The Gloomy Night Before Us Flies

We in Europe are at a loss to understand what is going in the USA. We can only think that the American people are being fed pure propaganda, as was the case in Hitler's Germany prior to the 2nd World War, and that because of this their ability to make reasoned and educated judgments has suffered a serious setback. Sadly, this is the only explanation that many of us can find. I, for one, find it almost beyond belief that Bush was re-elected. I would have thought that one term would have been more than enough. To me he is a madman in a Peter Sellers movie…..

Poet In Residence

[The above appeared as a comment to the previous article on this blog, “Feeding the Wolves, 2008”]

Dear Poet in Residence,

First, I want to say what a gas it is that we have already met. Both of us write haiku for the “Autumn Haiku” (which followed the “Summer Haiku”) site. I assume that’s where you found this site. So here we are, two poets mixed up in the center of things, trying to make sense out of insanity .Maybe politics really is too important to leave the politicians.

No Peter Sellers movie ever captured the loonyness of this moment. We have, I think, reached the point in this country where a satirist might merely be a cold reporter of the news. That’s why John Stewart’s show is so popular. He’s not making jokes. He’s just putting out the facts, usually without any opinion.

It’s hard to keep a sane head in this madness. And by madness I mean a presidential candidate making outright lies again and again. And these are lies that he knows are lies. The Republican candidate has lied about everything: his own record on regulation, his position on the economy. I don’t ever remember a presidential campaign where one of the candidates created such a litany of lies. And then, with the Vice Presidential candidate, the lying escalates. The Governor of Alaska is lying about her record as a “reformer”, “maverick” whatever.

Now, these two Republican candidates have expanded their level of lies to attack Barak Obama. It is almost at the point where I hesitate even to give examples. Like Obama never advocated sex education for five year olds. Jesus! Peter Sellers could not have created a tragic-comedy as powerfully unreal as this reality. Not even Bertholt Brecht could do that. And we are living in it.

After saying all this, I can’t imagine living in a more exciting time. No, I don’t think that Chinese wish, “may you live in interesting times,” is a curse. I think it is a blessing. I feel blessed to live in such times as these. And in such a place as this. Who needs boredom?

I used to think that it was overboard when people made analogies between us in the U.S. and the Germans in Nazi Germany. Of late, I have played with that analogy myself.

There are some similarities. I don’t mean the similarities of storm troopers knocking at the door and arresting Jews, Gypsies, Communists, Socialists, Liberals. We are very far from that even with the present administration’s disregard for constitutional process. There are real similarities between what is going on in this country and what went on in Nazi Germany. But it is not the concentration camps nor the secret police.

This country has invaded another country that posed it no threat. It has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of people for a war whose very reasons for existence evaporated years ago. Nazi Germany invaded other countries on the pretext that its self interest was threatened. There’s a similarity.

Young German boys bought the bullshit and died thinking they were protecting the homeland. How many American young men and young women have died thinking they were protecting our homeland? Homeland Security?

Another similarity is the big lie. The Nazi’s were really good at that. They would consciously create total lies and it seemed like a lot of folks believed them. Again, how many times does the Republican presidential candidate have to repeat the explicit and conscious lie that Barak Obama wants to teach sex education to five year olds? And the repetition gets stated over and over on the satellite propaganda machines of the media like Fox News. And what clever Republican Party Ph.D. in Psychological Manipulation thought of that wonderful way to link a child sexually to a Black Man?

The big lie is now the stock in trade of the Republican political machine and its candidates. Every time you think they can’t get any lower---they do.

Another similarity between the Nazi’s and our government is that it is totally of, by, and for giant corporations. The biggest economic beneficiaries of the Hitler years were the loyal corporations. And today? And here.

One other similarity between Nazi Germany and my country today is the manipulation of fear. There is no question that fear was the giant motivator in the Nazi invasions of other countries. Fear that the Germans would be brought to their knees again like they were after World War I. Fear that other countries feared them and would attack them. Fear. How many times did speakers use the word “terror” or “terrorist” at the Republican presidential nominating convention of 2004? This whole administration is based on fear—of terrorists—of losing your way of life—of gays—of [pick your own].

But there the similarities end. Karl Marx once said, “history repeats itself. The first time as tragedy and the second time as farce.” So you look at the Gotterdammerung of Nazi Germany—the fires that consumed a once proud people and raged into a Holocaust. An extermination of millions of people orchestrated by an intensely charismatic Fuehrer and his cohorts who consciously mobilized the power of the dark force in the psychic traditions of a people. Here truly was a Knight of Evil. This was tragedy beyond tragedy.

John McCain as the Fuehrer? That’s farce. What a sad and querulous old man who probably knows next to nothing about what moves him. This is farce. Or how about George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler? Dick Cheney would, I guess, love to be able to be a Fuehrer. But would you buy a used car from a face like that?

I love this country so very much. My study of American history was a labor of love from undergraduate school through a doctorate. Goose stepping is about as non American as you can get.

There is a strong element of truth about the pioneer spirit. Not the Fourth of July day speech pioneer spirit. Fact is that all of our ancestors are immigrants. These were two groups of folks. There were those of us whose ancestors pulled up their roots and chose to enter a new world—an unknown world. There were those who were pulled up by the roots and brought in chains to this new world. All of us and our families have been strangers in a strange land and I do believe we carry that spirit with us.

