"It won't change tomorrow, or after the next election. No candidate of this moment will change it in any measurable sense. But it can be done. It must be done. We are Americans, children of a crazy dream, always striving to make that more perfect union, so that we will be a little more free tomorrow than we were yesterday."
THE POWER OF MARSHMALLOWS
From a 1968 letter to a dear friend about to go on trial for his Draft Resistance work:
"Would it sound patronizing, Bob, if I said I'm proud of you and what you've been doing these past few years? You've got more guts than I, that's obvious; I hope your payoff is worth it all. I think it probably is.
"I've always used the image of a marshmallow to characterize American society: it is so flabbily strong, it can take any punch thrown at it, usually absorbing the puncher in the process. What it can't absorb, it disciplines, harshly or softly, depending upon the mood of the time. In my more pessimistic moments, I believe the U.S. mottleclass society can absorb anything the left can present; Chicago is a good demonstration of that. It absorbed the Gene McCarthy thrust, then disciplined the radicals -- and, of course, the great American public supports the cops, who are now a political power all their own to be reckoned with...
"So you see, despite all our agitations and hard slogging labors, the 'objective conditions' are not present for a massive social revolution, and will not be present in the foreseeable future. The underlying structure is simply too strong, too well-entrenched for anything other than occasional reform.
"In my more optimistic moments, I see the crumbling pillars of the superstructure about ready for the historical shove, and the merging of the youth/hip/black/student movements -- if they ever could do it -- would serve as that shove, as they are attempting to do (and sometimes even manage to do) from Belgrade to Bratislava to Berkeley to Beijing. Oversimplified, I admit, but enough of 'something happening,' of generational gaps, to justify the analogy.
"I feel torn -- intellectually and tactically schizoid -- when listening to the current movement debates. Is this the year? Is now the time? Perhaps I've answered that for myself: I'm going down to Seattle next Tuesday to join in the founding convention of the New Party in Washington State."
THOSE PESKY "OBJECTIVE CONDITIONS"
If the "revolution" couldn't come in The Sixties when tectonic social plates seemed to be shifting every day, then it probably wasn't coming at all. (By "the revolution," I think we activists meant a "revolution" in consciousness throughout the land that would lead to imminent major changes and shifts in everything from politics to foreign policy to economics to education to child-rearing, etc. etc.) "We want the world, and we want it NOW," to quote Jim Morrison, but, alas, it wasn't going to be that easy.
The giant American "marshmallow" absorbed that social dynamic, deflected it, attacked it, altered it, and the "New Left/hippie" alliance began splitting apart (with a little help from J. Edgar Hoover & Friends) as factions and ideological sects emerged to battle for the future direction of "the movement."
It turned out that the "objective conditions" were really not there in "The Sixties" (roughly mid-'60s to the mid-'70s) for the kind of changes we desired. And that could be said, in spades, for our current situation in 2007, though we must continue to do everything we can to help create those "objective conditions."
True, anger and resentment and frustration are building and gaining momentum in the body politic, enough so that there is at least talk about the formation of progressive alternatives to the calcifying Democratic Party leadership. But it's all amorphous, scattered energy, with few if any leaders or factions emerging to help guide its birthpangs. At least not yet.
AMALGAMS & ALLIANCES
I suspect that it may be too late to do anything significant along these lines for the 2008 election, though certainly it's imperative that we keep fighting for those changes now. This at the same time we're loosening the soil and planting seeds that will grow and send out deep roots, and hopefully yield a bountiful harvest of grassroots alliances somewhere down the line, perhaps even as early as the midterm election of 2010 and the presidential campaign of 2012.
Perhaps there will be an amalgam, a fast-building "Movement," of Progressive Democrats of America, United for Peace and Justice, Democracy for America, the Greens, disaffected mainstream Republican conservatives, et al., led by such dynamic activists and thinkers as David Swanson and Medea Benjamin and Robert Kennedy Jr. and John W. Dean and Paul Craig Roberts and Paul Krugman and Jesse Jackson and Mark Crispin Miller and Arianna Huffington and Bill Moyers and Rev. Lennox Yearwood and Cindy Sheehan and Dahr Jamail and Bruce Fein and Ehren Watada and others you can think of as well.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
I promise to be one of those "younger leaders" who "will emerge from the growing grassroots to provide the energy, innovations and solid ideas to take us further along this path to peace and justice in our time."
I'm hard at work building up connections with people through the Dennis Kucinich campaign, seeking to find a way to get an income that will finance a political life, writing political pieces that get my ideas and mindset out there, and calling and contacting through mail my elected leaders to let them know how frustrated and upset I am and that I expect them to change.
I am seriously thinking about running against whomever in Indiana's 2nd District after I turn 25. That gives me six or more years to strengthen my soul, mind, and body plus get my life going so that it is stable.
