sanctuary: January 2015

The United States of America is awesome, we are awesome.

(Andrea Tantaros, Fox News TV co-host, responding to U.S. Senate report on torture)

The loneliest moment in someone's life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Accepting

It's the unsettling truth that may be the hardest part right now for a large portion of white America; after all, the U.S. has the oldest functioning Constitution in the world, and that might be the problem on any number of levels.

It was the brilliant James Madison, author of the United States Bill of Rights and one of the authors of The Federalist Papers who, in 1787, said, “They ought to be constituted [the nation] as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” Ah, always the dangerous mob, the rabble, a consistent yet unspoken “through-line” of the United States.

Is an 18^th century document going to serve our needs in the 21^st century? Most likely not. Our social and political myths—created most certainly by white America and in particular the “minority of the opulent”--have largely remained intact for more than 200 years. The last occupying foreign army in the United States was the British during the war of 1812.

The many reasons given for not voting in the recent mid-term election represent at the very least intellectual laziness, be they offered by the “millennials,” those that just find the Republican party repugnant and of course the “disenchanted” liberals. But we've reached the point where we can probably say “so what” with some qualifications. The rot has advanced too far.

The Democratic party is a feckless relic, a hollow shell; yet, it possibly could morph into some sort of sane conservative movement, at some point in the future. The handful of genuine Democratic political progressives in the party, and they are only a handful, ought to be spending their time building a new progressive movement elsewhere.

The Republican party, the party of Lincoln, at least outside the benighted Confederacy, is really about the intentional development of an authentic, nativist, totalitarian movement, what the Europeans were familiar with in the 20^th century and that may be once again rearing its head in Europe in the 21^st century.

Black America, more than anyone else, clearly has a compelling reason to develop an organized and disciplined movement, one capable of acquiring greater political power at the national and most definitely at the local level.

The Occupy movement demonstrated that people could come together for political change with a serious moral purpose, but Occupy ultimately floundered and became a minor irritant to the kleptocracy and the political hacks that do its bidding.

We seem to have difficulty accepting the fact at the present time, but radical change is never a brief “get together” without any clear, definable objectives. To succeed, a movement has to ultimately bring in large, diverse groups of people of all ages, who aren't going away under any circumstances.

Of course it's about power, gathering it in and confronting those who refuse to give it up. Above all, it has to be unremitting and offer an understandable alternative to the status quo. This is not something done overnight nor is it a fervent wish for some messianic vision to make it happen.

An excellent time to begin is in January 2015. There will be more than enough motivation to go around. Once again from The Great Gatsby, a novel about illusion: “Americans while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.” Well, we'll find out.

For an interesting documentary on the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the use of police repression and the connections between what happened more than a 100 years ago and today, watch the video below.

The Wobblies: An Actual History of American Labor

IWW

Some Additional Reading and Considering Other Possibilities:

Slavery and Capitalism

The Power of Bad Ideas

America's Ownership Society

The Road to Turkdom

When History Knocks

Let's all screw the 1 percent: Thesimple move Obama could make to strengthen the rest of us

Why Poor People Stay Poor

Why so many wealthy Americans thinkthey're middle class

Big money keeping minoritypoliticians out of office, report says