The Revolution Is Here

Back when the Baby Boomers took to the streets to register their discontent, the standard phrase was "when the revolution comes. . . ." We were speaking about that time in the not-too-distant future when the people would win their struggle and the oppressors would be overthrown. Well, the revolution's here. How do you like it?

Of course this ain't the revolution we were hoping to tip our hat to. But this revolution is just as profound as the Industrial Revolution was to the 18th and 19th centuries, resulting in a sea change in the way people in modern societies live, work, recreate and even die.

Permit me to get a bit academic on you. In this country, the Industrial Revolution had its most profound effect on rural America, resulting in the migration of millions from farms to cities. In 1890, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there were roughly 63 million Americans; 43 percent were farmers and farm laborers. By 1920, as industrialization took hold, that figure had dropped to 27 percent. By 1970, the U.S. population had risen to 204 million, and the farm population had plummeted to barely 5 percent. Millions of people had to find new ways of living. For those who couldn't cope, lifestyles and lives were shattered.

Which brings us to the new revolution. Historians may call it the Technological Revolution, and its impact may not be totally realized for centuries. It began when automation started eliminating manufacturing jobs, and it's still continuing, evidenced by the outsourcing of white-collar jobs. We don't know when this revolution will end (probably when the next one begins). But we do know that like the Industrial Revolution, it includes the potential for massive political and social upheaval.

So far we have escaped catastrophic unrest, because previous leaders have been wise enough to recognize when innovation and change was called for. The Great Depression could have destroyed America but for President Franklin Roosevelt's government interventions such as social security, unemployment insurance and federally sponsored public works projects that put people back on payrolls. (Oddly enough, the right has excoriated FDR's New Deal reforms as anathema to capitalism, but they just might have saved the Republic.)

Today's society is a witch's brew: unease created by the ongoing Technological Revolution, plus a mighty dollop of fear resulting from 9/11 - which Georgedick Bushcheney has shamelessly exploited. Ever since 9/11 Bushcheney has played the role of Mommy, saying to us, "Hold my hand, trust me, love me, and it'll be all right."

But kids soon learn not to trust parents who tell them everything's all right when it's not. So it's up to progressives to show everyone that we know how to get it together. Because the revolution sure as hell is here.

Contact Ira Lacher here.

The Great Turtle Island vs....Islam?

If Richard Clarke is correct, that overcoming Middle East terrorism is all about understanding and eventually helping to ease the ideological battle within Islam, we are lost.

"It is a war that we are losing," Clarke, author of the book Against All Enemies, wrote in Monday's New York Times, "as more and more of the Islamic world develops antipathy toward the United States and some even develop a respect for the jihadist movement.

"I do not pretend to know the formula for winning that ideological war," Clarke goes on. "But I do know that we cannot win it without significant help from our Muslim friends, and that many of our recent actions (chiefly the invasion of Iraq) have made it far more difficult to obtain that cooperation and to achieve credibility."

The reason is obvious: Americans don't know or care about cultures, much less religions, other than our own. America as a Judeo-Christian nation is advanced, modern-thinking and progressive, and everyone else is a sand-eating camel jockey, spear-throwing cannibal, rice-growing slant-eye and you can add your own hateful epithet. Even Europeans aren't immune. And we haven't even begun to talk about other religions.

For all the talk about "Judeo-Christian," Judaism is marginalized, as witness to the Supreme Court's ruling several years back that a Christmas tree is not a religious symbol, kids' sports leagues thinking nothing about scheduling events on Jewish holidays, much less Friday nights and Saturday mornings, and other examples.

Islam? Despite the rush to understanding following 9/11, almost half of Americans still equate Islam with violence. A poll taken last September by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 44 percent of Americans say that Islam is more likely to encourage violence than other religions. (Obviously, Americans know little or nothing about the Crusades, Western Christian Europe's war on the Muslim "infidels," which may have given rise to anti-Westernism more than a thousand years ago.)

What's most chilling about the poll is that instead of listening to what Clarke is saying - that the key to overcoming Middle East terrorism is through understanding of Islam's divides and how to appeal to Muslims who don't believe in the jihadists - we are retreating farther into our shells like turtles. Fewer of us believe we know "some" or "a great deal" about Islam than before the attacks, and fewer people say Islam and their own religion have a lot in common.

Clarke ends his essay with a call to common sense: "We all want to defeat the jihadists. To do that, we need to encourage an active, critical and analytical debate in America about how that will best be done." But the only thing we're seeing is intolerance. A sampling of popular best-selling titles about Islam on Amazon.com includes: Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia  by Ahmed Rashid; Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent; and Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West by Robert Spencer. Confidence is not high.

Contact Ira Lacher here.

The New McGovern?
It's Not Whom You Think

In 1972, George McGovern outmaneuvered a divided Democratic field to emerge as the party nominee to oppose Richard Nixon - and his campaign fell apart following the convention.

