#420 – Dick Bernard: Speaking as a Liberal

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Directly related posts: here and here.
Yesterday’s news has President Obama going on vacation for a few days. Of course, presidential vacation is not a vacation at all. But this does not prevent the Congressional critics, themselves on a one month vacation, from saying the President should be back in the White House creating jobs – the same accomplishment they are actively seeking to prevent. Helping the President get more jobs is not politically good for the opposition. And so the deadly games go on.
My favorite blogger wrote today about the Presidents vacation, and that President Obama’s selected vacation reading was the book “Nixonland” by Rick Pearlstein. (My vacation choice was Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” I recommend it very highly.)
I’ve been thinking a lot about this label “liberal”, which I am proud to affix to myself. To many, it is a cursed word, along with other swear words like “union”, and on and on. In fact, years ago, Newt Gingrich had a famous list of words. They were (and still are) very helpful for his disciples to use as they seek and achieve high office.
They are also destructive to a functioning society, as we are seeing every day.
So, what is a ‘liberal’ as compared to the polar opposite ‘other’? (I use ‘other’, because in my own experience, most liberals are conservative people*.)
All I have is personal experience, and with that there’s a story.
Three years ago I was on a bus tour exploring matters French-Canadian in northern North Dakota. We stopped at a now-empty Catholic Church in tiny Olga, ND, and our leader, Dr. Virgil Benoit of the University of North Dakota, talked powerfully to us about intercultural relationships, specifically Native Americans and French-Canadians.
On the long bus ride to Belcourt in the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation, I was sitting across from Dr. Benoit, and at one point I asked him where his compassion came from. He related a specific experience at a Minnesota Indian Reservation, where, as a young PhD, a tribal elder spoke to him about priorities and social concerns. It made an indelible impression on him.
But then he turned the tables on me. “And what about you?”, he said.
I was taken aback, and struggled for an answer.
It really didn’t occur to me till later.
For me, the epiphany came in 1963-65 when my young wife and I struggled through two years of hell until she died of kidney disease in July, 1965 (she was buried on the very day the Medicare Act was signed by President Johnson). We were kids, then, and had no medical insurance. Stuff like this wasn’t supposed to happen to someone in their early 20s. I was on the brink of bankruptcy when North Dakota Public Welfare stepped forward and paid the bulk of the unpaid medical bills…and they had to stretch their rules to do that. (click on photos to enlarge)

Dick, Tom, Barbara Bernard about August, 1964, Valley City ND


The community which is government saved my and my sons future in hard times. I’ve never forgotten this; I never will. It could happen to anyone.
That, and other experiences, have made me ‘liberal’, and if that’s not okay, so be it.
In my observations over many years, it seems that there is some kind of a continuum that defines the difference between people like me, and those in the camp of the individualist, government be damned bunch.
Like all continuums, there are infinite gradations between one extreme and the other.
On one extreme are the communalists who argue that everything should be for the good of all. The Communists tried this, and it has never worked quite as the theory proposed. I suppose the Shakers were another variety; and the Amish a contemporary version.
On the other extreme, though, more akin to our most radical right wing types, is an even worse problem: in the extreme, all that matters is the individual. Theirs is a dog-eat-dog world and the strong survive, and the weak don’t. Get what you can while you can. Make the rules for the loser others. “Winner takes all”.
I’m off on the communalist side of this continuum, but far away from the extreme left that I describe.
There has always been this continuum, but the difference in the last 20 or 30 years has been the casting of one side as good, and the other evil. The side that considers my side to be evil has had the upper hand, and it is not healthy for them, for us, or for society at large. But it has been a winning formula for them, and only we can make them change their focus.
Then there’s the even more troubling “winning formula” of making a judgement of the whole, by a non-negotiable demand to resolve a part (i.e. unrestricted gun rights; an immediate end to the war in Afghanistan, and on, and on, and on.) Thinking larger is too hard, so we think small, or not at all. We just judge.
Where are you on these matters? At least think this through privately.
I’m proud to be “liberal”, and I think that, like a bird, there is a need for two ‘wings’, but wings that work together.

Dick Bernard at the White House, January 16, 1980


UPDATE: Saturday, August 20: I often describe myself as an Eisenhower kid: Dwight Eisenhower was President during virtually my entire high school and college years. I graduated from college less than a year after he left the presidency in January, 1961; and weeks after John Kennedy was elected to succeed him (I was too young to vote – 21 was voting age then).
Yes, I liked Ike, and still do. More than a few liberals I know do too. He was a moderate conservative. He’d be thrown out of todays Republican party.
My favorite blogger (see first paragraph above), was born in those days (1947), and remembers them in today’s column here. They are a little different than they are usually portrayed in those acidic “forwards” I get.

