Category Archives: Political

The Obama Conundrum

Posted on by
Reply

Years ago I remember a debate published between Michael Harrington and Christopher Lasch in The New York Review of Books about the efficacy of working inside the “system” or outside it to create social change.  (I might be wrong about the publication—it was a long time ago.)

Since that read, this debate has been a major part of my life as well as my political thinking.  Although my stint in Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) was obviously a “within,” the program I helped developed was not–and, by design. The People’s School, a storefront project that worked with high-school dropouts to eighty year olds, staffed by volunteers, had nothing to do with the Chicago school system.  “Inside” or “out?” Both, really.  VISTA paid my salary.

I was offered a job in Boston at Project Place, which, at the time, was a worker run collective where paid workers and volunteers made collective decisions about defining and running our different projects.  And there were many: a counseling center, 24/7 telephone emergency hotline, runaway houses, legal aid, ambulance, and more.  All the services were free, which meant private and public fundraising.  “Inside” or “out?”  Also both.

I’ve always leaned toward  the “outside” argument and lived much of my life as an “outsider.”  Never felt easy in schools and have no high-school or college diplomas to show for that discomfort–though I attended both, even graduate school, for at least a while.

This headset continued when I decided to write detective fiction.  My main character, Matt Jacob, is definitely a person who works outside any system.  And while he is an exaggeration, the apple never falls far from the tree.  When Random House systematically tried to censure my work (another story for another time) I picked up my fourth book and lawyered out of my contract.  In fact, if it weren’t for the radical changes in publishing and the ability to totally control all aspects of my writing and (soon to be) E-books, I’d a never returned.

But for me, one of the largest outside/inside issue has been the ballot box.  I just could never buy the “better of two evils,” argument as an inducement to the polls.  Since 1972 and George McGovern I’ve never voted in another federal election.  Until 2008 when I not only voted, but worked for the Obama campaign.

Some of it was purely personal.  My father owned a tavern in a small town when I was growing up.  At that time, when a Black person walked into the bar and was served, immediately upon his departure, whoever was bartending had to make a show of breaking his glass.  Not because my father personally disliked Black people; he campaigned among this friends and voted for Obama in 2008.  If the glass had remained intact he would have been out of business the next day.  Literally.

So for me, the notion of a progressive Black having an opportunity to actually win the presidency was right up there with smashing the Berlin wall.

I knew Obama had emerged from Chicago politics and all that implies. But after Bush’s eight years, two wars, the disgusting Patriot Act, and a myriad of other repressive measures, I thought the country was ready for significant change and believed he thought the same.  He was going to be a difference maker.

I was wrong.  Although the Obama administration has accomplished things I believe in—a terribly flawed but better than nothing health care law, abolished Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, non-enforcement of The Defense of Marriage Act, some Wall Street and credit reforms, he simply hasn’t hurdled my “pass/fail” process of looking at life.

We now have three wars.  One without any discussion of an “end game.”  Guantanamo remains open and people held captive without any hope of due process.  And most importantly the nation’s wealth is still shoveled to the rich while the poor and middle class have their services and safety nets dismantled.

I understand that the first two years of his administration was hampered by “Blue Dog Democrats”.  I also understand that the Republicans now control the House.  But maybe it’s time for Barak Obama to read that debate between Michael Harrington and Christopher Lasch.  Despite being president, maybe it’s time to work “outside” the world of political compromise because leading from behind the pack and acquiescing to right wing blackmail just isn’t working.

Maybe it’s time to stop thinking about 2012.

HOW CAN YOU BE IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE IF YOU’RE NOWHERE AT ALL?
The Firesign Theatre

Love Me, I’m A Liberal

Posted on by
Reply

Maybe it began because I worked a telephone bank for Barack Obama. Or, perhaps it started when the ACLU emailed a request to join. They’re big on the First Amendment and so am I.  It seems to me the right of skin-headed Nazi’s to march is a fair trade for the right to present art that is frequently attacked and banned by the Neanderthals who pock-mark the country.

So I dues up, get my card, sign their petitions.