There were a number of reasons for this, but perhaps the most important has rarely been examined: The traditional party faithful, especially organized labor who supported center-rightists Hubert Humphrey and Ed Muskie, turned their back on the antiwar senator from South Dakota, leaving him and his boy-wonder campaign staff to the mercy of Nixon's Southern strategy of bigotry and fear.

Now, jump ahead to last winter and spring, when Howard Dean was exciting progressive Democrats by saying what they were thinking - he opposed America's invasion of Iraq, he opposed corporate terrorism, he would fight for affordable health insurance for all Americans, he was from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Critics from the right of the party bleated, "Don't nominate this guy because he's another McGovern - too far left for his own good - and he'll bring the party down just the way McGovern did 32 years ago."

Well, the bad moon of McGovern is unmistakably rising, only this time it's coming from the right! By moving unmistakably "toward the center," PreDemNom John Kerry is threatening to alienate the energetic, passionate, progressive Democrats who supported Dean, Dennis Kucinich and, yes, Ralph Nader. And to win in November the Democrats simply can't do without that energy and passion.

If the proposed platform handed out to delegates at last weekend's district party conventions is any indication, the Democrats are going to march into the general election campaign forthrightly refusing to repeal the insidious No Child Left Behind legislation that aims to break down resistance to government-endorsed private education; refusing to vastly overhaul NAFTA and stanch the outflow of jobs overseas; refusing to take a strong stand against corporate abuse; refusing to advocate for true and vital environmental reforms; and, of course, refusing to commit to U.S. withdrawal in the shortest possible time from Iraq. All in the name of convincing the vast middle muddle that a Democrat without gumption would be better at running the country than a Republican who has strongly held views, even if they're so far outside the mainstream you have to navigate that tributary by a mule-driven canal boat.

So how does McGovern enter into this? In 1972, it was the vast center, which the Democrats needed desperately to defeat Nixon, that abandoned the South Dakota senator, leaving the president to feast on the "silent majority" that re-elected him by one of the greatest landslides in history. Today, despite right-wing myths to the contrary, the country is much closer politically, as evidenced by the utter skin-of-the-teeth margin in 2000 and polls that indicate a similar result in November. Kerry and the Democratic center-right threatens to alienate progressives at his peril - and that of the nation.

Ralph Nader: The independent presidential hopeful, or, as Kerry Democrats call him, the Presumptive Pain in the Ass, says that the only way to stabilize Iraq is with an international peacekeeping force composed of neutral nations and Islamic countries. "Iraq should be able to sort out [its] issues more easily without the military presence of a U.S. occupying force," he says.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0419-09.htm

Daniel Ellsberg: The Nixon-era Defense Department analyst who released to the New York Times what became known as the Pentagon Papers -- a confidential report that detailed over two decades the U.S. involvement in Vietnam -- predicted the escalating violence in Iraq "will get far worse." He also took issue with John Kerry's plan to perhaps increase involvement, saying, "I want him [Kerry] elected, but I'm not happy with what I'm hearing. ''We must persevere. We can't leave.' I hope that is a campaign promise he [Kerry] will go back on."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0420-04.htm

Watch What You Read . . .

Archconservatives had their day with books lambasting Bill Clinton for high crimes and misdemeanors so nutty that, had it been the Sixties I'd have attributed those rants to a bad tab of LSD. Now comes a slew of tomes taking it to Georgedick Bushcheney. But as fun as it may be to read that the anointed president is sharing a conspiracy with Saudi oil sheikhs to get elected this November, it may not be true.

Lefties can write bad books, too.

So whom should you believe?

For starters, place more trust in volumes written by people who have some knowledge about what they're writing about. That would include former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill ("The Price of Loyalty," with Ron Suskind) and former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke ("Against All Enemies"), who wrote about how the Bushcheney administration conducts business. When you're writing about life on the inside, it helps to have actually been on the inside.

Then, there are those who may not have been on the inside at the same time and place, but whose own experiences give them the credibility to write about closely related topics. John W. Dean (no relation to Howard) is such an individual. As a former legal counsel to President Richard Nixon, Dean was aware of how the Watergate scandal and White House secrecy were impairing democracy. So when he recognized the same thing occurring 30 years after his former boss was compelled to resign in disgrace, he hit the keyboard ("Worse Than Watergate").

Finally, there are the journalists. The real journalists, those who have worked for mainstream media with strong credentials. Bob Woodward of the Washington Post comes to mind ("Plan of Attack"). Unless Woodward has totally sold out, he should retain at least some of the journalistic lessons he and colleague Carl Bernstein learned when they broke Watergate. The Post didn't print a word of what Woodward and Bernstein wrote unless it was corroborated by at least two sources and all evidence was thoroughly checked and accounted for. Woodward later became a Post editor where, it must be assumed, he insisted on the same standards from his reporters.