I encourage more people frustrated like me to come out of the woodwork and run. America needs you.
by
Kevin Gosztola (207 articles, 111 quicklinks, 68 diaries, 806 comments)
on Wednesday, November 7, 2007 at 8:44:47 AM
so I was there with Nixon as well. The mistake you make (if mistake it is) has to do with changes in the way the country is run--then and now.
Then we had corporate power guiding things, but nowhere near the corporate tsunami that now drowns every aspect of our republic. In Nixon's time
There was no Blackwater--we ran our own military
Wars were profit centers, but they were not created for profit
The Judiciary still functioned
Republicans as well as Democrats turned Nixon out of office
My electoral 'memory' goes back as far as FDR and never over the course of 14 presidencies have I seen such universal alarm and discontent, tied like Gulliver to the sandy beach of lobbyist interest.
Patience and incremental progress is the culture of those who are sure of their rights. We were sure of those rights until very recently. No more.
America is going to have to go to the streets to get their country back. We have been remade into a homeland, crafted upon fear, greed, profit and world dominance. I don't want a homeland.
I want America back. My America.
by
Jim Freeman (108 articles, 51 quicklinks, 216 diaries, 382 comments)
on Wednesday, November 7, 2007 at 12:15:33 PM
"we had corporate power guiding things, but nowhere near the corporate tsunami that now drowns every aspect of our republic"
Globalisation has changed things. And I am pro fair trade just leery of piracy under the euphemism of free trade.
Capital flows faster than labor but also faster than governments can be elected. There are massive incentives for individuals to adopt shorter term planning horizons (every time one picks a managed investment or superannuation vehicle that operates globally to maximize profits or you change to another vehicle) because in the longer term national governments just don't have the power to control markets anymore.
What countries did better before was create a nexus between human rights with the citizens championing human rights as the interested parties through their votes and where and how money could be made. Citizens cared about human rights because when corporations pushed human rights aside it was they the citizens that were the effected humans. With an international financial system that nexus is broken.
Rupert Murdoch used to be an Australian. You know his nationality now. How could he deny himself the protections of the US Bill or Rights and operate a global company from a smaller pond.
The wealthy are already beyond nationalism and patriotism. So are major corporations. And that is not entirely a bad thing - except that the safety checks against human rights abuses mostly reside in national laws.
America is merely the biggest country now in a world where if human rights are to become part of a nexus and to influence where money is made the solution is likely to have to be global.
I don't actually think anyone even the very wealthy think what we have is an ideal state of affairs either in America or in the world. What we are up against now is in my opinion something of an evolutionary local peak.
Civilization is likely to have to climb down from the hill that was the United States of America (a national democracy) in order to get human rights and human values back into the way people live.
I don't think you can have your old America back. Civilization is going to have to be global now. To have human rights anywhere we are going to have to have the rule of law everywhere.
But getting from here to there is not going to be easy. Or quick.
by
Brett Paatsch (0 articles, 2 quicklinks, 22 diaries, 1010 comments)
on Wednesday, November 7, 2007 at 5:10:21 PM
You are right to draw attention to differing temporal contexts between the two eras. Sadly you then contradict your point by indulging in ‘picket fence delusions’ (we always imagine things of our youth were rosier than they objectively were) some of the claims you make are not supported by the facts.
For example it depends on whose perspective you apply about the Judiciary. Ask some older Americans who aren’t White. Particularly if they were in the Southern States. It could be argued that the Supreme Court was just as good maintaining the power structures as today’s.
Wars and profit centres perhaps not on the scale of Vietnam but proxy wars ‘for influence’ is a long standing factor of the West including America. e.g.Latin America, Africa, Middle East regimes were if not funded were supplied with weapons. By the way when did Israel first get military assistance?
Do you really imagine that Corporate America wasn’t influencing the decision makers?The only difference today is that it’s more blatant.
The same goes for government sanctioned private armies….soldiers of fortunepaid for by secret funds (cia).
Human nature is the same now as it was when we sat in the sun grooming each others nit from our fur.“People and organizations resist change and aggressively resist rapid or dramatic change. The more dramatic the more violent the resistance”. Andris’ law of political change.
An Objective perspective of Black rights tell you that all serious change in incremental and requires commitment to the ultimate goal, doggedness, and patience and planning that factors in the above.
It has taken at two hundred years to weave the toxic web that is the Western reality one can’t expect to change it in one or two elections. The political institutions are rightly geared to slow changes and anyone going there as a representative will soon learn. only those with the above qualities will survive.
