Day Started Well....

Did about 20 minutes on the bike this morning ... will go for 30 tomorrow if I can get up earrly enough. Knocked a few other things off my to-do list, ate OK for most of the day (but had some sweets in the evening, oh well....). Going to start on my research agenda before hitting the hay tonight because one must start to get started. Have an old (1965) monograph on the history of organized labor in NJ. Actually looking forward to it, since I know so little about the specifics. Expecting to have a project thrashed out by the end of the semester. Python book still waiting to be cracked open, but all in good time.

Looking forward to seeing people at the VALE Conference tomorrow.

Not a Bad Start

Back to work today after being off since December 22, but things are quiet during intersession, so it's easy to ease back in. Started the day back on my stationary bike for about 10 minutes, and will steadily work my way back to 45 minutes on weekdays and an hour on weekends. Have to start incorporating some other things into the exercise routine as well, possibly some free weight lifting if I can find some cheap barbells on craigslist.

Also ate smart today - had some bread with a lunch sandwich and pasta for dinner, but otherwise stayed away from carbs, and no sugar at all.

Plenty of stuff on the "to-do list" at work, so staying busy will be easy tomorrow. And then it's off to the VALE Conference on Friday.

New Year, New Challenges

I've got some goals for 2019, and I am determined  to achieve them. Among them are:

- establishing a regular exercise routine for health
- resuming a healthier diet that minimizes carbs, eliminates sugar, increases vegetables, and reduces meat consumption
- getting moving on a research agenda focused on labor history in New Jersey
- learning Python
- getting my band some real gigs

To help stay focused, I figure I'll use this blog. I don't expect anyone else to read it or care, but the discipline will help me.

Book Review: That Thin, Wild Mercury Sound: Dylan, Nashville, and the Making of Blonde on Blonde by Daryl Sanders

That Thin, Wild Mercury Sound: Dylan, Nashville, and the Making of Blonde on Blonde by Daryl Sanders

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Daryl Sanders' account of the making of Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, a landmark album whose influence resonates to the present day, is a fascinating read for Dylan fans and will also be of interest to anyone curious about the history of rock'n'roll music writing and production. Sanders offers a well-paced mixture of narrative, first-hand accounts from an array of interview subjects, and an analysis of the unusual writing and recording process that resulted in the album.

The book begins in the summer of 1965, as Dylan, who had grown dissatisfied with producer Tom Wilson following the recording of "Like a Rolling Stone," was matched with a new Columbia Records staff producer, Bob Johnston. Johnston had actively campaigned within the company to work with Dylan, and his style of production offered Dylan more latitude in the studio to pursue his creative vision of a new rock'n'roll sound than he had experienced with Wilson. Returning to Columbia's New York studios, the immediate result of this new collaboration was all of the other tracks on Highway 61 Revisited, a major album in its own right.

Nevertheless, Dylan had a problem. Gearing up for a North American tour that would include 40 dates between August 28 and December 19 he found himself without a band to back him, as the musicians who played on Highway 61 Revisited declined the opportunity to go out on tour. Scrambling to line up musicians who could produce the sound he was aiming for, Dylan received a fateful tip from one of his manager's secretaries that led him to the Hawks, a mostly Canadian band then trying to establish themselves in the U.S. Initially seeking to hire only guitarist Robbie Robertson, Dylan was eventually convinced to employ the entire group as the tour dates began.

By October Dylan was ready to return to the studio and begin work on his next album. Over a period of four months (in between concert dates) Dylan and the Hawks attempted to record nine songs, but Dylan was mostly unhappy with the results and only one recording from these sessions, for the song "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)," made it onto the next album. Sanders doesn't offer many insights into the sources of the problem, but it's likely that Dylan and the Hawks were still adjusting to each other at this point and had not yet forged the kind of musical unity that would become evident as the tour progressed into the following year. The Hawks were a hard-edged rhythm and blues combo who had cut their teeth backing Ronnie Hawkins for four years before striking out on their own. They had little familiarity with the folk idiom out of which Dylan came and which still informed much of his songwriting, despite his move toward rock arrangements. For his part, Dylan's method of studio recording was highly idiosyncratic. He would typically run through a song on piano or guitar, followed by brief rehearsals in which the musicians would develop their own arrangements, and then start recording takes until he was satisfied. In between takes he might offer only minimal or vague feedback about what he liked or didn't like, and although he was willing to do multiple takes on a song he favored the "lightning-in-a-bottle" sound one could get when a song was relatively fresh and spontaneous. Generally, he would not persist if the energy in the room was fading.

Producer Johnston had an idea for resolving Dylan's frustration, suggesting he move the recording sessions to Columbia's studios in Nashville. Johnston had experience in Nashville and was aware of a rising generation of young studio musicians who were Dylan's contemporaries. They were as familiar with the rock'n'roll and rhythm'n'blues styles as he was, while also being steeped in a host of other musical styles. They were also highly disciplined professionals well-acquainted with the routines of Nashville music production, where they were expected to get master recordings finished on tight schedules and on budget. While many of Dylan's New York associates regarded Nashville as a bastion of traditionalism that he should avoid, Dylan trusted Johnston enough to give it a try, believing he had little to lose after the New York session.

By a stroke of good fortune, Dylan had at this time a rare asset to facilitate his work in Nashville. Musician Al Kooper, who had almost accidentally contributed the signature organ part on "Like a Rolling Stone" and the rest of the Highway 61 Revisited songs, accompanied Dylan to Nashville and served as a de facto intermediary between Dylan and the Nashville musicians. Kooper would typically be the first to hear the new songs, working with Dylan at their hotel on arrangements and other details, then going early to the studio to rehearse with the musicians and edit charts while Dylan continued to work on lyrics.

From the musicians' perspective, the sessions were fairly unorthodox. Sanders' account of the eight recording sessions, which ran from February 14 through March 10 of 1966, with breaks in between while Dylan was performing concerts or otherwise occupied, describe a common pattern. The musicians usually arrived at the studio at 6:00 pm and waited for Dylan to arrive, sometimes for several hours. When he showed up, he often sequestered himself in an area of the studio to continue work on unfinished lyrics or arrangements until he was ready to begin recording. On several occasions the musicians were not summoned to begin working on the songs until well after midnight, with sessions wrapping up just before dawn or even later. Most songs required numerous takes, marked with false starts, breakdowns, technical problems, and Dylan's penchant for continuing to revise and refine lyrics on subsequent takes. Dylan and Johnston could afford to do this on Columbia's dime in 1966 because the company regarded Dylan as a hot property and worth the money. The musicians had few complaints about being paid at union scale for their time, whether they played or not, but most found the sessions challenging, especially when they were scheduled for morning sessions with another artist and operating on little or no sleep.

In 2015 Dylan released "The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966," including an 18-disc collector's edition that contains all of these takes, so the curious can have a soundtrack to accompany Sanders' narrative and hear the songs evolving both musically and lyrically through multiple takes. Even without this audio, however, Sanders makes clear that the Nashville musicians had little difficulty coming up with sympathetic arrangements that captured the sound in Dylan's head, with minimal guidance and encouragement from Johnston. It may have been a combination of their quick virtuosity, their broad musical palette, and their closeness to Dylan as generational peers that enabled them to create the varied soundscapes that make Blonde on Blonde such a striking album.

Sanders concludes with a brief account of the impact Blonde on Blonde had on rock music and of the impact Dylan's sessions had on Nashville itself. In the years following Blonde on Blonde's release, rock musicians from other parts of the country flocked to Nashville, revitalizing the city as a music center for many genres and undoubtedly contributing to the cross-fertilization of country and rock music that would emerge in the wake of Dylan's experience. The studio musicians Dylan worked with found themselves in high demand for many years afterward and contributed to countless recordings. Dylan also returned to Nashville to record his next three studio albums, but Blonde on Blonde remains the towering achievement of this period, and Sanders' book does justice to the story.



View all my reviews

Life and Death on September 11

I was born and raised in Hackensack, New Jersey, and for the last 19 years I've lived right next door in Teaneck. Save for one year spent a few miles further south, I've never lived more than about 15 miles from the World Trade Center. Yet as fate would have it, on September 11, 2001 my wife and I were on the other side of the world, over 11,000 miles away in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, China. We had left New Jersey a few days earlier to meet our daughter, Rao Nian Meng (we'd soon add Amanda Rose to her name), and bring her home, bringing to a close the initial phase of an adoption process we began two years earlier. The trip to China did not go as planned, for our initial non-stop flight from Newark to Hong Kong was cancelled shortly after we arrived at the airport to catch it. A frantic detour to JFK got us on a flight to Tokyo and finally to Hong Kong some 24 hours later.

We spent two days in Hong Kong being debriefed by our adoption agency with a large group of other travellers, some of whom were going to other provinces. Then on the morning of September 11 our group departed for the trip to Jiangxi Province. Because of the time zones, we were 12 hours ahead of the time in New York. To pick up the story, here are some passages from an email I sent home a few days later:

"We were met at the airport by the Holt representative, and she had hired a bus to take us to the hotel, a very nice place on a lake, appropriately called the "Lake View Hotel," and we do have quite a view on the 14th floor. When we arrived the Holt staff person passed out itineraries and explained our schedule in detail, but of course everyone in our group was just on pins and needles waiting for the children to arrive later in the afternoon.

Amanda was supposed to be among the first group, arriving at about 5:30 pm; but her train must have been delayed because the first group of children arrived from another orphanage in another town. All of the children had long days on a long train trip. Finally at about 6:00 pm another group came off the elevator, all being carried  by adult escorts (we'd all been waiting in the hallway, chatting incessantly in eager anticipation). A short while later they brought her and handed her to Mary.

