[Mb-civic] Dancing in the Dark

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

This first essay is really good....read and share.....


* Dancing in the Dark
By Michael Ventura, Austin Chronicle

Howard Dean Disputes Media View that
'Values' Swung Election By Charles Geraci

==========

Dancing in the Dark

By Michael Ventura, Austin Chronicle.
Posted November 11, 2004 to Alternet
http://www.alternet.org/story/20469/


What's our job? To dedicate our lives to preserving and
passing on what we love, so that if things ever get
sane again there'll be something left.

Joe Hill was a labor organizer executed on trumped
charges in Utah in 1915. The night before his murder he
telegrammed his comrades: "Don't waste your time in
mourning. Organize."

I once shook the hand of a man who shook his hand. In
the spirit of passing that handshake on, here are some
thoughts post-election:

It's after a defeat that you find out what you're made
of. Cry if you must, cry it all out, but don't let the
bastards sap your vitality.

In 1964 arch-conservative Barry Goldwater was crushed
at the polls. Everybody thought conservatism was
forever politically dead in America. But conservatives
re-grouped, re-thought, and organized patiently from
the ground up; when fundamentalist religion became a
force in the mid-1970s they were ready to take
advantage of it. In 1980, they elected Reagan. Dig: It
took them 16 years. American progressives seriously
started mass-scale organizing only about a year ago. In
just one year we came within reach of victory.

That's remarkable. Now is no time to quit.

Iraq is a mess and it'll get worse. Our military is way
over-extended. To keep present troop levels, Bush will
renege on his promise and institute a draft  -
probably next spring, so that he can recover by the
mid-term elections. Rural poor are already fighting
this war; a draft won't change their vote (though
continued failure in Iraq might). But the conservatives
of the middle class will be hit hard by a draft; that
will change the present equation considerably.
Progressives must stay organized and ready to help
them. Reach out to save their kids  -  and ours.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker said
recently that he sees a 75 percent chance of "financial
catastrophe" within five years. That's his polite
Establishment way of saying that an economic shit-storm
is on the horizon and could hit anytime. Any mix of oil
hikes, credit trouble, unemployment, interest hikes,
etc., could set it off. Also: the European Union,
China, and Southern Asia, have been hanging back,
hoping we Americans would clean our own house and vote
Bush out. We failed. They can't afford to hang back any
longer. The U.S., thrown into heavy debt by Bush, now
depends on these powers to buy our bonds. Their
collective hand is on our financial spigot and they'll
start turning it slowly toward "off." They'll do it
carefully, but they'll do it, because it's the only
check they have on Bush America. They needn't cut their
investment much to make us hurt. Combine the two  -
our internal weaknesses and dependence on foreign
financing  -  and we're in big trouble. Bitching about
that won't be enough, as this election proved.
Progressives must offer an analysis and alternatives,
and present them in a way that badly educated people
can understand.

Since the mid-1960s, progressives lost white working
stiffs because we talked down to them. We dissed their
work, their desires, their beliefs, their religions. We
made them Other, matching their bigotries with a new
own all our own. On Election Day 2004 we paid full
price for that. No working man or woman is my enemy.
Their struggle, their endurance, is to be respected.
They may be foolish and desperate enough to follow
people who lie to them, but they've got too much self-
respect to follow people who look down on them. They're
terrified. They're unequipped for the complexities and
paradoxes of the 21st century and they know it, and
they resent like hell all those who accept leaving them
behind as the price of entering the 21st century.
Progressives have got to accept what this election made
painfully clear: Either we all proceed or none of us
do. It's the greatest challenge and the biggest lesson
of this election: We've got to learn how to talk to
these people. They are our fellow-sharers in America.
They may not know or want that, but we must; and we
must act and speak accordingly. Whitman must be our
guide: "I will not have a single person slighted or
left away."

Don't demonize people who disagree with you. That's how
Bush and Cheney behave. Behavior is more important than
belief. What does belief matter, if your behavior apes
your enemy's? Behavior shapes reality. Belief merely
justifies reality. Demonization creates demons. Your
enemies are as human as you are. If you treat them that
way, the outcome may surprise you.

Never underestimate the power of the Irrational. At
every critical juncture of history, the irrational has
been a potent, often decisive force. At times whole
peoples go insane  -  Europe in World War I, Germany
throughout Hitler's reign, America during the Red
Scare. This is one of those times. Realize that you're
in the midst of it. Things may get so irrational that
nothing will work. In that case, what's our job? To
dedicate our lives to preserving and passing on what we
love, so that if things ever get sane again there'll be
something left. Which may be a way of saying: like Joe
Hill, lose beautifully. That beauty may be something
the future can build on.

This election was about identity. The concrete issues
-  Iraq, the economy  -  ultimately didn't matter. Bush
didn't lose the debates, after all. He incessantly told
his base that their wish to return to the national
identity of the 1950s was personified in him. He
reassured them that America was a force unto itself, an
entity that could create its own reality, and that that
reality was anything he said it was. He told them,
through coded language that they well understood, that
the 21st century would be the same as the 20th, and
that being an American was identity enough. He was
saying to the terrified and the left-behind: "You don't
have to grow, you don't have to change, you don't have
to be anything other than what you are  -  leave the
rest to me. I will fill your emptiness, validate your
God, still your terror."

Kerry's logic couldn't pierce that. His command of the
facts threatened everyone intimidated by the very facts
that seemed to win him the debates. They didn't want to
hear it. Reasoned judgment versus passionate belief?
Passion wins over reason every time. Democrats played
reason, Republicans played passion. End of story. A
progressive strategy? Never surrender reason but
remember: we're passionate too. Passionate about
genuine liberty and genuine justice for all. Compromise
that  -  play to a now non-existent middle ground  -
and all is lost.

