Well, here we are, closing in on a mid-term election that has everyone either smirking in anticipation or wringing their hands in angst. One way or another, it will be over in a few days and we’ll all have to learn to live with the consequences.
As you know, in our last mid-term election, we suffered “a wave” that produced enormous fallout in the political arena and serious ramifications for any progressive legislation. Mid-terms typically produce rebellion, given the probability that a president’s record will have sufficient holes in it halfway through a term to cause buyer’s remorse among the populous.
Since youth and minorities seldom vote in mid-terms, elders lead the charge at these junctures, especially those with a conservative train of thought. You may read that as misinformed FOX News followers if you wish, because that’s generally who they are these days, and may I say that those who frequent that media source do not see the hyperbole in its by-line, “fair and balanced,” nor in its coverage of news.
That should tell you much that you need to know about the coming election: yet another riff on George W.’s remaking of reality, a project still being assisted by an increasingly hostile Karl Rove, the right’s money manager. Down to the wire, Karl has a new super-PAC at his disposal, with millionaire contributors throwing caution to the winds by allowing their donations to be made public. There has never been so much money given over to the political process, here in a mid-term election that much of the public doesn’t even know — or seemingly care — about. Begs the question, what inconceivable amount will be spent in 2016?
Things have surely changed, here in this new century, haven’t they? The first eight years took progressives through the rabbit hole and spit them out on the other side of a reality that had stripped them of much that they’d worked for most of their lives. They faced the election of 2008 with a rampant case of PTSD and longing for the return of sane, informed and substantial leadership, but that’s not what they got. The reality-based citizen was treated with a Punch and Judy show on the right and a run-off between race and gender on the left.
It was during this period that we met a fledgling generation of new politicians entering the ring This became obvious when old establishment favorite and occasional ‘maverick’ John McCain allowed his people to select aggressive, attractive — and Pub-approved MILF — Sarah Palin as his running mate. She was a shooting star, flashy and compelling, a complete unknown, to McCain, as well. Knowing what we know now, it was a no-brainer that Sarah’s ambitions would take her off the reservation in no time, but despite so many clues dropped by the previous administration, nobody in McCain’s camp seemed aware of the morphing of religious fundamentalism, hawkish neocon principles, corporate loyalty and hatred for government that had kissed George W. a reluctant goodbye while finding a new home under Glenn Beck’s big tent of malcontents.
Although McCain pledged to work across the aisle whenever he could, Sarah had no such intention. The last of the respectful political interactions pledged by the likes of McCain and his senatorial pal, John Kerry, were already as cold as the embers from your Memorial Day cookout. Sarah represented the ascendency of mundane intelligence and religious bias, along with questionable lifestyle options that time has exposed as narcissistic and self-exploitive. If we want to know what “dumbed-down America” looks like, witness Sarah and her most recent family adventure, described by a witness as “just like a Jerry Springer episode.”
Two years later, mid-term backlash to the Kenyan in the White House [sic] gave us the Tea Party and produced what I think of as the solidifying of anti-intellectualism. Think not? How about the likes of this election’s Iowa senatorial candidate Joni Ernst, asking voters for a job in government while defending her right to carry her Smith & Wesson in order to stand tall against intruders or “the government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important.” Joni distinguished herself earlier this year with a television ad in which the public finds itself on the business end of her gun muzzle, Joni herself squinting down the barrel at them and promising to “unload on Obamacare.”
In addition, Joni proposes — in Rand Paul and Paul Ryan fashion — to help the American public learn to treasure the joys of self-sufficiency by eliminating educational spending, food stamps, unemployment insurance and Medicare, for starters. Furthermore, she has every intention of privatizing Social Security and forcing the needy to suck up to church charities for assistance. I don’t have to explain her ‘pro-family’ particulars, do I, or her heavy funding by the Kochs? Now that Michele Bachmann is retiring, we will need to crown a new lady Repuberterrian righty extremist. Should Joni win in this close election, dashing the hopes of all reasonable Iowans, we will surely have our new Princess of Pain.
Now, none of this particular brand of lunacy is new, you might say. But it hasn’t withered on the vine, either, which, by evidence of deprivation and need (most of which are blamed on Obama as lack of leadership but more accurately illustrate a lack of funding for the public good, backing policy choices that protect mainstream Americans or concern for any but the rich and powerful) it should have by now. In fact, although the odds still seem to be that Pubs will ride their attempts at voter repression and many-many-million-dollar Koch infusion to Senate victory, the fact that Dems are doing as well as they are speaks to the concerns of the multitude. And those concerns are legion.
