Young, young, young
Only wanting the word
Sifting through the madness for the word, the line, the way
-Charles Bukowski “Neither William Shakespeare nor Mickey Spillane”
I was in the Lost Dog Coffee Shop in Shepherdstown a few weeks ago when I began to journal on a scrap of sketchbook paper which had been laying beneath a bulletin board. When I filled the page with my own words and turned it over, I discovered that someone had written on the other side in large purple colored pencil, “Fuck organized faith. Think for Yourself.”
The sign, though not espousing my thoughts on religion seemed destined for me. I had left seminary—and all the annoying group think of that system—a few weeks prior. I also left many good things—a solid community full of friends, who, in many ways know me better than anyone else, a diocese which cares about personal, spiritual and intellectual development, a spiritual guide able to shine light on dim paths.
I decided right then that although I espousing thinking for oneself, I wouldn’t leave my deep and personal relationship with organized faith behind. In the ensuing weeks since I have continued to go to mass and pray the office on my morning and evening commute. I’ve read four books and have continued to work on my own novel. I’ve made community with a beautiful family and find myself thrust into old relationships like big brother, dog owner, babysitter, errand runner. It all serves as a distinct reminder that love is best lived out with others.
In my work, I’m blessed to be around inspiring people actively actualizing their baptismal call to bring Christ into the world. It’s a long way from my previous life, which was long on future talk and granfallonary. But always present is God, guiding our actions, bringing us ever more into the now, presenting us with the chance to align our temporal concerns with his infinite grace, to be made perfect in our imperfection. Going forward I will deepen my relationship with the church. I will also continue to think for myself. As we enter the last two weeks of Lent, I believe, that in some respects, we really can have it all. Maybe we already do.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
The Fist and the Cross
HUNTINGTON—This past week our community lost two of its most beloved radicals. I came to know both Fr. Bert Valdez and Winnie Fox during my time as an undergraduate student at Marshall. For Bert religion was about being human, and for Winnie, revolution was religion.
For Fr. Bert, spirituality was not so much taught as it was performed in front of your eyes. He understood that the symphony of life never ceases, and his attuned ear did not miss the music. He did not expect people to always understand his point, but he did expect them to think about it.
He was fond of saying all stories are true, while some of them actually happened. He once told me during a heated debate in the sacristy that he didn’t believe in the Immaculate Conception. It wasn’t until after Mass ended that we were informed that his presider’s microphone had been on the whole time!
During one homily, he likened the Church to a house of ill repute and told the story of how he watched from his window at St. Charles Seminary on Paca Street in Baltimore as a madam kicked out a male patron. Throwing his wallet in his face, the woman screamed, “this is a respectable whorehouse.”
Winnie could be just as feisty. When she became more stooped over, she would amble up to politicians using her walker and fool them into thinking she was a sweet old woman. Then she’d grab them by the shirt collar. Waiting for her arthritic hands to twist, she would pull them toward her, and explain why her cause was vital.
Winnie was born in eastern Kentucky and her father politicked for Fred Vinson, a congressman who eventually became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1946-1953. Her life as a political activist began when she stood up for her African American co-workers while working as a secretary in Washington, D.C. during the Second World War.
Winnie was always writing editorials and congressmen. She loved people and hated those in power who made decisions that benefit the rich without thinking of working folk. She was an outspoken feminist who attributed many social problems to the male perspective, but was fierce in her devotion to her late-husband Jack.
In the past few years I drifted away from both Winnie and Fr. Bert. Winnie was initially against my going to seminary, but a couple years later told a mutual friend that even though she couldn’t stand organized religion, she knew I would do right by the people and practice liberation theology. Regarding Fr. Bert neither of us picked up the phone. As I look back on my friends I don’t mourn their death so much as my own loss. Because of them I was able to find my own place, somewhere between the fist and the cross.
For Fr. Bert, spirituality was not so much taught as it was performed in front of your eyes. He understood that the symphony of life never ceases, and his attuned ear did not miss the music. He did not expect people to always understand his point, but he did expect them to think about it.
He was fond of saying all stories are true, while some of them actually happened. He once told me during a heated debate in the sacristy that he didn’t believe in the Immaculate Conception. It wasn’t until after Mass ended that we were informed that his presider’s microphone had been on the whole time!
