monthly musings from JD
November 2008 - The Election
I guess it’s the 11th hour.
Seems like it’s been with us forever.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident………”.1
I’ve been a Democrat since I first voted in 1968.
I turned 22 that year, and in those days the ‘age’ to vote was 21. By then I had served in the United States Navy Air. Stationed on board the USS Independence, CVA-62, my squadron, VF-84, consisting of 12 F4-B fighter planes, had spent 9 months in the South China Sea. During that time we had flown countless missions over Vietnam, and Cambodia, and had dropped hundreds of thousands of pounds of bombs on ‘the enemy’. It was absolute horror for all concerned.
It changed my life forever.
By the time I got back from that long and bitter voyage into manhood, I had seen the utter madness of ‘war’. All of the lost lives for nothing. It was meaningless.
It was just ‘good business’ at the time.
It was all clouded in “We’re stopping them damn Commies”.
We were not.
Nothing was at stake except the Industrial Military Complex, Politics, and the lie of ‘stopping the spread of Communism’.
Having started out as an innocent, naïve Republican kid from Littleton, Colorado, I returned home so far to the left on the political scale that I doubted I could ever again participate in the ‘system’. I came home to America feeling like I had blood on my hands, and all I wanted to do was forget.
A lot of us felt that way.
But in 1968, after Bobbie and Martin had been killed, and after all the others had been eliminated, I had the almost impossible and amazing opportunity to travel and work with then Vice-President Hubert Humphrey for the last eight days of that campaign. As part of that first long-ago group ‘The Good Earth’, and traveling usually in a Lear jet in front of the candidate, I was able to take part in a Presidential campaign and to see very up-close the nerve wracking ‘workings’ of the ‘process’.
We were, in essence, a part of Vice-President Humphrey’s ‘warm-up’ act. We would warm the crowd up, introduce the Vice-President, and then, while he was speaking, race back to the airport to fly to the next city to do it all again. It was exhilarating. In those eight days, I traveled from the East Coast to the West Coast, and to so many places in between that I could not remember them then, and do not remember them now.
On election day of that year, I flew from Minneapolis to New York, took a taxi into the city, voted for the first time, stopped by my apartment for a few things and to love on my kitties, then flew to Washington, D.C., caught a press plane heading back to Minneapolis, took a cab to the hotel headquarters’ of Vice-President Humphrey, checked in, grabbed my guitar, and headed for the ballroom and sang a bit with Bill for the assembled crowd.
All of us thought that Hubert was going to win. He had surged to within striking distance in the last several weeks of the campaign, and we all thought he was going to pull it out and be elected President. But as the evening wore on and it became clear that he was going to lose, I soon returned to my room in utter despair. This was not possible. I had only been at it for eight days and I was exhausted. He had been at it for a lifetime. It is the only time in my life that I smoked pot under the protection of Secret Service agents, although I’m quite certain they wouldn’t have approved had they known. (Thank you gentlemen for affording me your completely professional protection. I meant no disrespect).
Later that night, in the company of other ‘Celebrities” (Bill and I were nothings), we were escorted up to and into Mr. Humphrey’s suite, where he thanked us for working for him. It was heart-breaking. He had lost the Presidency to Richard Nixon. It was one of those moments in my life when I wished I had not gone with the others, as, being a guy who knows a lot about ‘not being in there’, it was clear to me that, despite his excellent make-up and cheerful demeanor, Hubert was not ‘in there’. I gave him a cigar and thanked him for allowing me this incredible opportunity. He shook my hand and said ‘Thank you.” I returned to my room, smoked more pot, made some calls from the shower, and went to bed completely freaked out. I highly doubt Vice-President Humphrey slept that night, and while he was probably jacked up on enough vitamin B-12 to keep him up for days, it would have been a good bet that he did not smoke any pot. I returned to New York the next day, and that was that.
The point is that someone is always the loser in this brutal, vicious, vulgar and now disgusting process that we know as the Presidential election.
All of us who are of a certain age know what then took place in American history.
It really does matter who ‘wins’ and who loses’. It greatly affects the outcome of history.
Of us.
Of the world.
The fifty-five thousand names on the wall in D.C. stand as cold evidence to that reality.
And now we are at the 11th hour..
I supported Hillary Clinton for President.
I voted for her in the primary. She is my state Senator.
I like her courage, her steel will, her incredible ability to press on, her positions, her family, and her vision. She would have made a great president.
I was horrified by the almost unbelievable sexist coverage by the media of her campaign. I couldn’t remember any other election when the spouse of the candidate was used against the candidate in the vile way President Clinton was used. The ‘demonification’ of the Clinton name outraged me, and on more then one occasion, I called networks with my not so subtle displeasure. I quarreled with friends. I wanted the ticket to be Clinton-Obama, figuring that they would win, which would give us eight years of reasonable and rational leadership, followed by eight years of reasonable and rational leadership with Obama, who would have grown and evolved in the relative security of the second highest office in the land.
First a woman.
Then an African American man.
There was nothing racial about my hopes. When I’d seen and heard Senator Obama deliver his speech at the democratic convention in 2004, I noted with great excitement, “There’s our first Black President.”
Every since my friend Blake Sissle beat the crap out of me in the second grade because I kept calling him ‘egghead’, I have tried my best to overcome the in-bred racial nature our beings. Of course all ‘white American’s’ of certain ages are racists. How could we not be? But many of us have walked the troubled road with our brothers and sisters of all colors and creeds, and we have seen, like my momma said, that “We are all in this together in the eye’s of the Lord.” Whichever, and whatever ‘Lord’ one may hold close. If ‘Lord’ feels uncomfortable, then this great cosmos. This vast and mysterious universe. Whatever. We are all brothers and sisters on this planet called this good earth, and we are all connected to the frighteningly thin thread of existence.
