40 Years in the Wilderness

Watching the "I Have a Dream" speech aired in its entirely yesterday on the Imus Show, the resonance of hope and possibilities in the crucible of this year’s political campaign, brought back painful reminders.

Forty years ago, the year Dr. King was assassinated, the year an outsider took on a sitting president of his own party only to be supplanted by an entitlement candidate who was himself assassinated—it’s tempting to say, Nah, we’ve gotten beyond those times.

Sadly, I don’t think so. Last night’s South Carolina debate did nothing to change my mind. Two entitlement candidates—the first woman, the first African-American—while the candidate with the ideas, the candidate with the agenda of economic justice gets short shrift from the media, prodding to quit by the shills with their pundit masks on.

I’ve been thinking that we’re seeing 1968 play out all over again. Hillary = Humphrey. And a bit of a role twist, since Edwards was in there first, but I see him more in the Robert F. Kennedy role, the focused, scrappy fighter. Obama, the elegant academician Gene McCarthy. And we know how that turned out. Nixon, anyone?

[Disclaimer, I worked on the McCarthy campaign as a college kid, I was in LA primary night, I was in Chicago for the convention, and a bunch of primary state pit stops along the way.]

We’re seeing way too much reflection of the past this year. The dividing-up of the Democratic Party by tactics that may give quick wins along the way and cost the national election. There’s still time to correct the course. The disenfranchised want inclusiveness, not niching…not who’s in, who’s out. That can happen in groups as small as a handful or as big as a political party or nation. And this time, we need to get it right.

The cynical Republican race-baiting and stirring of old divisions and distrusts is already in play. Likely-looking nominee John McCain spends MLK Day in Alabama in a dandy moment of “who me? nah, I’m a good ol’ boy” wink-wink-nod-nod. The Clinton campaign is pushing The Restoration, the Golden Years of Bubba, fudging the line of just who would be the president. Seems more like The Atonement to me.

The president who promised to be a uniter not a divider has managed to unite all the Republicans…they don’t want to mention his name at all. Meanwhile, the Fed cuts interest rates ¾ point this morning…how’s that workin’ out for your retirement, Grandma? And Life after People on the History Channel seems the more likely scenario for the aftermath of BushCo’s saber-rattling than his fairytale of a blissfully Peter Pan-ish centerpiece of democracy.

As the tectonic plates of the Democratic Party shift and quake, those of strong constitution need to keep their resolve intact. Change is never easy, and this year is one that promises change…or being sucked back down into the familiarity of the status quo. Fear of the unknown—will it trump the hope, the desire, the demand for change? That’s up to every individual. The choices are out there…even if you have to wade through the fog of the media’s best efforts to make this a boxing match, a horserace, a triviality of personalities instead of a reasoned examination of critical issues.

An epic battle, Edwards calls it. Not a one of us should cut and run.

Because once the primaries and convention are over, we will learn if this is No Country for Old Men.

There’s an epic battle getting to Election Day, never mind the challenges that await the new president.

One thing I expect: There Will Be Blood.

Prairie Postcard: Quarterbacks or cheerleaders?

Well, the economy's finally caught the attention even of the petulant fur-robe wearer-in-chief. Listening to him tell us about his due consideration of the sit-che-ation this morning surrounded by his handlers, all I can think is: can it be 2009 soon enough! [You want boxing metaphors, Tweety? I give you the punchdrunk prez.]

For the last seven years we've had a bunch of sidelines standing cheerleaders pushing the laissez-unfair style of capitalism that has put this country into recession. That would be parasite and pirates.

It matters who we elect next fall. It matters who survives the primary season and emerges the Democratic nominee. I for one have had enough of the cheerleader in chief...frankly, you'd have to consume a keg o'beer singlehandedly to believe a word that spills from this guy's sullen lips.

I'm ready for the progressive change. I'm ready for a quarterback...capable of winning...and leading. I'm ready for Edwards. How 'bout you?

Today's the day...put your progressive change in the right place. Small change, large change...we must be part of the change.

Bridge over Troubled Waters

We’re looking for a bridge these days—oh, not a bridge to the 21^st Century. That’s been pretty abysmal for most folks so far. And not a tongue kiss or handhold to the family Saud…[you’ll have no trouble finding those pictures on the web, not dragging them into the garden this day.]

Every time we go to the gas pump, we’re at the mercy of that “bridge” between 9/11 terrorists and the black gold that funds them.

We’re looking for another bridge…a bridge buffeted by the fogs of fate, yet still able to stand strong, sure. And we surely need him. Because we have been buffeted, too, these past seven years, caught between Iraq and a hard place that is the American economy.