I do believe that the American people have a short bullshit span. In some ways Americans are as hard to corral as cats.

We Americans have been through periods of temporary insanity before. Take the McCarthy period. Please. I mean that guy really was leading the country with lie after lie after lie…….and fear.

I was a teenager during the McCarthy period and my parents were leftists. They were radicals. They were Reds. So I started off with a head start identifying the insanity. These were people I loved and they loved me. My stepfather, the guiding political light of the family, was a stubborn, bullheaded, dedicated, totally honest and caring human being. I guess he had to be single minded. The pressure during this period on anybody slightly left of center was great. And he lost job after job---as a professor of music, no less—after the F.B.I. whispered in the college president’s ear. Subversion of music was a serious thing back in the 1950’s. So I had a good view of the 1950’s madness that was quite different than that which people saw on the television program, “Happy Days”.

I was the enemy. I was the person that was going to subvert the government and destroy democracy. I was something to be feared. I, as the popular anti Communist t.v.show titled, “led three lives” or certainly two.

And yet I had friends. I connected with the folks in my class. We respected each other as human beings. We had proms. We all knew each other since the class only had fifty four people. There was sanity in the midst of the insanity.

By the time I graduated college, the 1960’s were dawning. It was like the heart of the country had opened up again. Where people were terrified to open their mouths in the 1950’s, ten years later, people were growing in the streets to express their opposition to American intervention in Vietnam.

There was a time in 1960, when I could actually feel a new and fresh wind blowing over the land. It was not, by the way, created by John F. Kennedy et familia, but was definitely used by them. In the midst of a horrendous war, it was the dawning of a new time. Aquarius or whatever.

I feel that dawning now. Thomas Jefferson was running against John Adams in 1800. Adams, despite his other attributes, was overtaken by fear of “the others”—in this case the French and their sympathizers at home. (Remember how Congress changed the name of French fries to freedom fries in 2003 when the French wouldn’t support the invasion of Iraq?) So the Adams administration, out of fear of others, passed a series of acts. These were the Alien and Sedition Acts, which provided, among other things that newspaper editors could be thrown in jail for criticizing the president. This was another period of insanity. Adams lost the election.

There was a campaign song in the presidential campaign of Thomas Jefferson. I have sung the first verse so many times with glee over the past several years. It begins,

“The gloomy night before us flies

The reign of darkness now is over

Its gags inquisitors and spies

Its herd of harpies is no more.

Rejoice Columbia’s sons, rejoice

To tyrants never bend the knee

But join with hand and heart and voice

For Jefferson and Liberty.”

Now the gloomy night is fleeing. The spark that has ignited in this country cannot be quenched. It cannot be quenched even if Obama was not elected. Here another song wills to mind. Peter Gabriel’s “Biko” about the murder of a Black South African leader by the government:

You can blow out a candle

But you can’t blow out a fire

Once the flames begin to catch

The wind will blow it higher.

The candidacy of Barak Obama has come to represent something infinitely larger than the man himself. It has come represent a swelling group of Americans that are tired of division. It has come to represent people who are feeling the possibility of empowerment. And I definitely include myself in that swelling group. It is not a group of others. It is a group of us. It is a group of people that recognize that the overwhelming majority of Americans are potential friends.

I am writing this before the second debate between the Republican presidential candidate and Barak Obama. Chances are that the Republican candidate will continue to lie blatantly. (I must say that there are few times in my life when I recall anybody, other than a kid worried about being punished, consciously lying openly to my face). The latest lie is that Obama pals around with terrorists because he sat on a community group board with Bill Ayers, a former Weatherman who committed his violent acts when Obama was eight.

Yes, there are people who believe the lies. But, like Lincoln said, “you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time. But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” And less and less people are being fooled.

I am writing this at a time when the middle is disappearing. There really are choices this time around. And sure Obama has corporate supporters, but even many of them have not benefited by the mayhem of these past eight years. We are part of those legions of supporters that are not corporate but just folks. Not the “just folks” of the Republicans that excludes other folks who are not like them. I am talking about the “just folks” that all of us are. There are a lot of us.

I am writing this a time when there is something much larger than Barak Obama happening. And I think he has the wisdom, experience and humility to recognize that. That is the kind of leader we need now.

I am writing this at a time when millions of Americans are looking for ways to change their lives. They recognize that our government is founded to “Promote the general Welfare.” Community—people taking care of each other—is part of our American heritage as well.

On the frontier, in the slave cabins, in the trade unions, in the building of towns, community has been part of our history and our psyche. The Republican ideology has redefined community as corporate socialism and individualism as greed. What a perversion.

However, community always seems to surface. It’s one of those things that define us as human beings. It is one of those things that define us as Americans. How appropriate that a community organizer is running for president.

I am writing at a time when I feel more kinship with my fellow Americans than I have in a long time. I know that there will be people who will believe the lies. There always are. There always will be. And hucksters from Karl Rove to P.T.Barnum have used that one. Still, even those who are duped can be unduped if we are willing to listen as well as talk.

I am writing this at a time when there is a new burst of creativity in our land. It is the flip side of the dead old fears. I am writing this at a time where people are listening with their hearts as well as their minds. We come from the gloomy night of fear and suspicion into light.

It is a time of poets, singers and artists, of writers and dancers as much as it is a time of politics as we have narrowly defined it. It is a time of celebration.

Sun spreads on the fields

Slowly emerging from the clouds,

Like a second dawn.