During one homily, he likened the Church to a house of ill repute and told the story of how he watched from his window at St. Charles Seminary on Paca Street in Baltimore as a madam kicked out a male patron. Throwing his wallet in his face, the woman screamed, “this is a respectable whorehouse.”
Winnie could be just as feisty. When she became more stooped over, she would amble up to politicians using her walker and fool them into thinking she was a sweet old woman. Then she’d grab them by the shirt collar. Waiting for her arthritic hands to twist, she would pull them toward her, and explain why her cause was vital.
Winnie was born in eastern Kentucky and her father politicked for Fred Vinson, a congressman who eventually became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1946-1953. Her life as a political activist began when she stood up for her African American co-workers while working as a secretary in Washington, D.C. during the Second World War.
Winnie was always writing editorials and congressmen. She loved people and hated those in power who made decisions that benefit the rich without thinking of working folk. She was an outspoken feminist who attributed many social problems to the male perspective, but was fierce in her devotion to her late-husband Jack.
In the past few years I drifted away from both Winnie and Fr. Bert. Winnie was initially against my going to seminary, but a couple years later told a mutual friend that even though she couldn’t stand organized religion, she knew I would do right by the people and practice liberation theology. Regarding Fr. Bert neither of us picked up the phone. As I look back on my friends I don’t mourn their death so much as my own loss. Because of them I was able to find my own place, somewhere between the fist and the cross.
Interview with Winnie Fox
*I conducted this interview with Winnie as an assignment for a creative writing class at Marshall University in Fall 2005.
October 26, 2005
For this assignment I went up to the east end of town to interview Winnie Fox at her home on sixth avenue and twenty-sixth street . Winnie is 85 years old. She has four children and has been an activist, concerned citizen and community leader for over fifty years. The patron saint of Huntington hellraisers, Winnie is never too busy to sit down over a cup of coffee and discuss the status of our world. Although her bones don’t work the way they used to, Winnie is as outspoken as a rebellious teenager and has a mind like a steel trap. In this interview Winnie talks about growing up during the depression on the Kentucky side of the Big Sandy river.
I was born in a place called Torchlight, Kentucky on the Big Sandy river. It was a very small community above Louisa, a coal mining town. My daddy had the store there, and when the depression came he kept feeding people out of the store until he went broke because that’s what people did back then. It’s hard for people to sort out their lives, especially when it was so long since all this stuff has passed.
One of the first things I remember when I was just a toddler was when our house caught on fire. Those old houses used to have a living room and a family room. The living room was where you lived and had the fire place. I remember sitting there with my mother, and maybe I was 18 months old, something like that, and we walked into the kitchen and the whole ceiling was on fire. We had coal oil lamps on top of one of those old coal stoves—boy they made the best food in the world. Corn bread and biscuits to die for. Anyway, my mother called my father and then went up to the attic and started pulling out beams in the roof and throwing them out the window. Her hands were completely burnt and my daddy was bringing her barrels of water that they had around the house since we didn’t have running water.
When I was five I moved to Louisa. My uncle was a locksmith and captained a sternwheeler he’d built by himself in his spare time. Boy I loved that Big Sandy river. He used to take me up and down and every now and then he’d let me take the wheel. I remember going up the Big Sandy in a row boat at night with the moon shining. We were going to see a show boat, and just the idea of it was fascinating. My husband’s uncle’s name was Isaac and he worked on the river and when he was a child he was a Shakespearian actor on one of those showboats.
Back in those days though, times were tough. I had gone to live in Louisa with my uncle because my parents couldn’t keep me. One of my daddy’s best friends in Louisa was Fred Vinson. Daddy had helped Fred get elected to the legislature the first time and I used to go to his house when I was a kid. He lived in a big stone house near the post office. The house has since been torn down but I can still close my eyes and picture it. He was very good to me. He didn’t have any children of his own and I used to play with his grand nieces. They lived on a house on the property with their mom, and had the biggest playhouse you ever saw. It had a miniature kitchen and a living room. My mom used to ride horses with Fred’s wife Roberta.