Sitting in Vice President Walter Mondale's chair, the west wing of the White House, January 16, 1980


* – I have long thought that this true conservatism of ‘liberals’ (prudence, careful in use of money) is one reason why big business doesn’t want liberals in control of government. Government waste, after all, is very good for business, not bad. It may not be good for the community that is our country, but it is great for profit.
UPDATE August 21: A good friend commented on this post, yesterday.
Bob Schmitz: I too can pin point a number of epiphany moments that led me to embrace the label liberal and now Green Party values. A recent incident confirmed my beliefs. Last summer I was in Wishek, N.D. for a wedding. Wishek votes Republican. As I was walking down the street in a residential area of the city I could not help but admire this pleasant town, but I became most impressed with the finished look to the streets with their curb and gutters, and sidewalks throughout. As I got to the end of a block after having made this observation, I looked down at an inscription on the sidewalk. It said, “WPA – 1937” [Works Progress Administration], the year of my birth. I was very much a product of the depression and my family never really recovered until the late 50s or during the golden era of our economic revival from the 30s. It is to bad that revival came as a result of military Keynesianism [WWII]. When on his death bed a few years ago my 90 year old Dad started talking politics with us. He recalled the idle men sitting on the benches in downtown Arcadia, Iowa during the 30s, and spoke of FDR with such fondness. He started to cry when he talked about Roosevelt trying to help them and how some of these public works projects started under Roosevelt gave them work and restored some dignity. My grandfather lost his farm due to the depression but recovered with WWII, which put everyone to work, including my three uncles who participated in the war. They came back and all could buy a home through the GI bill. My wife’s brothers were able to become engineers, and wealthy, by attending the school of engineering at the U of M under the GI bill. Without the GI bill they would not have been able to attend college. They by the way are Republicans. I still recall the “bums” coming to our door as a small child and before the war cranked-up. These bums were traversing the country on the old Lincoln Highway looking for work and food. Mom would make them a sandwich or let them have something from the garden in return for raking some leaves or doing a small odd job, and we didn’t have a “pot nor window” [old saying about being poor – “not a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out of”] .
I want to recommend a book: “There Is Power In A Union: The Epic Story Of Labor In America” by Philip Dray. This is a wonderful history of labor and reminds us that we are still fighting the same old battles. Right now I am reading about the Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1910, a horrifying tragedy which should be memorialized, just to keep the public reminded of the consequences of Adam Smith’s free-market economics when applied in an industrial age.
Dick’s response: There were, of course, ordinary people in the depression who hated Franklin Delano Roosevelt too. I know this included some of my relatives. The same kinds of reasons some despise liberals today.
Here is one of my Depression era stories (I was born in 1940). This story is set in rural Berlin ND, about 60 miles east of Wishek on Hwy 13.
Later, another from Bob: I know there were those who disagreed about FDR. There were great discussions in my family about politics and I do recall them talking about the plutocrats or small town business people who did not want to help the derelicts and cursed FDR. My maternal grandparent did ok but retained sympathy for those who did not, and seemed willing to chip in to help the neighbor who ran onto bad times. I believe he was a closet atheist as he resisted attempts by the local Methodist minister to get him into church. Grandpa Liechti, a Swiss, said his religion consisted in doing onto others as he wished them do onto him, and that’s all he needed to know. He simply threw a biblical quote back at them and left it there. My Dad’s parents were devout Catholics but also had a strong social conscience which I think came from their life’s experience. Grandpa Schmitz was an orphan dumped with a farm family who essentially used him, which was the social welfare system of that time. I recall vividly that Mom and Dad voted for Henry Wallace in 1948, the Progressive Party candidate. He was from Iowa and the former Sec of Ag. and I believe a Vice-President under Roosevelt. Dewey was supposed to have the election locked up but Truman upset him with a very narrow victory. Mom and Dad were told that they wasted their vote. I don’t think so.
Sometime I could go on about the mental health movement in which I had the good fortune to participate. I am referring to the successful effort to empty the old state hospitals at the end of the 50s and into the 60s. The current Republicans seem to want a movement back to those days. In those bygone days the Republicans of that time saw the merit in ending the old state hospital system and participated in that effort. Elmer Andersen was one of them.
As I read history the current trends seem less scary and are nothing new, but there is no guarantee that they could not morph into full blown fascism.

#419 – Dick Bernard: Going below the surface in political hate e-mails. And, by the way, it is the Congress, specifically the House of Representatives, that authorizes the expenditures…and the debt. And mostly, it's been Republican. And "we, the people" elect every one of these representatives every two years.

