This post wants nothing from you. You don’t have to yell or scream, or refute your core beliefs, or get mad as hell and swear you’re not going to take it anymore, or shoot holes in my argument, or even submit your email and create a password. It’s just a little slice of life, followed by a little editorial, and it won’t hurt you, even if you don’t agree with it’s point-of-view. I don’t want anybody to eat anybody. I just want everybody to be happy. Really. And I’ll be back to writing about cute dogs and pretty flowers and precocious children again before you know it.
This is the little slice of life part: I shared two posts on my Facebook page yesterday that were about politics. One post was a share of a Huffington Post report (such a silly name, Huffington) which suggested, as I believe right now, that Bernie Sanders has a legitimate chance to be elected President next year. They had polls and stuff to back it up. We don’t have that kind of technology here at Duffy’s Creek, but we do have fresh broccoli growing next to the garage, which I bet The Huffington Post doesn’t have. The other post was about a trained paramedic who makes $15 an hour, who suggested that fast-food workers are entitled to make the same $15 an hour even without his prerequisite skills because it would in effect force his employer to eventually pay him more, the same employer that sends out emails to the $15 an hour paramedic to tell him how great they’re doing and how much money they’re making. I suggested that this guy’s realization was proof that, in the words of the great Joe Torre, “the goddamn worm is starting to turn.”
A couple of people who I know think the same way as I do threw me a couple of likes when I checked back on the posts after going to the pool, and buying two grape slurpees at the 7-11, and picking up fresh meat and produce from the Hudson Valley out of the back of an SUV in a church parking lot. (I live a full and rich life) . But later, as I was staring at the garden and The Dude was up in his man cave, I got to thinking about my previous forays into political debate on facebook, and I said, “uh-oh” and I deleted the posts.
But then, because I’m OCD and I can’t leave well enough alone, I posted an explanation of why I deleted the posts. And because I’m OCD and I can’t leave well enough alone, I’ll probably delete the explanation later. Here’s what I wrote:
I posted some political stuff today. Then I took it down. Last time I got going on Presidential politics I got some folks upset. Something about the joy of watching a certain guy get caught speaking his mind among his rich friends. The guy who strapped his dog to the roof of the car. Don’t remember his name. Anyway, my philosophy on Facebook sharing since then is it should be the stuff you’d tell people at a backyard barbecue, not from a barstool, ya know? I’m going to hold to that. No politics from me on Facebook. I’m a far-left, pro-union borderline socialist bleeding-heart liberal ’cause that’s the way Mom and Dad raised me. Surprise, surprise. Oh, and screw Facebook. I have a blog. If you want to know what I think, you’ll have to up my clicks on wordpress when I put up a tease. It ain’t all gonna be flowers, therapy dogs and poignant parenting stories, especially when this thing starts getting ugly. I’m voting for Bernie Sanders, and he’s going to need my help, but you don’t need to hear about it, unless you want to. Time to cook dinner. I won’t be posting a picture of it. smile emoticon
That was cool! I copy/pasted the smile at the end of my rant and it came up “smile emoticon”! You can get away with saying all sorts of things if you follow them with a smile emoticon. Anyway, as you see, I have some history with this stuff. I know people whose politics are as much learned from their parents and heritage as mine are from mine (fun with pronouns, there) and I like those people just fine and I don’t want anyone to be mad at me, ever, for anything. And when I started shooting arrows at…oh what’s his name…Moose? Ripley? (Thanks, Steven Colbert) it started a whole ugly back and forth and I began to realize that Facebook is a really good place to post pictures of your dog and yourself on a ferris wheel and a really bad place to forward your political beliefs. But I know lots of people who do it, on both sides of the Little Civil War we’re all having. And really, I want them to keep doing it. Because I don’t tell other people what to do unless I’m getting paid to. And unlike myself, often they manage to do it in a less snarky way than I would have.
