I was for Bernie Sanders before I knew his name or heard him speak. I came of political age in the early 1970s. My first vote was against Nixon. I played in bands at protest rallies throughout the decade. I was proud to be voted Freak Of The Week the year we protested VP nominee Bush The Elder with snipers on the student union roof watching us lead protest songs against the coming regime. My compatriots and I envisioned a future where the things Bernie Sanders believes now were common wisdom, and we knew it was obvious the world would be better for it. The People were revolting. The prize was close to being won.
Then Reagan happened.
[Leary said,] “China is one half of the struggle happening on the planet right now. And the struggle is for the consciousness of the planet, a struggle between the mass centralization of China, which American corporate feudal lords aspire to, which breeds that Maoist, insectoid kind of suspicion (And sure enough, we find China today expending more effort in surveillance of the Internet than developing it usefully) the authoritarian Soviet-style state vs. the American sixties style self-realization movement toward individuality and self-evolution. The main battle is for the consciousness of the American people. It’s the biggest ballgame they will ever play. And it is being played for keeps between cultural outlaws and the repressive forces of military police court authority worshippers. During the Sixties an undeclared civil war took place and the right side won.”
“Yeah, my side,” says Liddy. “And we’re not about to let it happen again.”
Conversation between Timothy Leary and G. Gorden Liddy in 1982
The Ghosts Of Timothy Leary & Hunter S. Thompson
By Joe Bageant
Counter Punch
MAY 16, 2007
(emphasis mine)
When Reagan came to power with a host of minions and sycophants our vision was pushed back vociferously. In the forty years since of wandering through the wilderness of their creation, Bernie evolved and moved up through the political levels. As I became aware of him, I recognized in him a hope that politicians could actually remember those simple and powerful ideas and was striving to keep fighting for them. And as Bernie evolved, I have been proud to stand with him whenever I could.
In this election; in this year; in this cusp of change, I stand with him in awe at the era he (and all of us who have stood against the Reagan Revolution knowing a People’s Revolution was inevitable or the Union would fall) are ushering in right now at a breathtaking pace.
In the mid-1980s, a group of us Freaks sat in a University of Washington auditorium to see Hunter S. Thompson, Timothy Leary and Abby Hoffman give a round-table discussion. The room was filled with preppy college students in full suit-and-tie regalia. We hooted and clapped as the panelists made points that stupefied the Reagan Generation students around us. At the end, one asked Hunter why he wasn’t writing like he used against Nixon. Hunter grunted and replied, “I’ve done my job. The real question is, why aren’t you writing anything against this government?”
Good question. Many of us have continued writing and speaking and protesting, because we won a battle in the 60s, but not the war — America’s torturous cultural epilogue to the Civil War. At times, protesting against the two Iraq wars and the Patriot Act and other madness, it seemed hope was lost, even on our Democratic candidates and representatives. But we fought on, nonetheless.
In the last six weeks, the threads of progressive policies we have woven as Democrats in crafting the foundation for a progressive Presidential administration with a Democratic Senate and House and Democrats taking office up and down the line have yielded an undeniable force. Universal Health Care for COVID is what Pelosi and Schumer and company have proposed, and the Senate must eventually yield. The beginnings of Universal Basic Income is in the House bill, and in Phase Four and Phase Five, as Nancy put it, Democrats will fight for it past June 30th all the way to December 31, 2021, as the House initially proposed.
Bernie, and the other progressives have brought every Democrat to the trough from which to drink and go the distance. Unless he screws up, Biden will be President because the revolution has begun. He knows his challenge will be to ride this wave into office.
He won’t have a choice.
As I plowed through all 1100 pages of the original House bill put together by the whole panoply of House Committees, I was gobsmacked by how “Bernie’s agenda” was everywhere in it. The original Take Responsibility for Workers and Families Act was used to amend the Senate’s CARES Act in negotiations with the Senate later that week, but the original lays out a full blueprint for launching the Revolution. It was obvious Our Representatives were listening to the People as Bernie had, and have been since at least 2018. Public service was obviously to be honored and supported up and down the line. More inspectors and regulators. More “socialism” because there is no other choice — not even insane choices We have been served up Administration after Administration are relevant any more. It left few out: it was clear we all are essential.
McConnell and company tried their best in Phase Three to take the juicy parts and ignore the rest. This week McConnell and company are ready to pass an extension to the SBA Paycheck Protection Act on Thursday (today) ASAP. They have no choice. The funding is soaked up in one week. Just say the words “Paycheck Protection Program”. Roll them around on your tongue. WTF? McConnell has to extend it and support it fully?
The price will be exacted by the Pelosi/Schumer tag team Bring more sections of the original House bill forward, fully fund them and extend them to December 31, 2021 or the end of fiscal 2022 (none of this “a few months” mamby-pamby). The Senate will push back, but more will be passed. And Trump will sign it.
He has no choice.
The pandemic will drag on. Rural areas will start getting sick and dying, one church at at time, including here in Iowa. Pressure will build. The other elements of the original House bill will be called forth, and more will get passed. The needle will move and the Overton window will slide — is sliding every moment, faster than thought possible even two weeks ago.