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Directly Related post here; other related posts, here and here.
Yesterday, a valued relative of mine sent me one of those ubiquitous anti-Obama forwards. This one was full of dismal statistics about America suggesting that every problem was all Obama’s fault. I replied: “So what does this prove…? Is Obama THE government?” He responded: “Let’s say the situation was reversed and these same figures happened under George Bush and you sent me the same e-mail and I replied, “So what does this prove, Dick? Is Bush THE government?” I responded “But I didn’t send you the same e-mail…”
I included a few more sentences that probably won’t convince my correspondent (who claims he’s “independent”). So it goes. (Point of fact: in most of the Bush years, THE government: House, Senate and Presidency, was Republican.)
Out of curiosity, I checked my e-file against what I’ve received from this man. He’d sent me 20 of these kinds of forwards, the first on July 3. All of them had been forwarded to him by someone else, probably a friend.
In the same period I had sent one “political’ item to family members, written by myself, and clearly labeled POLITICAL in the Subject line. In that one I was commenting on Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann, then-candidates in Iowa whose records I know far too well – she’s my Congresswoman, and he was MN Governor.
My relative has been invited to read this post, and if he does, he may be surprised at how many of those things he’s sent on. Collectively, they support what I posted earlier here on June 27, 2011. He’s a foot-soldier enlisted to kill President Obama. He probably won’t like to hear that, but it’s true.
I’m one of what I believe is a small group of people who actually like getting this hate-mail circulating against the Government, Liberals, Democrats and Obama. It ‘comes in all shapes and sizes’, is sometimes subtle, sometimes very direct, but always, always, it aims to stimulate the base emotions of fear, loathing and anger, with no interest or concern about accuracy of fact. If the objective is to make the reader hate Government and all it represents, Democrats or Obama, it is not necessary to explain the piece. One just needs to get blood boiling with rage. Facts don’t matter at all. The intention is a mob mentality, mostly in people in my senior citizen age group. It is disgusting, but it is effective.
It reminds me of one particularly unfortunate situation I was proximate to a few years ago. The Middle School age daughter of good friends of ours was targeted by some of her female classmates with incessant hate e-mails. The parents and (I believe) the school administration did all they could do to stop this terror campaign, but nothing worked. Ultimately, the family sold their home and moved to a new town and their daughter had an opportunity to start over and be the honor student that she could be. (She’s now in University).
The gang of teen girls ‘won’, I guess…but what did they really ‘win’? Same question for the producers and distributors of the hate mail.
Last week, from two people in Illinois and Arizona who have no way of knowing each other, came identical copies of one of these hate-mails which was especially interesting. It was interesting in that, while its targets were people like me, it was most accurately and appropriately describing the current Republican and Tea Party Congress, especially the U.S. House of Representatives. For those with an interest, I’m reprinting most of the e-mail below, with annotations.
If you aren’t interested in detail, at least note this accurate quote from the particular e-mail (which proclaims itself to be “completely neutral”): “The Constitution [of the United States], which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes…House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.”
Note also, that in the e-mail there is not a single suggestion about who it is that selects those members of the House of Representatives – it is we, the electorate in those 435 Congressional districts around the U.S. They are Us. Your vote (or non-vote) can have dire consequences. WE are totally responsible for the mess in Washington.
Note, (and consider printing out), the single sheet that shows the general composition of the U.S. House of Representatives, Senate and Presidency since 1977. It is here: Congress 1977-2011001 I prepared this sheet for my own information in April, 2009, (with update for 2011-13 today) less than three months after President Obama was inaugurated. I prepared it because already then, the President was being accused of being a failure as President. The campaign has been incessant since then.
The e-mail from which the above quote has been extracted follows in total, with my additional comments bold-faced and in [brackets]. Most of what Reese writes about I, as a liberal, could easily agree with, regardless of what party is in power.
Minor word changes that do not seem to reflect Reese’s meaning are not noted here.
The analysis of the e-mail, at least the portion supposedly written by Charley Reese can be found here.
THE SUPPOSED CHARLEY REESE COMMENTS
“Be sure to read the Tax List at the end” [not included, as it has nothing to do with Charlie Reese]
This is about as clear and easy to understand as it can be. The article below is completely neutral, neither anti-republican or democrat [agree]. Charlie Reese, a retired reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, has hit the nail directly on the head, defining clearly who it is that in the final analysis must assume responsibility for the judgments made that impact each one of us every day. Its a short but good read. Worth the time. Worth remembering! [No idea who wrote this preamble, typical of such forwards]
545 vs. 300,000,000 People
by Charlie Reese
[Much of the column printed below is word-for-word from a 1985 version which did not appear in the Orlando Sentinel. There was a similar column in the 1995 Orlando Sentinel, but with differing wording. Reese did write both. In 1985 the Congress was Democrat and the President Republican. In 1995 and again in 2011, the Congress was Republican and the President Democrat.]

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The President does.
You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don’t control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
[In his 1995 version, Reese said this, which was left out of the 2011 forward: I exclude the vice president because constitutionally he has no power except to preside over the Senate and to vote only in the case of a tie.] I excluded [excused]the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913 Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.
[in 1985 version but not in 2011: Don’t you see the con game that is played on the people by the politicians? ] Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. [In the forward, but not in 1985 column: Who is the speaker of the House now? He is the leader of the majority party. he and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.]
[ditto It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 who stand convicted — by resent facts — of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can’t think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.]
[ditto If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair.]
[ditto If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red.]
[ditto If the Army & Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan it’s because they want them in Iraq and Afghanistan…]
[ditto If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it’s because they want it that way.]
[ditto There are no insoluble government problems.]
[ditto Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation,” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.]
Those 545 people, and they alone are responsible.
[in 2011, not in 1985:They, and they alone, have the power.]
They and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses. Provided they have the gumptin to manage their own employees…
[in 2011, not in 1985: We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!]
The rest of the 2011 forward, fully half of the document, has nothing at all to do with the real or alleged Charley Reese column so is not reprinted here.

#418 – Dick Bernard: Watching President Obama

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Related posts here and here.
Monday I hoped to see Air Force One approach and land at Twin Cities International Airport. I got a late start, and missed any opportunity I may have had.
About 11:30 I went by the airport enroute to visit a friend of mine in a Twin Cities Nursing Home. When I got to Greg’s room, he was watching the President in Cannon Falls MN, and he and I watched the hour together. It was a special time.

