Politics

The media obsession with details of politics in America breeds an apathy, born of overkill. Politics have overshadowed government. The manipulations for power have become a spectator sport on the level of professional wrestling. Meanwhile, the quality of American government on all levels deteriorates. Look at your roads, your buses, your subway trains for an illustration.

The yowling Tea Party contingent bring more dysfunction to this environment. Playing with covert racism and homophobia, these closet Republican Rightists seek to immobilize any progressive legislation in a time of national crisis. Their motivation, shrilly misrepresented as patriotism, is obviously manufactured by corporate financing.

Progressives of all types are disillusioned by the Obama administration's sadomasochistic love affair with Wall Street. Summers, Frank and Geithner serenade Obama with sonnets of Wall Street's inherent love of democracy and freedom, as the money men continue to pick the pockets of the American people.

There comes a time in any organization's life when it begins to exist for itself, not for those who have formed it or pay for it in money or labor. This seems glaringly true of the U.S. administration, Congress and Supreme Court. Our government is foundering in a sea of political self-interest. And the people are suffering for it.

Perhaps it is good for the citizens to disengage from this government, as it now operates. Perhaps this is a time for a Jeffersonian revolution. This Fall's election will definitely be a harbinger of what form such a revolution will take in America.

Ronny

hey, chimp-loving actor man

are you resting in peace alone?

no crowds there in the ground.
cameras are all turned off now.

remember me? could you now?

your big feet walked all over us.

that hollywood '40s wave smile

under your red-dyed white hair.

are you mingling with my pals?

killed by your anti-gay bigotry
killing the chance to kill a virus,

killing us sooner, you had hoped.

what do you say to quilt people?

do you charm them with a joke?

do you blame the darn russians?

do you cry "mommy'' to nancy?

your own gay son is born again.

jesus-loving son of rightist god.

the fanatics mass to your image,

print it on the fifty, they chant.

you are their addled golden calf,

elevated as the neo-cons' idol

in the face of any human justice,

false liberty's proud demagogue.

Celebrity

Today's Scott Brown is tomorrow's Tiger Woods.

Socialism

As I look at the current culture here in the U.S., I wonder if all the hyperactivity I see is a symptom of unmedicated or overmedicated anxiety and/or depression. The obsessive use of smart phones in public by a growing percentage of Americans is disturbing to me as a former psychiatric nurse. I see self-imposed social isolation in the midst of crowds everywhere. It looks like self-imposed autism.

I ride the subway frequently. Subways are marvelous, random microscopes for the scientific and observant. I study my subway cars. I would estimate that, on average, approximately 20-30% of passengers busy themselves with smart phones without eye contact or apparent engagement in their environment. On the posher spans, through wealthier communities, I would up that estimate to 30-50%.

In poorer communities along the subway lines, single passengers who are not focused on their smart phones usually stare blankly ahead and avoid all eye contact with other passengers. Disabled and elderly passengers in the aisles are ignored or buffeted by passengers as they push in or out of the train. In wealthier communities, groups of passengers take over sections of the train car. Often they sprawl over sections of several seats and yell across the aisle, while other standing passengers are packed tightly in the aisle around them. This is overt, antisocial behavior, practiced by the young and middle-aged alike.

I see these behaviors as symptoms of the conscious and unconscious manipulation of the society by financial-capitalist business, government and media. The individualistic materialism of the past two decades has been fostered by media and Reaganite (neo-conservative and neo-liberal) political ideologues, who are hand-in-hand with financial institutions and corporations. The entrepreneurial, anti-tax, anti-socialist messages are unrelenting. Socialism has become a dirty word. Lack of socialism on a very pragmatic, democratic, non-totalitarian basis is a destructive force when human beings are overpopulating their environment. We need look at Haiti for an example of the end point of this.

This trend can take the U.S. in only one direction. Greater class separation, class conflict, violence and the degradation of the overall quality of life. Those with wealth are apparently blind beyond their own greed and need for celebrity adulation by the duped masses. This is not new. It is a sad replay of pre-democratic history. And, democratic socialism is not the cause. It may well be the cure.