Unfortunately, while concerns are piling up, solutions seem elusive. Yet with so many congressional races still evenly split, it should be clear that the consequences of a media conglomerate more interested in ratings than vetting political positions have crippled the national conversation. Clearly, most of those congressional districts up for grabs have been so heavily gerrymandered toward conservative votes that the fact that there IS a tight race going on speaks to a serious decline in confidence about Republican leadership and values. Still — and because following the dots of logic is still a skill that requires dedication and practice — confusion reigns about what constitutes the public good.
Eleanor Clift writes that in Louisiana and North Carolina, where multi-millions have been poured into nasty TV ads, a focus group of women voters known as Wal-Mart Moms are simply tuning out. These are mostly red-state women, sympathetic culture warriors, but they aren’t so sure any more who is friend or foe to their concerns. The ads have them confused and feeling emotionally manipulated, but news agencies other than FOX are not trusted from the right of the political spectrum, leaving them little with which to clarify the facts from the political fodder. Some of those interviewed say they’ll Google on election day, deciding then which candidate to support. Clift finishes her assessment with this warning: “And with that apathy comes consequences they can’t imagine.”
There’s that concept of consequences again. And try as I might to banish them, scenes from a funky and irreverent sci-fi/comedy keep popping up into my brain. In 2006, Mike Judge — the man who cartooned that seemingly outrageous and frighteningly accurate prick to social consciousness, “Beavis and Butt-head,” and followed it with 13 years of “King of the Hill” — made an obscure little movie called “Idiotocracy,” now something of a cult classic. As with most satire, it takes unattractive truth about our society and skews it into absurdity, something Judge does with ease. His version of America 500 years into the future is so pitiable as to be laughable, but just lately I’m not laughing. I’d like to say a culture that has forgotten so much about agriculture that it waters its plants with the equivalent of Gatorade and wonders why the crops are dying has nothing in common with the United States, but — well — you know. We’re not showing an impressive amount of intellect in 2014, are we?
For instance, while bees are necessary for pollinting a third of the food we consume, industry is happier to invest in science to produce alternatives to that process than eliminate the toxic chemicals that are killing not just bees*, but birds, butterflies and other vital portions of our ecosystem. While fracking continues to be frowned on by the majority, and bottom-up activism seems to be doing a lot of the heavy lifting to jam the spokes of plutocracy, the EPA is still more responsive to the oil industry than to the cries of victimized citizens with compromised water sources. Go over to CommonDreams.org and hit their climate page for more examples of both the bad news and the good on progress in holding back the never-ceasing machinery of capitalism bent on stripping the planet down to mere bones; there is some. And truly, the cataclysmic dangers of global warming have become so obvious to all but encrusted deniers that today’s candidates take chances of turning off savvy moderates by pitching the topic to their faith-filled base.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why anyone who wants to breathe decent air, eat real food and live a sustainable future would fight a common sense approach to climate change. And why would anyone who isn’t wealthy support the current Republican agenda? Even should they be as opulently well-fixed as Midas, witness billionaire Warren Buffet, who thinks the rich aren’t taxed nearly enough. Warren earned himself the title of “most hated man in America by millionaires,” and I don’t think he minds much. He knows when enough wealth is truly enough, unlike those who continue to take from an unwitting public to feather their own nests. Indeed, the consequences of the failed financial policies of this nation will, eventually, find even those whose loyalty has been bought victims of their own greed, but by then the breakdown in structure will make a response more difficult. In Will Pitts’s latest piece, titled “The True History of Blowback in One Sentence,” he writes:
…remember that history exists, and actions have consequences, and this event is tied to that event is tied to the other event in a tapestry of escalating cascading fallout, which is called “blowback,” which always carries a dear price unless you’re getting paid for it, which is why you think very hard before making a lethal national decision, because every lethal decision always comes knocking at your door someday…
Essentially, it depends on the consciousness being expressed as to whether consequences are welcome or not, but there are surely unintended consequences attending every decision we make, while the intended ones are more straightforward but perhaps not as we expected. In Kansas, for instance, Governor Sam Brownback has done such an excellent job of implementing the Baggers’ agenda, especially in terms of taxation, that the state is in dire fiscal need, creating a wave of voter apprehension. Similarly, governors in North Carolina and Wisconsin face engaging gubernatorial contenders. Connecting the dots back to a party unwilling to support the commonwealth seems to be turning a lot of red states purple, not something the Pubs anticipated.
