Talkin' 'bout a (R)Evolution!
Seems like anything else is
"just another campaign"!
By
Ed Democracy
May
2015
That's the thing about campaigns -
at some point the power of BS wears off, people wake up & sober
up & either you had what it took to win or you didn't.
Bernie, of course, will have all
the standard minimal machinations required of getting on the ballot &
winning. Minimal - as in clearing the bar in a pole vault. This is not a race for President of the Recreation Society at the old folks home. This is Olympic "pol" vaulting! This is a BIG, BIG, BIG JOB all by itself! Reaching & mobilizing millions of unorganized registered Democrats to actually & effectively participate in party caucuses & primaries (where state convention delegates get elected), THEN, to actually & effectively participate in state conventions (where national delegates are elected), THEN, to actually & effectively participate in the national convention (where party nominees are elected), THIS, is a long, long, long slog!
BUT, doesn’t there need to be more than that? By comparison, "just" getting nominated & elected is the "easy" part! Just governing under "normal" circumstances is a Herculian challenge. To talk about running a (R)Evolution WHILE governing, in this day & age, at the same time is the business of fools (court jesters), gods, and real-deal TRUE small-d democratic revolutionary leaders the likes of which has yet to appear and prove themselves on the face of the Earth. The closest we have seen is the American Revolution. Even then, it was a different world. A miraculous constellation of players & circumstances aligned to effect a highly unlikely result. Today, we have a much smaller, faster, and extremely volatile world.
BUT, doesn’t there need to be more than that? By comparison, "just" getting nominated & elected is the "easy" part! Just governing under "normal" circumstances is a Herculian challenge. To talk about running a (R)Evolution WHILE governing, in this day & age, at the same time is the business of fools (court jesters), gods, and real-deal TRUE small-d democratic revolutionary leaders the likes of which has yet to appear and prove themselves on the face of the Earth. The closest we have seen is the American Revolution. Even then, it was a different world. A miraculous constellation of players & circumstances aligned to effect a highly unlikely result. Today, we have a much smaller, faster, and extremely volatile world.
We, the people, cannot afford to play around! We, the people, need a real-deal small-d democratic revolution of humanity, by humanity, and for humanity! We, the people, need deep systemic change! Not incremental (excremental BS) "change", not reform, but, whole new systems of a scale & scope which can only be called: (R)Evolution!
Is there any real chance of success
if this is "just another campaign" for the Democratic Party
nomination which fancies itself a "revolution".
Simply in terms of "the
expectations game": "do not underestimate me" + "the
revolution is coming" = CRANK expectations HIGH.
There had better be more of a plan
than this:
...get the pissed off masses HIGH
on CRANK and JOLT them to life long enough to take the White House
and then, if we miraculously make it that far, we will figure the
rest out later from the Oval Office.
To mount a successful true
democratic revolution we will have to mobilize the grassroots
insurgent democratic wing of the Democratic Party to seize the party
for the people.
While
we are getting Bernie nominated & elected, we must also
begin a complete overhaul of the party to fully & thoroughly
democratize it by developing it into a 50-state, 200,000 precinct
infrastructure of democracy & community empowerment - everyday
democracy for everyday people.
YES! BIG JOB!
The medium is the message. IF the
message is "REVOLUTION of the people, by the people, and for the
people" AND, YET, the medium is the same old story of MEDIA,
MONEY, & MUNDANE campaign, THEN, you have DISSONANCE ... the
OPPOSITE of RESONANCE!
Bernie ENERGIZES because his words
have the ring of truth! His words have RESONANCE with our EXPERIENCE
of what is wrong and what we need to do to right it!
Yet, to MOBILIZE & ORGANIZE
will require - more than words - ACTIONS which have RESONANCE with
the MESSAGE and the ultimate achievement & sustainability of the
objective: VICTORY in a DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION of the people, by the
people, and for the people!
“The most important office in
a democracy is the office of citizen.”
"It becomes a contest of
power: those who have money and those who have people. We have
nothing but people."
- SAUL
ALINSKY
CHECK THESE:
- AmericanCommons.com - common people, common sense, common decency - an American Evolution of a civil civic commons!
To win the general election, will
require a BIG, BIG, BIG TENT!
Every single human being who
believes in HUMANITY - republicans, independents, greens, black
panthers, gray panthers, millennials (they have that really fast
space ship, right? The Millennial Falcon...), comedians,
libertarians, librarians, rotarians, Jesse Venturians, plumbers (they
have "Joe the Plumber" & kitchen sinks), and, last,
but, not least, democrats - ALL must unite to defeat the
mean-machine!
Burke is considered the
philosophical founder of conservatism, AND, yet, he was a relative &
supporter of Nano
Nagle
- a pioneer of education for poor Catholic children in Ireland in
defiance of the English Penal Laws which as he described those laws:
"Their declared object was to reduce the Catholics in Ireland to
a miserable populace, without property, without estimation, without
education." Because of their steadfast dedication to education,
their family was not allowed by the English to keep their vast land
holdings.
While we would not ask middle-class
conservatives to risk losing their land in order to help the poor,
the mean-machine is trying to take it anyway! So, they should join
us in the BIG, BIG, BIG TENT!
Seems like anything else is "just
another campaign"! Talkin' 'bout a (R)Evolution!