And that’s my problem. And everybody’s problem, more and more. I was taught, wrongly, that in a political debate you go in for the kill and you take no prisoners; that it’s as much about proving the other person wrong and proving yourself right as it is about an exchange of ideas. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that this is an awful, un-Jesus-like way to be. Apparently, many people my age haven’t gotten older. I may feel very strongly about my political beliefs, but I’ve come to feel equally strongly that there’s no need to shove them in people’s faces. It’s impolite. Chris Christie is the sitting Governor of New Jersey and he says he wants to punch the leader of the American Federation of Teachers in the face. He was responding to a question that some talking head on a news show asked him, which I find incredulous. The question was, “who would you like to punch in the face?”. Why would you ask that question to a Presidential candidate? Did Christie’s people get to the guy before the interview and say, “Hey! Ask him who he’d punch in the face! It’ll be great!” And then I read the quote that came out of that useless orifice he has there, and I say to the newspaper: “Oh yeah! Well when you cut yourself shaving, fat boy, gravy comes out. You’re running for President? You couldn’t even run to the bathroom to lose that last ten pounds of red meat you just sucked through a freakin’ straw you disgusting, inert mass of lipids. You wouldn’t even be able to lift your arm to throw the punch. You’d fall forward and be like a goddamn weeble wobbling on the floor until they sent fifteen of your empty-headed people scrambling in to hoist your fat ass back up with a rope and a pulley.”
You see? He got me. I was goaded, and I went in for the kill with a personal attack that has nothing to do with our disagreement of the role of teacher’s unions. (of course, neither does threatening to punch somebody in the face). And when the other idiot with the hair started talking trash about Mexicans, the best we all they could have done was not give him a second of airtime. Not a second. Why would anyone dignify such hateful, vile words? I first heard it with my son in the car at 4:30 in the afternoon and switched off the radio as quickly as I could. The Dude asked me why. I said, because the guy who was talking is a piece of garbage and he doesn’t deserve a single cell of my attention span.
But he got hours and hours and hours of coverage, and everyone on one side said, “Yeah. Immigrants. That’s the problem. See? He said so.” And everyone on the other side started trying to punish the ignorant bastard and take away his toys because they’re all shocked that a jerk would say something jerky if put in front of cameras and a microphone. And he obviously loved every minute of it.
I recently read a great quote from Pedro Martinez when he was being elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Some reporter was goading him into responding to some backwater radio commentator who had something nasty to say about Dominican baseball players. I don’t know what the radio idiot said, but Pedro responded by saying, “I only discuss things like that with intelligent people.” And it’s not like Pedro doesn’t understand winning and losing. He is the owner of the single best baseball quote of all time. When they asked him about the “Curse of the Bambino” that kept the Red Sox from winning the World Series for 80 years, he said, “I’m going to dig the Bambino up and drill him in the ass.” The man understands that a baseball diamond is a good place for no-holds-barred competition, not to mention colorful trash-talking, but it has no place in real life. When we’re trying to figure out where everybody fits in this world, there shouldn’t be any thought given to who wins and who loses. We should try to figure out how everyone wins.
But the politicians get worse and worse. Even Obama, who has for the most part stayed above the fray – sometimes to his detriment – has referred to politics as a “blood sport.” What the hell does that mean? Why do they insist on perpetuating this ugliness? And why do I have to hear about buffoons like Donald Trump and Chris Christie just because I stay in touch with current events? (Even if I stick to NPR). If they want to run for President, fine. Go ahead. But if your rhetoric is obviously beneath the dignity of the office you aspire to, and said just for shock value, just to get yourself noticed, why would the media report it at all? I suppose they have to, but why do right-thinking people then feel the need to react to or counter these statements at all? Why not just say, “I only discuss things like that with intelligent people.” What exactly do petulant little gobs of snot with money burning holes in their pockets, who decide they can get a lot of the attention they so desperately crave by running for President, really have to do with the state of the world until the day they’re actually standing in a general election and can directly affect the destinies of the immigrants and schoolteachers (and immigrant schoolteachers) that they openly hate?