Our bridges are in sorry shape…real bridges collapsing in rivers, others so ruinous they are shut down.

Campaigns that will need to bridge their differences once the primary season is past are now being sorely tested as well.

This week we have an opportunity for some bridge building… Will we build it strong? It’s up to each one of us. We are the bridge-builders … and we will be the bridge users. So, it’s up to us…Will we use the strong steel of our forefathers to build? Or lay back and say let someone else do it?

The buzz is already building out there on the web, launched by the folks at DailyKos, but a swarm of others of us join in the call cutting through the fog. Won’t you join in? Support the Edwards campaign on Friday, January 18. And today as well can’t hurt….

Someone else is dying for us in Iraq. Or coming back shattered in mind or body. For the foolishness of a President whose Napoleonic ego drives him to fearmonger and false promises.

Someone else is watching their neighborhoods boarded up and ruined…by the waters driven by the winds of selfishness and greed. In New Orleans. In Michigan.. In cities where “subprime” destroys lives so rich men may dance. Dance, Karl. Dance, David. Dance, dance, dance.

Someone else is dying on the sidewalk in front of the Bishop’s house in Fargo Sunday night while the city races to finish up a new shelter…homeless, needy, in despair? Chronic addiction, transient lifestyle, they say. It’s someone else.

Until it’s not.

Time, past time, to take a stand. Build a bridge on solid ground to span the troubled waters and unite again this nation divided. It’s an epic battle…and we are the nuts and bolts that will build the bridge…if we have the will.

UPDATE: You'll find commentary updated on the 1/18 campaign for Edwards at DailyKos ... or just stop by the Edwards site direct and help build this bridge. Now would be good.

Prairie Dispatch: We Don’ Need No Steenkin’ Polls

Last night’s primary produced one sure winner…and one big loser. The winner—we, the people. Like Iowa, the voters of New Hampshire turned out in force and said, “enough’s enough.” We’re sick of top down tell us how to think and vote. We’re takin’ back our democracy, one state, one primary, one vote at a time.

The landscape looks a lot more colorful this morning, not just A vs. B, but the nuances and interactions of candidates bringing to the table their street cred and their issues. And by street cred, we’re not talkin’ Wall Street and inside the Beltway, we’re talkin’ Main Street, and the highways and byways of Real America.

Which brings us to the big loser last night. The cocktail wienies lost big time. The pundits and prognosticators and poll-takers and poll-interpreters and poll-spinners lost.

And hurray for that!

They’re still trying to dictate top down. Telling Edwards it’s time to drop out [Matthews]. Callin’ the Democratic side in disarray [Buchanan]. Well, guess what guys. We ain’t buyin’ what you’re sellin’ anymore.

John Edwards said we are going to be in an epic battle to wrest back this country from the corporatists. We haven’t settled on the one leader for that epic battle, but obviously the battle is joined.

We don’t need to rattle pitchforks. We vote.

Culling the Heard

Decisions are being made today, undecideds are finally deciding on someone. The first vote tallies are in from Dixville Notch, and Obama scores as many votes single-handedly as all the Republicans combined.

As the day unfolds, exit polls, pundits — the “experts” — will tell us what it all means. Or not.

We’re seeing a paradigm shift these days. There are all kinds of metaphors for what’s happening.

My personal favorite just because of the divine justice of it, post-Katrina, is that the Republican party is quaking and shuddering and slumping away like a levee hit by the rising Democratic tide. Their feats of clay aren’t made for walkin’ any more…

So maybe Tsunami Tuesday coming up on February 5 takes on a whole ’nother meaning.

There are some other decisions being made in the culture as well.

Last night we tuned in the Daily Show and Colbert Report. Not before trying to find out whether they were right with the WGA. And you know, there’s been about as much of a clampdown on that conversation as the mainstream media’s clampdown on coverage of presidential candidate John Edwards. Whazzup with that?

We ran across one little dustup over at Crooks and Liars down in a Huckabee thread…check it out for yourself, starting at comment 56. Some hot feelings. Where’s there’s fire, there’s smoke?

So today, New Hampshire gets its moment in the spotlight and then the swarm moves on to Nevada and South Carolina. Around here, we’ve already decided. For Edwards Before Iowa.

And Comedy Central’s stars and soon Bill Maher and already Letterman and Leno and Ferguson and Kimmel and…well, the vote’s not totally in. But in our household, by bedtime last night, regarding the Stewart/Colbert return, we’d decided we’re “ambivalent.”

A Republic, If You Can Keep It

In our little corner of the tall timber, just at the east edge of Prairie Country, the sun rises across the lake, behind a ridge of red pines. The cabin faces that sunrise, bathes in its glow to launch the day.