Of course, fate would take the Vinsons to Washington as Fred’s political career advanced. When I went to Washington during the war to work for the Roosevelt administration, I met with the Vinsons. By that time Fred had become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Fred had a head for politics but Roberta told me she hated shaking hands with all those people she didn’t know. That’s the way they did women back then though. They wanted to keep you pregnant and uneducated. I don’t think it was a very good thing that he was head of the Supreme Court. He must have been rather conservative because someone told me if he’d been alive Brown vs. Board of Education might not have passed. He seemed like a nice man though and always talked to me when I was a kid.
Now before I go any further lets get one thing clear. America is full of shit and I’ll never salute the goddamn flag. Now I’ll salute people who try their hearts out. I’ll support the people that went to Vietnam and Iraq who were lied to. It’s pitiful when the only way some people can get an education is to go into the service. My husband got an education on the GI bill. They said he didn’t have to pay for it. But he paid for it. He paid for it when he was 18 years old in the Pacific and saw flame throwers, and mothers jumping off cliffs with babies and the sky so black with flies that you couldn’t see the sun. All so he could work like a dog his whole life at the nickel plant and then get cancer. Where’s the noble cause in that? No matter what they tell you, there is hardly ever a cause worthy of going to war over. And that’s the truth
October 26, 2005
For this assignment I went up to the east end of town to interview Winnie Fox at her home on sixth avenue and twenty-sixth street . Winnie is 85 years old. She has four children and has been an activist, concerned citizen and community leader for over fifty years. The patron saint of Huntington hellraisers, Winnie is never too busy to sit down over a cup of coffee and discuss the status of our world. Although her bones don’t work the way they used to, Winnie is as outspoken as a rebellious teenager and has a mind like a steel trap. In this interview Winnie talks about growing up during the depression on the Kentucky side of the Big Sandy river.
I was born in a place called Torchlight, Kentucky on the Big Sandy river. It was a very small community above Louisa, a coal mining town. My daddy had the store there, and when the depression came he kept feeding people out of the store until he went broke because that’s what people did back then. It’s hard for people to sort out their lives, especially when it was so long since all this stuff has passed.
One of the first things I remember when I was just a toddler was when our house caught on fire. Those old houses used to have a living room and a family room. The living room was where you lived and had the fire place. I remember sitting there with my mother, and maybe I was 18 months old, something like that, and we walked into the kitchen and the whole ceiling was on fire. We had coal oil lamps on top of one of those old coal stoves—boy they made the best food in the world. Corn bread and biscuits to die for. Anyway, my mother called my father and then went up to the attic and started pulling out beams in the roof and throwing them out the window. Her hands were completely burnt and my daddy was bringing her barrels of water that they had around the house since we didn’t have running water.
When I was five I moved to Louisa. My uncle was a locksmith and captained a sternwheeler he’d built by himself in his spare time. Boy I loved that Big Sandy river. He used to take me up and down and every now and then he’d let me take the wheel. I remember going up the Big Sandy in a row boat at night with the moon shining. We were going to see a show boat, and just the idea of it was fascinating. My husband’s uncle’s name was Isaac and he worked on the river and when he was a child he was a Shakespearian actor on one of those showboats.
Back in those days though, times were tough. I had gone to live in Louisa with my uncle because my parents couldn’t keep me. One of my daddy’s best friends in Louisa was Fred Vinson. Daddy had helped Fred get elected to the legislature the first time and I used to go to his house when I was a kid. He lived in a big stone house near the post office. The house has since been torn down but I can still close my eyes and picture it. He was very good to me. He didn’t have any children of his own and I used to play with his grand nieces. They lived on a house on the property with their mom, and had the biggest playhouse you ever saw. It had a miniature kitchen and a living room. My mom used to ride horses with Fred’s wife Roberta.
Of course, fate would take the Vinsons to Washington as Fred’s political career advanced. When I went to Washington during the war to work for the Roosevelt administration, I met with the Vinsons. By that time Fred had become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Fred had a head for politics but Roberta told me she hated shaking hands with all those people she didn’t know. That’s the way they did women back then though. They wanted to keep you pregnant and uneducated. I don’t think it was a very good thing that he was head of the Supreme Court. He must have been rather conservative because someone told me if he’d been alive Brown vs. Board of Education might not have passed. He seemed like a nice man though and always talked to me when I was a kid.
