Bill LaCroix: Go Bernie!

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Go Bernie!

8000+ people waiting hours to see Bernie/ Missoula Montana/ May 11, 2016

Here's a little paragraph I wrote to the Bernie website I've been contributing to this last year ($27 a shot) when it asked me why I support Bernie. I don't suppose anyone will really read it there, so I thought I'd reprint it here and let five or ten other people see what they think. Ah, the internet! I suppose I should thank Al Gore for all these joys at my fingertips, but I'm still mad at him for not fighting harder the last time the media stole a presidential election. The bastards….

It's hard to express in this somewhat impersonal format how deeply I respect Bernie's efforts on our behalf. Since Reagan, most politicians bow out or wimp out long before the job is done, but Bernie is clearly the politician so many of us hope will be the prototype of the future. My main income these days is Social Security, and I figure if my children are going to have that program when they get to be my age Bernie's campaign is an excellent investment of a couple month's worth of mine now. Maybe the best thing about his (our) campaign is that he woke up so many people—especially the young--to the corporatist nature of the entrenched party and media. The latest machinations and collusions of the corporatists and the media in undermining our democratic process in the June 7 primaries—particularly in California--will never quit smelling like the rotten elk carcass in the hot sun that it is. This brand of open-air, stinking collusion between cozy elites has certainly happened before (the 2000 Bush vs Gore coup for instance) But thanks to Bernie we are finally being given a big enough voice to (maybe) shout them down this time. Maybe not yet, but the movement is building. In fact I feel it’s just the beginning and it’s entirely exciting. What choice do Us The People have but to be “clear-eyed” optimists?

Sincere thanks and…Go Bernie!

I recommend sending Bernie donations as long as he asks for them. His donation site has about 20 progressive candidates that you can also help out with a credit card number and a push of a button. It's not the hardest thing we'll have to do in the near future, certainly not the only thing. But you can count on Bernie that every dollar you spend now is a real-time investment in your kids' and our Earth's future.

DireWolf says:

Get off your butts

Don't give up

And give til it hurts

Or your kids'll end up in a tar pit

And then go extinct.

Don't tell me I don't know!!

https://go.berniesanders.com

No comments:

Post a Comment

Why I Blog

Thoreau and Emerson had a discussion in May of 1846 about the Mexican War--our first war that set us on the course we still track today. Conquest of nation-states and the inevitable Imperialism that follows. Emerson counseled his friend that we can supersede the transgressions of a well-meaning State by the Muse. Thoreau wasn't so sure that the State was so well-meaning or that the Muse alone would be enough to supersede it. But he tried both the Muse and "other means" to our everlasting benefit. Civil Disobedience, in the American sense, has always been his child, in large part because he raised it to the level of Literature. "Other means" requires the Muse to be lasting and effective, and vice versa. How would anyone know what the hell you were talking about otherwise, let alone emulate what you're trying to do?

The problem with Progressives today, I think, is that we have been in the habit of letting other people--Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, Sun Myung Moon--tell our stories for us, people who do not mean us well. We haven't plugged our muse into our political discourse very much, and that's a big mistake. Mark Twain didn't make that mistake, and he was among the first American writers to use the new-fangled typewriter. Why do we children of Twain, Emerson and Thoreau make that mistake now with our new-fangled computers?

For all its faults, Corporate America understands that people are story-based critters, like it or not, and I think we progressives should like it. By definition, people make many important social (read: political) decisions based largely on who's the best storyteller. It’s in our nature, and Corporate Media is a classic example of how Nature abhors a vacuum. We’ve collectively created a cultural ‘narrative’ vacuum by allowing ourselves to be so easily entertained by—Corporate Media! And Nature hates that. She’ll allow the same garbage responsible for that vacuum (Corporate Media!) to be sucked in and to rattle around until it ruins our cognative motors before she’ll let that sad state of affairs stand. I'd ask any "America Firsters" stumbling on this blog and reading this far to consider: Rupert Murdoch is from Australia. Sun Myung Moon, now-deceased but whose creatures, the Washington Times and UPI still walk the face of the earth, was from Korea. The Koch Brothers, of course, were from the sheikdom of Texas. All of them were, and the living ones still are, so obscenely rich they apparently believed they own America simply because they paid for it, and we collectively let them define who among us are “real Americans”?! C'mon!

Although it helps to strive toward the goal, progressives don't have to be great writers, and I'm not claiming to be one. We simply have to acknowledge that we have the better stories and we’re sitting on our best ones. Our truest ones. Multi-national billionaires have better versions of American Liberalism and Progressivism than the real ones told by real Americans? Us? We shouldn't put up with that. Why do we?

Like any historic attempt, we need to find our Voice. Significant action will come only after our contemporary, progressive political muse matures, which it hasn't yet. Not to paint with too wide a brush, but too much of our positions have been framed in intellectual, almost-didactic prose, which, if you don't identify as an intellectual, means boring. Not all of it, just a whole lot of it, but never mind. If history's still a guide--and I hope it still is--there's hope, because when any progressive movement's Muse matures, it generally becomes the baseline for much of Western Civilization’s meaningful and therefore lasting literature. For example, "Mein Kampf" is still in print but I'll bet you'd have to turn over a lot of rocks to find someone to call it 'literature'.

So, this blog. It's a call, I suppose, to elevate our critical modern discussions out of Fox-news-landia back to where intelligent, caring Americans can find their feet and fight back, either with the Muse, by other means, or both. It’s not up to some politician to change the narrative. That’s up to us. So by definition we still have as good a chance as we ever had. Don't lose hope. It’s always been this way. At least in literate societies.

In other words, like Emerson advised and Thoreau partially agreed with: stories matter, and may the best Muse win.