I can't even describe how wonderful she is, a tiny, beautiful girl with bright eyes and the sweetest disposition you could imagine. We brought her in the room with her escort from the orphanage and a Holt translator. We asked a bunch of questions about her condition and her habits, routines, etc., then the orphanage person and the translator left and we were alone with her.

Despite the fact that she wasn't smiling much in most of the pictures we received, she is quite delightful in person, a warm, wonderful baby. She took to both of us immediately. We gave her a bottle of formula and then played with her until putting her to bed at about 8:30 pm. She slept a little fitfully during the night. It became clear that she had a small cold and was congested, so she rolled around in her crib, sometimes coughing. We tried to get mucous out of her nose with a little suction tube, but it was difficult. Naturally, she's pretty far away from being able to blow her nose.

We got up about 6:00 am and she awake by herself a short time later. We'd had the TV off since receiving her, so it was only when we went outside the room to get breakfast that one of our group members told us about the awful terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The news was pretty shocking, to say the least, but we were on such a tight schedule that we had little time to even think about it. We ate a quick breakfast in the restaurant on the first floor, giving Amanda some congee and bits of other food that interested her (like a silver dollar pancake, which she clutched and nibbled for a long time), then it was time to go to our morning appointments at government offices in downtown Nanchang.

We piled onto a bus and were escorted through the process - mostly just filling out forms and being interviewed by civil service officials. The interviews were very pro forma, no trick questions or anything. During the whole experience Amanda was quite cheerful and calm (which we can't say for many of the other children). On the ride back to the hotel about three hours later she started to nod off, and she's now taking a nap in her crib. We'll be feeding her again when she wakes up. Tonight we're having a group dinner in the hotel's Chinese restaurant at about 6:00 pm, which should be nice.

Once we got back into the room and put Amanda in her crib we finally sat down and took a look at the TV. There are a number of U.S. stations we can get here, including CNN, so they showed a bunch of footage, including film of the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center and both buildings collapsing. It's all extremely horrifying and surreal. We were trying to think about people we know who work in New York downtown, but we couldn't think of any....."

Our distance from New York continued for the next two weeks, as our itinerary required us to remain in China to complete the adoption and obtain Amanda's visa in Guangzhou before returning home. We continued to get some information from the broadcast media and emails back and forth with family and local friends, but being so far away made the reality of what was happening at home very difficult to grasp. The immensity of Chinese culture as it figured in our daily interactions - to say nothing of the immensity of a child we were just getting to know as first-time parents! - was very front and center.

During the months our adoption application was in process, Mary and I made connections with other families who had experience with international adoption through online discussion lists and the like. One thing we learned very quickly was the lingo associated with significant dates in the adoption process: application day; match day; and the day your child first joins your family, which is commonly called "Gotcha Day." Not, we realized, a term we could ever use in Amanda's case.

We scheduled our return flight on what turned out to be a very large plane (a Boeing 777, if memory serves), probably the largest plane I'd ever been in. Disruptions in air travel since the attacks, however, led to so many cancellations that the passenger cabin was almost empty. It seemed there were more people working on the plane than there were passengers. Amanda had fun crawling on seats, but all the empty space was troubling. On our ride home from the airport my eyes immediately went to the New York skyline and I saw the void where the towers had once stood. I couldn't see any smoke from the Turnpike.

I kept thinking it was so strange to have been so far away when all this horror had transpired close to home. The twin towers were a constant fixture on the New York skyline every time I had looked at it - usually several times a day - for as long as I could remember. I'd been inside the buildings only a few times, once going up to the top of the observation deck, and once in the early 1990s conducting research for a paper on the early history of the Port Authority in its library on the 55th floor of the North Tower. But like many people I'd passed through the buildings many times on PATH and subway train rides. Just two months before the attacks, on July 11, Mary and I spent a wonderful afternoon in the plaza between the towers to see and hear Freedy Johnston and Jill Sobule at an outdoor concert and I remembered thinking how great the experience was at that location. "We'll have to come here again," I said to Mary at the time. But now that space was filled only with smoking toxic rubble and death.

Returning home at last we counted ourselves fortunate we had not lost any family members, friends, co-workers, or other people we knew as a consequence of the attacks, even though there were some close calls. Happy as we were to have Amanda with us, I felt a strong sense of sadness about the fact that so many people among us had been killed and that Amanda's life with us had to begin this way. I feared it would not be long before the government initiated some military response, and I didn't have long to wait, as the U.S. war in Afghanistan began on October 7. It hasn't ended yet.

While Mary and I have tried to provide Amanda (and since November 2003 her sister Olivia) with what passes for a "normal" childhood these days, this is a constant struggle. Today many people have told me that I must "never forget," and of course I never will. But time did not stop in 2001, and since then I have additional things to remember, more things I must never forget:

• I cannot forget that during the last ten years my daughter's life in the United States has included only about two weeks in which her adoptive country was not at war.
• I cannot forget the many people killed as a result of our wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Libya (including over 6,200 U.S. soldiers and probably over 1 million people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya), deaths that do nothing other than create enormous suffering and make the world more insecure and dangerous. The September 11 attacks claimed almost 3,000 victims in one day. Imagine such an attack taking place every day for almost a year and that will give you a sense of the human cost of the "war on terror" so far, a cost paid primarily by innocent people with no connection of any kind to terrorism...and with no end on the horizon.
• I cannot forget how our wars have unleashed some of the ugliest currents in my country's political culture - including racist bigotry, religious intolerance, antilabor fanaticism, and the promotion of a bellicose nationalism - nor how these ideas have been accorded a respect they do not deserve through shrill appeals to fear, as though wrapping them in a flag somehow dignifies them
• I cannot forget that these ten years have witnessed an accelerated weakening of our rights and liberties under the Constitution in the name of "security."

So I will never forget.

I will never forget that this is not the kind of world I want for my daughters.

The bloody business of empire management has given us a world consumed by war, fear, insecurity, suffering, and pain. No sooner had President Obama finished his speech Thursday night than we were informed the U.S. was once again under an unspecified "terror threat." I don't want to live this way, and I don't want this as some type of nightmarish permanent future for my children. My government is responsible for bloody and unspeakable acts of violence in other countries, and every time a plane drops bombs from the sky on populations helpless to defend themselves from such weapons, it is itself engaging in an act of terrorism.

I joined the peace movement as quickly as I could and threw myself into it with others who tried to stop our government from going to war in Iraq. I did this not only because of my objections to my government's policies but also because I live in a country where many claim our government is subject to democratic accountability, and if there is any truth to this claim it means we who live here bear a greater moral responsibility for our government's conduct than do those who suffer under the rule of dictatorial and tyrannical states that make no pretense to democracy. So far my fellow peace activists and I have failed. But we can't give up. Ever.

What has all this violence brought to the many victims of September 11? Has it brought them comfort? A sense that justice has somehow been served? This seems unlikely. Violent retribution (if violence visited upon people who had no part in committing murderous acts can even be called "retribution") is an especially toxic balm for the spirit. It creates no peace. It defers the necessary strides toward healing and forgiveness to an ever-receding line on the horizon. It poisons our culture and extends this poison to the future our children must inherit.

I want to honor the dead, and to do so I must embrace life, without fear. For Amanda's sake, for my sake, and for your sake. Peace be with you.

Living Uneasily with the Bomb; Looking to Live without It

Long before an operational nuclear weapon was developed, it was envisioned and imagined and described in western culture, with key ideas arising decades earlier, particularly in speculative literature and science fiction. As H. Bruce Franklin argued in his book "War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination," a strong case can be made for viewing the emergence of nuclear weapons as part of a seductive cultural fascination with the idea of a weapon capable of providing a solution to the problem of war itself, ensuring security and protection through its sheer destructive power. But there are no technological solutions to such problems, and instead the bomb has brought in its wake a host of terrors steamming from its use, its ongoing development, and the continuing madness of political and strategic doctrines organized around the threat of its use as a weapon of war.

Where to begin? The initial folly of U.S. policymakers squandering their years of nuclear monopoly in escalating confrontations with the Soviet Union while subjecting the domestic population to anticommunist repression on a grand scale? The irrational belief that "secrecy" in matters of science and technology could ensure strategic advantages? The crackpot "deterrence" doctrine which became ever more ridiculous with each passing year as both the nuclear arsenals and their destructive force grew unchecked? Consider the growing realization among all strategic thinkers of nuclear weaponry's increasing practical uselessness for achieving any manner of rational military or political aim, such that "deterrence" became little more than the effort to maintain the "credibility" of a willingness to initiate global suicide. Nuclear weapons and their associated policies have proven very effective tools for the subjugation of domestic populations through the promotion of fear and insecurity. They have also enabled heads of state throughout the world to concentrate ever greater degrees of power in their hands - one need only reflect on the complete removal of effective war power from Congress in the U.S. to recognize this shift.

The encouraging steps toward serious arms control and disarmament that began in the 1960s marked the first open acknowledgement that the menace of nuclear weapons demanded political and diplomatic solutions. Yes, it was true the nuclear "genie" was out of the bottle for good and that the knowledge of how to build nuclear weapons is here to stay. But this has never constituted a justification for maintaining huge arsenals aimed at targets that can be reached in minutes, thus reducing the time in which human beings must make decisions about their use to unacceptably small fragments. In recent decades the very size and complexity of nuclear arsenals has even raised the horrifying possibility of "accidental" nuclear wars, yet another chapter in the insanity of attempting to build policies around nuclear forces.

