The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Barth's picture

    Being There

    By Barth on Sat, 10/02/2010 - 2:43pm |

    As well described by cmaukonen the other day,there are things that cannot always be fully understood unless you lived through it. The unspeakably brilliant Jill Lepore explained to Rachel Maddow last night why that is not always so, and, frankly, why Barth the amateur historian is truly an amateur,but to have missed the Vietnam War period means that much of what passes for political thought these days must be confusing.

    It is hard to imagine, for instance, that missing that time you could fully understand how much "the war" overwhelmed almost every conversation, even those having little to do with politics. It got to the point that Randy Newman had to explain that when

    entertaining a little girl in my rooms, Lord
    With California wines and French parfumes, Lord
    She started to talk to me about the War, Lord
    I said, "I don't want to talk about the War."



    For righteous reasons the war swamped everything else. Your faithful blogger was in high school during the time when those older were being drafted en masse to serve in that meat grinder, and was fortunate enough to hold a nice large number when the draft lottery covering his birth year was held, so a certain level of urgency did not apply, but until the summer of 1973, when a new obsession swept the country (a year too late to do what needed to be done), it was hard to talk about any other issue.

    The result of that obsession was a new and divisive politics and it gave the king of such destructive debate, Richard Nixon, the eight years in the White House that were truncated when his thuggishness could no longer be ignored even by Republicans.

    In the meantime, though, the Roosevelt majority destroyed itself. Some of what followed was, to be sure, the result of Southerners who had identified themselves as Democrats in memory of the party that opposed Abraham Lincoln and a reconstruction after the civil war which would have moved against racial segregation, deciding that it was time to leave the party that enacted civil rights legislation.

    In 1968, though, it was the war, far more than anything else, that caused so many of the elements of the coalition that built and nurtured the New Deal into the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and then the Great Society. As liberals and progressives abandoned President Johnson and his party forcing him to forgo a campaign for re-election and watched it nominate Vice President Humphrey to succeed him after Senator Eugene McCarthy faded under the weight of the stronger and more inspirational campaign of Senator Robert f. Kennedy who was then murdered, its splintered remnants could not come together in time to prevent Nixon's election.

    The divisions within the party, and within families and relationships have not completely healed over forty years later. We all know people only now able to experiment with contacts with those with whom they were close until the war divided them. For all the expressions of gratitude to those who give their life or limbs or mental acuity in service of our country, those who tried to avoid contact with the damaged people who returned to our campuses after a tour in 'Nam, have a long way to go to repair that damage.

    The Democratic Party still wrestles with the legacy of that sad time. It has pockets that no longer trust the government to which President Roosevelt assigned the duty of being the ultimate protector of those unable to protect themselves. They remain suspicious of all efforts to protect the nation's security, and of law enforcement in this country as if J. Edgar Hoover were still preparing files on dissidents for the political use of the president whose administration compiled an enemies list.

    To many their vote is an expression of principle and conscience. If a candidate or a president takes a position or maintains a view that violate either, they cannot be supported. It matters not that by withholding their vote they enable forces of gluttony, of selfishness, and even of out and out craziness to take over our government. Indeed, in a perverse way, they agree with their tormentors on only one thing: the government is bad.

    As Randy Rhodes once said to Ralph Nader on the late Air America, we can longer afford that type of thought. Some of us never thought we could and urged votes for Vice President Humphrey to stop the evil that was able to take over our country. We even voted to re-elect President Carter because of the alternative and supported the re-election of President Clinton, even those his personal obsessions made irrelevant our worries and our ideas.

    A voter does not have to agree with this blogger's views about the best and most inspirational president we have had since Nixon's triumph, to understand that what is at stake now is the very future of our government and, perhaps, the lives of millions of us. That president made the case exceedingly well earlier this week, again, and instead of reading further about the despair that floats all around, it might be better to spend a few minutes listening that what he had to say.

     

    Comments

    You are so good at stating my position.