Schools are providing three hot meals a day to children. Student will get computers, tablets and connections to the Internet. The People’s Revolution is rolling as a tsunami with a force to sweep away the Reagan Revolution, the “drug war”, the 9/11 fiasco — all of their underpinning rendered irrelevant and swept aside as rubble.
Day care for essential workers is essential. It will happen: is happening in fits and starts. Education is essential. Homeless people given shelter, food and free health care is essential. Racial and environmental injustices are laid bare in a way everyone understands. The possibility that the whole world’s environment, health and economies can go south in a blink of an eye is now undeniable. Whole governments will be swept away and others will not be able to do business for the billionaires alone any more. Billionaires will pay more for the work force and infrastructure that made it possible for them to “build it themselves”. That fallacy is laid bare. They will adapt.
They have no choice.
I have stood by Bernie as a Presidential campaign because he was the prophet who heard the Word Of The People I heard in my youth and called the People’s Revolution before it seemed possible, but called it nonetheless.. He stood to say that in the official Presidential arena in 2016, a pariah to the pundits. He was joined by many more voices in 2020. Now the People throughout the nation are in revolt and ready to survive through revolutionizing every aspect of Our common weal.
We have no choice.
Bernie Sanders leaves the Presidential stage today vindicated and empowered. He will not go dark, but will fight on to change the Democratic platform planks hindering revolution and do what he can to harden Biden -- who has lucked into a pass in the primary season but will face the most vociferous and brutal onslaught from the Trump/Fox News/hate radio cult ever seen before.
Bernie will continue to stand for the People’s Revolution, and he is no longer alone. By December 31, 2021, we may or may not have a vaccine. But We will have adapted and accepted a taste of universal health care, housing, food assurance, free day care, upgrading the educational systems so every student can learn at home as well as in a classroom, guaranteed income (hat tip to Andrew Yang), forgiving and reducing student loan debt (hat tip to Elizabeth Warren), oversight of stealing money by billionaires, banks having to become the conduit for supporting all businesses of any size and a post office able to serve us with mail-in voting.
We will be used to these things, writ large or targeted to specific citizens. We will want more, and We will want it all to be universal because otherwise this nation cannot survive the pandemics and disasters coming at us. By the time We are able to crawl out of Our isolation and be together in person again, We will know that risk is real and what it can mean.
The regressives will have no choices left.
Harry Belafonte recalled in an interview with Tavis Smiley recently a story he was told by Eleanor Roosevelt. She related a public event when her husband, FDR, introduced Randolph and asked him, Belafonte recalled, "what he thought of the nation, what he thought of the plight of the Negro people and what did he think ... where the nation was headed." Continuing the story, Belafonte recounted what FDR replied upon hearing Randolph's remarks: "You know, Mr. Randolph, I've heard everything you've said tonight, and I couldn't agree with you more. I agree with everything that you've said, including my capacity to be able to right many of these wrongs and to use my power and the bully pulpit. ... But I would ask one thing of you, Mr. Randolph, and that is go out and make me do it."
This story was retold by Obama at a campaign fundraiser in Montclair, N.J., more than a year ago. It was in response to a person asking Obama about finding a just solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. After recounting the Randolph story, Obama said he was just one person, that he couldn't do it alone. Obama's final answer: "Make me do it."
A long train ride
Amy Goodman, King Features Syndicate
January 21, 2009
(emphasis mine)
Joe Biden the person is irrelevant now, other than whether he can truly stand with Bernie et. al. and ride this wave to victory and transformation. He now inherits the whirlwind of a revolution Bernie has whipped from the grassroots to the halls of government. I stand with Bernie, proud to know he has stood for giving me, and every citizen, the chance to see the People’s Revolution finally become real. Once the pandemic passes, there will be efforts to roll it all back, but it will fail if We are resolute and finish what We have started and what Bernie has called upon us to do. Revolt. Reform. Adapt. Prepare.
Thrive, as a people. Say to every public servant, “Thank you for your service”. Join our fellow citizens in protecting and expanding the public commons and honor those who serve the common good. We The People are also recognizing how essential so many workers, long ignored, are: grocery workers, retail workers, waiters and cooks, utility workers — the list gets longer each day of those We now recognize as essential. All of Us. Each of us. We are realizing the common weal and the fellowship of our fellow citizens are essential. That sensibility is a huge shift, and it will have consequences.
We The People will fight on to secure the promise of what will be done under the threat of COVID, but if we place the mantle of power on a Democratic President and Congress this fall, as We certainly have a great chance to do, Our fight will be easier to finish. Finally. We have no other sane choice. COVID is a wake-up call. More calamity is coming — and much trouble is already underway. Pelosi and Schumer are laboring in the vineyard. And they and their Democratic colleagues are now revolutionaries. We all are. We all stand with Bernie now.
The time to have a choice is gone — the People’s Revolution is upon us.
Thank you, Bernie. Thank you for your service. And Joe, be advised: We are going to help you win, and then make you do it.