The promise of arms control, non-proliferation, and disarmament as serious policy has been subjected to enormous strain in our time, and in the last decade the U.S. government has once again taken a foolish detour from sane policy by attempting to compel non-proliferation through military means, an approach which is utterly doomed to failure while making the world more dangerous in the process. Not unlike the mounting ecological threats posed by climate change, pollution, and nuclear weaponry's deadly junior partner, nuclear power, the bomb is a global menace to all of us, and it demands a response that goes far beyond the petty, puny, and increasingly pathetic nationalism governments and elites promote to breed ever more outer-directed hatred, fear and resentment among the population. I'm not interested in the hysterical conjuring up of "insane dictators" and "fanatical terrorists" as a justification for maintaining nuclear arsenals, and I find it dishonest when those who engage in this fear-mongering make excuses for a U.S. government that today rains bombs on people in other countries with impunity, something which must surely strike victims of our military violence as "insane" and "fanatical."

The peoples of the world have accomplished a great many wonderful things since the end of the Second World War. It is time to add the abolition of nuclear weapons to this list. We can live with knowledge of the bomb, but we can't live with nuclear arsenals. They are enemies of all life on the planet, and they must go before we use them to put an end to that life.


H. Bruce Franklin's War Stars page:  http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~hbf/Books/WarStarsNew.html

Interview with Jonathan Schell on his book "The Seventh Decade":  http://youtu.be/7zy29OwnbkI

Bibliography: The Atomic Bomb:  http://universityhonors.umd.edu/HONR269J/bibBomb.htm

Some hope - Theodore Sturgeon's story "Thunder and Roses," from 1947. Sturgeon was well ahead of his time in realizing the way out of this darkness:  http://www.datapacrat.com/Art/Fiction/Baen/twtud/0743498747__29.htm

Notes on Left Forum 2011

I've just returned from two full days at the annual Left Forum conference in New York City, a gathering I've attended on and off for about 20 years (when it was known as the Socialist Scholars Conference). I attend Left Forum to learn new things, to gather news about events taking place elsewhere in the country or in other countries (usually from first-hand participants), to connect or re-connect with colleagues and comrades, to spend a little concentrated time thinking about where I should focus the time and energy I can devote to political activism at home, and to pick up some new books. In recent years I've even been donating extra money to support the conference.

Back in January, Chris Hedges - a writer I greatly admire - wrote a savage attack on the Left Forum (and the Tikkun Conference in Washington) as worthless, sterile, navel-gazing exercises disconnected from real social movements in the U.S. Hedges argues that the Left Forum is dominated by the worst kind of academic radicals who delude themselves into believing the conference contributes anything to the building of a vigorous left movement. On the contrary, he argues the conference does more to blunt real activism, trading in a cowardly defeatism designed to accommodate rather than challenge the capitalist war-state. Because real commitment to radical politics would entail genuine risks, the academic intellectuals who organize the conference traffic in a phony radicalism of political correctness and empty posturing. To quote from Hedges:

These conferences are not fundamentally about change. They are designed to elevate self-appointed liberal apologists who seek to become advisers and courtiers within the Democratic Party. The conferences produce resolutions no one reads. They build networks no one uses. But with each conference liberals get to do what they do best - applaud their own moral probity. They make passionate appeals to work within systems, such as electoral politics, that have been gamed by the corporate state. And the result is to spur well-meaning people toward useless and ultimately self-defeating activity.

The organizers of the Left Forum conference scheduled for this March at Pace University in New York City also communicate in the amorphous, high-blown moral rhetoric that is unmoored from the actual and real....

The conference agenda, which sounds like a parody of a course catalogue description, includes the requisite academic jargon of “moral act of imagination” and “chains of solidarity.” This language gives to the enterprise a lofty but undefined purpose. And this is a specialty of the liberal class - to grandly say nothing. The last thing the liberal class intends to do is fight back. Left Forum brings in a few titans, including Noam Chomsky, who is always worth hearing, but it contributes as well to the lethargy and turpitude that have made the liberal class impotent....

If the liberal class remains gullible and weak, if it continues to speak to itself and others in meaningless platitudes, it will remain as responsible for our enslavement as those it pompously denounces.

While there is merit to some of Hedges' arguments, I think he is wrong on a number of counts. There is nothing inherently wrong with an annual conference where people who study, write about, and participate in radical politics gather to share their ideas and try to figure out how to advance socialism. Whether the label "Left Forum" is the best way to describe this gathering is a good question - the old name was probably more accurate - but in all my years of attending the conference I never encountered anyone who confused it with an organized left, a community activist organization, a labor movement, or a political party. When people leave the conference they go right back to the work they do in their own communities, sometimes better equipped and sometimes not.

It is accurate to say that most of the people who offer presentations and panels at Left Forum are employed at colleges and universities, and this fact does stamp the conference with a certain character at times; but the conference also draws a large number of non-academics to speak, including a multitude of community organizers and activists, union activists, independent journalists and film-makers, artists, youth activists, and people from other countries with no academic affiliations. The result is something very far from the sound of one hand clapping, and people who try to steer conference attendees toward working "within the system" usually find themselves facing a barrage of criticism, especially in recent years.

Conference attendees are not shy about challenging presenters and panelists, either. Many people who attend Left Forum have years of experience as organizers and activists in their communities and as a result are quite capable of thinking on their feet and formulating powerful arguments on the spot. Yes, sometimes people at the conference can be pompous, or pretentious, or overly sectarian, or given to holier-than-thou posturing, or -most often - just plain long-winded. More often than not, however, I encounter people who are passionately committed to democratic socialism and all it entails and who find clear, compelling ways to communicate useful ideas and insights from their experiences to others. They are caring, mensch-like people.

This year the events in North Africa, Wisconsin, and elsewhere provided the backdrop to the discussions at Left Forum. Although U.S. imperial wars - now expanded into Libya - and the ongoing class war now waged through the economic depression still constitute formidable challenges for us all, the atmosphere was clearly marked by the positive energy and creativity demonstrated by these emerging social movements. The overriding sense among participants was one of hopefulness and an urgency to get more involved with building the vision and organization necessary to grow and sustain these movements into a more powerful force. Most of the voices I heard this weekend called explicitly for working vigorously OUTSIDE the corrupt electoral system rather than within it - at least in the first instance - and in building power among workers even if this means - as it usually does - defying union leaderships by forming reform caucuses that will eventually be capable of taking power.

Something else I found encouraging this was the sharp increase in conference attendees. The 2010 conference drew about 3,000 registrants, but this weekend that number rose to 5,000, with significant representation from young people. Assuming they're not all paid spies dispatched by the Koch brothers and the FBI, this is a very hopeful sign.

Building power based on a vision of hope; carrying that hope forward into concrete organizing at the community level and in the workplace; and confronting the corrupt and repressive power of the state and the corporate elite as we move forward: this was what I carried from this year's Left Forum. The process will include demonstrations, and we will spend a lot of energy continuing to respond to onslaughts from the corporate state ... but the most important thing we can do now is break with a "reactive" politics and start setting the agenda, start asking what we want, and start fighting for it. As I tell my pals in New Jersey: I don't want to worry about what Chris Christie and the Democratic state legislature in New Jersey are going to do (as though we don't know) - I want Chris Christie and the Democrats to worry about what WE are going to do. It's time to put the other side on the run.

(TV) Free At Last

Today we cancelled our cable television subscription and will henceforth use the television set only as a monitor for watching films on DVD. This is something I've wanted to do for many years, but it took a while for my wife to agree to the idea. At one time she watched a number of programs on a regular basis but gradually eliminated them from her schedule as they lost interest for her. The last obstacle was her love for the New York Mets, as without our cable subscription she couldn't watch the games at home. But recent Mets seasons have been very difficult to stomach, and in the last two she stopped watching games well before July. Spring will come again, of course, but she has alternatives to TV, including the far less costly MLB.com, not to mention the still-compelling radio broadcasts.

My own relationship to television goes back to childhood. I can recall exposure to hulking, wood-encased black-and-white sets in relatives' homes in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with color sets arriving in my home by the mid-1970s. I was a pretty avid TV viewer as a child, and I was especially fond of old horror films and comedy serials, though I pretty much watched everything. Sometimes I got overly assertive about what I wanted to watch, behavior that would prompt older relatives to remind me of just how privileged I was to have a television, because "when I was a kid there was no TV!" Although this comment was intended to impress me with my elders' relative deprivation, I eventually came to regard their childhood world as more of a lost paradise.

When I was seven years old my family moved from the downtown Hackensack neighborhood I'd known since infancy and relocated to the other side of town. Until then we'd been living in a second floor apartment in my mom's parents' house, but with the move my mom and dad acquired a house of their own. This was a major step up the social mobility ladder for my parents - both came from working-class backgrounds and neither attended college. My father hadn't even turned 30 yet. Talk about paradise lost!

For me, however, the move was extremely traumatic. I left school and neighborhood friends I loved and found it difficult to make friends on my new block. One of my earliest memories of being at my new home was being hazed by some kids who thought it would be fun to distract me and dump handfuls of dirt down the back of my shirt. When I did manage to become buddies with another boy on the block his family quickly left for another town, so I was back to square one. At school I had done well; so well, in fact, that I was double-promoted and bypassed the first grade, but this - along with my December birthday - meant I would always be the youngest person in my class for many years to come, and it became a further source of social isolation.

While many responses were possible, I made the unfortunate decision to turn inward and retreated into my house where my closest companion became the television set. For the next five years I was a TV addict. In addition to regular children's programming like Saturday morning network shows and cartoons, I quickly expanded my viewing schedule to include weekday afternoon game shows, sit-com reruns, movies, and prime-time programming. Sometimes neighborhood kids would knock on my door to call me outside, but most of the time I'd refuse to go out and eventually the kids stopped coming by. I often lobbied my parents to stay up past my regular bedtime in order to finish watching something. I looked forward each summer to TV Guide magazine's "Fall Preview" issue and went through it in detail so I could plan my schedule around new shows I wanted to watch. It was pathetic.