    We should raise a ruckus everysingle day. That is good for the party, for the left, for the liberals, for the progressives...

    But we have to come together for elections.

    Things will become very very bad with a Speaker Boner or that asshat with the glasses in the Senate.

    And I probably will be chastised for saying this but My President has good intents and the legislation passed over the last 20 months has really been phenominal.


    by Richard Day on Sat, 10/02/2010 - 3:47pm

    But we have to come together for elections.

    Well said.  The primaries are over.  The battle over policies and legislation will continue later, but what is is, for better or worse.  Our coalition needs to band together, in spite of our differences, and maintain control.

    The End.


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 10/02/2010 - 4:13pm

    Alexander Pope said: What is is, and what is not is not!!


    by Richard Day on Sat, 10/02/2010 - 4:24pm

    And didn't Rumsfeld say there is the knowable what and unknowable what, and the known unknownable what is not the unknown unknowable what, and that is what is not the knowable what we go to war with.


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 10/02/2010 - 6:10pm

    Well Camus he said something like that but he was most probably under the influence of one of his companies 'intellectual enhancers' at the time. haahahah


    by Richard Day on Sat, 10/02/2010 - 6:13pm

    What?


    by LisB on Sat, 10/02/2010 - 7:34pm

    Generally speaking, by the time I reach the voting booth I can't help, no matter how I'm feeling, but vote strategically for the Democrat.  I voted for Nader in 2000 but as a Nader trader.  I gave my New York vote to Nader and a Florida Green gave his Florida vote to Gore.  If more people had done that (and not even that many more) it would have been a very different decade.

    That said, I kind of consider myself part of the problem and I consider people who don't vote for the candidate that best reflects their point of view to be part of the problem.  George Washington famously warned us not to let political parties take over our political system.  Not only did we do that, but we let two parties do it and it's ruining us.

    While I have no sympathy for people who say the parties are the same (they aren't) it is true that the parties represent the same thing -- the breadth of convention wisdom in the United States.  This is why political discourse is so stupid.  We've been having the same conversation for 50 plus years.

    Again, I think Democrats have better policies and ideas than Republicans and we're better off with Democrats in charge.  But we'd be far better off with social libertarians and economic egalitarians in charge.  We have to somehow get that into the conversation.

    Voting for the Democrat, whoever they may be, has some obvious advantages and a lot to recommend it.  But don't fool yourself.  It's still a vote in support of the status quo.  They just want your vote, they don't care if you held your nose when you gave it to them, so long as they can reasonably believe you'll do it again.

    And we do it again.  And again, and again.  You, me, all of us but my old pal Bluebell from TPM.  We play their game.  I think it's important to remember that the top people in both parties have more in common with each other than with any of us.  Sorry to have to say this, but Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and John Kerry would much rather have dinner with Newt Gingrich, John McCain and George Will than they would any of us.  On one hand, yeah, these guys are at each other's throats.  On the other... they've divided the country between them and they aim to keep it that way.

    If we're always going to be scared to vote for a third party then we're always going to have two parties.  That's it.  That's how it will be a hundred years from now.  At a certain point it's time to vote your conscience.

    Also, I have to say that I find it offensive that the Democrats think they own my vote.  That if I do vote for some one else and it's enough to cost a Democrat the office that they must think they have some sort of right to, they'll say "somebody stole his vote."  To heck with that idea.  You either earn my vote or you don't.  Nader voters didn't cost Al Gore the election.  Nader simply earned some votes that Gore wanted.  Gore was either unwilling or unable to convince those people he would have been the best president.  I won't go so far as to say that's his fault.  Maybe he didn't want to be the kind of president the Greens would support.  But nobody outside of the Florida state government and the Supreme Court stole anything from him.


    by Michael Maiello on Sat, 10/02/2010 - 5:28pm

    That all sounds fine and dandy until we think about Rand, O'Donnell, Angle and others chairing committees and driving the media noise machine.  Suddenly all the "you don't own my vote" and they "have more in common with each other" screeds don't seem so fine and dandy.  The reality is that in the final analysis there is a difference, and the liberals need to keep their coalition, regardless of its recent performance, in control.  This taking one step forward three steps back is not going to help us in the long run.


