The state of my political world

I haven't talked about politics in this space for a long time because, frankly, the state of politics in this country bores the shit out of me. My friend, David Palmer, has tried to get me involved in a couple different efforts in the last couple years. One of them was to help Rashida Tlaib in 2018. Another one was a project oriented around voting patterns and trying to use that info to help campaigns that we were interested in (like Rashida's, by and large.) And, y'know, I was willing to help, but I didn't do either effort any justice, mostly because I've become something of a political nihilist in the 15 years since I got out of regular activity.

When I helped build the Green Party in this state and was its chair for five years, I was still an activist. There were still principles that I was willing to work a second full-time job without pay for. There were principles that I was willing to ruin my marriage for (although that likely should have ended a lot sooner than it did, anyway.) I still hold those principles among the guiding truths of my life. But most other people don't give a shit. Quite honestly, most people didn't give a shit then, which is why I walked away from it, having burned out on doing most of the work myself because everyone else had better things to do when they weren't spending a couple hours a week in a local meeting, thinking that the more they talked, the closer the world came to suddenly transforming. When Tricia and I met up with David after a concert one night, he asked her: "So, what's it like living with an actual revolutionary?" We all laughed because it was kind of a joke. I laughed at least in part because I knew that almost everything I'd done was a complete waste of time. Most revolutionaries at least have the integrity to spend a long time in prison or be assassinated or something like that.

Both of Tricia's kids, Keller and Simone, are Bernie supporters. Being from the current generation, they recognize the obvious injustices of American society and understand, as much as they instinctively understand breathing, that things need to change. I don't know how much of my occasional ranting has influenced that outlook, if at all, since they both seem to have developed opinions on their own based on their open-minded view of society. I remember when Simone was in eighth grade and mentioned that a couple of her classmates had already declared themselves to be transgendered. I just shrugged, but I chuckled inwardly, trying to imagine any set of circumstances where I could've been at the age of 13 where anyone would even consider doing that, much less actually following through. There are many things that have changed for the better on a social level in the last 37 years. And, of course, there are many things that really haven't. Such is life.

But I was having a discussion with a guy I know on that Michigan board I've been hanging out on for 23 years. I don't even watch Michigan anymore, but I've known these people for a long time and they're still worth the conversation. He's a Biden supporter because he's a former Republican, appalled at the party's descent into Trumplandia, and he just wants to remove the game show host from the Oval Office. In other words, "anyone but Trump." That's not an unreasonable position and it's been supported with Biden's victories in most of the primaries and with his support from the DNC that Sanders has continually attacked and derided (possibly not the best strategy when trying to win the party's nomination, as a non-party member. Just sayin'.) But it's also emblematic of the status quo, which is essentially "put things back to where they were", pre-Trump.

Those of you who've listened to Mike Duncan's superb Revolutions podcast will have heard him regularly opine on the difference between a political revolution and a social revolution. The former is what founded this country. It was a bunch of wealthy, highly-educated, landholding White guys who objected to being denied any way to govern themselves and to having their money taken just because they weren't part of a few particular families. It wasn't about slavery or poverty or the inability to find a job or any other basic human right. It was mostly about money. I've always said that America was founded as a way to make money and it has never changed. This event was no different. These guys were part of the Haves in 18th century America, even if they didn't have the coat-of-arms to prove it back in the old country.

A social revolution is a very different animal. It's almost always initiated by the Have Nots who have been denied those basic rights, typically because the Haves have kept those things from them. Why? Because denial of basic rights usually makes money. This class division has existed throughout human history and the consequent revolutions have occurred whenever that chasm has gotten so wide that the Have Nots on one side of it see no way that they're ever going to close it without violence. And here we are.

