about the United States and Murphy's Law

Eric Schlosser's new book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety has turned my thinking back to accidents. In my last post I referred to Edward McClelland's analysis of the middle class in the United States. He called it an accident. If he's right, I'd add that the temporary phenomenon known as "The American Dream" has been replaced with a nightmare. That nightmare is economic and it is a nightmare that I doubt will rise to the conscious level of most Americans as a true "class warfare" issue. Rather than analysis I will try to make that point with a true story.
I chatted with a man on Padre Island in 2011, the first year I camped there with my dog Edy, writing songs and practicing up for Austin open mics. He was the manager of a Sears appliance repair facility. It was his career; he was something like 20 years into the job. He told me that, despite the overall problems of the Sears corporation, appliance sales and maintenance were still profit centers. Yet, he also told me of the downsizing his unit had undergone and his relief at surviving with a decent income. Then, he tells me of the immigrant employees he supervises and how they all say, "America is the best country in the world for an immigrant." He said it obviously as a statement of the greatness of the United States. I thought, well yeah, if you're immigrating from anywhere except Great Britain, Germany, France, Canada, etc., sure, "America, what a country."
Now, I'm reading about how close the United States has come to accidental (what a shame I must add that word) nuclear detonations within our borders! Go here, to Politico, for an interview with Eric Schlosser. Or here on salon.com. Or go here for The Guardian book review and interview.
Pete Seeger began his lovely book Where Have All the Flowers Gone: a Musical Autobiography with a discussion of Murphy's Law - "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." It seems that from a rational point of view a huge proportion of the human race is doomed. There are just too many BIG things that can go wrong! In the United States, a sizeable minority controls the government. This minority has a distressing penchant for banding together on Big Issues, so it doesn't much matter how one refers to them: they are The Religious Right, The Gun Nuts, The Unscientific Minded, The Haters of the UN, the rascist, ignorant, manipulated masses ... In short, The Republican Party. These dangerous people are enabled by: those who eschew politics altogether, those who pay no attention to real news, those who never receive "news" from a source that covers the rest of the world, those who have only one issue and they "got theirs" whether it be marriage or marijuana or...  In short Democrats and non-voters.
I heard a BBC reporter use the word "perverse" in relation to the inability of the United States to view gun violence as an important issue. Yes, it is perverse that our Congress cannot pass a Constitutional fix that would address gun ownership AND drastically reduce gun violence. Yes, it is perverse that our Supreme Court elected a president and WE did NOT take to the streets in protest!!
And it is perverse that WE go on with, I think I will call it, The Presidential Obsession. One Man, or maybe One Woman, will lead us back to the American Dream, the Promised Land ... The United States is unconsciously begging for a dictator.

The time to support third parties is now!

I keep hearing people quoting, whether knowingly or unknowingly, a great Jimmy Dale Gilmore song about facing the inevitability of death: “And you might as well choose right now, it’s love or fear.” Who will you travel with? he asks. Politics is the context of those I’ve heard say that lately.

       Reading the news that Obama has relented on his reelection promises to increase taxes on all Americans who earn over $250,000.00 a year AND to leave Social Security alone was a shock. Listening to one of my favorite radio shows, the Stephanie Miller Show, I heard her say once again that “Obama plays chess, the Republicans play checkers.” I too have been an Obama apologist, but no more, even if he is playing some kind of chess. I can’t support a chess game that involves lying to me. And if he wins, for whom has he won? The Democratic Party, I assume. I am 62, so what does the Democratic Party mean to me now? It is the party that actively encouraged and participated in the cover-up of JFK’s assassination, and that, I now think, was the end of America-as-we-thought-it-was. It is the party that supported two hugely expensive and wrong-headed (in blood and treasure) wars: Viet Nam and Iraq. Those are just the biggest examples of misguided military actions supported by Democrats. It is also the party that gave me Social Security and, soon maybe, Medicare. I say gave me, but of course, I paid in to these insurance policies. Thank God, it was the party that eventually cooperated with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. It is the party that has capitulated on environmental progress, the party that cooperated with Republicans to establish a fascist world-wide “free trade” umbrella. It is the party that lost, temporarily, Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat! Ok, it’s too depressing to go on. The hope offered by Obama is now proven to be a change too far – too far to prove real.

       I will not go off on the Republican Party in this blog. I am not and never was a Republican although I once thought John McCain offered hope and voted to reelect him as a Senator in the 1980s.

       So, here’s where I am at: I could never be a Republican and now, I won’t be a Democrat either unless an almost impossible thing happens. That would be that the Democrats in Congress, en mass, oppose Obama’s stance and force him back to his campaign promises. He would thank you for it as would all of us who voted him in. The continued growth of Presidential power in America must end. The Congress must take back its Constitutional powers. No more wars without a Congressional declaration of War. No more compromises on core Democratic values such as Social Security. The Military/Industrial and now, /Secrecy Complex must be confronted and unfunded, leaving a true civilian-led military that is lean and mean, and then TAKES PROPER CARE of its soldiers. The dangerous Supreme Court decision that corporations are people must be debunked.

       Oh yeah, there’s more, but on to my main point. George Carlin was right. America is a club and you and I don’t belong. So, what to do? Well, the radical idea that Americans are going to overthrow the government by force is so ludicrous I won’t even go there. That is the sick underpinning of the Republican Party! The complacent idea that ONE person, the President, has the power to fix America’s ills is actually a plea for dictatorship which will never be benign. It is un-American to the core. The thought that you go vote and things will be made right your way is delusional unless you have contributed somewhere around $100,000.00 dollars to one of the two parties. I disagree with George Carlin on refusing to vote. That’s the ONLY thing we have, and that only when we overwhelm voter suppression and fraud with huge numbers.

       So, I’m going to vote, but with a big difference. I’m going to ALWAYS vote third party in elections. In primaries where there is no third party on the ballot I will vote for the Democrat I like best and if I don’t like any, I’ll, I'll...hell I'll decide in the voting booth. I could vote for Ron Paul in the same way I have voted for Democrats - on balance, if his policies were implemented in a way undiluted by Republicans (big if) America and the world would be better off than having a Republican in office.  To be specific, we'd shrink the Pentagon and Secrecy organizations and keep our military ready, but at home. Peace might be allowed to break out! But I won’t vote, as one young man I know, for Mickey Mouse. It's not a joke, it's the fate of our species! Our vote is our last best hope and continuing to vote for a Democratic Party that will not become as liberal as its base is a losing proposition. Most have either been bought out or scared out, and I don’t doubt that, for some, the fear is reality-based. For others, it’s merely a fear of losing elections. Let’s make ‘em shiver. You’re too old to be in our nest, we’re pushing you out. Straighten up and fly right. (No pun intended.)

 postscript: I can think of lot's of counter arguments and expansion and explanations, but I'll do that only if there are comments made.