Politics

Scott Brown, the faux-commoner, nude poser and shill for the national Right Wing, is now the U.S. Senator-elect from Massachusetts. This is the political game in 2010 in America. The Democrat establishment has reaped the returns of its naivete and smugness. Obama is not the Messiah of a New Age. This is a good lesson for them and for those on the Left.

The battles for gay rights, universal rights to health care, just immigration policy and a peace-oriented foreign policy are still undecided. The powers of violence, fundamentalist hatred, greed and sexism are still alive and well in America. Those powers will pepper the airwaves with reactionary propaganda. They will spout liberal views in public and fund reactionary candidates in private. They will spur the resentful to the polls in January sleet in once-progressive Massachusetts. Politics are duplicitous. Nature of the game.

While I find the arrogance of Mr. Brown's duplicity particularly distasteful, I welcome the potential effect of this wake-up call. Neo-Liberals, like Coakley, have been shown to be ineffectual, monotonous and Republican-lite. The national political soup has been well stirred by this little Massachusetts election. I, for one, say, "Let it boil."

Stupidity

The current 'new' political movement in the U.S. is the Tea Party movement, which developed around opposition to universal health care in 2009. Some of the opportunists behind this movement (perhaps 'business' would be a better term) are techies in Chicago who founded the Samuel Adams Alliance. The name of this group belies the stupidity, or perhaps duplicity, of its motives. Samuel Adams, according to their literature, was chosen as their mascot based on their appreciation of his Libertarian, anti-government principles.

Below is a quotation from http://www.ushistory.org/, which tells a different story about Samuel Adams. Perhaps the new Tea Party patriots should start drinking their 'tea', rather than smoking it.

"Samuel and John Adams' names are almost synonymous in all accounts of the Revolution that grew, largely, out of Boston. Though they were cousins and not brothers, they were often referred to as the Adams' brothers, or simply as the Adams'. Samuel Adams was born in Boston, son of a merchant and brewer. He was an excellent politician, an unsuccessful brewer, and a poor businessman. His early public office as a tax collector might have made him suspect as an agent of British authority, however he made good use of his understanding of the tax codes and wide acquaintance with the merchants of Boston. Samuel was a very visible popular leader who, along with John, spent a great deal of time in the public eye agitating for resistance. In 1765 he was elected to the Massachusetts Assembly where he served as clerk for many years. It was there that he was the first to propose a continental congress. He was a leading advocate of republicanism and a good friend of Tom Paine. In 1774, he was chosen to be a member of the provincial council during the crisis in Boston. He was then appointed as a representative to the Continental Congress, where he was most noted for his oratory skills, and as a passionate advocate of independence from Britain. In 1776, as a delegate to the Continental Congress, he signed the Declaration of Independence. Adams retired from the Congress in 1781 and returned to Massachusetts to become a leading member of that state's convention to form a constitution. In 1789 he was appointed lieutenant governor of the state. In 1794 he was elected Governor, and was re-elected annually until 1797 when he retired for health reasons. He died in the morning of October 2, 1803, in his home town of Boston."...

Truth

Jeremiah Wright, the much maligned friend of Mr. Obama, is a speaker of the truth. And I do not mean HIS truth only. Part of the popular furor he has raised is akin to the whining resistance of a sleepy child who resents being roused from its blissful sleep. A greater part of the cynical negative propaganda against Wright comes from the fascist Right Wing of the Republican Party.

The poor are poorer than ever in the US. The Iraq War is an abomination. The Bush administration is corrupt and evil. The Congress is impotent. Racism is alive and prospering in the US in many different forms. The people are suffering at the hands of the greedy, wealthy and powerful, whether those privileged classes are aware of it or not. The rich are richer than ever and paying less of their share of the public funds.

The truth hurts those who choose to deny it or ignore it. Wright is simply saying what should be said regularly on the public airwaves and in the press. Those forums have been kidnapped by the Right Wing.

It is easy to dismiss Wright as a crackpot. His style is histrionic. But Martin Luther King would be saying the same things if he were alive today. King's style was also histrionic. Jeremiah Wright is a brave man to follow in King's footsteps. Fascist assassins have good aim. Cowardly Liberals too readily defer to the Right Wing's brutality.

Practice is difficult and dangerous. It does not make you popular.