By some miracle I still managed to maintain good grades in school, but my early habits of independent reading were severely disrupted during these years. Not surprisingly I also got far less exercise and began gaining weight. As time went on, I slowly started to recognize how TV was rendering me more passive and I grew to hate much of the programming, but like any addict I found it hard to stop. What compelled me to keep turning on the set was hard to say, though the comfort of habit may have had something to do with it. By comparison with present-day standards and practices, TV advertising in the 1970s was pretty quaint, but it was still pernicious and there is no doubt I was influenced by it, with its mind-numbing repetition and its promotion of endless consumption. To this day I still have plenty of jingles and marketing slogans in my head.

For the most part, my parents didn’t regard my many hours in front of the TV as a cause for concern. There was still some lingering novelty about TV and the very aggressive child marketing industry had not yet exploded into the monstrous entity it has become in recent decades. But the corporate swill it churned out every day - message after message preaching a gospel of passive consumerism, a focus on the self, and short-term thinking - was relentless. I just didn’t yet have a framework for getting outside of it and seeing it for what it was, or a language to describe it.

In the end, it was another traumatic experience that snapped me out of my TV-induced catatonia when my father fell ill and died from cancer in 1978, shortly after I turned 13. From that point forward I could no long stomach the shallow, empty drivel that seemed to be the only thing on offer from TV and I forced myself back into the social world of my peers. Over the next few years I acquired some distance from television and got my brain back into gear by reading, writing, and thinking. In college I met a professor who told me he never owned a television set and could not imagine having one because it was owned and controlled by corporations that offered nothing but propaganda and infantile escapist fantasies. Then I began reading some of the major works that explained my television experience to me in a way that finally made sense, things like Marie Winn's The Plug-In Drug: Television, Children, and the Family (1977), Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Stuart Ewen's several books on mass media, Bill McKibben's The Age of Missing Information (1992), Susan Linn's Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood (2004), Juliet B. Schor's Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (2005), and other things. By my mid-20's I became quite hostile to TV and bitterly lamented the years I'd wasted on it.

With the arrival of my first daughter in 2001 I stepped up the lobbying with my wife to get rid of the TV entirely. By this time the child marketing juggernaut had grown to a massive scale and I was determined to stand in its way. My wife agreed we should severely restrict the amount of time our daughter could watch TV, but she wasn't quite ready to get rid of it. When I discussed TV with friends and relatives I was amused that so many tried to persuade me it had some worthy content, pointing to PBS and other meager fare; but this was pretty unconvincing. When our second daughter arrived I was horrified that she exhibited a tendency to focus on TV to the exclusion of everything else and would get upset and agitated when we insisted on turning it off even after she had spent hours watching one silly Disney or Nickelodeon show after another. As she was also giving us quite a battle on the reading front I began to get increasingly concerned about where this might go. It was time to pull the plug.

I realize many people will regard this as an "extreme" move, but I can't be concerned about that. I'm not so stupid or naive as to think this move means my daughters will not be exposed to the evils of corporate marketing and the systematic "education" it attempts to foist on children (and especially girls) around the clock. Nor is such "protection" my goal. But at least we have now banished one very important source of poison from our home and staked out some free space where our minds can grow with less of the non-stop hostile noise brought by "sponsors" who make us pay for the privilege of learning how to become passive consumer drones. With this space, I hope to equip my daughters with the understanding and tools - and weapons - to come to terms with the society and culture in which they live by forming their own judgments. All I want is to give them that chance, and now I think it will be easier.

Goodbye, TV. We won't miss you.

A New Year

Over the last few days I've heard and read comments from people who have gone out of their way to deny the new year calendar date any significance in their lives. Some insist that "every day is a new beginning," while for others the calendar is just too arbitrary and they seem to resent the idea it should have any bearing on them. Individualist assertions like these don't surprise me, but sometimes I wonder whether people realize there can also be benefits to long-lasting and widely shared social conventions.

Of course the calendar is arbitrary. There were specific historical reasons why a calendar introduced by a Christian Pope in 1582 became a standard adopted by a multitude of countries around the world in subsequent years; and in the absence of this calendar it is likely another one would have acquired the same status in our closely networked world. The point, however, is that the calendar - including the new year - is something we can share, and this provides opportunities for solidarity, very much needed in our time.

I also understand how people can tire of new year's "resolutions," especially if you tend to a view of human nature that places strong emphasis on the power of habit and intractability rather than on our capacity to change through force of will. Nevertheless, a "resolution" is ultimately nothing more (nor less) than an expression of commitment, and in this sense the new year offers all of us a shared opportunity to dedicate ourselves to worthy goals. Maybe the most worthy are those that might benefit others.

This is in many ways a time of great darkness, and in future posts I will try to address some of the challenges I think may be on the near horizon. For now, though, I will say Happy New Year to you and resolve to bring what light I can offer. Let peace begin with me.

Book Review: Joe Jackson's A Cure for Gravity

A Cure for Gravity: A Musical Pilgrimage
by Joe Jackson
New York: Public Affairs, 1999
285 pages


Joe Jackson's A Cure for Gravity was published in 1999, but I'm glad I waited until now to read it because my own experience playing music during the last decade made me better able to appreciate the many wonderful, hard-earned insights about music's power and mystery Jackson serves up throughout the book. It was also a joy to re-acquaint myself with Jackson's voice, as distinctive on the page as in his songs, and to be reminded of just how long I'd been listening to it. Allow me to digress a bit.

In the spring of 1979 I was a 14-year-old high school freshman. The last several years had been mostly unhappy following a move at age 7 to a new neighborhood where I had trouble making friends. Socially awkward and not much interested in sports I retreated from the torment and ridicule of the kids on the block by becoming a TV addict, which was its own form of hell. Then my father contracted terminal cancer and I hit rock bottom when he died in 1978.

Throughout these years my one consistent source of inspiration and enthusiasm was music, an obsession dating from early childhood when I was lucky to catch the final years of music programming on AM radio. But by the late '70s New York music radio had grown narrow and conservative and I was bored by what I heard.

I was starting to find out about punk and new wave music - to an isolated kid in suburban New Jersey the distinctions between the two were not meaningful, especially when either was set against the bloated corporate "rock" that saturated the airwaves - but nothing really connected with me until I heard Joe Jackson's Look Sharp, released in the U.S. in April 1979. The music was ferocious, intense, and lean, and the songs were tuneful and catchy. Jackson's delivery of his often funny, ironic lyrics was perfectly suited to every song, whether he was crooning over a gentle reggae rhythm or screaming over the cacophony of guitar-thrash workouts like "Throw It Away" or "Got The Time." Some of the songs even got radio play.

As it happened, the album's release was timed to coincide with Jackson's first U.S. tour, a blistering romp in which he managed to do some 34 gigs in 52 days before having to stop from an attack of laryngitis. By an incredible stroke of good fortune, one of those gigs was in New Jersey, and at just the kind of venue where a 14-year-old kid could see it: the Great Adventure theme park in (heh-heh) Jackson, NJ. I begged my mother to take me there and off we went. Jackson performed two concerts in the "arena," a venue normally used by the park for faux rodeos and chariot races. The shows were dynamite: fast-paced, energetic, and fun. Jackson announced from the stage that the audience - which filled the arena - was the largest he had ever played for up to that point, and he closed with a wonderful cover of Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame." For my first rock concert, this set a high standard; only in retrospect do I realize how much my expectations at subsequent shows were shaped by the experience of seeing Jackson.

I didn't know it at the time, but Jackson had already finished recording his second album, I'm The Man, just prior to the U.S. tour and when it was released in October I quickly snapped it up. It picked up right where Look Sharp left off, and after that Jackson began the first of his many experiments with different musical styles. I saw him several more times in the 1980s and continued to listen to him even when his work strayed far afield from the sound on his first albums.

Jackson's musical restlessness and ambition - his "determination," as he frequently calls it in A Cure for Gravity - has often left people with the impression he's a grim, humorless figure, but if one listens closely it's easy to see this is not true. As Jackson explains, he has spent his entire career seeking to make a connection with people through the singular passion he has sustained for music. If he hasn't always succeeded it's not been for a lack of effort or an unwillingness to play to an audience's expectations. In fact, Jackson spent several years before recording his debut album doing work other musicians might have refused as beneath them, though it all proved excellent preparation for the success he did enjoy, and Jackson's telling of the story makes for fascinating reading.

A Cure for Gravity is really two books carefully interwoven into one. The narrative structure is provided by Jackson's memoir of his life from childhood up to the release of Look Sharp in 1979, but much of the book is given over to his reflections on music - as muse, as art, as taskmaster, as a career, as a means of communication, as a cultural and quasi-religious force, and as something with the power to reach across every barrier that might otherwise divide people from each other and provide some unity and emotional or spiritual resonance. What ties the two parts of the book together is Jackson's use of various episodes in his life to illustrate some of his more abstract points about music - this richly textured use of detail proves a wonderful means of bringing the reader into Jackson's many enthusiasms, and if you're not already acquainted with the music of Beethoven, Sibelius, Stravinsky, or Shostakovich (to name a few of the composers he discusses) you may get the additional benefit of seeking out and appreciating their work after reading the book.