We face a new sunrise dawning now with the start of 2008. And there is much work to be done. But first, we indulge in a bit of reflection, weighing the nature of the day, the strength and energy it will demand. There are bird feeders to be filled. And sidewalks to shovel or, in its season, lawns to be mowed.

The seeking fingers of daylight will be reaching further into the shadows this year. And it will be hard. Others are arising, shaking off somnolence, and we ask them, where have you been these past seven years? Or, having seen these past seven years, why now are you choosing another way of division?

But those others will have to hold account with themselves.

For each of us, the prime directive is VOTE. Shame us not with purple-fingered other countries. We must vote.

Sorrow us not again with lines ten hours long in rain drenched states trying to deny our brothers and sisters the basic right of every American. We must vote.

Through winter storms and frigid weather, through flooded Southern cities, through the largest of our cities under siege, lessons have been shown. We must vote.

The history is told of the founding of this nation and a woman’s question to Ben Franklin—republic, sir, or monarchy? “Republic, if you can keep it.”

Keeping our Republic calls us to a noble purpose of citizenry. Vote we must. But vote smart—not for trivialities or beer buddies, but for leaders who will nurture our better selves rather than pandering to the darkness inside. We must choose wisely those we charge with representing us in Congress and in the White House and statehouses. And we must do the hard work of holding them to account when times or actions demand.

Citizenship is not for the faint of heart nor the shirker. As citizenship—or the lack thereof—is waved like a matador’s cape to inflame, it would behoove those who have it to take better care of it.

It starts with your vote. Don’t say your vote doesn’t count, I’m a lonely-only blue in a red state…Leaders are built on the smallest foundations of democracy and grow from there. Vote smart in 2008—not divisiveness or wedge issues, but the issues that bind us together as a nation and deserve restoring and empowering.

Vote…for your dog catcher. For your schoolboard. For your township. For your city. For your state. For your country. Vote…in your primaries, and your caucuses, and the general election next fall. Because if you don’t, someone else will. And look at the mess that’s gotten us in.

The sun is rising on a new year. America Rising, promises John Edwards. The first test is just hours away. Vote, Iowa. Vote, New Hampshire. Vote, America.

It’s a long road ahead. There is work to be done. And miles to go before we sleep.

When Nobody's Lookin'

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about honor and dignity. A vow made to us the way a groom promises to his bride on their wedding day. And when the groom turns abusive and instead of honoring his bride and treating her with dignity, he leaves bruises and scars.

Maybe those bruises don’t show on the outside, but they’re there in the spirit and fiber…of a person, of a family, of a nation.

Honor, my dear ol’ dad taught me in childhood, is what you do, how you act, when nobody’s lookin’. These days, it seems honor is in such short supply in some quarters that the nobody’s lookin’ part doesn’t even slow them down.

Senator McConnell’s recent “Nobody is happy about losing lives but remember these are not draftees, these are full-time professional soldiers.” was not an honorable comment. Or attitude.

Down the road a ways here in Fargo is the YWCA’s shelter for women and children. We pass them daily on our commute—all seven minutes of it—from home to Mr. Sunshine’s workplace. The shelter’s bursting at the seams these days, with more women, more children needing shelter day by day. Where’s the honor in that?

Veterans of World War II have been flying from Prairie Country to Washington DC in Honor Flights of late. Spearheaded by local radio talker Tracy Briggs, the trips take cajoling for some of the old vets. Dad never talked much about his Marine years in the Pacific in WW II. But I like to think he would have appreciated the honor his surviving comrades are being shown these days.

WW II vets who did the same intelligence work as is being done today have spoken out against using torture like waterboarding’s controlled drowning as a method to gain information. They honorably serve us all still by speaking out.

Honor means admitting your mistakes, accepting your imperfections while always striving to do better. Senator Edwards says his Iraq vote was wrong. He’s shown both dignity and passion in his campaign to make right that choice.

I have hope right now that the honor I see in talker Don Imus will overcome his mistakes and imperfections. His campaign support for the Boriken neighborhood health care center now exemplifies that honor.

Honor requires thinking. But it also requires an inner spirit of honesty and selflessness that is not valued enough these days. “Greed is good” rules, instead of One America. Changing that will take work. There is much tilling of the soil to be done…not just in Prairie Country, but in Washington and all of America.

We used to value work a lot more than we do now. These days, it’s all about the bravado and the big lie. Talking about the Greatest Generation without living up to it. Like showy annual flowers that wilt at the first drought and die away at the first deep frost.

