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From Bob Herbert's column in The New York Times, May, 29, 2010:
"The oil companies and other giant corporations have a stranglehold on American policies and behavior, and are choking off the prospects of a viable social and economic future for working people and their families....
It's not just a cozy relationship [between oil companies and the federal government]. It's an unholy alliance. And that alliance includes not just the oil companies but the entire spectrum of giant corporations that have used vast wealth to turn democratically elected officials into handmaidens, thus undermining not just the day-to-day interests of the people but the very essence of democracy itself.
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"And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis."
--Tim Wise, on white privilege in the Tea Party
Have you heard about the Nevada candidate for US Senate, Sue Lowden, who has proposed that we emulate our grandparents and pay for healthcare by bartering livestock?
(For background, cluck here.)
This 'chicken for a CAT scan' nonsense reminds me of the poignant scene in "To Kill a Mockingbird," when Mr. Cunningham sheepishly repays Atticus Finch's legal fees with a sack of hickory nuts. (Some internet satirist should dig up that clip.)
It's not that bartering is, in itself, ridiculous. In fact, I'm all for local, alternative economies. But the idea that this is a solution for the catastrophic rise in health care costs, or a viable option for patients in desperate need, is laughable. It shows how disconnected the Republicans are from reality.
How would this play out in real life? Can I trade you this celery for some chemotherapy? A turnip in exchange for treating my tumor? It sounds like an SNL skit.
The proposal is unserious, stupid and callous.
It's like when Sen. Tom Coburn responded to a woman in financial and medical crisis by saying neighbors should help one another. A noble sentiment, but when was the last time you knocked on a neighbor's door and asked, "Can I borrow $168,000 for a lung transplant?"
"We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat."
--General Stanley A. McChrystal, senior American and NATO commander in Afganistan
I think it is true, as someone said recently, that as brilliant as Obama is as a communicator, the administration has too often lost control of the narrative in this first year, or ceded control of the narrative to others.
It's been distressing to see the most lunatic narratives gaining power in these fearful and anxious and economically desparate times. And to see the right wing's rabid sway over the corporate mainstream media. Right-wing fearmongers have had far too much control of the narrative, from health care, to climate change, to Van Jones, to ACORN, and on down the line. All to the detriment of our discourse and democracy.
The concluding paragraph to this piece by Robert Reich illustrates the president's struggle to sculpt the story:
"But our President is not comfortable wielding blame. He will not give the public the larger narrative of private-sector greed, its nefarious effect on the American public at this dangerous juncture, and the private sector's corruption of the democratic process. He has so far eschewed any major plan to get corporate and Wall Street money out of politics. He can be indignant- as when he lashed out at the "fat cats" on Wall Street - but his indignance is fleeting, and it is no match for the faux indignance of the right that blames government for all that ails us."
--Robert Reich
Obama, following his often noble, sometimes futile, instinct toward reconcilliation, has thus far failed to craft a compelling narrative with the emotional, rhetorical and spiritual power that animated the campaign and electrified the world.
The success of his policies and his presidency, as well as the hopes of so many struggling people, depend on Obama's ability to wield the power story and activate a narrative that will motivate the nation.
Van Jones resigned last night.
My heart is heavy today.
Van is a personal friend and one of the most inspiring and effective visionaries of our time.
I am almost speechless about the right-wing racist attack machine. It's jaw-dropping to see the venomous comments from hate-filled know-nothings all over the web, spreading lies and distortions, calling Van a "racist" and "avowed communist."
(Most of this "communist" nonsense comes from one paragraph in a highly problematic profile of Van from the East Bay Express a couple years ago, the point of which was how Van has moved far beyond his youthful radicalism, and embraced market-based solutions to ecological and social problems.)
I am disgusted, saddened and worried about our country.
The hypocrisy of the Republicans, the right and the media is overwhelming. Do I even have to mention how many right-wing office-holders have said things 10x worse than Van's statements? Everything Van said was accurate, if occasionally provocative to a mainstream culture unaccustomed to critical thinking.
Van Jones is a hero, working for the well-being of all people. It is unimaginable to see him slandered as a "racist" by people who have no idea what they're talking about.