Now before I go any further lets get one thing clear. America is full of shit and I’ll never salute the goddamn flag. Now I’ll salute people who try their hearts out. I’ll support the people that went to Vietnam and Iraq who were lied to. It’s pitiful when the only way some people can get an education is to go into the service. My husband got an education on the GI bill. They said he didn’t have to pay for it. But he paid for it. He paid for it when he was 18 years old in the Pacific and saw flame throwers, and mothers jumping off cliffs with babies and the sky so black with flies that you couldn’t see the sun. All so he could work like a dog his whole life at the nickel plant and then get cancer. Where’s the noble cause in that? No matter what they tell you, there is hardly ever a cause worthy of going to war over. And that’s the truth
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Book Review
A DARING PROMISE: A SPIRITUALITY OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE. By Richard R. Gaillardetz. New York: The Crossword Publishing Company, 2002. Pp. 137. $16.95
In A Daring Promise: A Spirituality of Christian Marriage, Richard Gaillardetz notes that his book “might best be viewed not as a marriage manual in which the author unlocks the secrets of a successful marriage but rather something more akin to a pilgrim’s journal in which (he) seek(s) to record something of the spiritual topography of the marriage relationship,” (10). To that end the author blends traditional covenantal theology with anecdotal stories of his experience as a fallible married man—who does not pray with his wife, who struggles with his identity as parent—and creates a volume which he hopes will give married couples of all stripes a better understanding of the daily rewards and challenges of wedded life.
The central theme of A Daring Promise hinges on the notion that vowing oneself to another before God is a radical act. Marriage is difficult for the simple reason that it is the setting in which most Christian adults will, through the help of God, work out their salvation. Gaillardetz eschews the notion that God is a third party brought into the marriage by the couple through prayer in favor of grounding the sacrament in the Paschal Mystery. The consequence of this action is that people are able to commune with God in their daily life of communing with others. “If God is love, if God is gift given eternally, then our participation in the life of God happens not by escaping our everyday world, but by entering more deeply into the life of love and that paradoxical logic of gift which we receive most richly only when we make “gifting” others a way of life,” (39).
A Daring Promise addresses marriage over the course of 137 pages in light of Christian Spirituality, the Life of Communion, Conversion, Sexuality and Parenthood. The author makes use of a multiplicity of sources regarding marriage including Thomas Merton, Saint Augustine, Kallistos Ware, Karol Wojtyla, Karen Lebacqz, and Evelyn and James Whitehead. The author also includes three discussion questions at the end of each chapter aimed at helping married individuals better relate to their spouses. The book succeeds in giving a view of marriage that runs counter to both the “happily-ever-after” and “old ball and chain” fallacies deeply embedded in society. The weaknesses of the book are a reflection of the author himself. At times, Gaillardetz seems to advocate a leap of faith from Church teaching into interpersonal relationships without giving a clear methodology for accomplishing the task. Throughout the book the author brushes off a traditional view of marriage as promulgated by celibate institutional church leaders. Nevertheless, Church authorities, and more importantly, married couples seeking to reconnect with one another could greatly benefit from reading this book. No Index.
In A Daring Promise: A Spirituality of Christian Marriage, Richard Gaillardetz notes that his book “might best be viewed not as a marriage manual in which the author unlocks the secrets of a successful marriage but rather something more akin to a pilgrim’s journal in which (he) seek(s) to record something of the spiritual topography of the marriage relationship,” (10). To that end the author blends traditional covenantal theology with anecdotal stories of his experience as a fallible married man—who does not pray with his wife, who struggles with his identity as parent—and creates a volume which he hopes will give married couples of all stripes a better understanding of the daily rewards and challenges of wedded life.