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 10/02/2010 - 6:17pm

    What you say sounds nice, too.  But it means this goes on, as it has, forvever.


    by Michael Maiello on Sat, 10/02/2010 - 8:22pm

    And so it goes.  And our challenge is to remain humble and compassionate in the tumble.


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 10/02/2010 - 8:42pm

    I agree with you, Destor, that the two-pary system is not working and I would love to see a real Independent Party formed.  Or another third party, Green, perhaps.  But I also think it's going to take a long time and a lot of local groundwork before that happens.  Would I work to help get local Indie representatives elected?  You bet.  And if everyone else started doing that, across the country, I think we could finally see some major change.  But not right away, unfortunately.

     


    by LisB on Sat, 10/02/2010 - 7:50pm

    Let's take a minute to frame the premise in something other than "who is more closely representative of your interests than the other?"

    Let's understand a premise of Class War. A case can very easily be made that what we have witnessed in the last 30+ years is an all-out assault against the working class and the poor in which the wealth has been increasingly accumulating in the top tier whilst power and wealth has been systematically taken from the majority.

    On one side, you have the corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthiest among us.

    On the other side, you have labor and the poor and those who cannot afford to feed themselves, let alone keep politicians in the manner to which they are accustomed.

    You have two political parties. One which represents the wealthy class outright; who makes it their reason for being the support of the wealthy class in some kind of cockamamie belief in a "trickle down" economic system; they insist that if we will only give enough bread to those seated at the table, that eventually enough crumbs will fall from the table to sate those who they grind underfoot. 

    The other party supposedly represents the little guys in this contest. They will fight to ensure the less-wealthy are fairly represented in all policy decisions. It is their charge to create safety nets and limitations on the powerful to make certain that they don't run off with everything, leaving everyone else behind in the dust.

    The choice is clear. For those in the working class and the poor, the Dems are your guys. They represent you; that is their charter. If there is ever going to be any economic justice, it will come from that representation, certainly not from the GOP.

    All very good... so far. After all, I can remember a time when this worked; when we in fact won Progressive/Liberal policies from Washington that placed power into the hands of the working class and even the impoverished.

    But what happens to this Class War paradigm when the powerful and the wealthy actually end up owning both parties?

    You don't need to look far to see. The realities of multi-million dollar campaigns and our present method of financing those campaigns offer all the lesson you need to learn.

    What you get, in our case, is a Dem Prez and a Dem Congress elected with an impressive mandate for change. And what is provided is only so much change as the wealthy owners will allow.

    Thus, you get health care reform that has as its first objective the charge to make sure the health insurance industry remains intact. Single payer? Not even on the table for discussion. After all, the insurance lobby will never allow that - so why piss them off? Public option? Ditto! The polls may show that it's overwhelmingly supported by the electorate, but the boss says no, don't even go there.

    Thus, you get financial reform that is written by the lobbyists for Wall Street. Too big to fail? Goldman Sachs says it's not an issue, and you in Congress better be listening. Credit Default Swaps? None of your business, sayeth the hedge fund campaign contributors. So we'll just kinda' let those slide, ok? sayeth the Dems.

    Look at what we've lost in these last thirty years. The right to strike. The right to earn a family-supporting wage in the manufacturing sector. The ability to pass "globally uncompetitive" regulations on environmental protection and labor and all manner of important issues that ensure we retain a first-world economy and public environment rather than participate in a race for the bottom with the lowest of common denominators in the third world.

    For better or worse, we are engaged up to our eyeballs in Class Warfare, and we are losing almost every step of the way. The Dems are our dog in the fight, and we must therefore support them. The prospect of these whacked-out libertarian Repubs having free reign is absolutely horrific, as you say.