I am proud to stand with Van and to call him a friend.
My heart is very heavy today.
The right-wing is lying about Van Jones, and Glenn Beck is their Liar-in-Chief.
This is just the latest in a long series of attemtps to cynically swiftboat our discourse and our democracy. The untrustworthy folks who won't hesitate to smear the service of veterans like Max Cleland and John Kerry, who claim that health insurance reform is a plot to kill grandma, and Obama is a foreigner with a fake birth certificate, are now spreading ridiculous lies about the White House advisor for Green Jobs, Van Jones.
Somebody should tell these clowns that their neo-McCarthy red-scare antics are wearing thin. The American people want ideas and vision, not lies, hysteria, and racist fear-mongering.
I've known Van Jones personally for the last ten years, and ideas and vision are what he's all about. Van is quite simply a hero, committed to the well-being of all people.
To anyone who knows Van, and his work as a compassionate, visionary bridge-builder and leader, it would seem incredible that the Republican slime-slingers would attempt to slander him as a racist, communist, socialist, or whatever nonsense they're spewing...but arrogant disregard for truth has become the Republicans' only strategy. Why sweat facts when you're committed to spreading fear, and attempting to play the American people for suckers and fools?
In the last few days, right-wing dittoheads have been flooding websites with comments describing Van Jones as a "racist," and "avowed communist." These charges are simply false. The people passing along these lies don't know Van and don't know what they're talking about.
It is laughable to see these ludicrous claims that my friend of ten years "hates white people."
(Apparently, noticing or mentioning the history of racism is all it takes to be accused of hating white people.)
We progressives must stand strong when our allies and leaders are maliciously maligned. The unscrupulous mendacity of the right wing must be challenged and refuted.
Van Jones is working to create jobs for Americans of every race and background. He is a loving father, and a person of immense integrity. I am honored to stand with Van Jones in his work to build a green economy, and deeply grateful to call Van Jones my friend.
"This is widely recognized as a transformative moment in the history of the USA and, perhaps, the world. The neo-liberal model - which views greed as good and wealth as a reward for virtue; which believes that markets possess infinite wisdom and regulation and unions can only detract, and which discredits every objection to rising inequality and upward redistribution of income as an unwarranted assault on the class that creates prosperity - has, for all intents and purposes, imploded. It clearly is no longer viable. How else to explain Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's nationalization in all but name of the insurance giant AIG? The admission by former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan that he was wrong to believe financial markets would self-regulate?"
--Eileen Appelbaum, TruthOut, Dec. 14, 2008
Like many of you, I wept a tear or two the night Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The tears that flowed for so many across the country gave testimony that the last 8 years have been trying. But more than that, the tears of joy and relief--springing from the depths of our national soul--testified to four centuries on the fault lines of freedom and slavery. A history filled with trauma, though not without triumphs.
November 4, 2008, was one of those triumphs.
I felt giddy when my dad called early in the evening and said, "It's over. Obama won Ohio." Though the networks wouldn't call it for another hour, I went to the fridge and popped a bottle of champagne. Channel-surfing the live TV coverage with my son, we were watching Jon Stewart's show when he told Stephen Colbert and a delirious crowd the official news: Obama would be the 44th president. Involuntarily, my chin buckled a bit, my chest quaked, and I did something like a half-sob. On TV, the usually ever-ironic Colbert was wiping his eyes.
The tears around the world were not only mirrors of the past, but also libations for the future, dedicated to the proposition that we can heal and transcend the brutal shadows of history, see the full picture of the present, and manifest a transformative tomorrow.
The election of President Obama represents a stunning moment in the history of systemic racism in this nation--a profound moment in the spiritual journey of the country, and an amazing moment in the history of the world.
But as Obama said on election night, " This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. " Looking at the past, we see that history is made by mass movements, more so than by a single person--even a prophet or a president. To reverse catastrophic climate change and runaway global warming, we need a movement. To dismantle institutional oppression, we need a movement. To save the Earth's biosphere--the sacred, fragile and disappearing web of living species--we need a movement. To end poverty, and the unnecessary, unconscionable suffering it causes, we need a movement. To transform our country from an empire into an ally, we need a movement.
