Party Loyalty vs. Personal Priorities (or Why I won't be Seeing Hillary)

It is moment of truth time. A fellow Democratic activist friend invited me to attend Hillary Clinton’s fundraising event in Louisville this Friday.

Suddenly the conflicting rays of principle, party and personal priorities converge in the prism of his invitation. For while I have long been a fervent FDR Democrat, Mrs. Clinton supported the Iraqi war, which for me is the defining issue of our time.

There is NOTHING more important than correctly calling forth our military to invade another country, nothing. All our social justice and citizen’s benefit philosophies are dwarfed by the hypocrisy and immorality of erroneous decisions to war. And Mrs. Clinton was a vocal advocate of this war, voting along with many other Democrats to authorize President Bush’s fait accompli.

The whole of 2002 found me so frustrated and enraged by the Democrats buckling, not only on Bush’s anti-social domestic policies, but especially by their complicity in Bush’s frequent and flagrantly FALSE assertions about the non-existent Iraqi threat and our urgent need to go to war.

From his State of the Union “Axis of Evil” speech to his West Point address enunciating an unprecedented policy of PRE-EMPTION it was clear that Bush was intent on going to war way before the final CIA report that fall. His bellicosity was as Un-American as it was illogical, and was based on deliberate mis-representations in order to whip up public fear and fury to support this long-planned invasion.

Thus, I wrote an anti-war article based upon my own research and analysis that thoroughly debunked Bush’s rationale and correctly predicted the hornet’s nest we instead created. (http://peacecow.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_peacecow_archive.html appearing under the June 21 “Time To Impeach” entry).

I could not for the life of me understand how intelligent, highly placed Democrats like Mrs. Clinton, like John Edwards and like John Kerry could have voted the way they did. It showed either an incredible lack of depth of thinking OR depth of character in sacrificing long term truth, justice and security for short-term expedience. How could I, sitting here in the hinterlands of rural America know more than them?!

Then came the 2004 Democratic platform, which had as its top priority a vast increase of our military so that we could exert control across the globe, practically mirroring the Republicans and totally missing the fact that we were nearly outspending the rest of the world combined.

MY COUNTERPOINT: “Yeah Rich, but we’ve gotta support the party if we are to unseat the Republicans, who are killing America with their selfish cronyism and corruption!” True, but if I have no say in what my party prioritizes, and if it continues with leadership that has acted contrarily to my deepest held values, then I would have to abandon that party. I am NOT saying the Democrats are there yet.

In fact, John Edwards has apologized and admitted his error. Good. But can he be trusted again? Those in the highest levels simply cannot make those errors on such important issues and with a little research and analysis this was not even a close call. Yet Mrs. Clinton still supports this war.

MY COUNTERPOINT: “But Richard, a party will never represent 100% of its members wishes.” True, but war and obscene military spending are bellwether issues, and if that remains the official party line in 2008 I will leave it.

I have come to this realization: I am not merely a “Democrat.” I am first a Human, then an American, reporting to a Universal Moral Director.

MY COUNTERPOINT: “You know, you’ll about kill any chance you had at getting your party’s support for any elective office you may want to seek down the line.” Yet my goal should never be a seat per se, a position per se or anything but to do the will of the Director and to serve others as well as myself as best I can with the light given me.

I hope the Democratic Party will return to that snug fold. But if not there IS a political party that more closely represents the Director’s values, and Ralph Nader is that party’s leader.

Respectfully, Rfd 11/30/05

Nee Cassius Clay, Now Muhammad Ali

My first recollection of Mr. Ali was February 26, 1964 in the morning school bus on the way to my 3rd grade class at Stonewall Elementary. I still recall an older student with one of those little transistor radios, the hottest techno-gadget for that time, excitedly telling the whole bus about Clay’s stunning victory.

If not for the older boy’s excited announcement, and the fact that NEVER before or since has ANYBODY gotten so excited over any news event on my subsequent public transports, I would not have given Clay, or any boxer or boxing feat any significance whatsoever. After all, as an 8 year old, I was—THANKFULLY--never exposed to this most brutal so called “sport.”*

*[Don’t get me wrong, I have long appreciated the extreme physical nature of boxing, the strenuous work ethic boxers undergo and the strategy and unbelievable courage they have. It’s just that for me “sport” excludes any and all activity wherein the goal is to literally knock somebody else senseless.]

So was born Cassius Clay into my young consciousness. For reasons I did not then understand Clay became Muhammad Ali. The years that followed were full of ABC Wide World of Sports, and its new Ali-made celebrity, Ho-ward Co-SELL (my interpretation of which won me my own sort of celebrity in high school and college).

