Let America Be America Again

I posted this poem back in June at my place but in light of the history making event of the coming week I thought it would be nice to read again. "Let America be America Again" by Langston Hughes resonates clearly with where we are today and it is absolutely amazing to me that a poem written in 1938 by a black American carries such meaning for us today 70 years later.

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Wounded Animals

Remember the 'angry left' that the wingnuts on the right have railed against since Saint Reagan or before? From what I am seeing in the news and around some of the lefty blogs the right is trying to raise the ante. McGrumpy and Caribou Barbie are increasingly feeding angrier and angrier crowds that shouting 'terrorist' and even 'kill him' with no response from either candidate. They are feeding it and taking energy from it. It's like the seen in Star Wars where Luke is finally facing the Emperor and Darth Vader in person and the Emperor encourages the anger and hate. I can't remember the exact dialogue but it is something like "yes young Skywalker let the hate grow--your transition to the dark side is almost complete". It's the first thing that came to my mind when I read the stories of the angry crowds surrounding.

I don't remember this much outright hate and vitriol in previous campaigns. What is different this time? Could it be that in the previous campaigns they were the assured winners and that this time it is almost assured that they are the losers? Does it go beyond the election itself and actually touch on who they are and the knowledge that they are about to lose control?

The reality is that in the last 8 years they have had power. They have had their boy George in the White House with Darth Cheney in the background pulling the strings. Bush and Cheney were their justification for their extremist views. Bush and Cheney in power validated their hate, war mongering, gay baiting, and yes, racist views. Think back over how often the rallying point for the conservative right has been their derision and resentment of liberals, intellectuals, Europeans or anything else that threatened their carefully constructed alternate and self-serving reality. What is happening now is that it is starting to sink in that they are losing and losing in a big way. The failure of Iraq, Afghanistan, free market capitalism and all the rest is shredding their belief structure. Cap all of the sense of loss with the unthinkable - a black man as President of the U.S. and you have a sense of how dangerous this is really is. If you think cornered and wounded animal then you may get the sense of where we are.

Anybody what to take odds on how soon the "N" word pops up at one of these hate fests?


crossposted at Fallenmonk

And I said no no no

Habits are so hard to break. Like ignoring the wishes of the people and forcing them to accept someone they didn't vote for.

Think Progress:

Despite the defeat of President Pervez Musharraf’s party in the Pakistani parliamentary elections, the Bush administration is still trying to “construct a coalition that will keep Mr. Musharraf in power as president.” Officials admit that Musharraf “remains the administration’s preferred Pakistani leader.”

AP:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan's president will not step down as head of state and intends to serve out his five-year term, his spokesman said, despite a sweeping victory by his opponents in an election that President Bush on Wednesday judged to be fair.

But with the vote count nearly complete, two opposition parties have won enough seats to form a new government, though they will likely fall short of the two-thirds needed to impeach the president.

The result is seen as a major political setback for Musharraf, a key ally of Washington in fighting Taliban and al-Qaida, whose popularity has plummeted over the past year. The victors were secular political parties; Islamic hard-liners fared badly.

Bush, the Pakistani leader's chief foreign backer, declared Wednesday that the elections were a "victory in the war on terror."

"There were elections held that have been judged as being fair, and the people have spoken," Bush said in Ghana during his current trip to Africa.

Let me interrupt the article to point out the supportive threat ... statement Georgie makes:

"It's now time for the newly elected folks to show up and form their government," Bush said. "The question then is 'Will they be friends of the United States?' I certainly hope so.

You called Osama and his band of merry men 'folks', too, George. Just saying...

So Pakistan tries to figure out what to do next:

As the fallout from Pakistan's general elections comes into focus, one enormous question mark has emerged: who will be included in the new government? Some major domestic political players have made hasty, if strategic, retreats from the government-making process and have adopted policies of wait and see.

Meanwhile, Washington has moved to mend bridges between embattled President Pervez Musharraf and the opposition camps in order to preserve its interests in the regional "war on terror". Analysts believe that if Islamabad is gripped by further political turmoil, and if Musharraf exits the corridors of power, the US-led operation could flounder.

"We shall prefer to sit in the opposition and would rather provide support for the issues of national interest instead of making any bid to be a part of any set-up," Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed, secretary general of the former ruling Pakistan Muslim League Quaid-i-Azam (PML-Q), told Asia Times Online. "I think there are a lot of issues where any future set-up needs our support, especially in the 'war on terror', and we would provide our support while sitting in the opposition benches."

