You’re free to speak your mind my friend
Don’t criticize the fatherland
Or those who shape your destiny
You’ll lose your job your mind and all the friends you knew
We’ll send out all our boys in blue
They’ll find a way to silence you
But there’s nothing you and I can do
You and I are only two
What’s right and wrong is hard to say
Forget about it for today
We’ll stick our heads into the sand
Just pretend that all is grand
Then hope that everything turns out ok
— “The Ostrich, Steppenwolf, 1967
One of the most puzzling contradictions I’ve ever seen in my lifetime is going on right now in the good ole USA.
We Americans were astonished to see Donald Trump pull off one of the most unlikely political comeback victories about six months ago. Yet since that fateful November, we are told a significant number of people have been rising up in righteous indignation, protesting the things Trump has been saying, doing and sponsoring.
I’ve been spending a lot of time refusing to believe all these amazing rallies with huge crowds gathering in support of the tour by Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Occasio Cortez. These two are just about the exact opposites of Trump, yet they’re flexing some impressive populist muscle. Is it too good to be true?
So I couldn’t help but reach out to an old friend from my days at the Allegan. County News & Gazette — Jeff McElwee, who at one time was editor of that august weekly newspaper and director of the Allegan County United Way.
McElwee in his retirement has pulled up roots and moved out to Idaho to spend his Golden Years working with birds of prey.
Now Idaho is regarded as almost the most conservative state in the union, so I just had to ask Jeff if a recent Sanders-AOC rally in that state really did bring in 12,500 people and a lot of enthusiasm. He said it did indeed, and he proved it with pictures because he was on site himself.
I was laboring under the impression that the anti-Trump tour out west was just a blip on the public relations screen, that it was just a temporary example of Howard Beale’s rap in the movie “Network,” with “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.”
Is there really significant backlash after Trump won in November and then turned loose the richest man in the world to make budget cuts without congressional approval? Some say yes, and the most significant information is Bernie and AOC whipping up the masses.
But then why did Trump win the electoral and popular vote for the first time in his three tries only last November?
This just doesn’t seem to add up.
Are we going there in a hand basket, or are we “just on the dawn of correction?” (Withe apologies to the Spokesmen)
I really hate to get my hopes up. I’ve been an unabashed supporter of Bernie since he first announced his candidacy in 2016 and launched the very best political advertisement I’ve had the pleasure to see — the one with Simon and Garfunkel singing “All Come to Look for America” while many tribes gather enthusiastically to hear him speak.
I have long unabashedly supported many of Bernie’s ideas, particularly Medicare for All because we’re the only industrialized country on the plant without a cheaper and more effective health care system. Ours is the most expensive.
The reason? “Follow the money.”
But we really do live under the Golden Rule. He who has the gold makes the rules, like Elon Musk. The only question worth discussing is “What are we going to do about it?”