President Obama at Cannon Falls MN August 15, 2011, thanks to Nancy Adams


Greg and I watched as the President talked about “Obamacare” (a term the President said he’s proud to own), and dealt effectively with the recent news that an Appeals Court had ruled that a federal requirement for people to pay for insurance they don’t want violates individual constitutional rights.
Greg may have had something to say about that topic, though we didn’t talk about it.
Greg and I volunteer together, so I don’t see him that often. I knew he’d been ill, but I thought he was getting better. He’s five years younger than I.
At church on Sunday I asked Greg’s son how his Dad was doing, and it was then I learned he was in the Nursing Home. It was a shock.
It turned out that Greg had been hospitalized with a treatable illness in May, and one thing led to another, and another, and another. Three months he’d been out of commission, and when I was visiting with him, he was again beginning to feel better, though he’d been bedridden so long that walking was a problem. He’d probably not return to be an usher captain – the position in which I knew him.
He and I didn’t need to talk about ‘opt out’ of mandatory medical insurance. We didn’t have to. He was living the reality that escapes others who think they can plan their illnesses.
As it happened, the last few days I’ve been surrounded by other random acts of disaster: Two days before the President arrived, my sister, properly crossing a street in New York City, was hit by a car which backed into her (it is an odd story). As I write, she’s awaiting surgery in a New York City hospital and in the long run should be okay.
Monday, a friend wrote about his wife, not yet 50, who ended up in emergency intensive care in a Rochester MN hospital due to kidney failure. She didn’t plan that.
And last night came a call from my Uncle that his 91 year old sister, my Aunt, had fallen in their apartment and had an emergency trip by ambulance to a rural North Dakota hospital. Luckily, she only cracked her collar bone. It could have been much worse.
So it goes when you’re in a position like the President of the United States (who I feel is doing an outstanding job under incredible obstacles).
Whether left or right, every opinion seems to be non-negotiable, and often completely opposite.
The House of Representatives (more on them in tomorrows post) is the only government entity that can provide funding to help increase employment, but will do nothing that can be perceived as a victory for the President.
People, including those who voted for him, seem to think their vote gave them the ability to order him around to their point of view.
It is “we, the people” who will make or break this country of ours.
I am not very optimistic that we have the vision and the ability to work together for positive change.
UPDATE August 21: A good friend commented on this yesterday. Comments and response included with his permission.
David Harris: Thanks for your continuing contributions, I enjoyed the recent blogs, even though I disagree that Obama is doing an outstanding job. I think it’s past time that he stopped compromising. I’m hoping he will have something of an epiphany on the fundamental nature of jobs and housing rather than attempting to boost the economy indirectly via programs that support banks and large corporations. I hope his actions are not based on concerns about being reelected. A lot of people pinned their hopes on him, and he is letting them down. In no way am I attempting to blame him for the incredibly obstructionist and short sighted actions of the Republicans, but I think he has been too focused on “top down” changes. Also, I’m very disappointed in his continued support of war as an instrument of policy.
Dick, in response: I doubt you and I will ever reach consensus on this, but here’s my position.
I think Obama has faced huge obstacles that few of us really appreciate. He needs to govern from the center, all the while beating off, in some fashion or other, the jackals that pass for the Republicans in Congress and Senate and State Houses. The politics is worse than I have ever experienced in my life, and I think he needs to be given a great deal of credit for accomplishing the great amount that he has.

#412 – Dick Bernard: Will this crisis finally wake us up? I doubt it….

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Earlier today I sent to my own e-list the link to the Sunday August 7 Face the Nation.
I added this note:
“One of the most stupid comments I have ever heard was Sen. Lindsey Graham’s on Face the Nation yesterday. You can see it ‘below the fold’…. It was cynical, arrogant, hypocritical and worse.
Of course, it played well in sound-bite land.
Of course, it plays well with a certain audience.
These are sad days for this country…and it’s not Obama’s fault.
WE are the ones who need to do the heavy lifting. No more whining.”
Reader Will Shapira commented back, almost immediately:
“I think this all is very confusing and an abstraction at best to most people who believe it cannot affect them because they don’t understand it. That would generally include me.
You or someone else needs to explain to your readers how it could affect the common folk.”
I said I’d try.
We are a society whose eyes glaze over at headlines, much less essays. If we don’t understand something we tune it out. If it’s too hard to deal with, we generally refuse to deal with it. “Let’s go out and have a big sundae. It’s a nice afternoon. Going bankrupt is a problem for another day.”
But I digress:
Among other statements, Sen. Lindsey Graham said that “in any other private sector enterprise, he [Obama] would be fired.” He added “coach” as another profession from which the President would be fired.
OK. I’m in with “coach”.
There is, indeed, a ‘trickle down’ aspect to the tragedy of years of reckless spending accompanied by tax cuts for everyone, including ourselves. (The rich weren’t the only ones who got a good deal in the George W. Bush years of a Republican majority in both House and Senate.) The national credit card was out and running up a huge balance. We are on a national drunken binge. The culprits: unfunded wars and Medicare improvements, and, primarily, big tax cuts for the already wealthy. That trifecta is basically what got us to 2011. Oh, and we got those tax cuts too….
Team America was losing the game big time. And it all happened long before Obama’s watch.
Then comes Sen. Graham on Sunday, speaking for his Republican colleagues in carefully calibrated sound bites.
Let’s take his coach analogy.
Say someone is hired as a coach of a team, and a significant part of the team decides that it’s main objective is to get the coach fired – to make him fail – even before his first day.
In the real athletic world, that mutinous part of the team would be history, suspended at minimum. But in the United States political version, the mutinous rabble would be cheered on by the fans in the stands, hoping that their own team, the home team, would be clobbered, so that their new coach would be fired, and they could go back to the good old days, whose players and coach not only cost them the championship, but virtually bankrupted the operation. Those were the days when they got free popcorn, and all sorts of other bennies.
That’s what we’re playing with here. Team members who don’t think they’re part of the team. A crowd in the stands who doesn’t think they have any responsibility other than to watch: it’s the coaches fault. Fire the coach.
As previously stated, the key part of Graham’s quote is this: “…in any other private sector enterprise, he [Obama] would be fired.” Yah, right. Watch the mutinous division head become history in any private sector corporation that has hired a new CEO.
Of course, the U.S. is not a corporation, or a football team. Rather, we show ourselves in times like this to be a disorganized rabble.
Those who think they aren’t big enough to be impacted by, or impact on, this crisis had best think again, and think very, very hard.
We citizens may be small fish, but if the small fish start to die, the bigger fish further up the food chain will die as well, and sooner or later we’ll be all dead.
Maybe that’s what we want. For our sake, I hope not.
Update Aug. 8: Janet makes a relevant point: “Yes, but. But, we have been divided into 2 teams. Only 2 teams. Winner takes all.” Yes, but…until the present toxic days, our system seems to have been able to negotiate and compromise as though we were all interested in building a stronger union. There was rancor and division, yes, but there was negotiation and mutual respect. Those have been diminished to the point they have been all but destroyed.
Janet’s counterpoint to mine: “Good point. I have been thinking about this for years. When I say teams, I mean like athletic teams. America is very “team” oriented, whether it be school, college or professional sports, we want our team to win. Some will want to win at all costs and that is represented in extremity by the Tea Party. Unfortunately, they don’t understand that they are representing Koch Industries and other mega-corporations interests above their own. Koch funds Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Works, ALEC and a host of other organizations that want to destroy all laws and regulations that might affect them. Instead, those laws could apply to the rest of us or we could live like it was the Wild Wild West in a free for all.”