Jackson was born in 1954, the oldest of three sons, to a British working-class couple and grew up in the southern coastal city of Portsmouth, a rough-and-tumble place filled with drunken sailors and other coarse, colorful characters. From an early age he was self-conscious of being different from other kids and even his own family, with an artistic and inquisitive bent that drew him to writing, an interest he first pursued by writing his own comic book series with a like-minded schoolmate. Jackson characterizes his childhood in Portsmouth as marked by a stifling cultural parochialism where there was little exposure to art and few expectations for working-class children other than growing up to be "useful" and conforming to established habits of life. Nevertheless, Jackson managed to hear Beethoven and the British rock groups of the early 1960s, and both gave him a strong sense there were horizons far beyond the Portsmouth coast calling him. By age 11 he began taking violin lessons in school and at 14 he acquired a piano (the free donation of an elderly couple in town), teaching himself to play in a cramped corridor. He also found opportunities to play timpani and other percussion in his school orchestra.

During these years Jackson focused primarily on classical composers and paid less attention to the pop charts, continuing his formal training by studying scores and learning the basics of orchestration, or what in popular music is called arranging, a skill that is instantly apparent from his earliest recordings. With little encouragement or support from anyone in his social circles, Jackson turned inward to find the motivation and discipline to develop his musical abilities - for a budding pop/rock star, the very fact that he was obtaining a "proper" education in music made him unusual among his peers. He notes:

"Around the same time [I was learning to read music], some of my peers must have been making their first assaults on guitars, and most of them still don't read music. They use all kinds of strategies to avoid it, and only make things more difficult for themselves in the process. Some of them have confessed to me a fear that reading 'the dots' would take away their 'feel' or their 'soul.' Where do people get these ideas? you might as well say that learning the alphabet will hamper your ability to write poetry."

As Jackson moved into his final years of secondary education he grew more committed to a career in music and managed to earn sufficient grades in the university matriculation exams to gain admission to the Royal Academy of Music in London, no small achievement for a provincial working-class kid in a Britain where university-level admission was still highly restricted. He even passed an additional exam in music to earn some financial support, but like the practical-minded, aspiring professional he was becoming Jackson wanted to start working in music, not least to earn money. He spent his scholarship grant on portable equipment and began working as a piano player in pubs, restaurants, and clubs, solo or in small combos. Some of these experiences were good, while others were dreadful, like Jackson's stint with Portsmouth pop group The Misty Set, whose "repertoire consisted of all the wimpiest, most inoffensive pop tunes you could think of....They were like some bland and smiling master-race of a dystopian future, genetically engineered to remove every last spark of passion or originality."

Jackson might have hoped his Academy experience would prove more inspiring - at least he was now among fellow musicians who shared his youth and possibly his enthusiasms - but he quickly became disillusioned. His instructors were mostly unsympathetic or unsuited to his interests, he found many of his fellow students unbearably pretentious, and he could not embrace the highly theoretical and abstract tendencies in composing that dominated the Academy in these years. Atonal and serialist works left him cold, and much of this music has proven to have little lasting influence. Jackson judged these compositional styles self-referential and self-indulgent to a fault, with their greatest sin being the abdication of any concern for what the music sounded like to an audience. He completed his studies and earned a Licentiate Diploma in 1975, but it was a very bittersweet conclusion given his high hopes at the outset.

Jackson realized he had come full circle, from being perceived as an elitist in Portsmouth to being a populist at the Royal Academy, and not quite at home in either setting. Unhappy with the institutional contexts and connotations that had changed the meaning of "classical" music in the late 20th century, and unwilling to forsake the possibility of finding a contemporary audience for the music he wanted to write, Jackson resolved to establish himself as a popular songwriter and performer. Toward this end he joined the Portsmouth pop group Edward Bear and spent three years attempting to achieve success by transforming the group from a cover band playing local clubs to a professional group playing original songs, releasing records, and getting radio play. Through personnel changes, internal band conflicts, numerous lousy gigs, hostile or indifferent audiences, surly DJs and club owners, and problems with managers, agents, and record companies, Jackson tried to stay focused and positive, but even his drive could not push the band to success with a mass audience and the experiment had run its course by late 1976.

Unwilling to give up, Jackson returned to steady work as a small-combo pianist at the Portsmouth Playboy Club, backing a wide variety of mediocre (but sometimes amusing) entertainers and then taking a job as musical director for a touring cabaret act seeking to cash in on notoriety they had attained by winning a competition on a television talent show broadcast nationwide. At the same time, however, he became an enthusiast of the punk rock scene exploding in London and elsewhere, catching shows whenever he could get time off and slowly working on new compositions that were rooted in the vitality of punk. He put together a small, energetic rock band to back him, rehearsed the new songs, and began booking a few shows to see how the material would be received. Thrilled by the positive response, Jackson fully embraced punk's do-it-yourself ethos and recorded an entire album with his backing band, hoping to secure distribution with a record company or, failing that, putting it out himself. But London in 1978 was the right time and place for his music to generate commercial interest, and he managed to sign with A&M.

This is where the narrative ends, but along the way Jackson wrestles with questions that many struggling musicians confront, such as: Why am I doing this?, What is the proper relationship between musician and audience?, and What to do to keep something you love from becoming tiresome and boring? Jackson doesn't always provide answers and is the first to admit they may not exist, but his passion for music and his generosity of spirit - that lasting desire to connect - make A Cure for Gravity a rewarding journey, and maybe in the final analysis that is the point.

Denver Travelogue: Five Days in a Low-Rent Bohemia

I'm wrapping up a five-day visit to Denver for the American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting. This is the fifth Midwinter Meeting I've attended since 1999, and over time I've learned that locations are not of much significance when it comes to the meeting itself. The ALA is a large organization, and its conventions can be held in only a limited number of cities. The cities hosting such events follow a very similar pattern in constructing convention centers, with the usual crop of big-chain hotels clustered around them and all the associated businesses occupying the remaining commercial real estate. The majority of these are also outposts for large corporate chains, so you can have the experience of going to different places around the country and feeling like you're always in the same place. People who make their living in event planning will tell you I am oversimplifying and that there are vast differences in amenities, services, facilities, costs and the like from place to place, and of course they are right, but unless you're the kind of conference attendee who is attuned to such details it's unlikely you'll pay much attention to these differences. Instead, homogenization and conformity may be your chief impression.

Despite the samey character of these conference locales, there is some advantage to the organization in having a choice among them because it can dangle before each city the infusion of cash that a conference booking will bring, not only to the conference facilities but to many nearby local businesses, and so there can be competitive bidding or negotiations for discounted rates, a good thing for lowly librarians not known for commanding big salaries or working in institutions that earmark hefty travel budgets. Moving from place to place is also a benefit to those who will attend only if it doesn't mean having to travel across the country, so each year a conference is "local" to some segment of the population.

The real advantage of being in a different city, however, comes only when you get beyond the convention center's cocoon and into the city itself. Because I'm always on the hunt for cheap accommodations, I've never stayed at an official conference hotel and this trip was no exception. My hotel, about a mile and a half from the Colorado Convention Center, was on East Colfax Avenue, and the neighborhood is quite different from the one around the Center. The simplest way to describe it is as a kind of "skid row" district, characterized by a lot of low-rent independent businesses, several vacant storefronts, a sizeable population of homeless men and women patrolling the streets, and a slightly run-down character. This is not to say that it is highly distressed: unlike other neighborhoods I've known, it's got plenty of life and most of its residential buildings appear to be occupied. There are no lots filled with rubble from demolished buildings and walking the streets is not a menacing experience. The state capitol is a short distance up the road and so on some streets an evening stroll means going through places deserted after 5:00 pm because the buildings are mostly government offices, but elsewhere you get a sense of close-knit communities and struggles to stay afloat. There is even space for the arts, with at least three concert venues along a one-mile stretch.

I describe the area as a "skid row" in part because of the nature of many businesses here. There is a liquor store or bar on just about every block (in some cases right next to each other), check-cashing establishments, some charity thrift shops like the Salvation Army store, and a few places that seem to be set up as day-laborer hiring halls. On the next tier are several independent retail stores of the kind that no longer exist in my own county, including record/CD stores, book stores, video stores, head shops, and vintage clothing shops. There are also numerous hole-in-the-wall grocery bodegas and restaurants selling Chinese, South Asian, and Mexican food; and, of course, the big-chain fast food places.

Visiting some of these places, especially the independent music and book stores, reminded me once again of how much I detest what has happened to my own county over the last 30 years. Back when I was a child, the commercial sectors of Hackensack, NJ were already struggling under the pressure of their proximity to the Paramus shopping malls, but there were still numerous independent businesses in a variety of retail categories and one could experience all the things that came with the stamp of personality and difference in dealing with each one. Even the malls themselves made room for independent businesses and small chains. Starting in the 1980s, however, a succession of real estate booms in the region, the rise of big-box stores, and some very aggressive takeovers wiped out a huge number of independent retail stores. In losing them, we lost people with strong ties and commitments to our towns and became subject to the decisions of corporations with headquarters thousands of miles away, people who could care less about us and what we wanted. Today you can search in vain throughout Bergen County in search of independent book stores, music stores, office supply stores, and hardware stores. At the same time, independent furniture and clothing stores are also on the ropes.

Many people seem to have no regard for what is lost when small local businesses give way to massive corporate chains in one commercial sector after another. For the last several years my local paper has featured letters from people complaining bitterly over the absence of a Starbucks in town, as though it is some sort of hardship or insult to our status to be spared from this overpriced boutique. I frequently hear people gushing over the latest big-box store to open in their area and their willingness to drive for miles to get to it for the sake of saving a few bucks when the real cost of such businesses (including more auto traffic, more pollution, more wasted time, more precious land given over to massive parking lots that must necessarily surround such places, and the devastating impact of these stores on local businesses) is ignored. While shopping for books for my daughters in December, I was staggered at the extremely narrow range of publishers on display in the local big-box chain store (which still required a drive of several miles) ... but unless I wanted to do all my shopping online I had almost no alternatives in the region. Increasingly, one's options are limited in area after area. Nor do the social costs stop there, for as open-air, mixed-use downtown Main Streets have given way to the total control and surveillance environments of enclosed malls, where every inch of space is private property, so too have people been subjected to increasing regimentation, subliminal marketing, and less freedom and diversity. There is no freedom of speech or assembly in a mall.