Month after month, year after year it was Ali “Winner” here, Ali “winner” there, indeed Ali was the greatest anywhere! His braggadocios taunting was frankly annoying to me and yes, I would be hoping for an upset no matter who he faced, but of course, Ali always won.

And then he did something during the Vietnam War that from my limited perspective seemed unpatriotic and cowardly: he refused to go to Vietnam, saying “I ain’t got nothing ‘gainst them Viet Cong.” Being a pro-establishment conservative, wary of pinko-hippie pot smoking protestors any such opposition to our war against the spread of Communism was heresy!

I could only see a killer in the ring who was scared to die outside it; my young pre-pre-sophomoric mind did not yet fathom Ali’s principled action nor the rightness of his stand. [I’m sorry Mr. Ali, and thank you for helping encourage my own miniscule-by- comparison conscience-based stands].

Three years later Ali won again—this time in the US Supreme Court, which unanimously overturned his conviction and granted him his right to refuse service on religious grounds. Then came his fights of legend: the Thrilla in Manilla, the Rumble in the Jungle where Ali, with Joe FRAZHIUH, made boxing the undisputed King of um, er…(ugh) Sports.

I began to admire Ali and had hoped he would quit while he was ahead. I shuddered at the pounding he took in his final fights and, while never liking boxing anyway, forswear ever watching it again.

Today, we celebrate Ali as a world-class leader, a man who in humility now stands more strongly than ever in his quest for peace and justice.

Indeed Mr. Simon, The fighter still remains.


[The Muhammad Ali Center opens this week in Louisville]
Rfd

The "Heidi Game" Anniversary

The 60's was the peak--the peak of passion, of intellectual thought, and of technological achievement (I know, I know you are saying pc's, internet, cellular, hdtv," etc. but the stage was set in the 60's and before and at any rate all progress is built on the shoulders of giants).

And the 60's was the absolute peak of TELEVISED sports. None of the annoying, OVERKILL graphics, terrible field angles, interminable close-up shots of players, horrible replays from field level that are more appropriate for C-grade action movies.

Instead there was total field of view coverage, ample re-plays that showed the whole play develop, and the best announcers ever--folks like Curt Gowdy (my favorite), Kyle Rote, Charlie Jones, Ray Scott Al Derogatis, Chris Schinkle and Lindsay Nelson. And there were few more memorable sports moments than....THE HEIDI GAME!

___________

From The Writer's Almanac <newsletter@americanpublicmedia.org>


It was on this day in 1968 that NBC interrupted its coverage of a football game between the Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets with one minute remaining in order to show the scheduled movie Heidi, about an orphaned girl who goes to live with her grandfather in the Swiss Alps.

In the last minute of the game, the Raiders scored two touchdowns, coming from behind to win the game 43 to 32. Football fans were enraged. So many people called to complain that the NBC's telephone switchboard in New York City blew 26 fuses.

It was that game, and the storm of protest by fans, that forced TV executives to realize how passionate the audience for football really was. Two years later, networks began showing football on Monday nights as well. And because of that game, the NFL now has a contract with the networks that all football games will be shown until their completion.

Why France Fries

It is with surreal fascination that we watch France set aflame. As with all abnormalities we naturally ask—or SHOULD ask—“why?”

Already there are those French haters who relate this conflagration to “Islamic terrorism” and loosely to the Iraqi war and France’s refusal to join it. Yet the reasons for the current inferno have absolutely nothing to do with either of these shallow and self-serving rationales.

As this excellent article http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5328931-103390,00.html from the Guardian details, the angry young French of North African descent are rioting for much the same reasons as American blacks did in the 60’s: a dynamite stick of poverty, discrimination and indifference lit by an emotionally-charged event.

In 1968 it was the King assassination, today it was the electrocution (apparently accidental) of youths evading French police.

That the impoverished immigrants--most brought over 50 years ago from to do much of France’s dirty work--are Muslim is of no consequence. They were long ago sequestered in suburban ghettoes, treated like third-class citizens and recently made to suffer 20% cuts in social programs.

France’s official non-discrimination law, a well-intentioned ideal born of the Revolution, tragically gave cover to the very real and human discrimination that permeates French society.

Hopefully, the recent events will breed positive change in French culture. Ideally it will cause their leaders to accurately assess root causes and effective, just solutions to them.

Or they may ignore the “why?” and focus solely on punishing the perpetrators. But like cutting weeds at the surface, those riotous roots will grow ever stronger.

And they won’t stop at the French border.


Rfd 11/11/05