#411 – Dick Bernard: Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama

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Yesterday President Obama turned 50. His counterpart, Abraham Lincoln, was 51 when first elected to the presidency in 1860.
The similarities do not end there.

Cast iron plaque of Abraham Lincoln


Last Sunday evening, July 24, I happened across PBS American Experience on Twin Cities Channel 17. This segment was about the life of the Lincoln’s in Civil War Washington D.C.
The segment ended with the narrator talking about Lincoln’s exceedingly dismal chances for reelection in the election of 1864. His first term, after all, had not been in the best of times. As he took office in 1861, seven states had seceded from the still fledgling Union that was the United States of America. His first cabinet – selected by him – was not exactly a ‘band of brothers’. His entire term had been dominated by the Civil War. “Anybody but Lincoln” might have been an informal street assessment of Abe Lincoln’s chances for reelection to a second term in 1864. He was severely criticized from all sides.
Ultimately in the 1864 election he polled 55% of the popular vote, overwhelmingly won the electoral vote, and was inaugurated to a second term. Three months later he was dead.
“Now he belongs to the ages.”
Today Abraham Lincoln easily ranks as one of the most-loved Presidents in our Nations history.
This is how the matter of history plays itself out. The short term assessment by vocal critics means nothing; it is the long term that matters.
One hundred fifty years after Lincoln’s first inauguration a man with similar background experience to Lincoln, Barack Obama, occupies the White House.
In Obama’s case, states didn’t secede from the union. The U.S. now holds ten times the population of Lincoln’s United States.
But from the moment President Obama took the oath of office in 2009, his Republican opposition has been very, very public in their efforts to make Obama a failure: a one-term President. Their weapons: words and media. They have gone to war against this president, using all of the weapons in their arsenal to hopefully destroy him.
Obama’s base of support has for the moment seemed to join the opposition. “He’s sold us out”; “he doesn’t stand for anything”…. I see the litany all day every day on my computer screen.
To those character assasinators and those dooms-dayers and nay-sayers I say, don’t count President Obama out.
He is surviving a Baptism by Fire.
He is a class act.
Abe Lincoln similarly strode a hugely difficult road. But in 1864 the ordinary voters of the day decided that they had been well served, and gave Lincoln his second term.
I believe that there are lots of ordinary voters – the silent majority – who are finally beginning to seriously think about the implications of what is happening in this country.
You won’t see their opinions in letters to the editor, or in opinion polls, or reflected through the lens of the punditocracy or the political establishment, left and right. But they are out there, thinking.
“Is this mess what we want for our future?” they are saying. Who should lead us in this time of desperate trial. They aren’t deserting President Obama.
Will I be right or wrong about 2012? No one knows.
As my friends know, in 2008 I supported Hillary Clinton for President until she conceded the nomination. I thought she had the greatest and best experience to succeed at the job.
This time around, assuming he stays true to his performance so far, my support for President Obama is assured.

#410 – Dick Bernard: 2 days to Default. A tentative agreement.