    But at what point can we ever expect these Dems to deliver anything like a knockout punch in this fight when they allow their owners to effectively tie their hands behind their back? When can we ever expect to see a fulsome victory on things such as labor standards and environmental regulations and tax policy for so long as the Dems must pull their punches in order to be allowed by the owners to stay in the game?

    Go ahead. Lecture me on the necessity to vote for the Dems in this fight because they are "my guys." We've got no one else in the fight except the Dems.You're right.

    But then, please tell me when you are going to join with me and the rest of us who insist that the Dems MUST cast aside the shackles placed upon them by their monied owners and stand tall and fight for US in this battle against the oligarchs - let the chips fall where they may.

    Want peace? Work for Justice. And it begins by making certain your "representatives" in the ring aren't pulling their punches in a fixed match where "When Money talks, Principles walk!" 


    by SleepinJeezus on Sun, 10/03/2010 - 6:29am

    Sleepin':  I try almost never to disagree with you and there is not much in what you say that makes me want to try.  All I can add really is that the idea that money talks has generally always been so.  The railroads got built that way with land grants and the civil war was fought for those reasons so northern business interests were not required to compete with those who ha no such much free labor at their disposal.

    Once in awhile, the people with the bucks get scared that what they have created could lead to something uncontrollable.  If a Roosevelt shows up at that precise moment, and the stars are otherwise aligned, great things can happen.  Otherwise, not.

    There was no huge majority that came in with the President.  You know that.  You know that Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieux, Blanche Lincoln and the reincarnated Joseph Lieberman are not part of any majority that inlcudes you, me and the President.  In the House, too, the number of Democrats elected only in reponse to President Bush's incompetence, but otherwise reflect Republican opposition to anything we propose, was large.

    We knew the President could only ride for one hundred days.  We got a lot done then:  not as much as we might have had we not wasted time thinking the Maine women:  Senators Collins and Snowe, would do what had to be done or that other supposed "centrists" would join us, but we made a dent.

    I suspect the next two years, even if we can retain a bare "majority" in Congress, will be a step back, but the fight is worth fighting, every day.

    I know you agree with that.

     

     

     

     

     


    by Barth on Sun, 10/03/2010 - 9:41am

    Thanks, Barth.

    And I try to never mis-characterize what someone else has said in an attempt to win debating points. There's way too much of that in these discussions, and it tends to derail conversations into mere pissing matches.

    That said, please accept my apologies if I am wrong and feel free to offer a correction. But what I hear from you here is a surrender to the notion that money will always prevail; that, indeed, it always has except under extraordinary circumstance.

    Now, I can agree with the second part of that. Money - and its corrupting influence - has always been a major problem in attempts to realize anything like a democracy.

    But where we differ is in what I perceive to be your willingness to simply abide this corruption as the way the game is played. These are the rules, and we can either play or stay home.

    First, there's a critically important point to be made: Baucus, Nelson, Lieberman, Landrieux, and Lincoln have not arrived at their obstructionist play in Congress out of some deep-seated philosophical differences with the Dem Party platform. No, even the media acknowledges that their strategic interference is bought and paid for by the lobbyists funding their campaigns.

    And I understand the argument that a true liberal would have difficulty winning the seat in many of the districts from which these asshats have come.

    But the calculation would seem to be "If we can't win in the District (or state) on the basis of our ideals and our principles, then perhaps we can simply install a corporate whore on the Dem ticket and overwhelm the electorate with campaign cash." In the Senate, especially, we see how productive this approach is in terms of actually getting anything accomplished. We have done nothing in such an instance but install the very tools that allow the oligarchs to limit any reform to only so much reform as they will allow. We have set ourselves up to be Palooka-Dems, pulling our punches in a fixed match wherein one entity owns both contestants in the Class War played out in the ring in Washington.