Then came the email from People For The American Way.  Hey, anyone who created Archie Bunker and Meathead and actually mobilizes against the Wing-nuts who want to hurtle the country back to the 18th century I gotta support.

So I join and sign their petitions.

What can you say about Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International other than they shine light upon some of the most horrific abuses throughout the world.

More dues, more petitions.

I figure I’m set–spent my charity budget and feel pretty righteous

But it ain’t over.  Slow and steady, email by email, link by link, the requests to sign this and that and the other pile heavy into my inbox.

How do I turn down requests by organizations who protect a woman’s right to choose?

I sign.

How do I turn down Mayors Against Guns when 34 people a day, every day, get shot?

I sign.

How do I turn down environmental groups when I believe in climate change and have worked closely with laborers who have died from the toxicity in their plants?

I sign.

Well, by this time, I’m not feeling all that righteous.  Hell, now when I click a link I don’t even have to fill in blank boxes.  They know me.

As a result, I get a stream of form letters from senators and congressmen thanking me for taking the time to express my views.  And a promise to keep my ideas in mind when relevant legislation lands on the floor.  To absolutely no avail.  Virtually every issue I’ve sign up for loses when it hits the House or Senate.  So much for their minds and my signatures.

But signing has become crack.  I can’t stop.  I’m fucking signing petitions to protect polar bears.  Why? The closest I’ll ever get to one will be on the NatGeo channel.  But I think it through.  Palin and her motley crew must be behind this bear slaughter.

I sign.

I’m signing petitions against virtual fences, for new filibuster rules, against budget cuts, for the recall of state politicians in states that aren’t mine.  I’m signing save  bowhead and beluga whales and walruses.  I wouldn’t know a beluga if one skateboarded down my block and chomped on my legs. (Isn’t it actually caviar?)

So, for sure, I sign.

I’m so devoted to petitions that more often than not I think I’m the president signing executive orders.  But then I look around and see that none of my orders command any respect.  Just the opposite.  The country is sliding back in time and all I see are wars, poverty, loss of rights, worse racial inequality, and right-wing Jihadists running the show.

Guess it’s time to admit the obvious.  If this is how high my “freak flag flies,” I owe an apology to David Crosby.  Somewhere along the line, I cut my hair.

From error to error, one discovers the entire truth.
-Sigmund Freud

Dylan, Ochs: A Conversation

Posted on by
Reply

(Artistic License Taken)

Thursday night I’d anticipated going to the documentary Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune. This edited instant message conversation took place between me and my blogger friend Rawrah (http://rawrahs.blogspot.com/ or see “Links” on this site):

Rawrah: From what I’ve read he hated Dylan. Ochs would torture himself to write and Dylan would simply pull magic out of his ass.

Me: For sure Ochs poked fun at Dylan. In one of his songs (forgot the name) he did it in a self-deprecating way. But I would call Dylan’s lyrics poetry, not magic.

Rawrah: Ochs believed in what he was singing. Dylan rejects the idea of “meaning” in his songs.

ME: Hell, I’ve used that line about my Matt Jacob books. Don’t make it true.

Rawrah: You might bullshit but that doesn’t make Dylan a liar.

ME: Trudat—but I still think he’s doing a throwaway.

Rawrah: Good to be a mind reader, huh?

ME: Asshole. It’s interesting. Dylan is talked about at the music studio. Probably ’cause I bring him up.

Rawrah: About whether he actually knew what he was saying in his songs?

ME: No. Because I say he’s the most important songwriter in our lifetime. The argument is usually about his “musicality.” I’m hit with “He can’t sing and his music is at best rudimentary, if that.” I say the poetry of his lyrics supersedes—but that don’t really fly at a music school.

Rawrah: I think people attribute a lot more depth than is actually displayed.

ME: Thanks, pal.

Rawrah: I read he’d skim a newspaper and dump out three or four songs of lyrics. Or eavesdrop on a conversation then spew out its essence. A savant.

