Fitful Dreaming

 

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood…

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream that one day in Alabama… little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today… When we allow freedom to ring‚ when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, Free at last, Great God a-mighty, We are free at last.”

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking to 2 to 300,000 people at the March on Washington, 61 years ago, August 28, 1963

 

I have considered myself a left leaning liberal since I was politically aware. Events like the march on Washington and the Kennedy, King assassinations, the 1968 riots, and the Viet Nam war, instilled in me that awareness. I remember when liberalism stood for the little guy, the working-class heroes and heroines, the blue collar/red neck men and women of the streets, the factories, and the farms of America where most of my ancestors originated and who I admired and am still proud of. The old time Grapes of Wrath Americans memorialized in Woody Guthrie songs.

For minorities and the weak, supporting President Kennedy’s Peace Corp, President Johnson’s Great Society, and efforts toward detente, leadership, and excellence. And above all, when we were for peace. And for a while it looked like peace might be coming. Landmark legislation was passed. Wars ended. Superpowers wrote treaties. People stopped. Looked at each other. And maybe we understood each other just a little bit better. It was a start. A start we could all build upon.

The zeitgeist changed, slowly and painfully as all zeitgeists do, eventually.

Some of these great ideas came to fruition. Some were buried under the torrent of big money, big greed, unenlightened self-interest, and vapor locked militarism. Like water washing over stone the old was ground away. Something new was deposited in its place.

When being liberal meant that we were against big business, big government, big war, when we mistrusted the oligarchy and generally took for granted that if it was official, it was a lie. When we were anti-war, anti-corporatism, anti-colonialism.

Twenty years ago, I considered myself ‘Left of center.’ Not rabidly liberal, not overly conservative. Willing to talk to people and listen to them in return. Willing to change my mind, if needs be, and to accept the minds of others, as should be.

Today I find it necessary to add an adjective to my self-description. I now call myself a ‘1960’s liberal,’ and accept all the baggage that entails, the good and the bad.

As far as I am concerned I did not leave my country, my country left me. I did not leave liberalism, liberalism left me. I haven’t changed in 60 years, yet change is all around me. Like water washing over stone the old is ground away. Something new is deposited in its place. New, but not unique. Things change. They stay the same.

I am even registered as a Liberterian now. Pointless, probably. Toothless, certainly. But I cannot in all honesty and self-respect, respect for my fellow Americans, and intellectual integrity, support either of the ruling parties. We are now ruled by the Janas party, guaranteed to remain a two-party system due to the ludicrously outdated Electoral College. Also known as the Uniparty, and the two shall become one. The oligarchy is not about to change what works so handily for them.

The candidates are two sock puppets clutched by matching hands from the same faceless, mindless force of nature behind the facade of democracy, though we were never a democracy. We were a republic at best, if we could keep it. I wonder if there is any real consciousness behind it or if our system of governance is indeed totally banal? They say that evil is ultimately banal. It would be the highest irony if we looked behind the curtain and found-nothing. Nothing is driving us into the abyss. Of course, that’s what abysses are: Nothing.

I remember Donald Trump when he was a crooked real estate failure that needed constant bailing out by Daddy in New York and New Jersey. It always surprised me that he did not end up at the bottom of the East River considering all his shady mafia dealings.

And speaking of mafias, starting with the Clintons the Democratic party became the water bearers of big everything: Big war, big money, big finance, big fascism, and big-anything-that-pays. At least the republicans don’t pretend to be on our side. The slogan of the Uniparty should be Divide et Impera. We all carry their water, why not drown ourselves in it, as well?

Where is the dreamer who dreams of the day on the rural streets of America, where the children of the ruling elites and the children of blue-collar workers, little democrat boys and girls and little republican boys and girls, liberal and conservative, will be able to join hands together as sisters and brothers?

Has that dreamer been gunned down too?