by
Andris (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 531 comments)
on Friday, November 9, 2007 at 9:20:42 PM
We are a group of candidates for Congress who promise a clean sweep of the corruption and cronyism, restoration of justice and re-establishment of the Constitution. withdrawal from foreign military adventures, rebuilding the infrastructure, working with other nations to solve global problems. We cross party lines. Check us out at http://sances.info/newbroom/ If you are a candidate and can subscribe to our mission statement, and want to join us, email me your info at cwolman@mcn.org
Peace, Carol Wolman
Green Candidate for Congress, CA District 1
by
Carol Wolman (216 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 100 comments)
on Wednesday, November 7, 2007 at 12:29:34 PM
We need to restrain an empire driven imperialist executive
In both cases, covering up their lies and crimes associated with reckless wars (Vietnam then, Iraq now) led Nixon and Bush further down the road to authoritarian misrule. Nixon claimed that the Chief Executive cannot violate the law because when a president acts, ipso facto what he's doing cannot be illegal. Bush claims that whenever he says he's acting in the national-security interests of the American people, he can violate whatever law or Constitutional protection he so desires. Furthermore, Bush asserts, the Judicial Branch should not restrain him and the Legislative Branch has no jurisdiction either. The courts, which he's packed with his ideological cronies, tend to uphold his "Commander-in-Chief" ukases, and the Democratic majority in the Congress tends to roll over and whimper whenever he (or The Cheney) raises his voice.
This is the main reason we need to advance Impeachment. Nixon was allowed to resign and he was given a pardon. This left his assult on the rule of law unchecked and lying dormant until this administration set up the needed criteria for implementation of the Patriot Act.
The Act should have required Constitutional ammendments and received none. It was an assult on the Constitution and it was implemented with acts of TREASON. There is no way ever that a false flag attack on citizens or a cover-up of such a false flag attack should be considered anything less then treason at the very least it is aidding and abbeiting an enemy of our Constitution.
We need to get back to our founding basics. Give the Constitution the validity that it deserves. I have seen some initiatives calling for a Constitutional Convention to address some of our problems but first we have to acknowledge the crimes of a runaway executive branch that seeks to dismantle the civil protections of our Constitution.
by
Sleeper (1 articles, 1 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 276 comments)
on Thursday, November 8, 2007 at 10:10:14 AM
We need to restrain an empire driven imperialist executive
In both cases, covering up their lies and crimes associated with reckless wars (Vietnam then, Iraq now) led Nixon and Bush further down the road to authoritarian misrule. Nixon claimed that the Chief Executive cannot violate the law because when a president acts, ipso facto what he's doing cannot be illegal. Bush claims that whenever he says he's acting in the national-security interests of the American people, he can violate whatever law or Constitutional protection he so desires. Furthermore, Bush asserts, the Judicial Branch should not restrain him and the Legislative Branch has no jurisdiction either. The courts, which he's packed with his ideological cronies, tend to uphold his "Commander-in-Chief" ukases, and the Democratic majority in the Congress tends to roll over and whimper whenever he (or The Cheney) raises his voice.
This is the main reason we need to advance Impeachment. Nixon was allowed to resign and he was given a pardon. This left his assult on the rule of law unchecked and lying dormant until this administration set up the needed criteria for implementation of the Patriot Act.
The Act should have required Constitutional ammendments and received none. It was an assult on the Constitution and it was implemented with acts of TREASON. There is no way ever that a false flag attack on citizens or a cover-up of such a false flag attack should be considered anything less then treason at the very least it is aidding and abbeiting an enemy of our Constitution.
We need to get back to our founding basics. Give the Constitution the validity that it deserves. I have seen some initiatives calling for a Constitutional Convention to address some of our problems but first we have to acknowledge the crimes of a runaway executive branch that seeks to dismantle the civil protections of our Constitution.
by
Sleeper (1 articles, 1 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 276 comments)
on Thursday, November 8, 2007 at 10:11:18 AM
We need to restrain an empire driven imperialist executive
In both cases, covering up their lies and crimes associated with reckless wars (Vietnam then, Iraq now) led Nixon and Bush further down the road to authoritarian misrule. Nixon claimed that the Chief Executive cannot violate the law because when a president acts, ipso facto what he's doing cannot be illegal. Bush claims that whenever he says he's acting in the national-security interests of the American people, he can violate whatever law or Constitutional protection he so desires. Furthermore, Bush asserts, the Judicial Branch should not restrain him and the Legislative Branch has no jurisdiction either. The courts, which he's packed with his ideological cronies, tend to uphold his "Commander-in-Chief" ukases, and the Democratic majority in the Congress tends to roll over and whimper whenever he (or The Cheney) raises his voice.
This is the main reason we need to advance Impeachment. Nixon was allowed to resign and he was given a pardon. This left his assult on the rule of law unchecked and lying dormant until this administration set up the needed criteria for implementation of the Patriot Act.
The Act should have required Constitutional ammendments and received none. It was an assult on the Constitution and it was implemented with acts of TREASON. There is no way ever that a false flag attack on citizens or a cover-up of such a false flag attack should be considered anything less then treason at the very least it is aidding and abbeiting an enemy of our Constitution.
We need to get back to our founding basics. Give the Constitution the validity that it deserves. I have seen some initiatives calling for a Constitutional Convention to address some of our problems but first we have to acknowledge the crimes of a runaway executive branch that seeks to dismantle the civil protections of our Constitution.
by
Sleeper (1 articles, 1 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 276 comments)
on Thursday, November 8, 2007 at 10:11:26 AM
12 comments
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