What about best sellers such as Al Franken's "Lies (and the Lying Liars who Tell Them" and Craig Unger's "House of Bush, House of Saud"? Well, I've read the former, and it's entertaining (more entertaining than Franken is on his Air America Radio show), but nothing I would want to base a scholarly work on. I haven't read Unger's book because I've been let down in the past by too many "investigative journalists" who purport to uncover the secrets of whatever, only to fall utterly flat, as the New York Times reported in its review. Those kind of books leave me feeling the way I do after eating a bag of potato chips: full, urpy and unsatisfied.

Contact Ira Lacher here.

Changing Hearts and Minds

Had the article on The Nation's website been written by anyone but William Greider, I'd have ignored it. But the most prescient progressive reporter of the last couple of decades I read. And one paragraph, about why today's mass media have simply refused to second-guess their shameful acceptance of Georgedick Bushcheney's war on Iraq, stood out, both for its profundity and for its aha! factor:

"How could such forgetfulness prevail, especially among a smart, engaged group like news people? It is perhaps not as sinister as it sounds. Most of the men and women now in charge of the news processes were boys and girls during Vietnam. The youngest reporters were not yet born. Their generation, I imagine, experienced the war more distantly as a disturbed era that ended in national humiliation. An air of shame hung over their growing-up years, a residue of bitterness and guilt all around. Did Americans wimp out? Did the news media poison their patriotism? My hunch is that many of today's reporters and editors came to think so and were determined to be less squeamish, more 'manly' about warmaking. Editors over 50 can't hide behind this excuse."

Maybe. Maybe it's just that today's young people simply aren't afraid of dying for something so meaningless, as my contemporaries were, and how 58,000 of them did.

Too many of us are sanguine in the knowledge that the only Americans who are dying in Iraq today are volunteers. Many doubtless joined up believing they were defending their country, or saw the military as a good career. But others surely enlisted because they hadn't a notion of what they wanted to do after graduating high school. Still others signed up for the National Guard and reserves thinking they'd be fighting forest fires or floods in their home states, not shipping out for an endless tour overseas.

But the common denominator is they understood there was a possibility that one day Uncle Sam, like the Godfather, would call on them to perform a service. That day, which many thought would never come, came.

The rest of us, not having to worry about being drafted - at least not yet - can sit back, sympathize, utter words of support for the troops, and a silent prayer that our rear ends aren't in danger.

A draft would change that mighty quick and, indeed, a few progressive legislators such as Congressman Charles Rangel of Michigan have even proposed conscription with no loopholes as a means of provoking opposition to the war. I don't think we're ready for a step like that, and besides, giving a draft to Georgedick Bushcheney would be like giving Osama a key to the Redstone Arsenal.

But no matter how the war goes, and whether a Democrat retakes the White House or not, we're not going to get the kind of antiwar sentiment in this country William Greider writes about. Not unless our young people can truly be made to feel that their lives are about to be cut short for something they can neither believe in nor understand.

Contact Ira Lacher here.

Regarding The Draft

Ira's essay brings up an important issue: The Draft. Legislation has been proposed in the House and Senate (twin bills S89 and HR163) to reinstate the draft as early as June 15, 2005, to apply to both men and women ages 18 to 26 and college deferments will NOT be allowed.

$28 million dollars has been added to the 2004 Selective Service System and the Pentagon has quietly begun a public campaign to fill all 10,350 draft board positions and the 11,070 appeals boards slots nationwide. It appears that both John Kerry and the Bush administration support this action, but you can have an impact by putting pressure on them and by contacting your members of Congress.  More information is available at Common Dreams.

Linda

Is A True Progressive Agenda Possible?

'Twas a busy and wacky weekend, working on a musical project for a friend and other sundry tasks. So nothing really new to rant on this morning, except the anticipation of the District 3 Democratic Party convention this coming weekend. The buzz is that there actually may be enough delegates committed to Howard Dean to be viable; that is, have an official presence at the state convention. Remember, Dean has "suspended his campaign," but has not yet released his delegates.

At the county conventions, there was considerable pressure for the Dean people to join up with John Kerry, but a number of county Dean delegations decided to pool their numbers with other candidates for the purpose of influencing party principle. In Polk County, for example, Dean delegates elected at the precinct caucuses aligned with people who were committed to Dennis Kucinich.

For the record, at the county convention your correspondent advocated joining with Kerry in a sea of party unity. But that was before it became known that the Presumptive Democratic Party Nominee was strongly indicating Clintonesque center-right leanings (see "The Call of the Bratwurst" published on this blog on Saturday).

So in the interest of full disclosure, I freely admit to flip-flopping on this issue of whether to insist on a progressive agenda -- which some argue will attract dormant Dems who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and sat out 2002 -- or to abandon progressivism entirely to back a center-right Kerry, who will try to appeal to the great uncommitted.