A ‘wave’ election is a tsunami of political activism aimed toward the mis-steps of a sitting president, and while Obama is not popular these days, he is a good deal more popular than either the Republican OR Democratic Congress in every poll. So the thing to consider about this campaign season, different from those in the near past, is it’s either up for grabs by the highest bidder thanks to the Supremes’ decision on Citizens United, or it’s a referendum on much that’s gone wrong within the obstruction party, and there’s some evidence that the latter is beginning to take shape. Much as Europe has shot itself in its own foot with austerity, the Republican governors in this nation who have pushed the Bagger agenda are facing a level of hostility they hadn’t anticipated from their own.
There is a crack in the dense Republican wall, likely from a gazillion heads hitting it from both the political left AND right. Money erected the wall, the same kind of money the New Deal regulated in order to bring the majority of American citizens into ownership of their own future and political process in the midst of the last century. The wall is the same one Elizabeth Warren talks about when she tells us that the system is rigged and we have no chance to win unless we change the very system, itself. As Bill Moyers, finally retiring this year at 80, asserts, “Either we reverse Citizens United and insist democracy is about equal representation, or we might as well close up shop.” Essentially, we can study this problem of ours until the cows come home, but unless there is a ground-swell of activism dedicated to ridding the political process of huge and harmful money, nothing is going to change. That’s where we come in.
And that’s where voting makes a difference. The millennial generation, by the way, along with the minority population, have a larger stake in this election than they realize, so I’d like to see them mobilize to keep progressive ballast in the Congressional make-up. Warren’s campaign to relieve student loans won’t see the light of day in an all-Republican Congress. In fact, very little will make it to the table, except a trimming of our remaining security nets and a full-throated give-away of corporate welfare to those who need the money least. Two groups I approve — Daily Kos and MoveOn — are working to mobilize Dem voters, and once again, it would be worth your time to join them if you can. In a totally Republican political environment, as we had under George W. Bush for a couple of (Tom DeLay) years, there will be no progressive agenda seeing the light of day, period. Big money will continue to travel to the top .01 percent, and, as our friend Moyers tells us, that will slam the door on the possibility of responsible governance..
Now, here’s the good news. If the Dems can come through the conservative money glut and the gerrymandered districts to run this close a race, that means populism is on the upswing. If the Pubs take both houses of Congress and further impede any kind of liberal agenda, blowback will see to it that they won’t find themselves in the White House in a decade and likely much more. If the Dems can pull this one out of the fire to keep the Senate, the public will be encouraged that it can be done and will continue to act locally to produce change. In that way — and illogical as it seems — what we face with so much dread today is a win/win for the democratic process.
Yes, we’re in dire straits. And yes, this election is important, worth our concern and activism and even a bit of personal sacrifice, if required. But, as our recent eclipses have made clear, a door has closed even as a window has opened. There has been an end to the circumstance that began back in 1995 — when intellect was being attacked by a growing evangelical fundamentalism — and the beginning of one that could well take us into an era of political restoration and ethical/spiritual renewal. We’re becoming accustomed to hearing harsh truth, learning to examine the consequences of our inability to face years of denial and practicing the art of following the dots to reclaim logic. And it seems to me that we’re traveling faster than many of us think we are.
There are some out there who are so overwhelmed by what they see and hear around them that all they want to do is pull the covers over their heads, and I empathize. But there is no victory in doing so, and no reward unless we’re either helping ourselves or those around us. We have a job to do on this planet, and that’s to contribute our best to it on a daily basis. I suppose some would disagree, especially in a political sense, but like Bill Moyers, I don’t want to close up shop on democracy, so in whatever way I can I do my little part; you can count on me to keep at it. I hope you’ll intuit the importance of finding a way to do yours, as well.
The channelers all say it’s up to us now. Let’s listen to our higher angels, vote our true values and insist that our politicians live up to them. Let’s create a ‘wave’ of loving action that flings the windows to a healed and healing future wide! Those are the consequences I’ve waited a lifetime to see.
*If you’re interested in saving bees, you might want to stop by your local Lowe’s Hardware between 10/29 and 10/31 to deliver a nice little “trick or treat” Halloween card urging them to “stop selling bee-killing pesticides and garden plants pre-poisoned with these harmful chemicals.” Friends of the Earth has a downloadable card to print and take in. Even conservative competitor, Home Depot, has agreed to put warnings on products containing neonicotinoids. Corporations are beginning to respond to public pressure. If this activity doesn’t appeal to you, visit the site to send a message to the EPA’s Gina McCarthy asking her to ban the toxic chems.