The central theme of A Daring Promise hinges on the notion that vowing oneself to another before God is a radical act. Marriage is difficult for the simple reason that it is the setting in which most Christian adults will, through the help of God, work out their salvation. Gaillardetz eschews the notion that God is a third party brought into the marriage by the couple through prayer in favor of grounding the sacrament in the Paschal Mystery. The consequence of this action is that people are able to commune with God in their daily life of communing with others. “If God is love, if God is gift given eternally, then our participation in the life of God happens not by escaping our everyday world, but by entering more deeply into the life of love and that paradoxical logic of gift which we receive most richly only when we make “gifting” others a way of life,” (39).
A Daring Promise addresses marriage over the course of 137 pages in light of Christian Spirituality, the Life of Communion, Conversion, Sexuality and Parenthood. The author makes use of a multiplicity of sources regarding marriage including Thomas Merton, Saint Augustine, Kallistos Ware, Karol Wojtyla, Karen Lebacqz, and Evelyn and James Whitehead. The author also includes three discussion questions at the end of each chapter aimed at helping married individuals better relate to their spouses. The book succeeds in giving a view of marriage that runs counter to both the “happily-ever-after” and “old ball and chain” fallacies deeply embedded in society. The weaknesses of the book are a reflection of the author himself. At times, Gaillardetz seems to advocate a leap of faith from Church teaching into interpersonal relationships without giving a clear methodology for accomplishing the task. Throughout the book the author brushes off a traditional view of marriage as promulgated by celibate institutional church leaders. Nevertheless, Church authorities, and more importantly, married couples seeking to reconnect with one another could greatly benefit from reading this book. No Index.
Thoughts on Tuesday
Loneliness invades a man. It bores in amidst the classes and theological debates in the hallway, the cold beer at the end of the day among friends. It comes upon me when I realize I am not the man I was, and am not the man I will be. Strip away the black shirt, the tab collar, the classes the masses, the breviary and Morning Prayer and all you have is a man in the likeness of his creator, God. Somehow, it’s not enough. It’s incomplete, an alarming mess in a world defined by pixels and megabytes instead of loved ones and community.
The question of a lifetime: Does man need saving, like the Judeo-Christian teaching proclaims or does he save himself, as the Buddhist path seems to suggest. Does it matter? Life marches on until we arrive at death. We have no choice in the matter. A friend lies on his death bed at Saint Mary’s, more than forty years a priest and as feisty as ever. “No one gets out of this life alive,” he reminded me. We can define our life and in so doing, define our death. Our world is really in our head. Not only the Gospel message, but every message we receive is received according to the mode of the receiver.
It is this hearing, and consequently the defining that happens as a result of our soul’s journey, that makes a life. Most days it seems to be enough to smile, but this day isn’t one of them. In the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, “we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
The question of a lifetime: Does man need saving, like the Judeo-Christian teaching proclaims or does he save himself, as the Buddhist path seems to suggest. Does it matter? Life marches on until we arrive at death. We have no choice in the matter. A friend lies on his death bed at Saint Mary’s, more than forty years a priest and as feisty as ever. “No one gets out of this life alive,” he reminded me. We can define our life and in so doing, define our death. Our world is really in our head. Not only the Gospel message, but every message we receive is received according to the mode of the receiver.
It is this hearing, and consequently the defining that happens as a result of our soul’s journey, that makes a life. Most days it seems to be enough to smile, but this day isn’t one of them. In the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, “we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Friday, December 10, 2010
Advent
Here is an unspeakable secret: paradise is all around us and we do not understand. It is wide open. The sword is taken away and we do not know it: we are off: "one to his farm and another to his merchandise." Lights on. Clocks ticking. Thermostats working. Stoves cooking. Electric razors filling radios with static. "Wisdom," cries the dawn deacon, but we do not attend. -Thomas Merton
It’s a chilly Friday morning and the flurries flaking down on the National Shrine Christmas wreaths, the Sedes Sapiente statue, my own uncovered head lead me to reflect on the last three years. Michigan and 4th, place of my discernment, setting of my first encounter with living in the institutional church!
My spiritual director, my friends, even the parking attendant mystic I speak to on my way to class seem to be stretched thin these short December days. Maybe they sense my unrest. Maybe they don’t rest themselves. Maybe they understand without being asked that they can’t answer my question, the one that led me here to seminary in the first place. God. Man. Why?
