facts, live with the consequences” (quoting Norman Goldman) that a millennial child born in 2006 United States has a 50-50 chance of living to be 100 years old in 2106. Therefore, it’s an obligation we have to treat these 12 year old Sunrise Movement youngsters better and more seriously than did Dianne Feinstein when they confronted her in her office last week seen in this live video of that event as she summarily dismissed them, even though they have a 50-50 chance of being alive in 2106, asking her to support the #GreenNewDeal resolution shows us an abominable reality in that video which by extension is in some ways what Jimmy Carter addressed in his 1974 Law Day speech. I summarize why I say that in the next paragraphs.
Refocus -- Biggest, most dangerous of all our trouble is this:
Executive & Legislative Branches at all levels local thru national have, in the 180 years since 1839, been turned into re-election machines instead of being the policy machine the Founders established along largely Scottish Enlightenment and Haudensaunee principles in the schematic diagram we United Statesans call “The Constitution”.
Personality labels exacerbate troubles posed by the Re-election Machine and preempt the Policy Machine. Bernie exemplifies Issue Campaigning rather than Personality Campaigning & shows us how issue campaigns are more difficult to successfully practice than are personality campaigns.
Bernie is better than anyone else at playing the margins to attract voters and to attract campaign funds. With the advent of so many outstanding campaigns like that of Elizabeth Warren Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and the like. The Presidency they seek, (“Commander In Chief” is a title, not an office), for whom Policy matters most, gives us Elizabeth, Bernie and all forced to play-up to the competition which is the best of reality for us all.
Campaigning For is more difficult to successfully practice than campaigning Against. As with the traditional marriage gradient in the U.S. in which men marry-up intellectually and women marry-up financially, Bernie is campaigning-up to many intellectually competent women while working to get all our good-hearted men involved with modest marginal but in-aggregate overwhelming financial support like that from which he has benefited in past campaigns. ... (As Norman often reminds, "I don't have facts to back that up...", yet my experience informs my confidence in my assertions.)
I think the best thing to do is back Bernie 2020 on a pledge of a one-term Presidency and then follow-on with Ocasio-Cortez 2024 (she’ll become “old enough” to be President turning 35 on October 13, 2024).
See today’s WaPo news for yet (again!) another reason Trump must go. He’s gotta for the same reasons Carter ran, for the same reasons that Bob Dylan in 1963 cited:
……….
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain’t the time for your tears
…..
In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
To show that all’s equal and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books ain’t pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled
Once that the cops have chased after and caught ’em
And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom
Hattie Carroll’s story as it was in Feb. 1963, that Carter remembered in May 1974, can be told as easily in Feb. 2019. In their own ways, Bernie and Alexandria are telling us what to do about it now. I’ll let them lead.
It’s my story & I'm stickin' 2it.
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