Most Pakistanis view this vote as a denial of American might:

Washington officially applauded the election process in Pakistan, which it termed transparent, among other praises. At the same time, however, the US has grave concerns that the vulnerability of a new government, or its unwillingness to cooperate with the US, could spell doom for the "war on terror".

"I suggest that political parties should demand that until Musharraf's resignation they would not take the oath in the parliament. Because, if they take the oath, it means they legitimize Musharraf's presidency," said retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, who has recently played a major role in organizing Pakistani veterans' groups to demand retired general Musharraf's resignation.

Gul was optimistic that the present vote against Musharraf and his allies was a vote against American domination of the region. He expressed hope that eventually mass support would push Islamabad to abandon all military operations in tribal areas.

"Americans cannot do anything if we stop the operations in tribal areas. If they stop military aid, they are welcome to do so. We don't need military aid. All we need is economic aid and they just cannot afford to stop it. Why? Because all NATO supply lines pass through Pakistan and if they stop economic aid, Pakistan can stop supply lines which would end their regional war on terror theater once and for all. This is the biggest crime of Musharraf - that he could not understand the strategic value of Pakistan in the region and could not exploit it," said Gul.

Amid all this, who is watching ... you know... the nukes? India is freaking out:

NEW DELHI (AFP) — India should be deeply concerned about the possibility of Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling into the hands of extremists, a top official was reported as saying.

"The nature of the dangers which nuclear weapons pose has dramatically intensified with the growing risk that such weapons may be acquired by terrorists..." Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's special envoy Shyam Saran said on Monday

"The mounting concern over the likelihood that in a situation of chaos, Pakistan's nuclear assets may fall into the hands of jihadi elements... underscores how real this danger has become," Saran was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India at a lecture in New Delhi.

[snip]

The United States and other Western countries have expressed mounting concern over the security of Islamabad's estimated 50 warheads, with Pakistani forces battling a growing insurgency by Al-Qaeda-linked militants.

So what will Musharraf do?:

The remaining question is what will happen to Musharraf. Among those who have come into personal contact with him, there is a sense that he will understand the depth of his current predicament.

"He is an intelligent man. He will know he is not in a position to dictate things," says Mahmood Shah, who helped coordinate Musharraf's policies in the tribal belt as former secretary of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. "Even if he tries to cling to power, it will be very difficult," Mr. Shah continues.

The coming days or weeks will be a test of whether Musharraf's legendary survival instincts have their limits, say others. "He will first try to see if he has any future working with these political parties," says Ikram Sehgal, editor of Defence Journal. "If it is not tenable, he will lay out a plan to say good-bye."

"He knows very well that the Army will not support him" if he challenges the parliament, Mr. Sehgal adds.

Should Musharraf prove confrontational, however, Zardari has said he would not rule out impeachment. This is particularly bad news for Musharraf, since Zardari's PPP has generally been more tolerant of Musharraf than Sharif's PML-N, which has categorically refused to work with Musharraf, partly because Musharraf overthrew Sharif in his 1999 coup.

The process of impeachment is relatively simple, requiring only a two-thirds vote in the general assembly and the Senate. The Senate is still filled with Musharraf's allies, since it is not up for reelection until next year. But senators might be tempted to abandon Musharraf if his situation looks untenable. The Army, however, would be loath to see its former leader humiliated in such a way and could step in to convince Musharraf to go, if it came to that point, says Sehgal.

crossposted at Rants from the Rookery

Primary B.F.D.

Doesn't it mine a richer vein of irony that one 'leading candidate' endorses a failed foreign policy as a stratagem to outflank his opponent who holds no real foreign policy ideas, merely because he cannot steal the threadbare credibility that the other's religious faith gives him among a minor segment of the voting population...And thus, he must adopt a stance that has garnered collapsing respect at home and even less credibility abroad, merely to provide 'contrast' for the credulous voters.

How sublimely unclever. One gets the sense that if sufficiently provoked through fear or greed that these empty vessels might say and do anything that could filch them the slim advantage necessary to eke out their brittle triumph over the other punchinellos in the right-wing electoral circus.