But they keep churning it out, they do, both the politicians and the media that covers them. And we keep slobbering it up. It seems a bit contrived doesn’t it? Like it’s being done on purpose. You think? They shove all this garbage at us because we all love to keep hearing it, so people on one side can own new nasty little talking points and people on the other side can let loose and take no prisoners like I just did to Fat Ass and Escalator Man. (Besides, if you asked me who I’d like to punch in the face, I’d have to go with Andrew Cuomo first anyway. I have my reasons). And though it felt very good when I was writing it, It’s ultimately pointless, not to mention toxic. But the Little Civil War looks like it’s just going to go on and on and it’s never going to stop. Unless, of course, intelligent people who are more interested in governing than in putting on a show are elected into positions of power. And, of course, the endless cycle of stupid could be broken if the media was run by intelligent people more interested in informing the public than in stoking the dark underbelly of people’s fears, or treating political issues with the depth of a kiddie pool. They’re supposed to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” (Finley Peter Dunne. Never heard of him).
They do the exact opposite now. They afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable.
So as I was saying, it’s just not going to stop.
But it stops on my Facebook page. And it stops on my TV, and my Twitter feed, and in my newspaper, ’cause I decide what I pay attention to. My ultimate goal is peace of mind and contentment. You can’t get there when you’re covered in slime. At least I can’t. I’m OCD. Less garbage in. That’s my plan. Following the Mets is stressful enough.
I’m going to miss Jon Stewart. He was and forever will be the absolute best at ripping the masks off the pretenders, parsing their insipid sound bites and reminding us of how much shit they think we’ll eat, and why we’re too smart to bite. But I understand that he’s sick of it. I’m sick of watching him do it. It’s funny because it’s our old crazy friend Jon, doing the Mitch McConnell turtle and the Lindsey Graham southern bell and The Dick Chaney growl. But it’s gotten to the point where it’s really not funny anymore, because this country is truly suffering from the incivility. As the mother-in-law character in “Field of Dreams” said when she couldn’t see the baseball players, “I don’t think it’s very polite…try’na make other people feel stupid.”
Therefore, I’ve decided to write a little manifesto, a little treatise, of what I believe, and how the two people whose images grace the top of this post, who are losing me followers as you read this, are the best embodiment of the direction in which I would like to see my country headed. Then I’m going to shut way up until the General Election. This is the editorial part. I am not asking you to slap me on the virtual back and tell me how much you agree with me or to slap upside the back of the virtual head and tell me how much you disagree with me. If you would like to write a post on your blog about how John Duffy does not know what the hell he’s talking about, I would not be offended in any way. I’d probably enjoy it, and most likely agree on many points. So I hope you will not be offended in any way by my sharing the beliefs that my parents instilled in me, and that I have taken to heart through my own empirical experience of walking through this world for 52 years. Here’s what I think:
- I think that everyone has a vested interest in everyone else’s success. If I do better, you do better, and vice versa. Competition is wonderful when you’re playing tennis, or Boggle, but it’s somewhat unhealthy when it determines whether somebody eats or has a home. If I have a big slice of the pie, and you have a big slice of the pie, then we both have more pie than we need, so we can sell some pie, so we can buy ingredients to bake more pie, or if we already have the ingredients to bake the next pie, we can give some pie to someone who has no pie at all, so they can have some pie, too, because when they get their own little slice of the pie, they’ll share their pie with somebody else, because we shared our pie with them. And on and on. There’s enough pie for everybody, and we have the ability to make lots and lots of pie. So there’s no good reason for the richest country on Earth to make it difficult for people to have a slice of the pie. The people with all the pie who won’t share it say, “Let them eat cake.” But cake is not as good for you as pie. The cake is the nonsense they throw at us to distract us, the “shiny objects” if you will: Empty calories and celebrity gossip. Pure sugar and “Mission Impossible”. If you eat too much of it, you get sick. But the pie is education and healthcare and family leave and affordable housing and day care and social security and veterans benefits and food stamps and home ownership and playgrounds and swimming pools and school clubs all the other things that can lead to a better life for a lot of people. And I truly believe that there is enough for everyone, and anyone who tells you differently is working for someone who wants to keep more pie than they should fairly be allowed to. and has conveniently forgotten that we are all connected. Or sees that he could help and nevertheless couldn’t really give a rat if you have any pie at all.