It’s the deep roots that endure…the well-set roots of community and neighborhood over selfish individuals sucking up all the moisture.

Yesterday, when I drove to my disabled husband’s workplace, a Rochester Armoured Express van was blocking the graded sidewalk. When I waved our disability parking card at him, he ignored me. When my husband wheeled out of the building, and waved the driver forward, he inched ahead.

When I got out of the car and asked the driver to please move, he looked at me and said, “there’s handicapped parking…I’m not blocking that.”

“No, but you’re blocking the sidewalk so my husband can’t get around your van to get to the handicapped parking space.”

The driver stared straight ahead until the courier hopped in next to him, then the van sped away. Honor? None there.

But a man in a wheelchair, disabled and enduring serious diseases, waiting patiently because a driver saw the handicapped parking but didn’t see, didn’t want to see, that he blocked the way…that man in the wheelchair…he has dignity.

There are lots of people in wheelchairs, lots of soldiers with injuries, lots of good Americans treated with dishonor. They deserve better. They deserve our thoughts and our supportive actions. They deserve our honor. It’s not enough to talk about it. It’s time to roll up our shirtsleeves and get back to work.

And that will lead us all back to our own honor and dignity. And the whole country will be the better for it.

Welcome to Prairie Country

No passports required, but you’re welcome to leave a calling card in comments.

Lots of changes are going on these days in the blogworld. The beauteous ladies of Firedoglake are takin’ it up a notch. Skyscrapers and wide boulevards and streetlights for the sidewalks. They’ve already inspired some of the regular denizens to venture forth themselves. Egregious midwifed this scribe from the print world to the voice of blogging. Snarkassandra dove right into her own blog with the assuredness of a longtime pro. TRex has a brand new treehouse. FDL’s built bridges to Blue America and Emptywheel’s regular digs.

Out there beyond the blogworld, the seasons are changing as well. Imus is back on the radio-teevee-satellite world. [DirectTV 379, just sayin’]. Cafferty’s back in CNN’s Situation Room [what? He doesn’t have his own time slot yet?]…from vacation, or the booktour, or the best of both.

Politics are heating up. After complaining about John Edwards holding Hillary’s feet to the fire, Hillary’s now saying “it’s beginning to look a lot like”….not Christmas….

We’re missin’ Jon and Stephen and the rest of the late night guys…and hoping for strong positive results for our colleagues fighting the good fight for all writers via the WGA strike.

Think of Prairie Country as an oasis, a garden space, a rest stop amid all the hurly burly of the toobz. We’ll move at a slower pace here. Like the splashing water fountain you hear behind the walls, and maybe only have captured a small slice of view through a creaky old wooden gate. But this portal’s ready for you to slip through anytime.

The season changes are vivid here in Prairie Country. We’ve learned life can change in an instant in a delivery room [joy of all joys] or a doctor’s office. We’ve learned about survival. We’ve learned about traveling across the globe and sampling the best of Marrakesh and Rome and Granada and Mazatlan and…now we’re learning the best of life’s inner journeys.

Here in this oasis/cloister/way station we’ll take a more languid look at the world, but no less thoughtful than we are challenged by those who have already blazed trails before us.

Sit a spell. We plan to offer food for thought Tuesdays and Saturdays and when the mood strikes. The paths in this garden meander a bit amid the evergreens and understory greenery, perennials will thrive here, and occasional more planned annuals of theme and conversation. There may be hidden treasures amid comments to come, ideas that send our garden growing in new directions. I won’t promise it’ll always be sunny. Like life, gardens have their thorns and thunderstorms, too.

How can there be a cloistered garden amid the vast expanses of the Prairie? Well, I think it’s the shelters, the sanctuaries that feed our body and spirit to sustain us as we venture out under broad skies and down unfamiliar byways.

So seek out the hammock under the stand of red pines. Or down that path there’s a reflecting pool, long and broody shaded as evening in the Alhambra. But water lilies have found their way there and send up smiling white lotus faces. There are inglenooks and benches, and if you look closely, you’ll find the quiet inner spaces of your own heart, in sanctuary here for a brief time or a long stay. Do come back again and again.

We’ll offer up a little food for thought as you come through the gate and the topics will likely be eclectic as we all are; there are no harsh blacks and whites, good’n’bads to be found here. Rather, the misty drift of colors and spirit, hopefully softened a bit around the edges.

Prairie Country is a state of mind—but it’s also a state of heart. And the sure steady heartbeat is what carries us all along and informs us and colors our lives.

Welcome to Prairie Country—leave your thoughts, take along your dreams and inspirations and motivations to nurture the garden within your own heart. See you back again soon.