What happens if we do this? Would progressivism permanently die in this country, or just take a holiday till things right themselves? How long might that holiday last (see the unending "war on terrorism")? Is a truly progressive agenda of national health insurance, actual oversight of megabusiness, gay civil unions and however more you can add -- ever possible for this country? We'll examine these issues in the days ahead.

Contact Ira Lacher here.

The Call of the Bratwurst

Ever get a gnawing, rumbling, grumbling feeling in your stomach, like when the bratwurst with onions, ketchup and mustard that tasted so great at the ballpark a few hours ago starts haunting you on your way home?

I'm beginning to feel that way about John Kerry.

The New York Times, which despite its great faults frequently quotes people accurately, ran a story Friday about how the Presumptive Democratic Party Nominee gave a speech to what the paper said were "wealthy and well-connected supporters." Wrote the Times' Jodi Wilgoren:

"Declaring that he is 'not a redistribution Democrat,' Senator John Kerry told a group of wealthy and well-connected supporters on Thursday that he would soon start an aggressive campaign to define himself as a centrist, in hopes of peeling moderate Republicans from President Bush."

The Times went on to say:

" 'We've got to reach out,' Mr. Kerry said. 'There are so many Republicans who have said to me: "You know, for the first time in my life, I'm going to vote for a Democrat. I'm ready to switch over." '

"He noted that Reagan Democrats were a critical faction in the 1980's but that Democrats like President Jimmy Carter had trouble attracting Republican votes."

Well, duhhh! Maybe it's because Democrats like Jimmy Carter didn't appeal to bigoted, homophobic, ignorant yahoos who believe that all the world's ills can be settled at the point of a cruise missile.

Senator, don't you want to attract votes of, you know, . . . Democrats? Those people who believe government has a responsibility to punish those who don't keep our air and water clean? To ensure that people who want to work can get work? Who want to be well can remain well? Who want to be accepted as people, no matter the way their genes line up? And to defend this nation and its people, not subjugate everyone else in our name?

"Their goal is to define me and make me unacceptable," the Times quoted Kerry as saying. "Our goal has to be to keep that acceptability."

Well, excuse me, Senator, but acceptable to whom? I mean, Howard Dean said he needed to appeal to Southerners with Confederate flags on the windshield and gun racks on their pickup trucks. But this is scary.

For eight years we had a Republicrat administration whose unofficial slogan was "A chicken in every pot, a Beemer in every garage." The rest of us poor schlubs just filed our taxes, saw single parents on welfare suffer and saw affordable health care become as rare as the truth in Washington. Is this what John Kerry considers "acceptable" to Middle America?

Is this what John Kerry considers acceptable to us? 

"The Gay Agenda"

Yipes! There it was again - "the gay agenda."

No, this wasn't coming from the God-fearing mouth of the ayatollah Ken Veenstra. ("Jonathan Wilson has made it rather clear that he wants to promote a gay agenda, an agenda of special rights," the state senator from Orange City said during the debate before the senate rejected Wilson for the state board of education because he is gay). This latest came from the keyboard of Rekha Basu, the lone liberal op-ed page columnist who receives a paycheck from the Register.

"They grilled [Wilson] on their key contention," she writes, "that he would promote a so-called 'gay agenda' . . . "

Wow! The attack of the gay agenda, as Village Voice cartoonist Mark Fiore has termed it. This must be some pretty powerful stuff if even liberals are saying it. What could it be?

A Google search turned up a million-plus pages dealing with the gay agenda. Some pages weren't in English! Some referred to other countries! Omigod! It's around the whole world!

And the more I read, the more I realized that this gay agenda was so insidious that even those sworn to protect our family values couldn't save us from this scourge. On the site of the Family Policy Network, a socially conservative Christian organization, came this dire warning about - gasp! - pResident Bush:

"Despite repeated statements about being a Christian and expressing the desire to restore honor to the White House during his 2000 presidential campaign, pResident George W. Bush is advancing the homosexual agenda as much as any other president in history." 

Bush! He's behind it, too? There's no place to run!

But . . . what is the gay agenda? And how can a simple, ordinary Iowan recognize it, no less protect himself and his children from it?

Finally, I found it. There it was, staring me in the face. The Cronus Connection website claimed to have a copy. But the site also contained this ominous warning:

"The Gay Agenda may contain some references that could, may and will offend some people. Please be forewarned that the contents are graphic, and may contain sexual references of the most offensive nature."

Gulp.

But in the interests of The People's Right to Know, I had to click the button that read: "Show Me the Gay Agenda." (I will have you know that I escorted my children out of the room first.)

So I clicked the button. And there it was, the Gay Agenda:

"To live free from persecution -so leave us the **** alone. Thank you for allowing us to educate you."

How menacing can you get?