The trigger event, in this case, may be a global pandemic, which has suddenly kickstarted conversation on topics that were formerly taboo. Could you imagine middle schoolers declaring themselves to be TG in 1985? 1995? Of course not. By the same token, could you imagine anyone talking about a universal basic income on the floor of Congress before the last couple weeks? Or seriously discussing national healthcare as a necessity, rather than a political prize? Or, for that matter, even envision the idea of Congress discussing just giving... money... to people.., that actually need it...? I can't. It violates so many tenets of the pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps America that it's hard to comprehend. It's absolute heresy to the give-more-money-to-the-rich-and-they'll-be-kind-and-generous religion. But those are the realities we're facing, as the trickle-down crowd shouts that grandma should be sacrificed to their ever-failing experiment, and they somehow fail to see that "the economy" also won't recover if a good chunk of the population ends up in mass graves instead of, y'know, buying shit on Amazon. And who is our hero to carry the banner of these new, transformative measures in society?!

Joe Biden.

Joe Biden, long-time senator from Delaware, the most corporate-friendly state in the Union. Joe Biden, scion of credit card companies and the leading supporter of the 2005 bankruptcy act that makes student loans non-dischargeable (You may have heard that that's a small issue to many young Americans and Democrats.) Joe Biden, vociferous proponent of both of George W. Bush's decades-long wars, which cost ungodly amounts of money. In many ways, Biden is the model, establishment Democrat. He's the perfect example of what I usually refer to as the "I got mine!" Democrats; giving lip service to a lot of issues, but only really following through on the ones that keep the status quo for the Almost Haves. You may know them as America's diminishing middle class. They have some money. They do OK. They're never going to be a Bezos or a Bloomberg, but they're content as long as things stay the same. In other words, Biden just wants to bring us all back to pre-Trump, when the poor got poorer but there weren't as many kids in cages at the border. And the president didn't act like a spoiled child. And professionals weren't dismissed from government service for making the president feel bad. But, uh, the poor still got poorer and nothing much else really changed, especially for those young people looking to make their way in the world. "Let's get back to the time when you still didn't have much chance at finding the American Dream!" isn't much of a slogan, but it's all he's got.

And now he's the nominee. The Democrats' constant "boogeyman" approach to elections has finally reached the bottom of its barrel. Now it's not just "You have to vote for us because, if you don't, THAT GUY will win!" It's that and "You're going to help us elect a guy whose only worthwhile attribute is that he's not THAT GUY!" Get fired up, yo. And all I can do is look back at the work I used to do and think, again: What a complete waste of time. Because I'm still looking for jobs that I'll hate in order to afford the drugs that keep me alive to be miserable, since Joe doesn't want national healthcare. Most people will never be free of the mild terror of knowing that, if they lose their job, they've not only lost their health coverage but will soon be out of their home because Joe's in favor of our all-or-nothing system. A lot of people are crashing face-first into those realities right now because of that global pandemic and the inaction of the current idiot in the Oval Office. And do you know what Joe's response is?

He doesn't want to fight the president.

Millions are outraged at the president's delays, where he refused to listen to his own HHS secretary, because a health crisis would make Trump look bad. But Joe doesn't want to point that out. Despite the attempts to put a $500 billion slush fund in the emergency aid bill that was directly requested by the White House when Trump realized that 6 of his 7 biggest properties were shuttered by state lockdowns, Joe doesn't want to fight about that. Millions are appalled that news sources like the New York Times and CNN won't simply call the president on his lies, especially when they're indirectly leading to people dying from coronavirus or directly leading to people poisoning themselves with various forms of quinine. But Joe doesn't want to call the president a liar. That would be unseemly.

So, this is where we are. And I think back to David's comment... "Revolutionary." I wish it was still funny.

The end of cinema (not really...)