The negative consequences of such narrow concentration are apparent during periods of both boom and bust. Large corporate retail giants employ many people and operate with large fixed costs - just think of what it takes to keep a hulking Home Depot open each day. When profits sag, the magnitude of impact can be far greater on a local population dominated by a few chains as thousands of jobs are lost because of a single decision. Of course, we are seeing this happen now.

The people on Colfax Avenue in Denver are not, of course, immune from the impact of an economic downturn. If anything, they may be more vulnerable to the general pressure of an economy on a sharp downward spiral. How many of the local businesses will be forced to close when the young people who go slumming here on evenings and weekends no longer have as much disposable cash? How many of those currently homeless will face greater desperation as their numbers swell and the patchwork of private and public relief agencies that now enable them to survive each day receive less support and more demand? There is little doubt that this neighborhood will be severely tested in the months ahead ... but at least not all of its eggs are in one basket, and maybe it's possible that neglect by the wealthy may turn out to offer some small advantages as it contends with the turmoil to come.

Spinning Wheels to Move Forward

Today marks the 11th day of my new exercise regimen for 2009, and I've now pedaled my way through 4 hours and 40 minutes on a stationary exercise bike in my basement. Although this is small potatoes to anyone who takes their workouts seriously, I've found the experience has already had a major impact on how I feel each day - I've got more energy and a sense of being more alert. There's a dietary component as well, but I don't expend much mental energy on it because my spouse already takes care of that department far better than I ever could. When it comes to food, I'd rather just eat healthy stuff than think about it. By contrast, during exercise I have time to think about all kinds of things.

There's no reason anyone but me should care about this post, which is purely personal, so the obvious question is: why bother cluttering up the net with it? Well, I've found that getting something down in writing can be helpful in enabling me to sustain some plan of action, so this seems as good an outlet as any. The "diary" format of the blog also gives me the temporal dimension, so I can post little updates at the end of essays on other topics. And, with the extra energy and focus I seem to be deriving from this plan so far, I hope there will be quite a few essays coming down the pike. We'll see...

A Letter to My Congressional Representative

The Honorable Steve Rothman
2303 Rayburn House Office Building
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Representative:

I was mortified to learn of your vote on June 22 for House Joint Resolution 10, favoring a Constitutional Amendment authorizing the Congress to prohibit the so-called "desecration" of the flag of the United States. Some of my neighbors claim you were "pandering" or "caving in" to the agenda of the ultra-nationalistic lunatics in this country who have long sought such laws in their quest to deify the state. I cannot agree. After five successful campaigns and very comfortable margins of victory in your last four elections, you have no need to pander or cave in to anyone. I can only believe you voted for this resolution because you sincerely support the idea of an Amendment that would give you the power to penalize people who damage a piece of cloth.

It is atrocious and disgraceful that you would vote for this resolution. Do you really believe a flag should be established as "sacred" - with its sanctified status enforced through legal penalty - while our precious liberties are profaned in the process? I've been a practising Episcopalian for some ten years and have studied the traditions and history of religious institutions in the United States for a much longer period of time. As a person of faith, I find the very idea of flag "desecration" to be repugnant, a crass form of idolatry not worth a second thought by a free people. One would have hoped the vast historical record of oppression, tyranny and suffering wrought by the unity of church and state from antiquity to the modern era - the very history the founders of this republic considered when they deliberately and consciously separated the two institutions! - might have given you pause.

I've read a lot of pettifogging nonsense in the media about how veterans groups in this country are howling for passage of laws to "protect" the flag, but this coverage is extremely misleading; it's probably closer to outright propaganda. These organizations do not speak for all veterans; they probably don't speak for most of them. No one bothers to interview organizations like Veterans Defending Bill of Rights or Veterans for Peace, both of which are adamantly opposed to a flag "desecration" amendment. I've spoken with countless veterans who find the idea of the proposed amendment an outrage. According to the 2000 Census, there were over 20,000 more veterans living in New Jersey's 12th Congressional District than in the 9th Congressional District, and they constitute a larger percentage of the adult population in that district as well, yet your colleague Rep. Holt had no problem honoring their service by voting against House Joint Resolution 10.

Perhaps the most appalling thing about your vote is the way it signals your willingness to take seriously the endless, meaningless, phony "culture war" - the bread and circuses of our time - that has gripped this country for the last thirty years. When one considers the life-and-death matters of public policy that should be occupying the full attention of the Congress - the war in Iraq, the President's relentless crusade to destroy what remains of the New Deal, the reckless and irresponsible fiscal policies that grant the wealthiest people in this country multi-billion-dollar tax breaks while the rest of us are forced to bear the costs of a government that mostly serves the rich, the ongoing environmental and health care crises, and so forth - something like a flag "desecration" amendment is a trifling matter indeed. This vote was an opportunity for you to take a stand against the wasting of the Congress' time on the idiotic politics of the "culture war." Instead, you endorsed the terms of this cynical endeavor and then added insult to injury by voting to enshrine a flag, liberty be damned.

Sincerely,
Richard K. Kearney
Teaneck, NJ

An Exchange with My Pal Art Vatsky

I'm part of a local peace/antiwar organization in my town (Teaneck, NJ). One of my confreres in the organization is longtime Democratic activist Art Vatsky, and we exchange messages now and then. Here's one exchange from tonight that addresses some questions facing the antiwar movement........

======================

Richard: I am a history nut and the error of going into Iraq is one which will do continuing damage to the Iraqis and ourselves.

First, despite corruption, the UN had made Iraq a toothless enemy, no threat to the US and little threat to its neighbors. Had we not invaded, that would have continued, world oil prices would be lower, hundreds of thousands of now dead would have been alive. Maybe Saddam would have been assassinated or not. Certainly, the US would have focused on those responsible for 9/11 who would have been caught by now instead of being heroes to hundreds of millions of Muslims.

Because we have invaded, we have replaced the outclassed Republican Guard and Iraqi Army with extremely cruel and effective 21st century insurgents, thousands of them. These young people would not be insurgents had we not invaded. Bush spawned them. Had our nation been invaded, would we be the insurgents? As in Yugoslavia, when you remove the cruel dictator over a forced state, you eventually get an even crueler civil war. What I am saying is that the likely result of the sacrifice of our soldiers is a cruel civil war in Iraq. South Iraq is Shiite and wealthy. Northern Iraq will be Kurd - Moslem but not Arab. Central Iraq will be Sunni and poor and angry. Of course, the democracy we are trying to install may work but I don't recall if we have a good record or skill in doing this. I think the trend will replace a non-secular dictator with theocracy as Iran now has. Wow, isn't that progress?

It is rare that a US President makes such a big mistake - LBJ was the last - Vietnam - but this President has made several. The fact that his mistakes are not accepted generally as such is because we don't want to think of our Presidents as makers of mistakes, so we are all in denial.

I am not a pacifist. I think we should not let Osama and his group continue to operate. They should be brought to justice, taking the wind out of that anti-West movement. Unfortunately, thanks to Bush, we have fulfilled Osama's view of Western behavior. We'd rather have Iraqi oil than Osama's blood.

Our troops have fought well and deserve our support and respect. They are just fighting the wrong enemy.

Art Vatsky

=====================

Art,

Thanks for your message. If I can figure out the details, I sure would like to open the TPJC web site so it would support discussion and debate through "blogging," because I think your perspectives should be part of the wider discussion.

I can't really disagree with most of what you've written. You are probably quite correct in suggesting "the likely result of the sacrifice of our soldiers is a cruel civil war in Iraq." This was probably not 'inevitable' in any meaningful way - in order words, it was U.S. policy that unleashed political forces which will now probably have to play themselves out in a context where U.S. policy is only one factor among many.

Where I disagree with you is in your reference to "the democracy we are trying to install," because I think we have no good reason to believe this is a serious objective of U.S. policy and plenty of reason to think the achievement of something approximating democracy in Iraq would be regarded as a very serious danger by U.S. policymakers. I'm also not comfortable with the "we;" having been adamantly opposed to the current policy, I refuse to identify with it now. None of that "politics is adjourned/disagreements stop at the border" bullshit for me. The stifling of dissent - including through self-censorship - is not helping the situation or anyone, least of all our troops.

I want to be as specific as I can here. I think it's extremely important that facile historical analogies not be made when there is no warrant for them. We are not living in the era after World War II, when there was both more real democracy in the United States and the world was filled with pretty strong and well-organized movements favoring democratic change and/or national liberation (think of the European resistance movements in France, Italy, Yugoslavia, the Chinese and Vietnamese national liberation movements, the Indian independence movement, growing movements for independence throughout Africa, and so forth). I know the myth in this country is that U.S. policy was entirely responsible for the estabishment of democratic states after World War II, but that is pure baloney. The worldwide struggle against fascism, colonialism and militarism unleashed extremely powerful popular forces for change. To the extent U.S. policy supported these forces instead of working ONLY to repress them, it was the result of democratic forces strengthened in the U.S. (through the much-empowered labor movement and related organizations).

But of course: the temptation to make an imperial power grab was great on the part of our elites, and so U.S. policy moved toward Cold War abroad and national security hysteria/McCarthyism/repression at home.

Where are the political forces for democracy at home and abroad today? Weak, disorganized, and under the constant threat of war and repression. American "democracy" is now characterized by stolen national elections, vastly increased socio-economic inequality, and the stench of corruption in every major institutional sector. Turn on the TV or radio and you'll get (no-nutrition) bread and circuses that clearly illustrates the contempt in which our ruling class holds us.