Me: Depends on the definition. Savant means “sage” or, as in “idiot savant–an intellectually disabled person who exhibits extraordinary ability in a highly specialized area, like mathematics or music. Gotta be a stretch to call Dylan intellectually disabled.

Rawrah: Why? Some say most people have “savant” potential but few have the series of experiences to trigger it.

ME: You know, we’re writing my Monday post. You mind?

Rawrah: Feel free.

ME: Thanks. See, what I think when you talk about Ochs’ needing to struggle to write and Dylan “pulling it out of his ass,” is their difference in ability to access the subconscious. Take Robin Williams…

Rawrah: Uh oh.

ME: When he’s on a talk show and somebody says something that clicks you can almost see the door to his subconscious open and out comes a riot. But a crafted riot. So I’m saying that Dylan’s door was more open than Ochs but that Ochs got there anyway and both used craft to hone their message into art.

Rawrah: And isn’t that the real difference between Ochs and Dylan. Ochs had to work to create—to say nothing about living his ideals—and Dylan didn’t.

ME: I probably call that the difference between genius and not. As for living ideals, don’t forget Dylan helped ignite a movement and Ochs ending up killing himself

Rawrah: Now who’s the asshole? I’d say there are truly gifted people and when their particular gift intersects at precisely the right circumstance, what emerges is magic.

“Please… could somebody just go ahead and WikiLeak whatever it is Bob Dylan has been singing for 50 years?” Bauart

Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered

Posted on by
Reply

BEWITCHED

It was mid October 1967, the Wisconsin air chilly, the sun bright.  The long drawn out discussion was over—those who wanted to be arrested inside the commerce building would block the Dow recruiters’ doors and those who didn’t would line its corridors.  Or protest outside.

I quickly realized that any distinction about committing civil disobedience was moot.  We were stuffed inside the building like sardines in a can.  No one could tell who was blocking a door and who wasn’t.

A university rep gave us a chance to leave before police would be called in to clear the building but no one made a move. I guess we thought that, at worse, they would push us outside—if we thought anything at all.

Then the tear gas bombs hit and the sardines, blinded and choking, began pushing and pulling each other in a deteriorating meltdown of rage and confusion.  Facemasks lowered, a phalanx of riot geared cops descended, indiscriminately swinging clubs in every direction.  We were red meat in front of Dobermans. Men, women, it didn’t matter. Blood flew in all directions.

They cleared the building with brute force but as we stumbled into the sun, eyes tearing, coughing, gagging, we saw the enormous swell of the crowd—many of whom had come to watch or were simply going to class but had now joined the ranks of outside protesters appalled by what they had seen.

Hundreds and hundreds were politicized that day including folks who’d never paid any attention to the anti-war movement.  And now actually began to listen.  It was a seminal moment, not only at the University but nationwide as people were stunned by what they had seen on television.

There are those who believe the anti-war movement of the Sixties failed.  From where I sat it was the genesis of long lasting social change: women’s rights, gay rights, poor peoples’ rights, and a vision of a world no longer built on the “survival of the fittest.”

And now, 42 years later I watch Wisconsin’s protesters, relive my memories, my beliefs about our lasting effects, but wonder whether  this year’s Madison augurs well for Amerika’s political direction or a losing stand against the country’s dark march.

BOTHERED

Detroit just announced that it is closing half of its schools and firing one half of its teachers.  Providence, because of “budget” rules, fired all their teachers. Boston’s school superintendent is trying to unilaterally close about half a dozen schools and you can pretty well imagine the neighborhoods she chose.

Health Insurance companies are creating hospital tiers. You want to go to a “good” one, you pay extra.  Virginia’s General Assembly passed legislation requiring abortion offices, clinics, and centers that perform first-trimester abortions to be regulated as hospitals—arguably the strictest requirement in the country.

Texas has committed 466 of the 1,239 state-sanctioned murders (executions) that have taken place in our country since 1975. And it’s Texas, by virtue of population, that designs much of the content of our nation’s social studies textbooks—content decided by a committee that includes a real estate agent and a dentist but no historians or economists. Corey Booker, a mayor I respect, makes it clear in Brick City, a TV documentary series about his administration, that he’ll cut everything possible to keep police and firemen happy.  And a couple of years ago The Boston Globe presented a pie chart that indicated almost 70% of the country didn’t believe in evolution.

