Pimping Populism for Post-Proletarians

Never people to spend time reading history (what with the time required for makeup/costume and schmoozing), our corporate media "election team" guys and gals have at least taken some note of McCain's move to out-outrage Obama on the Spoliations of the Speculators, the Peculations of the Privileged, the Avarice of the Already Alarmingly Advantaged.

Alas, here again, someone (are you listening, NYT?) missed a ripe opportunity to do some basic explaining in a way that would prick McCain's rhetorical bubble faster than you can say Lampasas County.

Lampasas County (TX) is where fourteen dirt farmers, women and men, in 1882 launched the Farmers' Alliance, an early precursor of the Populist Party.

Ten years later, on July 4, 1892, the Omaha platform of the People's Party, would thunder:

"We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench..."

Strong words, but words fairly easily mimicked in 2008 by Senator He-of-Too-Many-Mansions-To-Be-Expected-to-Remember. Authentic war hero, in case you forgot.

What cannot be mimicked: the real Farmers' Alliance folks, and the Populists behind them, did actual bloody battle with the agents and thugs of Jay Gould, James J. Hill, Collis Huntington, and the other railroad barons. They actually organized a movement that had the magnates seriously worried.

What cannot be mimicked is the way the Populists' greatest tribunes, from James Baird Weaver to William Jennings Bryan, did much more than just mouth the right words for a credulous press. They actually pushed back, strategically and often decisively, in legislatures across the country and in the Congress. History, of course, records that the other side "won." Big Capital "won," as it usually does, when Bryant went down in '96. But even in defeat the Populists kept a vital pulse of resistance alive.

Nothing remotely like that is going on today. Among today's newly-dispossessed, whether newly-demonized immigrants or newly-repossessed homeowners or newly-unemployed wage workers, there is no seriously political organizing taking place. Workplace and community organizing, yes, but political organizing based on economic self-interest is quite another thing.

And as for the question of any tribunes arising from today's political class, let this paragraph lifted from a current AP dispatch on the president's $700 billion rescue plan say all that needs to be said:

"Their language [McCain's and Obama's] reflected a tricky balance that politicians in both parties are trying to strike, just six weeks before Election Day: Back a plan that doles out hundreds of billions to companies that made bad bets and still identify with the plight of middle-class voters."

Comments

[Donald-Iowa]

It would appear that the playing field has been tilted from the very beginning. Did we ever truly believe this country was ready for a black man to be elected President ? Why do some seek more and more ties to a church-state relationship even though our founding fathers went to a great deal of trouble warning against it.

It bothers me when I hear people praying for their team to win an athletic event, praying for the passage of some advantage over their opponent in a political battle. Do we take prayer to mean so little and hold our Lord in so little regard that we would pray for something so inconsequential ?

Perhaps it's finally time then to put our faith to a final test. Let's give God a chance. Let's let all those who tell us they know the way to solve all of all problems in this great country. Why do we need to have an election. ? We're told the Evangelicals and the Republican Party are God's chosen people (I watched the GOP Convention) so the rest of us might as well stay home on Nov 4th. I'm guessing John McCain only has a few more years (like myself) until the Grim Reaper pays him a visit, and then we can all discover whether he exercised sound judgement by choosing Sarah Palin to lead us out of the darkness into the promised land.

Let's let God choose for us.

(This has not been a paid

[GrainOSand]

I know you are already enjoying and living your life and the present economic situation has no effect. I know you think any call for a level playing field is about as leftist as you can get. I get that you want to keep every dime you earn even if others have to burn in the hot flames of systematic disdain for poverty, for failing, for not prevailing -- the first, the second, or the third time out. I know you demand perfection; you say perfection is what it is all about -- Any cause for failure is merely an excuse. It does not matter whether it is sexism, racism, religious intolerance, or child abuse.

There is no reason not to be living high off the hog. If you are not, then you are relegated to dog status or hog status where you get the slop. It is dog-eat-dog and may the best “man” win and come out on top. But on closer review, we find that not all that is said is true about who rises to the top.

It seems the game may be fixed for certain people to flop. It seems that others may have shortcuts to wealth. It seems that corruption manifests by the propulsion of greed, impetus of payoff, and by mechanisms of stealth.

