What hath Glenn Beck Wrought? Naught but Rot.

". . .There is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone." 

Martin Luther King,  August 28, 1963

Here it is, the morning after the heralded Glenn Beck "Restoring Honor" rally, held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial inches away from the exact spot where Martin Luther King delivered his "I have a Dream" speech exactly 47 years ago. (Beck claimed it was "coincidence" that his speech was delivered then and there, but we know Beck so we know better.)

So the crowds came and the numbers were relatively "vast", and we're in a tizzy because it just shouldn't be.  It's Glenn Beck in charge and he's a mean one, and there's fear of a sullying or a misremembering or a watering-down of MLK's glorious words.

Fear not, oh, please.  Crowds are what we have with Glenn Beck but resonance is what we cherish with the Rev. Martin Luther King.  When we quote entire phrases from Dr. King, even now, after nearly a half-century, we're uplifted by their goodness and reminded of his courage and his deeds.  He brought us around to his way of thinking at a time when there was still so much resistance to the notion of racial equality.  We look back now (most of us who lived through it) and wonder how we could have been so blinded for so long, until true leaders--good men and women willing to lay down their lives for the kind of justice that should have been theirs all along--spoke to us in words and actions we could finally understand.

This is what Glenn Beck wants his flock to believe he's doing now.   Yesterday's Beck put on his religious cloak and preached goodness and mercy and a back-to-God  message that might have brought tears to our eyes, had we not known about the Beck-Before-Yesterday.

That is the Beck he's going to have to live down if we're to believe anything he said at the MLK "I Have A Dream" site. Glenn Beck's history is neither as a peaceful organizer nor as a man of God.  He's not even a man of the people.  He is a man of the person, an island unto himself.  This is his show, his shtick, and tomorrow the matinee will have changed and on the screen will be Glenn Beck, the actor, in yet another role designed to keep his paying audience riveted and agitated.

It's possible that he'll like this role so much he'll do an encore and we'll see him in MLK makeup for a while longer, but Beck is Beck and not that good at the kind of discipline that would require him to maintain the persona.

He is smart enough, however, to know his own people.  They're not peacemakers, either, and they won't tolerate this for long.  It's all an act, it's all a game, and they're playing because they think there's something in it for them.  Their goal is to destroy the "others" (that's us) and "take back" the country (our country--all of ours).
 
 It won't happen.

Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and spoke to a huge crowd of their followers.  That was the significance of yesterday.  The significance of MLK's "I have a dream" speech 47 years ago to the day is that we still remember it and we still honor the man who gave it.  We still believe in the America he dreamed about, and we still understand our roles in preserving it.

Glenn Beck tried to dilute that message yesterday and he failed.

Curtain down. 

Finis. 


Ramona

Take Me to Our Leader

The reasons for the stillbirth of the new progressive era are many and much discussed. There's the death of liberal and moderate Republicanism, the reluctance of some administration officials and congressional Democrats to challenge the banks, the ever-larger role of money in politics (see reluctance to challenge banks, above), the weakness of labor, the dysfunctionality of the Senate -- the list is long and familiar. But if there's a common feature to the political landscapes in which Carter, Clinton and now Obama were compelled to work, it's the absence of a vibrant left movement. 

Harold Meyerson, Washington Post, 1/6/10

__________________________________________

 Alas, it's true.  The "left movement"--the true left movement, not the middle-of-the-road "Progressives" nor the loony "Lefties"--is no longer vibrant.  We lost our glow long ago, when we decided the worst thing we could ever do to ourselves was to get in the position of being considered Socialists.  We even dropped "social programs" from our lexicon lest someone should suspect us of Commie leanings.  Then we dropped social programs altogether, just in case.

We either forgot or ignored the real contributions unions had brought us since before our grandparents were young, and turned on them just when we needed them the most.  We let the actor Ronald Reagan make the first incision and then stood back, wringing our hands, while the strength of our labor movement slowly seeped away.

Our voices were no more than mere whispers when American jobs by the millions moved to foreign countries.  No representative howls from these quarters when American manufacturing and American wages moved toward the downslide while corporate America's profits went soaring through the stratosphere.

We never completely bought the notion that all was right with the world, that our path to prosperity was named "deregulation", that the people in power had even a nibble of a clue, but every time we turned around someone wicked or more cunning was stealing our soapbox.  So we shut up.  Or so it seemed, for all the good our grousing and complaining did.


For eight long Bushwhacked years, we moaned and groaned and predicted the predictable outcomes.  And when they came, we got nothing for our troubles except to be able to utter a wholly unsatisfying "We told you so".  Because for eight long Bushwhacked years we, the Liberals afraid to speak our own name, had no real leaders.

Nobody stood out as the one willing and courageous and strong enough to take on corrupt big government and big business (even more dazzlingly corrupt).  We've had many voices--many fine voices--like Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR, JFK, MLK, Walter Reuther, Cesar Chavez, Barbara Jordan, Mario Cuomo, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Russ Feingold, Dennis Kucinich,  Anthony Weiner, Sheldon Whitehouse, Byron Dorgan (Yes, I've heard--but he still has a voice), Elizabeth Warren, Bill Moyers, Rachel Maddow.  We've had Molly Ivins, Michael Moore, Jim Hightower, and now Al Franken, who's laughing all the way to the Hill.

But where is the one strong leader leading the charge to help put our country back together again?  To take on the jammers and scammers in high places?  To demolish the Fat Cats' havens?  To get people back to work?  To keep families healthy and safe, without poverty looming?   For awhile there, we thought it was going to be Barack Obama.  For a while, I think even Barack Obama thought it was going to be him.   But it isn't.  It's clear he's not the one.


No leader.  Oh, well. . .so be it.

What??

Wait, that was last year.  This year--2010--we're going to have to do it ourselves.  We who see ourselves as the perennial, ineffectual caretakers are going to have to make our presence known.  Don't answer to "Liberal", I don't care.  Call yourselves "Progressives", I don't care.  Just do what liberals have always done.  Help the poor, feed the hungry, nurture the children, restore human dignity, and advocate, always, for equity and honesty.

This year is the year of the PEOPLE.  We are the people.  Only we can make it happen.  We can't do it alone.  We can't even do it with rooms full of like-minded people.  In order to be heard, we have to do it by the millions.  There are millions of us out of work with nothing but time on our hands.  There are millions of us who are retired, with no real schedule, who remember what it was like when the middle class was on top and want that back again.  There are millions of us with brain power and skills working at no-hope jobs through no fault of our own.  And there are millions of us who are union members who need a refresher course in labor struggles and organized ass-kicking.

2010.  The Year of the People.   Last I looked, that's us.

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here.)