Wednesday, October 22, 2008

The People? Nah.


The People? No.

Since the Great Depression politicians, poets, and folkies have found their populist voice in overtures, ballads, and oratories of, by, for, and to the people -- or "the people, yes" as Carl Sandburg wrote in riffing Whitman and Ma Joad echoed in the Grapes of Wrath. Our our present official worst-since-the-Depression rhapsody we too have been quick to demonize the wealth barrons of our tines. It's not a tropical depression. It's not a foreign invader. It's a force of human nature so the benders and shapers of blame and innocence are working overtime to establish the ground rules of the new rhetoric. But the countervaling hedge against evil? It's not so simple anymore.

Even within the Bill Moyers Bastion the discussion separated "the middle class" from "workers." Can you imagine FDR parsing the flegling suburbanites of his day from the truck drivers and the janitors? In our day the dissection is complete. Look at the language of Obama. In Berlin this summer we were "a people of improbable hope." This is a level of obtuse meaning that would cause any self-respecting rabble-rouser to button up their own mute buttons. That doesn't mean Obama can't raise consciousness or crowds. But it does mean that we are long past the barricades of bifurcation.

In November 1968 the great polarizing President-elect promised to "bring us together." Even in his most unifying of moments President Obama knows what a hollow note this would sound -- to supporters and detractors alike.

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