A Time to FIGHT Reclaiming a Fair and Just America
By Jim Webb UNITED STATES SENATOR to provoke a thought or two
"Where are the leaders?" Webb asks. "Has our political process become so compromised by powerful interest groups and the threat of character assassination that even the best among us will not dare to speak honestly about solutions that might bring us back to common sense and fundamental fairness?"
There are certainly thousands of people all around the country who have at one time made a speech on Memorial Day, or to the local Kiwanis, and afterward have been greeted by people who were present in the audience shaking you hand and saying, "Great words. You should run for office! I'd vote for you."
But the truth of modern American politics is that great speech you just made, or the issue you just talked about, is not very often going to be where your campaign will be fought if you decide to run. Your opponent's media advisers and opposition researchers are going to throw something else - often something manufactured from half-truths, akin to what the Soviet propagandists used to call disinformation - onto the airwaves, night after night, week after week, to remind prospective voters of what a danger you supposedly are to all that America holds dear.
If you opponent is an incumbent, particularly an incumbent who has been careful in his or her voting patterns and in the cultivation of powerful interest groups, you will be facing someone's multi million-dollar campaign chest who is capable of a massive media assault that will, in the parlance, "define" you as a pretty slimy human being.
With all the clutter on the political radar screen, the average voter either becomes disgusted or decides to vote for whichever candidate seems capable of doing the least harm.
This is how aristocracies, however we may wish to define them, retain their power.
And it is also how interest groups thwart meaningful change.
What we brought to the political arena was a strong belief that it was time for the Reagan Democrats to return to their worker-oriented Jackson roots, and a message that I care deeply about, which we conveyed with relentless discipline. It is a message that I believe should be a continuing part of national debate, and in fact should become the core message of a revitalized Democrat Party. I've said many times that this nation is going through a sea change in terms of party politics and that old labels simply don't work anymore. What does it mean to be liberal or conservative, I would ask, the the neo-conservatives, supposedly on the right, are so far left that they are spouting Trotskyite nonsense about exporting American ideology at the point of a gun? The political cards are being shuffled all across this country. Good, well-meaning people have watched their government flub things up, from Iraq to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Americans want better leadership. And they want new approaches.
The Karl Rove approach to politics is brutally simple and, let me say from personal experience, simply brutal.
Damaging an opponent's reputation is more important than contradicting him on issues. Hit the the other candidate where he is perceived to be strong. Cancel out his positives. Sow the seeds of doubt. Create a mind-set among the public that he really does not understand the average American and that he cannot be trusted. Take away his personal credibility. In the process, "define" him as an out-of-touch, sneaky, dirtybag sleaze.
Here's a reminder for those at the very pinnacle of power, wealth, and influence in our society: Life as we know it in this country is more fragile than we might want to think. Without the people who do the hard work of our society, those who are at the top couldn't even buy their food, or get rid of their trash, or fix the pothole in the road they drive to work on. In other words, you depend on them and you cannot succeed without them. And without a true sense of societal fairness, the America we have created would in a short time unravel and disappear.
I was seventeen years old before I had my first "man-to-man talk" with Uncle Tommy. I had been a boxer for several years by then, and he, having been among other things a "packing house pro" fighter in his youth, showed me a move or two, still powerfully built and agile in his fifties. After a while, I had a chance to ask him what he was proudest of in all the things he had done in his life.
Tommy didn't hesitate, and every time I faced a crisis of honor in my adult life his words have come back to me:
"I've never kissed the ass of any man."
I saw much more of the face of America during my time as a Marine. No system is perfect, and few humans are without some ethnic predispositions, usually involving a fundamental desire to protect one's own. But the military at itsw best creates a special form of fusion among its members, and the Marine Corps among all the branches of service has throughout its history been able to create a cohesion that lasts for a lifetime once a young man or woman earns the title of Marine. But at the same time, no one checks their cultural history at the door when they put on a Marine Corps uniform. In fact, comparing ethnic backgrounds and discussing life "before the Corps" is an ancient, favorite pastime of all Marines.
But when the flak jackets and helmets went on, when the bandoliers of ammo were strapped around their bodies, when grenades were stuffed into their pockets, when patrols went out or when fighting holes were manned at night, they were all business. They were in Vietnam, and they were all Marines. They had learned to work together, to take care of each other, and to serve a common good. And no matter what else they would do in their lives, they would always carry with then that one additional word, that identifier that in many ways transcends, and in other ways complements, their ethnic backgrounds: Marine.
The freewheeling internationalization of corporate America in the age of globalization has resulted in the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs to overseas locations, even as the executives of American corporations have been rewarded with historically unprecedented compensation packages.
The death-knell of the republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor alike, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as opposed to the interests of others.
Workers incomes in America have been disturbingly and demonstrably declining as a percentage of our national wealth. In August 2007, the Internal Revenue Service reported that average incomes in this country have been lower during every year of the Bush Administration than they in the year before his presidency began, a phenomenon not seen in modern times till now.
the top 1 percent of our population also owns more than half our stocks, making the stock market a poor indicator of the overall economic health of our society, but a pretty good indicator of how top 1 percent is doing.
Teddy Roosevelt warned us of the implications of such disparities toward the end of his famous 1903 Labor Day speech.
He said this:
In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been soften and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole. Again and again in the republics of ancient Greece, in those of medieval Italy and medieval Flanders, this tendency was shown, and whatever the tendency became a habit it invariably proved fatal to the state. In the final result, it mattered not one whit whether the movement was in favor of one class or of another.
We must act upon the motto of all for each and each for all. . .We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.
The average corporate executive now makes more in a day than his or her workers do in a year. This vastly increased disparity is not simply a by-product of globalization, for it were, we would be seeing it in the multiples of chief executive officer compensation in other 'first world' nation.
We should measure the health of our society not at the apex but at its base.
Those who are aligned with the terrorist movement, whether logistically or in a training environment or operationally, should be considered legitimate targets and should not be spared. But random bombings and the deliberate destruction of populated areas without a connection should be avoided. Over the long term this approach would deny terrorist armies not only their support base, but also their present justification that the United States and its allies are conducting a broad war against Muslim people.
Do not occupy territory
The terrorist armies make no claim to be members of any nation-state. Similarly, it would be militarily and politically dangerous for our military to operate from permanent or semi-permanent bases, or to declare that we are defending specific pieces of terrain in the regions where the terrorist armies live and train. We already have terrain to defend - the United States and our outposts overseas - and we cannot afford to expand this terrority in a manner that would simply give the enemy more targets.
"It seemed that every lapel now sported an American flag pin, as if this conscious display were mandatory to ward off accusations of disloyalty."
Semper Fidelis
Ricardo
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