When the Watergate scandal broke, I was just old enough to grasp that something really bad, shocking in fact had happened. That was before “shocking” became just another mot du jour and scandals were not reality shows.
I was raised by blue-dog Democrats who lived by the rules of the Greatest Generation: God, family, community and country. Hard work and a good education “pay”. Do unto others as you would have them do unto (unless it’s your brother or sister then go duke it out) you. Be home when the street light turns on (in the summer).
The coolest thing about watching a man land on the moon was that I had a relative who was over one hundred years old who was alive to see it happen. Imagine that! He was alive before cars. He lived through two World Wars and saw an astronaut walk on the moon and you know what? He received a letter congratulating him on his 100th birthday from THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I saw it myself and was utterly awestruck.
We were not touched by cynicism, sarcasm or self-pity. We were not victims, even if life was hard raising a large family on a working class single income and there were times things were tight. I have worked since I was about ten years old and could not begin to count how many jobs I have had over the years to save to buy a bike, go to college and work while in college; work after college and work multiple jobs while in grad school; work after grad school to pay for grad school. After grad school, working full-time I made about the same amount of money as the welfare families I was being paid to help and did not resent them, for their struggles were different than mine and I had chosen my path. Okay, I would have liked to have been able to afford a decent TV and stereo, but I did have a used car and that put me in a different league.
Years have flown by, and this has happened, and that has happened, and I went here, and there……and I participated in what came to be known a few years ago as, “civic engagement”. I was doing it because you are supposed to participate in your life and community is part of life.
More years flew by and I learned a bit more about the underbelly of politics and that most of the folks who were “head cases” were running loose in society…..lots of them serving on the same committees I was serving on. They say “water seeks its own level.” Yah.
Real life experiences began to happen with my “civic engagement” like learning that there are some people who have power, guns and badges who are really sick people. And there are people who hate deeply. And there are people who really, really do lie. Some of them are really hard to detect because they totally believe their lies.
Well, I was late to the dance, but found myself swaying to the music of Hope and Together We Can. I wanted to believe…..the Regan-Clinton-Bush eras debacles of slicing the middle-class to shreds and outsourcing our jobs while monopolies consolidated power, and the power of votes became a commodity to the highest special interest fundraisers were crushing.
I had a touch of cynicism. Just a touch and wanted to put it aside. I voted for the Patrick-Murray ticket believing like I had not believed before that we had the right combination to lead us forward to better days.
“Civic Engagement!” Wahoo!, you bet and with genuine excitement and fervor! Slowly, the deeper I walked into the center of the political fray, I began to see, feel and touch the rotten essence of politics in Massachusetts.
Activists are widgets, money is king. The past five years have brought utter prosperity to my cynicism. It has flowered and grown to toxic proportions.
The failures that have forever soured me to “civic engagement” are not of human mistakes but rather calculated human lies, deceptions and manipulations. My cynicism is non-partisan and includes media as an enabler and abettor to the decline in our society. It has been painful, these past many moons to come to grips with a failed presidency.
Yes, I will take it beyond the conventional “ineffective” semantics currently being used to describe the Obama administration. And while I continue find our Governor intriguing, his words and behaviors do not always match. I am a fighter by nature and have like many old soldiers, I suppose, just wanted the battle to end. I have wanted my fighting patriotic spirit to die and rest in peace. I have wanted to surrender to the reality that we are an empire in a long painful decline. I have wanted the bliss of apathy and being able to let go.
And they were singing, “bye, bye Miss American Pie, drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry…….them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye………”
Best wishes to those who still believe. You’ll find me in the big tent of unbelievers. But, no worries, I will find a good cause to pursue.
This is the same weariness I am feeling.
Watching the utter betrayal of my core Democratic principles by Barack Obama, while watching local Democrats willfully destroy the things that made me choose Massachusetts as my home nearly four decades ago, leaves me with a similar mix of sadness verging on grief, anger, and weariness.
I remain eager to vote for Elizabeth Warren and Mike Capuano. At the moment, I don’t believe that ANYONE else — Republican or Democrat — will get my vote in 2012.
Deval Patrick wrote those words in his memoir.
Then he built casinos.
to undo thumbs down? I clicked down by mistake.
I’d still have a lot of thumbs down on this comment. And I don’t know why. I quoted exactly from the Governor’s book, which I took the time to read, cover to cover. And then again.
I didn’t write those words. He did. And, while he never mentions it in his book, in real life, he’s never hid the fact that he wants to build casinos. So what is the objection?