What this regime wants in Iraq is not democracy but rather a stable client state prepared to back U.S. policy in the region and ready, willing and able to stifle any menace of popular democratic force that might object to the transfer of Iraq's wealth to U.S. business interests. A democratic regime in Iraq could not possibly be trusted because it might elect to have an independent foreign policy or to be responsive to popular pressure for economic stability by nationalizing industries or otherwise placing obstacles in the way of U.S. business interests in the country. How could Bush and his cronies tolerate that for even a second? By comparison, I think Bush would find a bloody civil war in Iraq far more palatable.

Because U.S. policy is so completely compromised by imperial imperatives I have no hesitation whatsoever in supporting the "troops out now" position within the antiwar movement. I have no illusions about our political position in the U.S. We are not making policy recommendations to a federal government that is listening to what we are saying. To our government, we are - at best - a mild annoyance and - at worst - disloyal traitors who belong in jail. To make the government listen to us, we must make its position increasingly untenable at home, using every means at our disposal that we can agree on. The only people we should be speaking to are our fellow citizens because they are the only ones who can help us achieve our goals. Bush and his gang, who have demonstrated so much disdain for democracy in the U.S., will not support its establishment in Iraq. I want the troops out now. I do not think I am morally blind in concluding that it is the only responsible position we can take.

Regards,

- RK

P.S. - Despite the war, I doubt that "hundreds of millions of Muslims" regard the 9-11 terrorists as heroes.

Throwing My Vote Away For The Last Time

For the second (and, I swear, the LAST) time, I stupidly threw my vote away this year by pulling the lever for a Democrat in a national election. The first time was in 1992, when I already knew better, at the urging of my soon-to-be wife - we were married four days after the election - and voted for Bill Clinton despite grave reservations. Clinton wasted no time confirming my initial view of him, and the country spent the next eight years witnessing Clinton do what national Democrats now do best at the policy level: sell austerity to the working class with a minimum of resistance.

That last point is important, and not to be underestimated. Would Reagan and Bush Senior have been able to secure passage of the NAFTA treaty and the savage welfare "reform" act as easily as Clinton did? Not likely. Democrats who might otherwise have stood in opposition to these measures on purely partisan grounds found themselves under equal pressure to support them when advanced by Clinton. Yet far worse than what transpired within the Democratic Party under Clinton was the nauseating conduct of many would-be "progressive" organizations who stifled the opposition they should have mustered against the Democrats' unrelenting assault on working people. Labor unions, civil rights organizations, women's rights organizations, environmental groups, and liberal policy advocates across the country closed ranks around Clinton and defended the Democrats despite the glaring betrayals on almost every front. In fact, "betrayal" might not be the right word, for it implies that the Democrats actually made commitments to the working-class constituencies that once made them a majority party; in fact, nothing of the sort took place. One could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, however, because of the willingness of these organizations to denounce and stifle internal critics and dissidents who urged a break with the Democrats over critical issues.

This time around, I foolishly adopted a kind of half-assed "popular front" approach to the election, thinking that the nightmare of Bush's reign might warrant setting aside my disgust with Kerry in favor of a large and unified voter turnout delivering resounding majorities to break the Republican stranglehold on all branches of the federal government. In hindsight, I see that what inspired this view on so many occasions was not what the Democrats were doing - if anything, they were a hindrance to forward movement against Bush's agenda - but rather what other people were doing. Of course my perspective was skewed, not least by the fact that I lived in a place sure to give the Democrats a majority anyway.

In effect, I fell into the same dumb pattern of behavior as the so-called progressive groups that back the Democrats despite overwhelming evidence this makes no sense. My "popular front" approach could only be comprehensible in terms of an all-out Democratic effort to mobilize the vote in favor of their national ticket...but this wasn't happening, and probably couldn't, because the Democratic Party had long since given its historic "base" the heave-ho in favor of chasing corporate dollars and middle-class voters in the 'burbs, with all the attendant policy positions you might expect from the Republicans circa 1988. Citizens thoroughly alienated from an electoral process and a policy debate so far removed from their concerns and hostile to their interests stayed home on Election Day in more than adequate numbers to repudiate Kerry and deliver even more of Congress to the Republicans.

Responding to an earlier post 'o mine, my pal the Superannuated Pedagogue said he "agree[d] that the Democratic Party must turn more progressive, and I hold out a degree of hope that they will be forced in that direction." But I'm not calling for the Democrats to be reformed, for there is no hope of reform from within. On the contrary, I'm calling for them to be abandoned, permanently, by every organization that holds pretentions to leadership among the working class. I'm looking for the Democrats to go the way of the Federalists, Whigs, Know-Nothings, and Populists and disappear from the political landscape, so they can do no further harm.

Let me put this as simply as I can: The continued existence of the Democrats and the inexplicable hope among people all over the country that they represent an alternative to global empire and the corporate rape of the planet may be the single greatest obstacle to peace and progress in our time. If this somehow sounds "extreme" to you, then you haven't been paying attention, for the rot has been under way for a good long time. It's also been well documented. Back in 1986 Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers provided a clear analysis of the Democrats' Right Turn and the reasons behind it in a book that should be required reading for anyone who contemplates getting involved in electoral politics and still holds illusions about what (and who) the Dems represent. In 2002, Steve Perry offered an update of the Ferguson/Rogers argument that is blistering in its judgment and no less true for its polemicism. Perry offers a boatload of compelling, practical arguments for dumping the Democrats, but the one I found most useful was his reply to those who accused him of ideological purism and a corresponding lack of "realism":

"This is ironic. In the past generation countless people have left the Democratic party, or gotten pushed out of it, or simply stopped caring about it, over all sorts of issues. It's the party itself that's burdened by an untenable ideological purity: It means to remain programmatically compatible with its financiers and large donors at any cost, even though that cost is an increasing and now perilous level of defection by traditional Democratic voters who have no stake in sticking with the party. But again, the Democrats are not in this position because they're out of touch. This is where they have chosen to stand. They would be happy for your help--in fact, they are positively desperate for it, because a party can lose only so much ground before the patronage that keeps it functioning at ground level begins drying up--but come what may, they mean to stick with the people who pay their bills, thank you very much."

A recent study by Political Money Line indicates that among 268 corporate Political Action Committees giving $100,000 or more to federal candidates, 245 gave more than 50% of their contributions to Republicans and only 23 gave more to Democrats. This represents a 10 to 1 tilt towards Republicans this election cycle...so perhaps the Democrats have now carried their ideological purity to the point of losing the elite patronage they so crave. One can hope.

So in the aftermath of this year's election my one regret is that I did not cast my vote for Ralph Nader, who was on the ballot in New Jersey and who certainly deserved my vote for the extremely important work he has done and continues to do in building (small "d") democratic strength everywhere he goes. Diana Barahona did the right thing and voted for Nader. In the concluding section of her essay explaning her vote, she reflects on those who are already calling for the Democrats to move further to the right and the madness of following in that path:

"There is no lack of irresponsible types who have no sooner made one mistake than they are off and running toward the next one, and in four years they will do it to us again. Every mistake is magnified now because the planet's days are numbered. Global warming is destroying the fabric of life as I write and unless there are radical changes in policies right now, its effects will not be at all mitigated; more likely, the US leaders will increasingly resort to military violence to try to maintain control in the face of constant natural disasters, wars over resources, and massive displacement of populations. The time for radical change was twelve years ago, and the failure of the American left to lead us toward this change is unforgivable."

In retrospect, I think my "popular front" attitude was also motivated by a sense that a great deal was at stake in this election, and that a victory for Bush would mark a very dangerous turning point in an American political system already corrupted to the point of emergency. In an October essay attacking the Nader campaign and warning progressives against supporting him, my undergraduate mentor H. Bruce Franklin painted the world after a Bush re-election as a very frightening place:

"If George Bush is elected, he and his gang will have the official stamp of approval from the American people (perhaps with help from Diebold), a Republican Congress, legislation in place for a police state, a thoroughly compliant media, at least two upcoming vacancies on the Supreme Court, and an unhindered opportunity to pack the rest of the federal judiciary with fanatical right-wingers. That packed federal judiciary alone will be enough to prevent progress on any legal front. Environmental protection will be decimated, legal challenges to the tortures carried out daily in the hundreds of Abu Ghraibs in the American prison-industrial complex will be tossed out, basic Constitutional rights and liberties will be jettisoned, the disenfranchisement of poor people will accelerate, and there will be no legal way to prevent the right-wing forces in power to steal any election they choose, whether by electronic voting machines or more old-fashioned methods such as purging voter rolls or tossing out thousands of ballots....The door toward a progressive agenda may be about to close. The only way to get a foot in that door is to get George Bush out of the White House. And the only legal way to do that is to elect John Kerry."

While I strongly disagreed with Bruce's attack on Nader, when Election Day arrived I did what he recommended and voted for Kerry, having arrived at the same bleak vision of what a second term might mean. But all the lefties in academia could not make up for the millions of working-class citizens who did not register, or who did not vote, because it was not enough for them to vote against Bush. There were no longer enough regular Democrats to win an election, even with ample support from non-Democrats. So do we now stand in the nightmare world Franklin described, with liberty and democracy in mortal danger?

Note that both Barahona and Franklin allude to the likelihood that legal methods of effective resistance to Bush's agenda will soon disappear, snuffed out through judicial sanction and state repression. If Barahona and Franklin are right, what options are now available to the peace movement? Stay tuned, while you can...