- I believe in the strength of diversity. I used to didn’t. I grew up in a segregated town that itself grew up to be unsegregated, and I went through the learning curve right along with it. My parents taught me not to hate, but I heard a lot of “us vs. them” around Valley Stream growing up. But I know now that there are two kinds of people in this world: People who believe that there are two kinds of people in this world and people who know better. I had a next-door neighbor from hell once upon a time. She was pasty-colored Irish just like me. She was a real estate agent, and she bragged that she was steering people of color away from houses that were for sale in our neighborhood. (This was in New York in 2005. Thought I’d point that out). She and her family did lots of obnoxious things and no one was sorry when they finally left. In one of her parting shots to me, she said, “enjoy the trash that’s moving in here.” Later, I related this quote verbatim to my other next-door neighbor, a hard-working, good-hearted, responsible husband and father of three who was born in The Philippines, who replied with a Buddah-like smile, “I guess I’m the trash that moved in.” If people leave their homes and family members behind to emigrate to this country, they must have a good reason, just like most American’s grandparents and great-grandparents did. Let’s find out what they came here for, and how they can contribute to everyone else’s success. And let’s not let the pie hogs start playing us against each other based on stereotypes. Nobody anywhere in this country should be falling for that crap anymore.
- I believe in the establishment of a maximum wage. Forget the minimum wage for a second. The real problem is a system where it’s OK to just keep taking and taking and taking. Because the more you’ve taken, the easier it is to keep taking some more. Exhibit A: The Wal-Mart business plan. As I have come to understand it, they pay people as little as they can get away with so they can sell cheap goods to people who work for other employers who pay the least amount possible, then they laugh all the way to the bank with billions of profits while the government, aka the taxpaying citizens, pay for food stamps and other subsidies to their workers, who can’t afford a pot to pee in with what Wal-Mart is paying them. Then the bubbleheads who work for the billionaire that owns Fox News tell you that the people on food stamps are stealing your money. Freaking brilliant. Exhibit B: There’s a small independent college called Paul Smiths College in the Adirondacks. A woman named Joan Weill, whose husband Sandy was the CEO of Citigroup, wants to pay the college $20 million to change the name of the college to Joan Weill Paul Smiths College. First of all, an act of hubris and superego of that magnitude would render Sigmund Freud dumbstruck. But more importantly, where did these people get $20 million to throw around in the first place? By systematically figuring out a way to take all the pie, and leave the rest of us with the crumbs. And I’m sure every bit of it was legal. Maybe if that $20 million had been fairly distributed in return for honest labor and productivity, the people who pay tuition to Paul Smiths College could be asked to chip in a little more, and they would. And Joan Weill would have just enough to maintain the insanely luxurious place she owns in the Adirondacks and would be happy enough to keep her name to herself.
And that’s why I think the time has come to burn down the mission, to redistribute the wealth and rebuild the ladder and the safety net; to “eat the rich” as it were. If that’s Socialism, then I’m a socialist. I believed all this before Occupy Wall Street. Before it was hip. What you take from society, you should give back in kind. If you’re successful, you got that way because you moved your goods and services on roads that were built for everybody, using everybody’s power and water. Maybe you even went to a public school. If you become rich in this country, you could have only done it on the backs of other people. And there’s nothing wrong with that as long as those people benefitted in some way while helping you get there. The ideas of the “self-made man” and “the job creators” would be laughable if people didn’t buy into them so freely. And if you turn around and try to deny others the same advantages you yourself used to get rich, you suck, and you deserve what’s coming to you.And here they come.
There are two politicians in this country who have addressed these issues bluntly and consistently: Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Obama has made a slight dent in the conversation, but he’s always been worried about choosing his words carefully, so it comes off as as more college professor than street fighter. Hillary is likable enough, but she’s too closely tied to the establishment. She talks the income inequality talk right now because Bernie has forced her into it. I’m sure she’s buddies with Sam Walton, as a matter of fact there’s a picture of them together right there. I’m sure she’s exchanged pleasantries with Sandy and Joan Weill. She takes a lot of money from the takers, who took all the money from you. She would obviously be the better choice if the general election were between her and any of the current Republican nominees, and she will probably win, firstly because the make-up of the Electoral College makes it almost impossible for a right-wing Republican to win a general election, and secondly because the Republicans will continue to talk non-stop until they’ve alienated and pissed off everyone except the extreme right wing, who are mostly angry because they’re a dying race.
