40 Years of Politics: A Personal View

So, I turn 40 this week. Holy crap, as I always say better than the alternative, but I can no longer fool myself that I'm young. I've slowed down, get hurt easy, have a mortgage and often catch myself saying, "kids, these days" or "when I was your age". Particularly when I see idle youth. Why aren't they working? A quick synopsis of my political journey, probably somewhat twisted and general. 5 year divisions would probably be better, but in the interest of time. For the record, I know ole Strom is dead, but in the interest of making me feel a little younger, Strom was 65 the year I was born.

1967-1977 BORN IN DC

I was born in the height of the Vietnam War, my mother had protested against the war usually running away when the tear gas started. I was driven to the hospital by my uncle and his friend who had stolen the car beginning a life of crime in utero. My sister was born 3 days after Kent State, both of us in Washington, DC. Meanwhile my father's family was an Army family, my grandfather an officer and two of my uncles in Vietnam. So there was a certain dichotomy from the get-go. One of the first media images I clearly remember is the evacuation of Saigon pictured in the Washington Post as I sat at my grandparent's dining room table. I have uncertain memories of Watergate, but remember Ford pretty well. I voted for Jimmy Carter in the Lyles Crouch straw poll, let it be known that James Earl carried Old Town Alexandria elementary schools pretty well. Pretty much everyone I know worked for the government or military so things were a little conservative at this time, I do remember waiting in gas lines and people complaining about Arabs and the price of gas, some things never change.

1977-1987 THE CRAZY YEARS
Moved to Massachusetts. Couldn't understand what the hell anyone was talking about. Tonic, wicked, retarded, frappe? Most important 4th grade moment with Fireball Frances was asking why pictures of people in slums had shacks with television antennas, her answer, "some people would rather eat a hot dog on a silver platter, than roast beef on a chipped plate." Probably not accurate but still sticks with me 30 years later. These were the crazy pre teen and teen years, had the classic superconservative, homophobic, violence crazed teenage boy times that were flamed by the return of uncool, Ronald Reagan.

Gradually, life in the lower/working class and punk rock music drove me leftward. Ronald Reagan, revered by many middle class/upper classes white men as saving America still stirs hatred in me as the divisive character he actually was. "Won" the Cold War by outspending the Ruskies, meanwhile ketchup is a vegetable, welfare queens are driving Cadillacs, and CETA jobs are gone. Police on My Back. Prop 2 1/2 makes every field trip one to a salt marsh and closes the youth center, takes down basketball hoops. (I still to this day don't understand how that saved money) So we drink and party and act stupid. Life is a blur in the mid to late eighties, what a crappy time of life. I mean at some points it's like me and my friends were engaged in a stupid contest, and I usually did quite well.

1987-1997 The Awakening

Wow, a college education and everything. Reading all sorts of books, politics, history, talking to smart people, talking to professors, arguing with Republicans, it's all good. A time where you could actually argue politics somewhat reasonably. Writing for the paper at CCCC. Then I hear Run DMC, the Beastie Boys, and the awakening to Public Enemy. It's hard to describe the first time I heard Nation of Millions. Too Black, Too Proud. It was like the shackles of Reagan being torn off. Punk was about destruction, about anarchy, not necessarily about explaining anything. PE changed it all, it was perfect timing. No need to not be proud of your heritage, where you came from. Didn't have to just be part of the crowd. Wow.

Then, Clinton is elected, Chez and I walk around DC during inauguration singing, drinking malt liquor and southern comfort like it's no tomorrow, the republican darkness had lifted. Maybe Bill didn't fulfill all his promise, but the hope had returned. Starting working in urban schools, wow, what a zap to the head, the hell of real poverty. Pretty leftist here, starting meeting my first rich kid lefties, which initially didn't make sense to me, isn't it going against your own interests? I become very infatuated with identity politics, Sixties leftist political literature and Latin American politics and history.

1997-present What a Weird Place: Birth of the Angry Middle

I'm an "adult" now. No mortgage yet, but in 1995, I get the first non-medicaid/school nurse health insurance in my life. Wow, go to the doctor for 10 bucks, awesome. What a country. At one point, I go to court to talk to a judge about getting a kid outta jail, he lets the kid go home with me. How did this happen.

I end up at Umass Amherst to get a CAGS, take social justice education classes, interesting but the focus on identity politics and self-analysis is taken to the extreme. Wait, what we're trying to do is educate these kids right? You know, math, English, history, science? Not engage in self study. I work in the dormitories where rich kids get the run of the building in an absolute lack of law, order or responsibility. I start doing diversity training with Springfield police and work with law enforcement on a different level.

Meanwhile the right wing wackos start to take over talk radio and an national obsession with the President's penis begins. It really is the manifestation of mediated reality. I mean you got dooshbags like Limbaugh, Coulter, et al, people who never did anything in their lives worthwhile putting their mark on Idiot nation. It truly begins to be the birth of Idiocracy. Followed soon by reality TV and of course the blessing and curse of the InterWeb, letting every no-nothing loser including yours truly to become a pundit and journalist. The blessing of course for an information junkie like me is that the facts or the fiction is now only a few short keystrokes away.

Soon I get my first "good" job, well good in that it paid decent, good benefits, government work. Moved in with Becky who also got a good job. Both of us are committed to good government and public service. Bought a big TV, three days after I bought my big TV, Islamic terrorists attack the United States. Like every American this day changed my political thinking. It was really one of the few days I can remember that was without laughter. Even when a family or friend dies, there is likely to be laughter, a funny story, a good memory that breaks the day. In retrospect there are feelings of pride in what some of those wonderful public servants did on that day and the ordinary heroes but there is no laughter. We all wanted to believe GWB on that pile of rubble when he tried to rally a nation and I'll say this, for a short time he did. We all grew up that day, and I'll often say, that this is the day that i really became an American.

Since then, it's been a twisted time. I'm pretty settled, house, wife, kid, patio, cool gardens, even bigger TV but the rest of the world seems to be spinning away. In someways everything has come full circle, as my uncle Gabby returned from Vietnam to hope to get his piece of the American dream, so does Elena's uncle Jim with the same hopes and dreams. What's stands in the way?

An administration that can't really seem to do anything right other than enrich defense and logistical contractors, who when pushed to make a decision will throw up continuous smoke screens and accusations of non-patriotism. The real weirdness of Dick Cheney and his neo-conservative cabal. And when the going gets tough, my own party can't even find the deck chairs on the Titanic, they're too busy trying to bake cookies in the galley. Obsessions with women in vegetative states and embryos on the right, and self-congratulatory and attacking each other for being DINO's on the left. The Democratic inclusiveness that I had yearned for had become it's greatest enemy, "I want everything in one bag, but I don't want it to be too heavy."

So as I start the next decade of my political life, where do I go? The wacky left wing aging, socialist? Right wing neo-con who sees worldwide democracy and capitalism as the only way to save the human race? Populist independent hoping for the Hagel/Dobbs ticket in 2008? Lunch bucket union democrat? Elliot Richardson/Edward Brooke Massachusetts Republican? Nihilist? American Idol contestant?

The 2008 election is the most important one of my life. A crossroads in America. America has been too short on sacrifice (for most of us) and critical thought and too heavy on easy solutions and quick fixes. What's our next step?