Both
have certainly tapped into a hungry void. Someone needs to sing the
songs the vast majority of Americans want to hear. Perhaps more than
ever before in recent history, there is an urgent need for music which
will raise our hopes and inspire new dreams.
But the way things stand, there are still a huge number of folks who have no song to hum.
I
believe people know what they want. But they can't write the tunes
themselves. They hear what's being played, listen for a catchy melody, a
singable chorus, an infectious beat. They take it from there.
None of the candidates so far have come up with a true hit.
Does this characterization trivialize politics?
It doesn't have to. It simply means that there is a lesson here.
The challenge is offering an honest, heartfelt, engaging, entertaining message, which is true to both the spirit and the content that drives that message, and one which people not only want to hear, but will be "singing" themselves -- because it genuinely resonates with them.
For the right wing of this country, this is apparently easy. While what they say makes me as a progressive shudder and recoil in horror, I have to hand it to them. They know how to put it out there and get their deluded, misguided, parochial flock of lemmings excited!
The Left -- and I'm not talking about the "sold out" Democrats or Starbucks liberals who for all intents and purposes form the willfully ignorant center of the political spectrum -- just can't seem to get it together.
For
many progressives, especially progressive academics and pundits, the
devil is so entirely in the details, nuance and caveat reign supreme,
and tragically the message gets lost. The "big ideas" might be out
there, but they're buried in a blizzard of abstractions, qualifiers,
minutiae, pros-and-cons, excuses and rationalizations, the truly
annoying and pathetic preemptive defenses, deflections, even counter and
counter-counter arguments.
You know . . . the old forest and trees myopia.
Where am I going with this?
I'll offer one simple example.
Remember the John Lennon song Happy Xmas (War Is Over)? The end of the song features a vamp with a huge chorus singing:
............. War is over if you want it! .............
Sound naive? Stupid? Wacky? Impossible?
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