Bernie is running for president. In a way, he has already won, because he forces Hillary to veer left. If her plan was to try and please everybody like her husband did, it’s not going to work this time. (see prison building, gun rights, draconian drug laws, defense of marriage act – loved ya Bill, but you were a goddamn suck-up, and a bit of creep). She needs to be a True Democrat, in the great tradition of the three great ones: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnston and My Mom. Or she needs to get out of the way.
And it’s possible, in my little dreamworld, that Bernie Sanders could actually beat Hillary and be the Democratic Nominee, because she plays it too safe, and she frustrates the base and they decide to go for broke. I’ve already made the decision to do just that.And if that happens, what a wonderful thing it would be if Bernie could get Elizabeth Warren to run with him as a Vice-Presidential candidate.
Besides being true to the Democratic Party traditions, there is something that those two people have in common, which is exactly what we need now. When they argue, they argue facts. They can easily dispel the myths of the “job creator” and the “too big to fail” banks. They can reveal the arguments against showing fairness and compassion towards your fellow man for the greedy ugliness that it all boils down to. They don’t throw shiny objects in your face to fool you into voting for them. They can tell you that people are being greedy without needing to vilify those people. They can show you why you are where you are, and what can be done to change it. They are not suggesting that anybody punch anybody in the face. They are suggesting changing the laws.
Of course they would hit the same gridlock as Obama has. But Obama has managed to significantly change the tone of this country if not the direction. People like that $15 an hour paramedic are starting to get it. We need to double down on that, we need to drive the point home that the rich are too rich and need to pay their fair share of taxes, and the corporations they control and hold stock in need to be regulated and monitored, so that the government has enough revenue to ensure the well-being and the equal rights of all its citizens. That is only asking what was more or less true of this country up until about forty years ago, when Nixon first tricked the people in the Deep South into voting against their interests by scaring them with liberal boogeymen. Then twenty years later, Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers. As far as fairness and income equality, it’s been all downhill from there, and that’s pretty much my entire adult lifespan. My parents didn’t have to live paycheck to paycheck. We do. 
If what Sanders and Warren are both suggesting is Socialism, then maybe Socialism is the way to go. Kurt Vonnegut had this to say, in a college commencement speech back in the 1970’s: “I suggest you work for a socialist form of government. Free enterprise is much too hard on the old and the sick and the poor and the stupid, and on the people nobody likes. They just can’t cut the mustard under Free Enterprise. They lack that certain something that Nelson Rockefeller, for instance, so abundantly has.”
I think that’s it in a nutshell. How you get people who can’t see the forest for the trees to understand this notion is something that I will have to leave to Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren, who I hope, for the good of the country, will combine forces. I will follow what they have to say and ignore the ignorant opposition for as long and as much as I can. And to this you say, oh – well – you’re doing exactly what they do – you’re just hearing what you want to hear and shutting out those who disagree with you. And to this I say, when I hear somebody on the right talking about anything else but cutting government, giving tax breaks to their buddies, defending their “traditional values” (of everyone in the restaurant being lily-white), breaking up labor unions, demonizing immigrants or bragging about who they’re going to punch in the face next, then I might tune in. Right now, they’re just blowing hot air, and I only discuss these things with intelligent people. When next Labor Day rolls around and the real election is at hand, I’ll be screaming my politics from the rooftop. And the Creek carries sound very well, so you’ll hear it. Until then, I will carry on with my life and hold to my beliefs in the way I live it. Though I will not – from this point forward- crawl down in the mud with the likes of the Christies and Trumps of this world, I will – in the words of a very smart fellow named Bruce Cockburn – “kick at the darkness ’till it screams daylight.”
A Creek Runs Through It 