Let's say this loud: THE ISSUE OF GAY MARRIAGE DID NOT
DOOM THIS ELECTION. You may measure the unhappiness of
heterosexual marriage by the ferocity of the opposition
to gay marriage. Listen to the country music that rural
red counties listen to: the hits are about the failure
of males and females to get together. In trailer park
or penthouse, half the marriages end in divorce and
many that don't are shameful compromises. Marriage, in
America, is in a state of unbridled panic. That panic,
not gay rights, helped doom this election  -  the panic
of people trying to hold on to something that really
isn't there anymore. Progressives must stand
passionately with all who seek their fair share of the
Bill of Rights.

My friend Deborah said today: "Bush manipulated through
fear, and the people who voted for him are filled with
fear. We're buying into it somehow. He generated it, we
voted against it, but now we're creating it. That's
something that leaves us vulnerable. We're not any
different from the other people." She's right. Bush's
re-election has driven many into a despairing fear.
Which is just where he wants you to be. That fear you
feel inside  -  that's Bush himself, inside you. Act
out of fear and the fear will increase. Courage doesn't
mean not being afraid; courage means doing what's
necessary in spite of your fear, even because of it.

Remember: we've only been organizing on a mass scale
for about a year and we almost won. If more of the
poor, the endangered, and the young had voted, we would
have won. We must keep those we organized and reach out
to those we failed to organize. The poor and the
endangered don't have many computers, they're not on
the Net. Politics is still local. Organizing from the
ground up means from the ground up, face to face,
speaking words that people can understand, showing them
how they can have a chance to change things and helping
them take that chance. It's only a chance but it's not
a delusion. Election Day is not set in stone. Our world
is in ferocious flux. In that flux, in the very thing
that frightens us most, is our chance.

Just one more thing: Nothing is less appealing or more
boring than solemnity. The old-time lefties who gave us
Social Security, the civil rights movement, the 35-hour
week, and the original (now shredded) social safety net
-  they partied, sang, danced, fetted, all the damn
time. They were famous for it. These are dark days and
they're going to get darker, but the dark side of the
day has always been my favorite time for dancing.

Michael Ventura writes the Letters at 3 a.m. column for
the Austin Chronicle.

==========

Howard Dean Disputes Media View that 'Values' Swung Election
By Charles Geraci
Editor & Publisher - Friday 12 November 2004

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_co
nte
nt_id=1000718777 http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111404U.shtml

Evanston, Ill. - Former presidential candidate Howard
Dean wants the media to stuff its new conventional
wisdom that "values" or "morals" drove the result of
this month's election.

Speaking Thursday night to 500 Northwestern University
students, many of them journalism majors, Dean noted
there was little "statistical difference" between the
percentage of voters who deemed moral values the top
issue (22 %) and those who ranked as their top concern
Iraq or the economy/jobs, according to exit poll data.

"How can you get to the conclusion morality was the
most important issue in this campaign?" Dean asked.
"It's beyond me, but that was what the media was
riding. They're entitled to their opinion. It doesn't
happen to be the opinion of thoughtful people who are
looking."

Though Dean, a Democrat, complimented President Bush,
saying he "ran a great campaign" and was "very
disciplined," he compared the president to former
Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, at least in one
regard.

"The truth is the president of the United States used
the same device that Slobodan Milosevic used in Serbia.
When you appeal to homophobia, when you appeal to
sexism, when you appeal to racism, that is
extraordinarily damaging to the country," Dean charged.
"I know George Bush. I served with him for six years
[as a fellow governor]. He's not a homophobe. He's not
a racist. He's not a sexist. In some ways, what he did
was worse ... because he knew better."

Dean also criticized Bush for the ballot initiatives in
11 states calling for gay marriage to be outlawed,
saying this "had only one effect, which is to appeal to
homophobia and fear and gay-baiting in order to win a
presidential election."

And he took a shot at Rev. Jerry Falwell.: "Most
Americans are decent people - not all. I mean, there
are those hate-mongers. I wouldn't call Jerry Falwell a
decent person."

Scolding Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for, in
Dean's opinion, humiliating people from the bench, he
said, "Justice Scalia ought not to be on the bench.
Never pick anyone who's sarcastic and mean-spirited."

But Dean's lighter side also was apparent throughout
the evening. When a student asked what, if anything,
Democrats could do regarding Bush's Supreme Court
nominations, Dean joked: "We can do a lot. But senators
have to have some chutzpah, as they say in Yiddish, or
cajones, as they say in Spanish."

The former Vermont governor also responded to an ad by
the conservative Club for Growth in which two ordinary
Americans said Dean should take his "tax-hiking,
government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating,
Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing,
Hollywood-loving, left wing freak show back to Vermont
where it belongs."

He explained, "I don't drink coffee. I have three cars
- all of which are American. No part of me is pierced
that I'm willing to discuss publicly. And if you want
to see a freak show, go look at the people who wrote
that ad - you won't believe it."

Dean talked about his vision for the Democratic Party,
saying, "We need to stand up for what we believe in ...
so that the people who vote against their economic
interests will now consider voting for Democrats."

Complimenting students for "voting in significantly
higher numbers," Dean appealed for them to "run for
office" quite a few times. Echoing the now infamous
"Dean scream," he shouted, "You need to run for office
- not just in Illinois and Ohio and South Carolina! ...
You need to run for office in Mississippi, and Alabama,
and Idaho, and Texas, and...."

==========
_______________________________________________________


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