I could probably write on forever, but would prefer, love it, if people would fill in their own blanks.

BEWILDERED

It was Wisconsin who voted in this governor.  Who voted out a fairly progressive senator.  Am I really surrounded by seven out of ten people who refuse to incorporate fossil evidence into their world view?  Have we totally given up trying to break the cycle of poverty that causes crimes to simply rely on catching and jailing those who commit them?  I know we’ve turned our backs onany notion of rehabilitation in our prisons.

And yet, and yet, there are people on the street fighting for the right of collective bargaining and unions in general.  People on the street struggling for a woman’s right to choose.  People on the street championing gay marriage and the actualization of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”  People on the street demanding decent housing and food for the poor and disenfranchised.  Honorable lawyers working every day to keep innocent people of color out of jail.

I’d like to believe.  I hate the idea of doing a lemming into the sea but I smell the salt.  I hope it’s fucking age.

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” -Robert Frost

Horsehair Or Horseshit

Posted on by
Reply

I wanted to write about spring training.  About the Green Monster and the Yankee pitching staff.  About trips with my friend Bill to Arizona the past couple of years to watch teams I never get to see.  About the pleasure of reading on the porch, listening to a game on the radio during warm summer nights.

I wanted to let my mind slide past the snowdrifts piled high on my street.  To think about the upcoming softball season, my first as player/manager of the team I’ve been on for twenty years.  But it ain’t gonna happen.

Because it’s a cold, cold, winter in Amerika and I’m really, really pissed.

Arizona has a Judge murdered and a Congresswoman shot through the head then does nothing to make it even slightly more difficult to buy and carry guns. More and more states allow concealed weapons without adequate background, license or user safety checks.  Hell, you gotta pass two tests to get a damn driver’s license. Instead of riding our horses back to the Cowboys and Indians days—‘cause those were such wonderful times—let’s watch Deadwood reruns and revel in the loss of that era.

Deficits and Budgets.  Yeah, I know the Repubs won the house and a ton of state legislatures.  So what do we get?  A so-called “progressive” president bending over the nearest chair telling the reactionaries to have at it.

And they are.  We’re in such bad fiscal shape that we can not, must not, raise money by taxing those poor folks who earn more than a half a million a year. But it’s fine to slice and dice the other poor folks—the real ones who can’t afford usurious mortgages, food on their table, and any of life’s small pleasures.  Like frigging Christmas.

It’s okay to repeal an extremely moderate (if that) health care law while people can’t afford medicines or doctor visits.  Only this time it won’t just be the poor who get fucked, but working people and the slowly dwindling middle class.  Let’s go back to leeches.  That will really balance the budget in one fell swoop.

The list seems endless. Fuck women’s right to choose.  Fuck unions. Fuck education.  Fuck community service.  Fuck financial oversight.  Fuck transportation.  Fuck infrastructure.  Who needs bridges? Who needs tunnels?  Definitely fuck poor people. They just take up resources that could go to the wealthy. Fuck the environment.  Who really gives a shit about arsenic in peoples’ drinking wells?  Or oily shrimp beds when there’s drilling to be done?

Was all this the “mandate” of the 2010 election?  Bring down the price of flat-screens and let folks live vicariously while corporations are defined as people under the twisted decision of a Supreme Court.  This isn’t “taking back America,” it’s giving America back to the robber barons.

In truth, I don’t blame the Repubs for forcing me to forgo writing about baseball.  Or even their wholesale trashing of any sort of social fairness.  They’ve been crystal clear since Reagan about their mission.  Figure out every possible way to pillage and place the nation’s wealth into the coffers of the Already Wealthy.  Reagan meant it when he called ketchup a vegetable. It was just his homey way of saying, “Let them eat cake.”

And his revolution still rolls on.  Along with a couple of expensive useless wars and fresh body counts.

Something is really wrong when the 1950s look good.