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As of Sunday evening, a tentative agreement has been reached to resolve the stalemate in Washington. Ordinarily, such announcements are not made without a high degree of certainty that all parties will agree to the terms agreed to. Soon we shall see. There are plenty of loose cannons who need to ratify the results, first.
There are two safe predictions, regardless of whether or not the compromise actually passes and averts a shutdown:
1. The Principals to the deal will all say they wanted more of whatever they wanted.
2. The Spectators who actually comment on the deal from the outside will say it’s a rotten deal for certain specific reasons, and that their particular target should have done more, or less, or nothing at all.
While difficult to imagine the rationale they’ll use, some will declare victory over the evil-other….
Included in one of the endless pieces of e-mail in my inbox when we returned from vacation on Saturday was this most interesting information link about “government spending”. This is a particularly relevant document for this time in our national and state history. (If you’re just skimming things, it’s simply a list of 102 common things on which government spends money.)
A week or so before I saw the preceding item, someone my age, who has thus been long enrolled on Medicare and most likely on Social Security as well, sent me one of those ubiquitous pieces of anti-Obama hate mail circulating on the internet. This particular one purportedly quoted that renowned expert on “Obamacare”, Donald Trump, and, whether true or not, related the litany of the anti-government anti-Obama crowd against universal health care for everyone.
I wrote the gentleman back, saying as follows: “Before I saw this one, I was thinking: why don’t all complainers about government make an estimate of how much government could be gotten rid of, say, 10%, 90%, all of it…. First you pick the number. Then, if you’re serious, make a list of EVERYTHING that comes to you as a government benefit – like a freeway – and decide which one of those benefits you’ll get rid of. Rather than taking away somebody elses benefit, take away your own, first.”
He hasn’t responded, unless a response is considered to be his forwards, without comment, of several more pieces of anti-Obama hate-mail churned out by the anti-Obama assembly line.
One of these forwards was a cartoon I’ve seen before, which has a bunch of sinister looking vulture-like birds sitting on a pyramid like perch, each level befouling the one below. It was labelled “The Political Flowchart”
At the top was the President of the United States (of course);
next rung down a few labelled “Democrats” and “Republicans”;
then a few more, still lower, labelled “State Politicians”;
then on the last and lowest and most befouled perch the “American People”, the purported victims of government.
The narration continued: “When top level guys look down, they see only shitheads. When bottom level guys look up they see only assholes.”
Crude, but cute.
I wrote back:
“Perhaps you might consider sending [my response] along to your entire list, as well as the person who sent it to you in the first place.
I would propose that the flow chart be upended, so that the American People are at the top of the chart, etc.
After all, it is the American People who are solely responsible for who they elect, either by voting, or not voting at all. We are not a dictatorship.
Congress, in my opinion, and state legislatures, best reflect either our wisdom or stupidity in voting. Deal with your state legislators and the Congressperson from your district. How wonderful are they?
President Obama is doing an outstanding job in an impossible environment, especially with ‘crap’ like this which flows incessantly, and speaks profoundly about the people who choose to pass it along and thus apparently believe it.”
“We the people” authored this disastrous mess in which we find ourselves. It has taken years to reach this point.
Regardless of point of view, it’s time to go to work and become leaders to built a society we can be proud of.
And read “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” by Naomi Klein.

#401 – Dick Bernard: Day 13 of Minnesota Shutdown; Day 20 till Default in Washington D.C. A Letter and a Public Appearance

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We live in the lower-priced end of our suburb which pretty consistently ranks as one of the best places to live in the U.S. Monday we were at one of the busiest intersections in our town and saw a new sign next to a local liquor store:

In the Minneapolis paper today an interesting bulletin directly related to the Shutdown. This brought some on-line repartee between friends about beer riots ending the Shutdown, constructing an OK Corral for gunslingers, and on and on. Sometime you need to take a timeout for the sake of sanity.
In an understated way, at least to this point, we are well into the world of ‘crazy’ in Minnesota, with the situation in Washington and in neighboring Wisconsin not far behind. The voters – those who cast ballots, and those who didn’t bother to show up to vote in 2010 – have brought this on themselves.
But it is a hard sell to convince people that they are cause in this matter of political disaster. It is much easier to label “politicians”, or some amorphous “them”, or “liberals” or such as the problem. We will rue the day.
Quite by accident, this day, I scored a ‘twofer’.
A Letter to the Editor I had submitted a couple of weeks ago to the local paper will be published this day. It speaks of my local Senator and Representative, newly elected Freshmen Republicans, who have, best as I can tell at this point, been loyal supporters of the till-death without compromise shutdown ordained by their party leadership. Our Representative, a prim and pleasant suburban homemaker, distinguished herself mostly in this session by a liberalization of gun laws (probably without much personal enthusiasm, but it came out of her committee and I doubt she had much choice in whether to vote the issue up or down. I’ll think of her each time I see this gun shop in our high-class town.)
The war continues.
Earlier today I had the totally unexpected opportunity to be one of five speakers representing the DFL (Democratic Party) about the Minnesota shutdown at this point in time.
My remarks to four tv cameras and several journalists for public release are below and are not necessarily distinguished, but that isn’t what I noted about this exercise.
When given the opportunity I had to distill my thoughts into a very brief presentation (here DFLSCStatementJul132011), and in the process try to represent the totality of hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans who in one way or another share my demographic (senior citizen) and political point of view (Democrat). Believe me it is not easy. Luckily, the timeline was so short that no one could or did look over my shoulder and insist on modifications or veto what I was going to say. It is me, trying to represent my demographic, which I think I know pretty well. I needed to try to distill how I saw the very large number of people I was representing. Afterwards I got some very sincere compliments. I got some silence, too, which probably meant ‘too soft’, or you shouldn’t have said THAT. Such is how it goes. (Update July 16: if interested in seeing my two seconds of fame, it’s here, about five minutes into Almanac on the local PBS affiliate.)
We are a bitterly polarized society, and unless we figure out how to work with rather than against each other our slide downhill is going to accelerate.
And, by the way, I have great respect for the President of the United States, and the Governor of Minnesota, trying to get people together in a most troubling time.

