One morning last October, I read a pair of columns with which I couldn’t agree more. One
was by Jim Sleeper and was basically a rant about the spinelessness of
most powerful Democrats. This column and another one by Charles Blow
which I read this morning have my mental wheels moving. Allow me to
quote Jim Sleeper’s last paragraph immediately below and then proceed to
my main topic.
“Until and unless Democrats are forced by well organized movements to challenge the regime of casino-like financing, predatory lending and consumer-bamboozling that they’ve done so much to sustain under the falsely compensatory drapery of United Colors of Benetton “diversity,” the true and urgent claims of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter will always lose to the belligerence of the Brett Kavanaughs and the bitter resentments of the less “entitled” politically incorrect.”
“Until and unless Democrats are forced by well organized movements to challenge the regime of casino-like financing, predatory lending and consumer-bamboozling that they’ve done so much to sustain under the falsely compensatory drapery of United Colors of Benetton “diversity,” the true and urgent claims of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter will always lose to the belligerence of the Brett Kavanaughs and the bitter resentments of the less “entitled” politically incorrect.”
Maybe
‘guerrilla’ political campaigns are a way to do this. I’m thinking
harder than ever about launching a ‘stealth’ campaign for president (and
encouraging others to do likewise for Congress and state legislatures
if and when necessary) which , I hope, can also prove to be an end run
around big money. There’ll be a link to my current ‘platform’. at the
bottom of this post. What I want to do is share the platform with the
clear understanding that the overriding job for all of us must be ‘save
the planet’. Some concerns at least appear more urgent, but none are
longer range. And in order to tackle longer-range concerns than we’re
generally doing now, anyone who runs for office under this platform has
to have at least two, maybe three, essential traits:
1) The ability to listen without an ‘override’ style
2) A strong sense of themselves quite apart from being politically powerful persons
3)
An understanding that there ARE rule-or-ruin groups and individuals
(like patriarchalists, fossil-fuel billionaires and Islamists, to use
three examples) and they MUST be dealt with very sternly indeed across
the board!
Since
I have neither the means nor the time to travel, I will ask political
friends and allies in all the states if they’d circulate petitions to
put me, and anyone running for other offices, on the ballot there. I’m
not even sure they need to let me know; maybe I too should be surprised
in November 2020.
You
may think this a quite loony idea; well and good. But just let it
simmer and imagine ‘stealth’ campaigns using low-cost communications and
making an end run round big money by people who won’t feel themselves
non-entities without more power than the rest of us! And imagine the MSM
caught entirely, or almost entirely, by surprise on Election Day — but
this time for something really good!
I
admit to having no political experience but I have watched and studied
politics for half a century (since I was almost 12). I also know a good
deal of history, geography, theology and the Bible. I also itch to throw
the ‘religious’ Right off the ground I see them as having usurped. In
any case, my observations and knowledge dwarfs the current
usurper — yeah, not like that’s too difficult, I know.
If,
after mulling this over, this appeals to you, please share it with
those who you know to be political allies in each state so we can get
things rolling. Let’s make this a campaign where the people can say, “We
did it ourselves.” Another post, more to the disengaged, will follow hard upon this.
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