This morning I was sipping my coffee - ok, gulping - when the thought suddenly occurred to me that several months from now when this little rock we call home is far from the sun and we are wrapped in layers of coats and sweaters and mittens, something will happen for only the second time in my cognizance, the first time being too brief and too complicated to have any effect.
A Democratic Congress and a Democratic President.
Thank God for Bill Clinton, or my entire life (aside from my first three years of Carter) would have been spent in the mad grip of Reaganomic corporate rule. Thinking of it that way, I'd have to say Bill Clinton saved the world.
Think about what life was like then, back in the nineties at the beginning of the information revolution. Things were so good that the gops had to make up problems and impeach the best thing to happen to us since FDR. All of that wasted taxpayer money, all of the time that should have been spent focused on Islamic fundamentalists, and we were all in la la land contemplating the meaning of is. (McCain, by the way, voted Clinton guilty on both counts.)
Oh, he was hated. He was hated because he was a poor Arkansas boy who had risen to be the most powerful man in the world. He wasn't part of the silver spoon club, he wasn't a Skull and Bones man. He cared about poor people. He screwed up the neo-con plan for world domination.
Did Bill Clinton make mistakes? HUGE ones. The man admits to his mistakes on Rwanda with tears in his eyes. Enron and WorldCom and the others flourished under his watch. Health care is still a mess today. And yes, there was Monica.
But the impeachment wasn't about Monica. Heck, the wannabe Speaker of the House, Rep. Livingston, admitted to an affair during the proceedings! All of the "shady" deals the Clintons had made, all of the "scandals," those things were concocted, misconstrued, and distorted by gops to ruin Clinton.
But you know what? We like our politicians to be human. Not only did they not ruin Bill Clinton, but they created a new Democratic party. The seeds were sown by that man, and we're all grown up now, and we're going to take over the country, and we're going to run it the way it was meant to be run - by the people and for the people, not corporations.
In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected with the help of a clownish man named Ross Perot. Thank God for Ross Perot. We had had twelve years of Reaganomics, and the country's economy was in a freefall. We had troops in seemingly every country on the planet. We had had a Democratic Congress through it all. Thank God for that. But they still let him get away with too much. Two years into Clinton's first term, we lost Congress.
This is a new Democratic Party, a younger party, but a wiser one, armed with the knowledge of what it's like to be a minority party for so long and what unbridled corporatism can do not only to the country, but to the world. This is a party that is starting to free itself from the chains of special interests, a party filled with new and eager faces ready to take on the world. Barack Obama is at the helm of that party.
There is so much in this world to be excited about, so many technological developments, the interconnectedness of the world brought about by globalization, the advancement of knowledge. Just think of the possibilities of a United States run by people who know how to use a computer, who understand science, who value education, who believe that a society is at its strongest when everyone is included.
What comes after democracy, I've often wondered. A society that not only is well-educated, but one that values that education as something in and of itself, not merely a means to get a job or to make mounds of money. A knowledge society. An America with Barack Obama as President and a Democratic Congress is an America I just may start to believe in again.
We have some work to do until November!
A Democratic Congress and a Democratic President.
Thank God for Bill Clinton, or my entire life (aside from my first three years of Carter) would have been spent in the mad grip of Reaganomic corporate rule. Thinking of it that way, I'd have to say Bill Clinton saved the world.
Think about what life was like then, back in the nineties at the beginning of the information revolution. Things were so good that the gops had to make up problems and impeach the best thing to happen to us since FDR. All of that wasted taxpayer money, all of the time that should have been spent focused on Islamic fundamentalists, and we were all in la la land contemplating the meaning of is. (McCain, by the way, voted Clinton guilty on both counts.)
Oh, he was hated. He was hated because he was a poor Arkansas boy who had risen to be the most powerful man in the world. He wasn't part of the silver spoon club, he wasn't a Skull and Bones man. He cared about poor people. He screwed up the neo-con plan for world domination.
Did Bill Clinton make mistakes? HUGE ones. The man admits to his mistakes on Rwanda with tears in his eyes. Enron and WorldCom and the others flourished under his watch. Health care is still a mess today. And yes, there was Monica.
But the impeachment wasn't about Monica. Heck, the wannabe Speaker of the House, Rep. Livingston, admitted to an affair during the proceedings! All of the "shady" deals the Clintons had made, all of the "scandals," those things were concocted, misconstrued, and distorted by gops to ruin Clinton.
But you know what? We like our politicians to be human. Not only did they not ruin Bill Clinton, but they created a new Democratic party. The seeds were sown by that man, and we're all grown up now, and we're going to take over the country, and we're going to run it the way it was meant to be run - by the people and for the people, not corporations.
In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected with the help of a clownish man named Ross Perot. Thank God for Ross Perot. We had had twelve years of Reaganomics, and the country's economy was in a freefall. We had troops in seemingly every country on the planet. We had had a Democratic Congress through it all. Thank God for that. But they still let him get away with too much. Two years into Clinton's first term, we lost Congress.
This is a new Democratic Party, a younger party, but a wiser one, armed with the knowledge of what it's like to be a minority party for so long and what unbridled corporatism can do not only to the country, but to the world. This is a party that is starting to free itself from the chains of special interests, a party filled with new and eager faces ready to take on the world. Barack Obama is at the helm of that party.
There is so much in this world to be excited about, so many technological developments, the interconnectedness of the world brought about by globalization, the advancement of knowledge. Just think of the possibilities of a United States run by people who know how to use a computer, who understand science, who value education, who believe that a society is at its strongest when everyone is included.
What comes after democracy, I've often wondered. A society that not only is well-educated, but one that values that education as something in and of itself, not merely a means to get a job or to make mounds of money. A knowledge society. An America with Barack Obama as President and a Democratic Congress is an America I just may start to believe in again.
We have some work to do until November!
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