    I suggest that it would be far better to run a candidate on the Dem ticket who is legitimately more conservative in their ideology than the average Dem if that is indeed necessary to reflect the politics in the District. We would then build a big tent that actually reflects the politics of the majority. Meanwhile, we are left free to try to impress upon the voters the superior quality of our liberal ideals - and they ARE so incredibly superior to laissez faire, Libertarian Capitalism in the way they impact the working class majority. Win hearts and minds of the electorate? What a concept! Far better that than the more expedient selling of your soul to the highest bidder in the campaign financing wars.

    I also disagree with your characterization of the Obama victory that would minimize the mandate he possessed on election eve. I saw the video feed from Grant Park. I was keenly attuned to the attitude that existed throughout the country. This country was fully prepared to turn the page on the Bush/Cheney madness, and the Repubs had so soundly run things into the ground that it was assumed by pundits - both left and right - that they would be banished to the woodshed of irrelevance for years to come.

    What happened? Rather than launch into the Class War fight that would have landed some solid punches for our side and co-opted so much of the anger we see exploited by the CorporaTea Party, Obama/Rahm and Co. pulled their punches under orders of their owners. The country stood ready for change. We got politics-as-usual instead, and it's a game the Repubs play all too well.

    The difficulty, of course, comes in acknowledging the need for cash to win campaigns. And it is here where I ask all the "pragmatic realists" to make a deal: I will indeed vote for your Dem candidates for the reasons I outline above. But then, get off your asses and give up this defeatist attitude that simply abides the corruption that keeps us from actually achieving success. Call out the instances of corruption for what they are as they occur - on both sides of the aisle. Then insist on fixing the problem with some manner of legitimate campaign finance reform. At last, strike a blow for our side in this Class War. They've got the guns, but we've got the numbers. And in politics, numbers must prevail - or we might just as well fold up our tent and go home. 

    At the very least, we cannot EVER simply shrug our shoulders and accept corruption as the cost of doing business. Never in our history have the people simply accepted the influence of the wealthy as standard operating procedure in a democracy. No, when it got to be particularly abusive, they stood tall in defiance. Meanwhile, there was always the voice of those who would be raised throughout, pointing out that there's a better way to run a railroad (simile intended).

    Want peace? Work for justice. Even if it seems to be about as pragmatic an exercise as jousting at windmills. There can simply be no other objective that drives us.

     


    by SleepinJeezus on Sun, 10/03/2010 - 11:13am

    While the points that there has always been corruption and that the rich always take the biggest piece of the pie are valid, it is less of a strain on everyone when the pie is slowly getting larger than when the pie is slowly getting smaller.


    by Donal on Sun, 10/03/2010 - 12:31pm

    Being There?

    Talk about being there. Try my life's adventure on for size and think about it.

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    http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e66/LarrytheDuck/Dag_Blog_Duck/182c176e.jpg
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    Yup! I was there in the crowded ball room of the Ambassador hotel. I was 22 and home in LA on a two week leave of duty, stationed in San Diego in the Navy. I was there with two friends I had gone to high school with and who were attending UCLA at the time and were working for the Kennedy campaign.

    I walked away from that night and never looked upon our country in the same light again.

    First, it was JFK. I was in art class in the 10th grade when the news broke.

    Then it was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I was in the US Navy and I was in the quiet little farming community of Tecumseh, Michigan preparing to compete in a track meet at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

    Then a month later Bobby was gunned down right after he gave the following speech. His words that stand out are found at  the 8 minute mark:

    "I think we can end the divisions within the United States."

    .

    .

    And here we are some 40+ years later just as divided if not more so than we were in '68 ... well, at least some of us are.

    As an end note: My wife (a Special Education teacher with LA Unified for 25 years) and I attended a special night at the new Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex located on the former site of the Ambassador Hotel. (wiki) I'm sure many have heard that this school is the costliest school ever built.
    To say that we were both moved beyond tears is an understatement. How fitting an edifice in the memory of Bobby. Money isn't everything folks.

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    http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e66/LarrytheDuck/Dag_Blog_Duck/20100912_RFK_Learning_Complex-1.jpg
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    ~OGD~

    by oldenGoldenDecoy on Sun, 10/03/2010 - 7:10pm