We desperately need to start a new story.
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Regarding General Colin Powell's devastatingly effective endorsement of Obama, one might ask, to what extent is the power and passion of the general's public statement related to regret at being used by Bush and sacrificing his integrity at the United Nations in February of 2003?
In 2003 Powell testified at the U.N. as the character witness for George Bush's War-Based-on-Lies. In 2008 Powell appeared on "Meet The Press" and lacerated McCain like a skilled courtroom lawyer.
Obama was launched as an anti-war candidate, whereas McCain has championed the invasion of Iraq.
Is it possible that General Powell's conscience is haunted by the thought of several hundred thousand murdered Iraqis?
If the Democratic ticket could be called "Joe-Bama" or "O-Biden," then I'm suggesting this moniker for the Republican ticket:
"McPain."
Tonight, for the first time ever, an African American was nominated as a major party's presidential candidate in the United States of America, a country founded on the fault lines of freedom and slavery.
The energy was amazing in Denver's Mile High Stadium as I packed in with my dad, my brother, and some 80,000 others for Barack Obama's acceptance speech on the final night of the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
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I guess the DNC is becoming something of a family tradition.
In 2000 I spent four days at the DNC in Los Angeles, demonstrating outside the convention; marching in the streets and protesting the corporate, militarist complicity of the Democratic Party. On the last night, I went inside the convention with my dad and listened to Vice President Gore's acceptance speech. Within minutes I had gone from the streets to the suites--from protesting behind a fence, to eating shrimp in a skybox with Gore's Chief of Staff, and the family of the keynote speaker, Harold Ford, Jr.
Candidate Gore was at the peak of his populism and gave a passionate speech in which he vowed that, as president, he would work for the people, not the powerful.
The next morning I drove from L.A. to the Bay Area, winding my way up the California coast on Hwy. 1 along the blue-green Pacific. (This was the day that I moved to Oakland: a sunny Friday in mid-August of 2000. Three months before Florida and the stealing of the election. A year before September 11.)
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Roll over.
Play dead.
Beg.
I don't understand why some commentators keep floating names for McCain's VP that don't rise to the ONLY QUALIFICATION that is a prerequisite for VP: "The Heartbeat Away Test."
Does anybody think that Bobby Jindal is ready to be President of the United States? Or the Gov. of Alaska, who Bill Kristol suggested for VP?
This is of course exponentially more important for McCain, who is so old he turned George Burns on to cigars.
Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail, and without it nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to succeed.
--Abraham Lincoln
Forty years ago today, Martin Luther King, Jr. stood before a microphone at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles and spoke words that would forever alter his place in history: I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America.
Though past the peak of his popularity he was at the height of his prophetic powers. Increasingly embattled, his influence waning, with the climactic victories of the civil rights movement behind him, King first announced in the City of Angels the opposition to war that marked his spiritual growth in the last years of his life. His concern anticipated that of many Americans about the current war.
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Incumbent Senator George Allen of Virginia lost his seat and imploded his presidential aspirations with a three-syllable word (and a long racist resume).
Mel Gibson lost his cool on tequila and exposed his extreme anti-semitism to the cops, and the world.
Three drunken fratboys from the University of South Carolina, thinking they were talking to a Kazakh reporter named Borat, revealed again the banality of hatred, proudly declaring their contempt for women, admiration for slavery, and the 'powerlessness' they feel compared to "minorities."
Now Michael Richards melts down, hurling racist threats from the stage. Surely some revelation is at hand....Ghosts of the land, specters of slavemasters.
The ghost of white supremacy is woven into the machine of the current system, from the drowning of New Orleans to the war on Iraq.
What are those of us who are white prepared to do to dismantle systemic racism? What are we prepared to see, recognize, observe, hear, say, read, learn, ask, challenge, interrupt, and give up? What work are we prepared to do? What movements are we prepared to support? What actions must we take to transform our racist past into real possibility?
.jpg "Drew at the Whidbey Institute, delivering the Thomas Berry Legacy lecture, October 2008")
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