Getting Better at Long Division

In a campaign marked by several outrageous failures, John Kerry's concession to George Bush - just hours after sending running mate John Edwards before the country to tell us once again that the Democrats would fight to ensure all votes were counted - may stand as a betrayal of singular ugliness. Journalist Greg Palast, who was responsible for some of the best investigative reporting about the large-scale disfranchisement in Florida in 2000, began warning some time ago of similar Republican-backed dirty tricks in New Mexico and Ohio this year, and Palast is now convinced that Kerry won both states despite reports to the contrary. I'm not ready to get into the merits of Palast's charges, but I will say this: if Kerry will not fight for the rights of his own voters, then the issue becomes largely academic. I guess Edwards was talking to the cameras for the sake of a "media moment," and never mind the people who voted for him (or tried to).

The drivel that spews from the corporate media purporting to explain the election to us in terms of some alleged public concern over "moral values" is nothing but noise pollution. If I have to read one more story about some Christian family in Ohio - always accompanied by a photo of mom and dad holding their precious children - who voted for Bush despite severe economic woes over the last several years because Bush allegedly stands for the things they believe in, I'll probably throw up. As Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman have been arguing for many years, the basic propaganda function of the corporate media is to establish the framework of debate, its major terms and concepts, and the range within which opinion will be considered "legitimate." Ideas that reside outside the spectrum defined by the corporate media are marginalized, ignored, and (when they become troublesome) vilified. Given the role of the corporate media and the many troubling issues of our time, you can expect editors and publishers to spend most of their days keeping news out of the papers, while in the broadcast world we get mind-numbing shoutfests over trivial nonsense instead of meangingful debate, and ever more vapid "infotainment" on what are quaintly called "news" shows. The net result is to place a burden on those of us who would like to make sense of the election, because we're not going to find it in USA Today, and we can't afford to buy the Wall Street Journal. In other words, we're going to have to do our own research.

But how hard is that? Maybe it's comforting to some self-styled liberals and progressives to believe Bush won because an army of ignorant religious yahoos overran the best efforts of noble, enlightened Americans. To my great disappointment, Air America Radio host Janeane Garofalo promotes this foolish characterization of the election as a battle between the smart and the stupid on the air at almost every opportunity. But Garofalo is dead wrong, and like most of the other Air America hosts who embraced Kerry without reservation she shares the contempt of the Democratic campaign for the working-class majority that is still routinely invoked as the party's "traditional constituency." Who supports the Democrats today? And why? Working-class Americans and their concerns do not interest the Democrats. The election strategies of national Democratic tickets have no regard for the majority, and this has been the case for many years. A working-class constituency audacious enough to believe it can demand some accountability from a political party claiming its support is troublesome, especially when that party has more well-heeled patrons demanding attention. The once-invincible "New Deal coalition" that succumbed to the strains of war, economic crises, and multiple conflicting demands in the 1960s and 1970s is now less than an echo within a Democratic Party that has long since restructured itself by sacrificing the interests of labor on the altar of wealth. Every national Democratic campaign since 1980 has offered fewer reasons to command the support of working Americans. On the campaign trail, in Congress, and in the White House, Democrats of the last generation have jettisoned programmatic commitments to labor, openly embraced the agenda of wealth, and now fail to give even lip service to the interests of workers.

With nothing to support, it's not surprising that workers simply stayed away from the polls on Election Day. The general increase in voter turnout this year - to about 60 percent of registered voters - should not obscure the critical fact that the Democratic Party failed miserably to draw voters to the polls. The numbers in New Jersey illustrate the pattern of Democratic decay despite massive voter registration drives conducted by grass-roots organizations and despite the fact that Kerry won the state. Kerry won majorities in 12 of New Jersey's 21 counties, area's representing 71 percent of the state's population. In the 9 counties Bush won, almost 47 percent of the population voted. By comparison, only about 38 percent of the population voted in Kerry's counties. You might think this is no big deal, but the gap between the two participation rates represents over 527,000 votes; Kerry's margin of victory in New Jersey was only about 212,000 votes. Voter turnout in New Jersey counties correlated positively with median household income (0.45) and median family income (0.49). Somewhat weaker positive correlations existed between those couties that turned out for Bush and median household income/median family income (both 0.37), while Kerry's counties showed a negative correlation with median household income/median family income (both -0.37). The strongest correlations, however, were between voter turnout and candidate strength: -0.73 for Kerry, and 0.73 for Bush.

Against electoral weakness of this magnitude, the Christian right didn't have to do anything special to look strong, and it didn't. Citing Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center, Conservative columnist David Brooks pointed out in a recent story that

there was no disproportionate surge in the evangelical vote this year. Evangelicals made up the same share of the electorate this year as they did in 2000. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who are pro-life. Sixteen percent of voters said abortions should be illegal in all circumstances. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who say they pray daily.

So with no massive upsurge on the right and no Naderites to blame this time, the Democratic implosion stands naked and exposed. A few perceptive post-mortems will suffice to drive this point home:

Here's Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair on the Democrats:

"The strategy of the Democratic Party as formulated by DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe amounted to belief in the simple potency of corporate cash, plus hysterical demonization of Bush and Nader, represented at full stretch by Michael Moore, who began the year backing General Wesley Clarke and ended it as a pied piper for Kerry. They came to the Rubicon of November 2 replete with fantasies, about the unknown cell phone vote, the youth vote (which actually remained unchanged from 2000), the galvanizing potential of Bruce Springsteen and Eminem....October surprises? No candidate was more burdened by them than George Bush....You can troll back over the past fifteen months and find scarce a headline or news story bringing good tidings for Bush....But Kerry and the Democrats were never able to capitalize on any of these headlines, a failure which started when Democrats in Congress, Kerry included, gave the green light to the war on Iraq, and which continued when Kerry conclusively threw away the war and WMD issues in August. When he tried to make a chord change at NYU on September 20 it was too late and even then his position remained incoherent. He offered no way out. More tunnel, no light.

It was like that for Kerry on almost every issue. Outsourcing is a big issue in the rustbelt, yet here was Kerry forced to concede that he had voted for the trade pacts and still supported them. All he offered, aside from deficit busting (which plays to the bond market but not to people working two jobs), was some tinkering with the tax code alarming to all those millions of Americans who play the lottery and believe that if they are not yet making more than $200,000 a year they soon will.

Edwards added absolutely nothing to the ticket. At least Dan Quayle held Indiana back in 1988 and 2002. No one state in the south went into Kerry's column. Gore did better in Florida and West Virginia. Dick Gephardt would certainly have brought the Democratic ticket Missouri and probably Iowa and hence the White House."

Cockburn has followed this analysis up with a more thorough one, worth reading in full.


Here's Thomas Frank, editor of The Baffler:

"Against [the Republicans' culture wars] the Democrats chose to go with ... what? Their usual soft centrism, creating space for this constituency and that, taking care to antagonize no one, declining even to criticize the president, really, at their convention. And despite huge get-out-the-vote efforts and an enormous treasury, Democrats lost the battle of voter motivation before it started.

Worse: While conservatives were sharpening their sense of class victimization, Democrats had all but abandoned the field. For some time, the centrist Democratic establishment in Washington has been enamored of the notion that, since the industrial age is ending, the party must forget about blue-collar workers and their issues and embrace the "professional" class. During the 2004 campaign these new, business-friendly Democrats received high-profile assistance from idealistic tycoons and openly embraced trendy management theory. They imagined themselves the "metro" party of cool billionaires engaged in some kind of cosmic combat with the square billionaires of the "retro" Republican Party.

Yet this would have been a perfect year to give the Republicans a Trumanesque spanking for the many corporate scandals that they have countenanced and, in some ways, enabled. Taking such a stand would also have provided Democrats with a way to address and maybe even defeat the angry populism that informs the "values" issues while simultaneously mobilizing their base. To short-circuit the Republican appeals to blue-collar constituents, Democrats must confront the cultural populism of the wedge issues with genuine economic populism. They must dust off their own majoritarian militancy instead of suppressing it; sharpen the distinctions between the parties instead of minimizing them; emphasize the contradictions of culture-war populism instead of ignoring them; and speak forthrightly about who gains and who loses from conservative economic policy.

What is more likely, of course, is that Democratic officialdom will simply see this week's disaster as a reason to redouble their efforts to move to the right. They will give in on, say, Social Security privatization or income tax "reform" and will continue to dream their happy dreams about becoming the party of the enlightened corporate class. And they will be surprised all over again two or four years from now when the conservative populists of the Red America, poorer and angrier than ever, deal the "party of the people" yet another stunning blow."

And last but not least, Ralph Nader, who probably inspired more anger from the Democratic Party this year than Bush himself. From a press release on Nader's campaign web site:

"The Democrats need to become an effective, bright-line opposition party that plays strong defense against the worst of the Bush administration’s policies and plays offense to shame and weaken the Republicans. The upcoming escalation of the war in Iraq will be the first opportunity for the Democrats to distinguish themselves from Republicans,” said Nader. “During the next four years the Democrats need to begin to build a coalition of the economically deprived and disrespected. These include 50 million low wage workers and their families, small farm and rural families. This is a winning coalition that can compete with Republicans throughout the United States especially in the Midwest and South.

Nader noted that in this election Kerry lost the support of his base. Youth did not come out to support him in large numbers. And, 44 percent of Latinos voted for Bush, as did an astonishing 42 percent of those earning under $30,000, 40 percent of those with union members in their households and 36 percent of union members. Nader noted:

If the Democrats do not stand for the issues that affect the daily lives of these people, many will vote on whatever issue of the day the Republicans can dream up to distract attention from their cruel corporate interests against the people. This year it was a vague hypocritical morality message, and a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage; four years from now it will be something else but this only works if the Democrats continue to take off the table the mainstay economic, peace and justice issues."

Yes...I'm afraid it IS that simple.