Now we all want a piece of the pie and the pie does exist. The problem some are having is that it appears that the size of the slice is fixed.

[GrainOSand]

CEO’s and other corporate hoe’s getting paid while the average Jane and Joe, is wondering what happened to the money they made, they are broke even though they just got paid. What kind of world is this where just surviving costs an arm and a leg? System set up to keep people running until they become weak in the knees and shaky in the legs, or even worse, until they are dead. Meantime, others dip their feet in the pools of the billion dollar retreats and they muse about the little people. Can you recognize you are equally feeble and prone to fall; money only builds a consumption wall. It does not separate living being from the mortality thing; it does not make Gods out of human beings.


So money ain’t the answer and greed is a cancer, tax cuts and no spending represents an ending to morality and it introduces the blind banality of a failed vision. Such a policy represents an eventual head-on-collision with what is really going on! Corporations we must save, but you, lowly individual, you cannot get a loan, you are on your own, and do not miss a payment. Can you say -- new form of enslavement? There is nothing wrong with the free market, there is something wrong with the misery target for it seems to hit the spot every time, it does not change. Let us stop playing the -- somebody has to suffer so that others can profit game.

[GrainOSand]

Are you the keeper of your brother?
Do you serve to protect your sister?
Have you functioned as a joy to your mother?
What of your father, was your life made harder because his was?
You wonder, what has become of the tenets of compassion, empathy, and love?

Lonely spirit set adrift to float out to sea amongst the sharks below and the vultures overhead.
Lonely spirit awakened to find out that it was already dead.
Now spirit tries to recall when it first noticed the tall wave that came crashing down.
Spirit wonders if it was destiny and if it could have avoided the catastrophe, it found.
Why did spirit stand there transfixed in the path of disaster?
Why did spirit not stand strong against the storm and what came after?


Why did spirit not make a plea, dropt to its knees and pray for help?
Sprit felt the trembling moment.
Spirit saw the menacing wave.
Spirit heard the fury of its sound.
Spirit knew that if it did not do something it was going to go down.
Now spirit sits in a watery grave.
Spirit wonders if it was fixed, or could spirit have been saved?

[GrainOSand]

Is it fixed?
Were you born sick?
Did you catch the virus of life?
Did you become contaminated by toil and strife?
Were you slated to fail?
Was hell the only reality you could find?
Was it destiny that you face hard times?

Is it fixed?
You cannot seem to pick up the pieces.
You do not seem to be ale to grab hold of the hem of the gown of Jesus.
You reach out to touch.
But…you find you do not have what it takes.
You do not possess enough to find God.

Is it fixed?
Why is it so hard?
Why are there so many obstacles to living well?
They seem insurmountable, too big -- too large.
Is it fixed?
You saw the train coming.
Yet, you did not get out of the way.
You did not attempt to dodge.

The water continues to flow.
Lives come and lives go.
What does it mean?
Who can say they know?

Is it fixed or did you have choices and make choices?
Are you a unique individual?
Are you just one of the masses -- one of the collective asses?
Are you simply one of the many voices?
Voices that ask, that demand, that beg, that fan, the flames of disdain for self and others?

[GrainOSand]

Is it Fixed?

Results of living life, you are hard pressed to believe what you got.
Always you check the balance sheet more than once, more than twice.
You continue hoping not to arrive at the same old conclusions.
You retain hope for an end to doubt, frustration, and confusion.

Is it fixed, you ask.
Is pain and suffering meant to last?
Will children continue to be born into a living death?
Will humans continue to kill until no more humans are left?

Is it fixed?
Is this all a game -- a dirty trick?

Simply being born begins -- the fall to ones’ own end.
Yet, you would never be finished if you did not begin.
There would be no doubts about life and no maybes.
If you had not been birthed into this world as an innocent baby

You look back on the expanse, on the whole.
You check the individual choices.
You recall the moments, within which life unfolds.
You see the path by which you arrived where you are at, the path you chose.
You wince at the missteps, errors in judgment, all of your life’s faux pas.
You know you cannot change the past, you cannot go back, now is where you are.

***correction below: "able to grab hold of the hem of the..."
Acknowledgement: Thank you HP for indulging me this long one.