“Mysss—teery,” says Fr. Regis, emphasizing his point over and over in my spirituality class. “To be baptized is to invite martyrdom, to be plunged into the paschal mysss—teery.” Regis is a brilliant man. It’s because he asks the right questions, and though he has opinions, he doesn’t pretend to have the answers.
Fr. Jerry, my old, dead spiritual director, resting in the middle of Georgetown’s campus once told me that to be a priest was to make your life a sacrifice to God, and to facilitate Christ presence in the lives of others. If this is true, the object of the spiritual life is to continually accept the reality that you are to be as gift given to the world through the Church.
If this is the case, it doesn’t seem to be enough. While we are renewed and full of joy one day, we are old and worn out the next. We become like last year’s Christmas gifts: used up, broken, lying in the trash heap, diminished by the terror of living.
But God invites us to renewal, to live the present, to forget our worries and cares. Consider the lilies in the field. If God cares thus for them, will he not care for you? We are promised a light yoke and an easy burden. Are these choices or realities?
As I sojourn on in formation it seems more and more seminary is something to be endured. Give the right answers on the tests, present the right face to the community, attend the right events for the diocese. Every item in its box, every box in its place sealed covered and properly stored to be examined if authority deems it fit at a later date. It is organized and neat, and they are organized and neat, walking around in their dainty white collars acting holy. The greatest sin of all might be that I am perceived as one of them.
If the institutional Church is the condemned and the people of God are the woman then I am Peter in the courtyard, denying the truth over and over, shouting louder than the cock can crow. I am a free thinker, my mind is mine, and I refuse to conform to another man’s rules. To the unthinking clerics I say, I am with you, but I am not one of you. I will seek the paradise that is open, lasting and free for the taking.
It’s a chilly Friday morning and the flurries flaking down on the National Shrine Christmas wreaths, the Sedes Sapiente statue, my own uncovered head lead me to reflect on the last three years. Michigan and 4th, place of my discernment, setting of my first encounter with living in the institutional church!
My spiritual director, my friends, even the parking attendant mystic I speak to on my way to class seem to be stretched thin these short December days. Maybe they sense my unrest. Maybe they don’t rest themselves. Maybe they understand without being asked that they can’t answer my question, the one that led me here to seminary in the first place. God. Man. Why?
“Mysss—teery,” says Fr. Regis, emphasizing his point over and over in my spirituality class. “To be baptized is to invite martyrdom, to be plunged into the paschal mysss—teery.” Regis is a brilliant man. It’s because he asks the right questions, and though he has opinions, he doesn’t pretend to have the answers.
Fr. Jerry, my old, dead spiritual director, resting in the middle of Georgetown’s campus once told me that to be a priest was to make your life a sacrifice to God, and to facilitate Christ presence in the lives of others. If this is true, the object of the spiritual life is to continually accept the reality that you are to be as gift given to the world through the Church.
If this is the case, it doesn’t seem to be enough. While we are renewed and full of joy one day, we are old and worn out the next. We become like last year’s Christmas gifts: used up, broken, lying in the trash heap, diminished by the terror of living.
But God invites us to renewal, to live the present, to forget our worries and cares. Consider the lilies in the field. If God cares thus for them, will he not care for you? We are promised a light yoke and an easy burden. Are these choices or realities?
As I sojourn on in formation it seems more and more seminary is something to be endured. Give the right answers on the tests, present the right face to the community, attend the right events for the diocese. Every item in its box, every box in its place sealed covered and properly stored to be examined if authority deems it fit at a later date. It is organized and neat, and they are organized and neat, walking around in their dainty white collars acting holy. The greatest sin of all might be that I am perceived as one of them.
If the institutional Church is the condemned and the people of God are the woman then I am Peter in the courtyard, denying the truth over and over, shouting louder than the cock can crow. I am a free thinker, my mind is mine, and I refuse to conform to another man’s rules. To the unthinking clerics I say, I am with you, but I am not one of you. I will seek the paradise that is open, lasting and free for the taking.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Until Democrats Become Democrats Again
At this point the 2010 midterm elections are over and the punditry has just begun. All night long on Tuesday I kept listening to the talking heads ponder what the Republican takeover of the House and GOP gains in the Senate mean.