Burt Reynolds died today at the age of 82. Reynolds was the first real "movie star" that I was aware of as a kid. I was fortunate enough to see a lot of movies when I was young, including many that most parents would be arrested for taking their kids to these days, so I knew what actors were and was conscious of them moving between films (Richard Dreyfuss was in Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and moving between media (Chevy Chase going from Saturday Night Live to Foul Play, for instance.) But Reynolds was the first person I remember being aware of as the centerpiece of whichever movie he was in. It wasn't so much that he was playing a role in a movie, as much as it was that he was Burt Reynolds in that movie. Richard Dreyfuss could be two very different people in two different films, but Burt was always Burt and mostly Burt was Bo "Bandit" Darville, half the namesake of Smokey and the Bandit, the film I first remember becoming aware of him as said "movie star."

I would soon see his earlier stuff like Deliverance and The Longest Yard and his later stuff like Sharky's Machine and Stick, where he played much more serious, always brooding roles. He did that really well and Deliverance remained one of his most critically-hailed performances. But it was as Bandit or Sonny Hooper (Hooper) or JJ McClure (The Cannonball Run) or Stroker Ace (Stroker Ace) or Jack Rhodes (Rough Cut) that you always knew Burt, because he was the same good ol' boy doing good ol' boy things with that smarmy grin and gravelly voice that gave him all the charm in the world. In that respect, Reynolds was something of a cultural icon, in that he personified the vapid and dilettantish 70s with its garish colors, wide lapels, sense of style over substance, and towering uncertainty economically, politically, and socially; only to fade somewhat in the more mercantile and crime-oriented 80s, with the suffusion of culture with the concepts of Wall Street, machine intelligence, and success determined only by one's bank balance; until he saw everything come crashing to earth as the 90s moved on without him and his bankruptcy, only to look back on his highlight decade with some fondness and a great deal of interest in his other hailed role as Jack Horner in Boogie Nights. Appropriately, his character is a person who doesn't want to accept the fact that the world does move forward, resisting the change in the porn market from proper films that an auteur could still claim pride in to video that could be sold on any street corner.

Unfortunately, that transition kind of predicted the end of his career, in that his last noted performance was in an otherwise poor film called The Last Movie Star, where an embittered older actor deals with the fading of his glory days. Many projects he worked on in his last years were direct-to-DVD, just like Jack Horner's films, and a format that itself has faded from the cutting edge of technology and preference. I remember that bitterness emerging even after Boogie Nights, when he had stepped back into the limelight. He was too old to be Bandit any longer and the smarmy grin (and high-pitched Bandit laugh) had faded to something more genial; the frustrated mentor who doesn't want to be doling out advice on how to take action or direction. He wants to be in there living it, but he'll still be as charming as he has to be while the lips press together, the nostrils flare, and you imagine the smoke pouring from his ears.

I don't look back on that period with any degree of nostalgia. I don't think that the 70s were some kind of elevated period that anyone should want to return to, for any number of reasons. In fact, when I think of films other than Smokey and the Bandit that involved Reynolds, I usually think of his hard-bitten action period exploits, like Stick. Despite my affection for the Bandit, I remember the brooding Reynolds when I think about character models or story atmospheres. Maybe it's the chintzy nature of many of those 70s/early 80s productions or the threadbare plots that were obviously just vehicles (sometimes literally) for Bandit to run around and have a good time. That's not to say that plots or performances in things like Sharky's Machine were any better, but there was something more secure in the idea that not everyone was just having fun all the time. Nevertheless, the image of Burt in my head is still that of Bandit and probably always will be; maybe because I want to be that charming guy just having fun, but know that that's not how things usually work out. That's the life of the movie star when, all along, I feel like Reynolds really wanted to be a "film star"; someone taken as seriously as Marlon Brando, an actual star that Reynolds was once told he resembled too closely to be cast in his first major film (Sayonara.)

I think what I'll look back on most fondly is the fact that, even in those "good ol' boy" movies like Smokey and the Bandit, Reynolds still carried that gravitas that permeated his notable roles like Deliverance.

He was just having fun. But he was doing so with a real awareness of the world around him and how it worked. That's something else that one could attach to that era of uncertainty: people still knew who was fun to hang out with, especially when he was the one who could make you feel alive (or at least well-stocked with beer.)