Dick Bernard in blue shirt at right at the State Capitol, July 13, 2011.

#394 – Dick Bernard: Day Four of the Minnesota Shutdown. A Parade. In a time of orchestrated hate, I'm Liberal, and proud of it.

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July 4 UPDATE at end
Directly related: June 27, here.
The hate mail about President Obama is starting to come more frequently into my e-mail in box. Predictably (and falsely) Governor Dayton is already being blamed for the Minnesota budget stalemate. It is reported that some Republican legislators jeered him when he announced the shutdown last Thursday night at the Capitol.
No class.
It must be the 4th of July.
We’ll likely do, today, what we most always do: go to the town parade in Afton a few miles east of here. It’s a quaint parade you can watch twice if you wish, since the units double back down the same main street.
There will be a color guard, and we’ll stand, and I’ll doff my Vets for Peace hat, then will come the usual. This is an off-year politically, so I don’t expect a lot of politicians. There will probably be even fewer than usual since they’d probably rather not be too out in the open, this soon after the shutdown. We’re nice people here, and there’ll likely be no hissing or such, but I still don’t think the usual complement of politicos will be on the main street. If we go, I’ll report back on what I observe.
I am interested in the hate mail (that’s exactly what it is). Usually it comes via people who I know, who are generally in my age range. Rarely does any personal message come with these “forwards”, so I don’t know why they are being forwarded to me. Sometimes, I think, they are interested in what I might think of this or that. But I don’t know that, usually.
My policy has become to respond, each and every time. The most recent one was an insulting parody of the oldie “Casey at the Bat”. There was no message whatsoever other than an insult of Obama.
I happen to be proud of the President, and I say so. He’s doing a great job under far less than good conditions.
I can make the same comments about Governor Dayton in my state.
We are a country filled with seething bitterness, most of it taught. It is not healthy…for us.
Last evening we watched a special about the complexities of Abraham Lincoln’s early political career and the relationship of he and his wife. In the 1860 election he won the presidency with 40% of the vote, and after he was elected 7 states seceded from the Union. And he’s the most revered President in our history…I believe the first Republican President. It could be argued that he opened the door for President Obama through the Emancipation Proclamation.
Succinctly, Lincolns political career has a lot of similarities to Barack Obama’s.
A friend’s letter to the editor in the June 30, 2011, Minneapolis Star Tribune says it as well as anything I’ve seen:
“A June 29 letter writer claims that Barack Obama “was the most inexperienced president the United States has ever elected.
Actually, Obama’s eight years in the Illinois Legislature, during which he sponsored more than 800 bills, and his two years in the U.S. Senate are similar to Abraham Lincoln’s eight years in the Illinois legislature and two years in the U.S. House of Representatives. Rather than looking at years in office, I prefer to look at a candidate’s understanding of public policy and his or her positions on what those policies should be.”
Joyce Denn, Woodbury
I probably can’t change the angry e-mailer attitudes. It’s a free country and they can vent all they want, whether through cartoons, parodies or out and out lies.
But that doesn’t mean I’m going to cower in a corner and pretend I’m something I’m not.
Liberals are demonized too. And I’m one of them, and I’m proud of what I am. We’re good, solid, upstanding people.
Do I know people on the left who are prone to sending insults and engaging in ugly behavior too? Of course I do. Probably roughly in the same proportion as on the right. But they don’t have the financial backing to spread their insults as broadly.
Money does talk, very, very loudly.
Have a good 4th, and work towards a renewal of respectful political discourse.
Politics was tough in Lincoln’s day, too. But they did debate respectfully, or so I hear.
Other recent and related posts can be accessed here.
UPDATE
Just back from the Afton Parade. From all appearances, more spectators than previous years. There was not a single unit that featured political leaders. Normally there’d be up to a half dozen. One very angry looking guy drove a red Corvette on which he’d draped two “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, without any explanation. If he had a message no one could figure out what it was.
A guy about my age struck up a conversation. He mentioned that one of their daughters works in a program for fetal alcohol syndrome that is dependent on state funds, and she is on furlough. Enroute home we noticed that the ubiquitous signs for the Minnesota Lottery were lights out: the Lottery has been suspended.
Everybody was very polite to everybody else. I think we all know we’re in a rotten kettle.
Tomorrow the holiday is over, and we all need to get to work.

Afton MN July 4 Parade. Color Guard.

#387 – Dick Bernard: Politics, the business of talking and listening and seeking agreement when agreement doesn't seem possible.