The Republicans are better organized, and despite their small government, fewer taxes rhetoric which favors the rich, have become the party of the people. Withstanding the usual last minute liberal appeals, droves of angry whites and upper middle class minorities turned out at the polls to support the GOP. So what does this mean for Democrats, whose ironic “Change” and “Hope” bumper stickers have faded and who now wish only to be oppressed in a sane, civilized manner (if John Stewart is to be believed)?
Since the 1980s, Republicans have controlled the story in American politics. We Democrats are the party of issues like Social Security, Unemployment, Medicare, Healthcare and the like. GOPers from push-polling Lee Atwater to Karl Rove belong to the party of articulated vision.
While Democrats strove to separate themselves from the far left and appeal to business friendly interests, Republicans were marketing the compassionate conservative, defending poor unborn babies, helping economic windfalls trickle down, and taking stands against the owners of Welfare Cadillacs. After an eight year Clinton White House, they pulled out all the stops to take back the executive office and promptly gave the wealthy a tax break and plunged the country into two wars.
Democrats found their spine long enough to win back both houses and the Presidency, but froze up and watched their political capital vanish in a series of bogged down debates concerning the economy and healthcare. Suddenly the Republican Party embraced the far right, just as they had embraced Christian fundamentalists in the 80’s and became the party of protest just in time for the midterm elections.
The liberal ideal was once that of higher wages and better treatment for workers. It was the party that advocated education for the middle class and equal rights for all citizens under the law. Somewhere along the way however, the Left quit giving the electorate a vision and instead began to operate within the GOP version of the American dream.
Many Democratic candidates began running right in order to appeal to big money interests and shed the half-crazed hippie or out of touch idealistic professor stereotype. Their opponents rightly deemed them the inconsistent knock off brand competing against the real deal conservatives. In 2008, Obama’s victory was a victory for the liberal vision. But that vision was abandoned nearly as soon as the president took office and Democrats find themselves once again the party on the outs.
In 2008 Democrats thought they had achieved change. What we got was a brief reprieve followed by more of the same. The pattern will continue until Democrats take control of the story and become Democrats again.
The Republicans are better organized, and despite their small government, fewer taxes rhetoric which favors the rich, have become the party of the people. Withstanding the usual last minute liberal appeals, droves of angry whites and upper middle class minorities turned out at the polls to support the GOP. So what does this mean for Democrats, whose ironic “Change” and “Hope” bumper stickers have faded and who now wish only to be oppressed in a sane, civilized manner (if John Stewart is to be believed)?
Since the 1980s, Republicans have controlled the story in American politics. We Democrats are the party of issues like Social Security, Unemployment, Medicare, Healthcare and the like. GOPers from push-polling Lee Atwater to Karl Rove belong to the party of articulated vision.
While Democrats strove to separate themselves from the far left and appeal to business friendly interests, Republicans were marketing the compassionate conservative, defending poor unborn babies, helping economic windfalls trickle down, and taking stands against the owners of Welfare Cadillacs. After an eight year Clinton White House, they pulled out all the stops to take back the executive office and promptly gave the wealthy a tax break and plunged the country into two wars.
Democrats found their spine long enough to win back both houses and the Presidency, but froze up and watched their political capital vanish in a series of bogged down debates concerning the economy and healthcare. Suddenly the Republican Party embraced the far right, just as they had embraced Christian fundamentalists in the 80’s and became the party of protest just in time for the midterm elections.
The liberal ideal was once that of higher wages and better treatment for workers. It was the party that advocated education for the middle class and equal rights for all citizens under the law. Somewhere along the way however, the Left quit giving the electorate a vision and instead began to operate within the GOP version of the American dream.
Many Democratic candidates began running right in order to appeal to big money interests and shed the half-crazed hippie or out of touch idealistic professor stereotype. Their opponents rightly deemed them the inconsistent knock off brand competing against the real deal conservatives. In 2008, Obama’s victory was a victory for the liberal vision. But that vision was abandoned nearly as soon as the president took office and Democrats find themselves once again the party on the outs.
In 2008 Democrats thought they had achieved change. What we got was a brief reprieve followed by more of the same. The pattern will continue until Democrats take control of the story and become Democrats again.
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