Are the thumbs down for him? Or for me? And if they’re for me I wish someone would explain why. I’d be interested to know.
Is it just because, unlike the Governor, I put the two together on the same page?
The governor writes at great length about the concepts of idealism and cynicism in his memoir.
This post is the touching story of one true idealist, a civic activist who really has tried to make the world a better place, and has the scars to show for it – exactly the type of person our Governor claims he not only respects, but is ‘the essential ingredient in human progress.’
And I don’t disagree with that at all. But when the Governor disparages cynicism, he needs to acknowledge his own part in creating it.
General elections, primary elections, Town Committee elections, non-partisan town meeting elections. You’ve got to do it at all levels to move the middle. To bring back science and a healthy debate about taxes and public services and public servants and investment in physical and mental infrastructure, you’ve got to move the middle. To protect clean air and clean water and clean noses and clean elections, you’ve got to move the middle. To protect the vulnerable granny and the vulnerable child who promoted mom to granny, you’ve got to move the middle. To preserve honest pay, and the honest work which earns it, you’ve got to move the middle.
Write letters to the editor. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Register some folks to vote, and then drag them to the polls. Call your elected officials on the phone, write them letters, show up at their offices.
SomervilleTom — leave some elections blank. That’s good activism. Don’t think for a minute that politicans — and potential candidates — don’t take note of those blank lines. Want to go the extra mile? Send a postcard to the candidates you didn’t vote for, and tell ’em that they weren’t enough like E Warren or M Cap. Send the message.
There’s a somewhat sobering piece by Michael Kazin in the New York Times today about what is missing from the left today.
A lot of us thought Obama would be one of those “aggressive proponents”. He certainly has the ability to be one, but it hasn’t worked out that way. That’s the biggest disappointment about his presidency for me, at least at this point. For example, maybe “Medicare for All” wasn’t going to happen this time, but by not pushing for it at all, he didn’t help lay the groundwork for next time or the time after that. I think of it as expanding the universe of what is possible. Especially when adopting the right’s talking points, he has actually reduced that universe when it comes to economic remedies.
Kazin expresses a similar opinion:
So while it is important to do the electoral work and get behind those candidates who you really connect with, we are still missing something.
Is the lack of longitudinal organization that Kazin describes a symptom of the political and media cultures in which we live? When news is 24/7 and everything our politicians and candidates do and say is on Twitter and Facebook five seconds after they did or said it, can we be surprised that there isn’t much thought and effort put into how to build the long-term constituencies necessary to achieve profound change in our politics and policy?
Liberals have been a minority in the Democratic Party for a while. Even if we weren’t a minority, we’d still be outspent within the Democratic Party by the corporate interests who are rarely our friends.
Result? The Democratic Party is not our mouthpiece. It won’t always listen to us. It will infuriate us.
There have been various attempts to create an independent liberal voice. The Rainbow Coalition of 1984 looked promising, but never amounted to much. In the early days of the Iraq War when large parts of Democratic Party were quite liebermannishly disappointing, MoveOn.org looked as if it could grow into something substantial. It didn’t. And the Dean campaign? Why isn’t Democracy for America bigger and more insistent on stimulus spending, climate change legislation, and financial regulation? Why did DfA never become prominent?
Liberalism keeps hoping. We keep hoping that at long last we have elected someone that will represent our vision with clarity and conviction. That never happens. There may be something pernicious about the fan-like response that Obama evoked. Maybe Deval Patrick cannot spearhead a grass roots organization while being governor: governor and agitator being incompatible jobs.
So yeah, I can understand feeling cynical about Democratic politicians and elected officials. But, hey, I think that’s imagining that they’re not who they really are. After all, unlike a certain Nazarene, FDR did not promise us a second coming.
This deserves a more detailed reply, but one point I would like to make is that we fight too many little battles. Science is in no danger, and even “the science of global warming” battle is really beside the point. The larger battle is, how are we going to have long-term, clean energy sources that won’t tie our foreign policy hands? We need a vision for that future, and science is the only way to get there.
And the effect is that, a) we expect too much of our politicians. making us mad that they aren’t fighting every little battle, and b) we let them off too easily, accepting little “wins” that don’t advance the larger vision. Is that a contradiction? No, it’s a conundrum. It’s like expecting a tennis player to play 2-on-1. They lose the match, but then can cite a few games and the difficulty of playing at all.
Look at gay marriage — did we help? (Gavin Newsom did.) Did we slow down the GOP, even? It’s advancing despite our inertia.