And all for naught, I suspect...the final raid on the henhouse of international goodwill by the glassy-eyed predators of profit that has climaxed in this decade is drawing to a close, with pardons and protections to come for all the participants as a last defiant act before the taxi to the terminal zone arrives.

Now, these unfortunate tidings might portend (to the cogent among us) an increased need for, if not outright benevolence, then at minimum a effort at comity of nations formed from the rest of the world towards America while the Great Repair commences...Yet these inconvenient realities are discarded out of hand by happy-faced gladhanders in order to maintain some fiction for the jingo-jangling yahoos that the beloved assymetrical hegemony of the last two decades might continue apace, with no commercial breaks.

What a sharp surprise awaits...Nothing like the smell of fresh-baked humble pie in the morning of America, eh, Aunt Bee?

;>)

I never lied to you, I've always been cool, I wana be elected,

As we've written about here before, there's a lovely new initiative here in CA to take electoral votes away from any Democratic candidates:

• Under the guise of “reform,” Republican operatives are funding a scheme to change the way California allocates electoral votes in the 2008 Presidential election by putting an initiative on the June ballot.
• Instead of awarding all 55 of California’s electoral votes to the Presidential candidate who wins the statewide vote, this Republican scheme would award votes one-at-a-time, based on the candidate who wins each of the state’s Congressional districts.

Thing is, this would be OK, if every state in the US did it at the same time. But the Republicans will never support that. Why, imagine, they might not get every one of Texas' 34 electoral votes.

Here's the real deal, from the Office of the Federal Registrar:

There are 48 States that have a winner-takes-all rule for the Electoral College. In these States, whichever candidate receives a majority of the vote, or a plurality of the popular vote (less than 50 percent but more than any other candidate) takes all of the State's electoral votes.

Only two States, Nebraska and Maine, do not follow the winner-takes-all rule. In those States, there could be a split of electoral votes among candidates through the State's system for proportional allocation of votes. For example, Maine has four electoral votes and two Congressional districts. It awards one electoral vote per Congressional district and two by the state-wide, "at-large" vote. It is possible for Candidate A to win the first district and receive one electoral vote, Candidate B to win the second district and receive one electoral vote, and Candidate C, who finished a close second in both the first and second districts, to win the two at-large electoral votes. Although this is a possible scenario, it has not actually occurred in recent elections.

So sure, popular majority in elections might be a great idea. Why, imagine what might have happened in 2000 if . . . well, I'm sure the Republicans don't want you to think about that.

"Winner Take All" is really a stupid idea, one that we've been stuck with for too long. But to claim it is unfair in only one state is blatant hypocrisy.

Read the entire article at Fair Election Reform. It spells the whole ugly thing out, including the Giuliani connection, and the SwiftBoatBastards connection.

Omigawd, these people are ugly and sick.

if the bogeyman should try to play tricks on your sacred mind

Dante Atkins, working for the Courage Campaign, shot some video at our house the day of our Blogger Fiesta, featuring some great words from some great people:



Jane, the first one to speak, writes about it at FireDogLake.:

Rick Jacobs and the Courage Campaign are currently fighting the “Presidential Election Reform Act” in California, which — if it passes — would give up at least 20 of California’s current “winner take all” electoral college votes to Republicans in 2008. The lawyers behind the ad are Bob Perry’s swift boat lawyers. Which should safely put it in “say no more” territory, but if that’s not enough:

Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk is one of the most politically involved law firms in the state. According to a news story on its Web site, Bell keeps a life-sized cardboard image of President Bush in his office. Federal records show the firm does legal work for a host of political committees, most with Republican or business ties.

Republicans have the strangest fetishes. Really.

And the lovely and talented skippy, who usually is anonymous, spoke out on camera, and blogged about it at his place.

Here's more from the Courage Campaign:

Yes, the Republicans are at it again with one of the most dangerous initiatives ever put before voters. If the so-called "Presidential Election Reform Act" passes on June 3, 2008, California will unilaterally be forced to divide up its electoral college votes by congressional district, resulting in the Republican theft of at least 20 electoral votes in November's general election -- the equivalent of Ohio.

Seriously, this proposed legislation is crap. The only way to eliminate the "winner take all" electoral system we have is to do it, all at once, in every state and voting territory. Doing it only in the most blue of states is hypocritical and blatantly unfair.

Kind of like the Republican Party. I'm sure they don't want us to try the same trick in, say, Texas.

Bastards.