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Last night I watched President Obama’s thirteen minute address to the nation on Afghanistan.
I felt it was a thoughtful speech, and it takes no long leap to state that every word, every inflection, everything, was very, very carefully put together for presentation to a diverse and immense world-wide audience including friends and enemies alike. This was not some soapbox kind of oration. Words do matter. Even its brevity fit within YouTube standards (which, in turn, fit within our national attention span, which is, regrettably, very short.)
We watched the address within our usual news show, and a 13 minute speech doesn’t do much damage to an hour program, so, of course, the end of the speech was followed by the grave analysis of what the President said, or didn’t say, or should have said, etc. All of this was to be expected. Ditto the commentaries that will flood the internet, etc., etc., etc.
I respected the analysts last night, but I didn’t stick around to hear their very predictable analysis. They were there to buttress their ‘truth’ as they perceive it to be. If only every one felt the same.
The speech came after a rather significant ten or so days for this individual blogger.
Included was a very respectful hour on a recent Saturday with Sen. Al Franken, his aide, and 20 of us, sharing views on critical issues like Israel/Palestine; Afghanistan draw-down; military spending. Sen. Franken gave us an hour of his time – a rather precious commodity when his constituency is 5 million people. You learn quickly that a focused hour is a very short period of time, and about the best you can expect – which is the best of all – is an opportunity to take the measure of each others feelings, thoughts and perhaps, even, gaps in information, including in one’s own information. Twenty different sets of ears, even if ideologically in general agreement, hear the exact same thing in twenty different ways. Imagine how complex it becomes at President Obama’s level, or at Senator Franken’s.
(click on photo to enlarge)

MN Sen. Al Franken, June 11, 2011


A couple of days later I listened to a briefing by three Minnesota State Legislators giving their views of the intense negotiations now taking place to avoid a government shutdown on June 30. Again, these were ‘birds of a feather’ – people I would ideologically agree with, though not from my district. In assorted ways they conveyed the complexities of the issues to be addressed.
“Reform” is an oft-bandied about term, and one gets the sense that most of us are in favor of reform only if it makes our position stronger; we rail against it if we fear it will weaken our relative position. Of course, politics enters in to these conversations, and negotiations of differences in a fishbowl is a contemporary reality that (even coming from a proponent of open government) leaves something to be desired.
There is something to be said for being forced to sit together, privately, until something is resolved that both sides can own.

Legislators briefing citizens June 13, 2011


There were several more meetings on substantive things these past ten days. At each, the result was the same: if you sit with others of different views, you can learn something. But you can’t isolate yourself with ‘birds of a feather’ and expect to either possess the ‘truth’ or to prevail in your argument within a larger society.
The day before President Obama’s speech, two of us met with a young woman, a Senior this fall at Swarthmore College, who has taken on a most interesting task for a senior thesis: to talk to people about how they talk about our involvement in Iraq, past and present. Allison is a young person from both conservative and liberal roots in a rural midwestern state, going to a College in a major eastern city. She is involved in what I believe is a major project of major importance to us all.
If we can’t listen to and value and learn from each others opinions, how can we expect to resolve anything, politically or otherwise?

#364 – Dick Bernard: "The Wicked Witch is Dead" The killing of Osama bin Laden

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I wrote a friend a bit earlier this evening saying I probably wouldn’t comment on the killing of Osama bin Laden a day ago.
I’ve changed my mind…a little.
All day I kept thinking about the hit song from Wizard of Oz, “The Wicked Witch is Dead”. There are endless analyses of what L. Frank Baum, author of
“A Wonderful Wizard of Oz” in 1900, might have been trying to convey in his characters and his story. I won’t enter that fray. The song did keep coming back to me.
The crowds celebrating the death of bin Laden last night and today reinforced the celebratory nature of the song.
Speaking just for myself, I believe President Obama picked the best of the bad options, and took a huge risk in opting for the mission into Pakistan. Close in mind was President Carter’s failed attempt to spring the hostages in Iran in 1979. So much is out of control in such missions.
This mission succeeded, with unknown future ramifications.
Oh that such decisions were to be easy.
I thought back to an uncomfortable conversation at the Nobel Peace Prize Festival a year ago.
At the neighboring table in the display area was a man, an Indian from India, who was a long-time and close advisor of Gandhi’s grandson. He was helping a friend of mine with her book selling.
It would be fair to say that he was extraordinary in all ways, including intensity. There was no escape from at least considering his line of reasoning. He didn’t expect agreement, nor did it seem that he necessarily even wanted agreement, but neither was it easy to wiggle-waffle around. He much preferred that the person be eye-to-eye and deal with whatever the topic might be.
He told me a little about himself, and then he circled round and presented a scenario, which I remember to be something like this: you are on your property, and you are approached by someone who you know to be very dangerous. You have a weapon, but you believe completely in non-violence. The person approaches the fence and shows every indication of doing violence not only to you, but to everyone else who also occupies your space.
“What do you do?“, he asked me.
I really had no idea what to say. By now, I was caught up in who he was, and who he represented, and what his life philosophy had to be, given he was apparently a disciple of Gandhi.
“What would he say?” I asked myself, hoping to give him an answer he himself would have given.
He knew I couldn’t figure out what to say, and he had me.
After an appropriate silence he gave his answer: “you must kill the invader if you can, because if you do not, he will do infinitely more damage.”
On one level his comment made sense.
On another, it still troubled me greatly.
But it seems to apply to the issue of the death of Osama bin Laden, though the long term implications of bin Laden, and war generally, is many degrees more serious, and no one knows for sure the future.
I’m troubled that people cheer on the news that somebody was killed.
On the other hand….