…we first have to fight for the idea that we need such a policy. The other side claims to want a policy that doesn’t tie our foreign policy hands too, but their answer is, “Drill, Baby, Drill”.
It was the insistance on the little battle that endangers the war.
For YEARS, I have been writing that it doesn’t MATTER if the global warming/climate change theories are true. What is in front of us is a chance to make money, have jobs, and eliminate foreign sources of energy.
But progressives – notably the Union of Concerned Scientists – writes letters saying that there cannot be any working together until consensus is reached. People who want to work with them are actively rejected for not also affirming that their view of the problem is real – and never mind about the solution.
“make money, have jobs, and eliminate foreign sources of energy”
There’s also this little thing called the environment, at least for those of us who want to survive as a species and a planet.
I think this is the biggest point of the thread and one that should not be overlooked. The biggest problem with the left is that it is a fractured coalition of diverse interests and causes. As is the right. The difference is for nearly forty years the right has been able to come under the banner of the ‘three legged stool’ of strong defense, limited government in the economy, and preserving tradition. Those three, vague but binding concepts have kept the various factions happy and were prisms through which various issues they disagreed on were filtered through until consensus was formed.
The left, under the New Deal coalition, did have such a stool, but Vietnam and the 60s permanently destroyed it. I think we might now have a shot at reclaiming it for a variety of reasons, mainly the conservative reactionaries of the 60s are gradually receding into their graves, the new leftist reactionaries, after a generation of Reaganite conservatism in both parties, recognize they went too far and are nostalgic for restoring FDR-Humphrey levels of liberalism into the public discourse, and my generation, which never knew that liberal consensus at all, hungers for it, especially as we are over-educated, underemployed and underutilized.
I would say the three legged stool ought to be economic justice at home, human rights and fair play abroad, and social and civil libertarianism in general. Such an agenda would gain widespread support amongst my cohort, my brothers cohort (Gen Y) and my dads cohort (depressed hippies) which would be enough to win an election. Its time to let old conservatives fade away and get trying to split the difference with them as Clinton did, and Obama is trying to in vain. Instead inspire the youth, inspire the JFK generation, and inspire Obama’s own generation who are struggling to raise their families in this climate, and we can win.
I am tired of getting bogged down in endless policy fights over which health care plan to adopt, what climate change strategy is truly progressive, tax reform, etc. The problem with progressive activists is that we disagree, we are too educated to avoid nuanced answers, and we always want to have the last word and are frustrated when people do not immediately grasp our concepts. Time to wage this campaign, which frankly is for the heart and soul of this country and what kind of government we want to have, in the simplest terms possible.
Do you want the government to help those in need?
Do you want the government to create jobs?
Do you want the US to rebuild this country instead of rebuilding ones abroad?
If you answer YES to all three, vote Democratic.
-Jobs -Peace -Prosperity -Security
Those are our buzzwords, anything else we can iron out later.We need to establish a narrative first and the policies will work themselves out. The right made government the enemy and in doing so united its disparite elements together behind one common purpose. It is time we do the same.
“Those are our buzzwords, anything else we can iron out later.”
We voted Democratic in 2006 and 2008. The buzzwords remained just words; no progressive legislative movement happened. Until the Democrats actually deliver on those promises, it’s going to be a tough sell, regardless of which set of slogans you use.
I imagine a Republican candidate need only run 2008 Obama commercials to stir up votes.
I understand that politics is compromise. Look around the candidates. The unchallenged Democrat and the many Republicans. The closest I can come to a progressive is one that supports the Constitution as much as the ACLU does. One that is against illegal perpetual wars of conquest and its military industial base. One that is for the rights of citizens to protection from government. One that supports valued currency to prevent the soaring inflation that is robbing the poor, elderly and middle class. One whose campaign contributions come from human persons. One that is consistent.
And consistently ignored by the mainstream.
Not perfect by any means, but more progressive than any candidate at this writing.
Who could that be?
“Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.” –Robert Byrne
And nobody EVER accused him of compromising.
Hello, Heartlanddem
I got out the vote for Ned Lamont in CT – the first to say we should end the Iraq War – and for Obama in NH. And I’m appalled it’s still business as usual. Those in the Oil Bidness are frantic to find any drop of fuel they will scrape up tar marks, those in the investment community rob us all, all while the Earth burns up.
The only way to find sanity is to leave it all behind and get local – VERY local. Make it your mission to find out where you can get the food you need – locally. Make sure your neighborhood starts gardens, keeps chickens.
Google “Transition Town.”