That’s the way that dog hunts.
It always has.
It always will.
It’s the Truth.
Obama ultimately prevailed.
Senator Clinton did the ‘right’ thing.
And now we are here.
I will be voting for Senator Barack Obama for President.
My vote will be of no disrespect to Senator John McCain. He is a great and courageous citizen of our country. He served as I served. His service included unspeakable horrors that mine did not.
That Senator McCain has allowed his campaign to dissolve into what it has is his unfortunate decision.
His choice for Vice-President is, obviously, profoundly un-prepared to assume the office of President. Her intended disrespect of me, implying that because I live in New York City that I am not a ‘real American’, does not serve her ticket well. It is wrong. It is bigoted. It is separatist. It is fear based. It would seem that now she is only interested in being the GOP nominee in 2012.
She will not be.
The wing of her party that operated in this fashion is, fortunately, soon to be a hateful thing of the past. They will have no one to ‘blame’ but themselves.
Can we continue to divide?
Can we continue to see things in such black and white contrasts?
Of course not.
This immoral and horridly expensive ‘war’. (Please don’t think because I have been against this ‘war’ from before it started that I don’t ‘support our troops’. Having ‘been one’ once, I know exactly the situation they are in. My support for our troops includes seeing that they receive the best health care while there, and once they get home. Not just physical care, but mental as well. I know about that part of it too).
This squandered position in the world. On the 12th day of September, 2001, a French newspaper ran the headline “We are all Americans”. Smelling the smell of death for weeks in the town I live in, that town referred to as ‘not really real America’, I was comforted in the knowledge that the ‘world’ understood.
They did.
Our tragedy had united the world unlike any event since World War Two.
But our actions eliminated that.
As I wrote at that time, “This is all done in our names.” So it has been.
And now the near-collapse of the global economy.
This thinly disguised pay-out to the ‘fat cats’.
This torture. The United States of America that my mother taught me about, the United States of America that she grew up in and lived in and loved, this America’s precious soil that cradles her holy remains, does not torture. When we do that, does that not make us ‘just like them?’ Aren’t we intended to carry the torch of freedom and righteousness into the world?
This illegal and immoral incarceration of anyone thought to be a ‘terrorist’.
There is no ‘war on terrorism’.
There were no weapons of ‘mass destruction’.
The wire tapping of American citizens.
There is only shameful manipulation.
There is only fear and greed based on money and oil.
There is only dishonest, deceitful, and now, painfully obvious, desperate attempts to divide.
To conquer.
To control.
Where I come from, this is all usually known as “Un-American”.
Has the time not come to stand up and quietly announce, “Not on our watch?”
In his thoughtful, courageous, and reasoned endorsement of Senator Obama, General Colin Powell, a long time member of the Republican party, noted that the American hero named John McCain had, sadly, somehow been changed by the dreadful ‘machine’ behind his run for the Presidency. That seems completely true. The Senator McCain we all knew no longer exists. He has been replaced by this sad and mean caricature of the far right. Hopefully history will be kind to him.
As The New York Times reported, General Powell made his final decision after seeing a photo in Newsweek. He stared at it for an hour. It was of a mother laying on the grave of her 20 year old son. She rested her head on his gravestone. In Arlington Cemetery, the same cemetery where so many other proud brothers and sisters rest, the name on the stone was Muslim. The boy, from New Jersey, had been outraged by the events of 9-11. He had been 14 years old at the time. He had been anxious to join the military and do what was ‘right’. He did. And at 20 years old, he had given his life. General Powell had thought about the knowingly dishonest accusations that Barak Obama is a Muslim, with the implication that being a Muslim somehow meant one was a ‘terrorist’ . “What if Obama was a Muslim?”, the general had asked on “Meet The Press.” “Shouldn’t a little Muslim boy or girl be able to grow up in America thinking that they could be President?”
Yes, Sir.
Yes General.
Every little girl and boy in America should be able to grow up dreaming of becoming the President of the United States.
That’s what I was taught.
I have been under the impression that my entire life’s work has been attempting to shine that light.
I was under the impression that was one of the things that made our nation such a beacon.
Is that not the Dream?
So un a few hours I’ll walk over to the public school on West 77th street on the upper west side in New York, and I will, for the first time in my life, vote for an African American Democrat to be my President.
Our President.
There are no ‘red’ states.
There are no ‘blue’ states.
There is only the United States Of America.
I will stay glued to the returns, take notes, drink a few biers, make calls, and when Senator Obama becomes President-Elect Obama and this terrible nightmare is over, if even just for a moment, I will sit down and wail in exalted soulful joy that ALL of the sacrifices we have made, our generation, the generations before us, and all of the sacrifices of ALL our brothers and sisters have finally delivered us unto the place where we can at last get started. I will shed tears of pride that this happened in my life time, and that I have played a tiny part in it all.
We shall, indeed brother Martin, brother Lyndon, overcome.
We shall indeed.
Senator Obama will surround himself with the smartest, most experienced, most trustworthy men and women in the country. In the world. He will do his best to see to it that ALL Americans have a seat at the table. That ALL members of the Family of People all around this precious and tender globe have seats with us.
We are hungry.
We are all family.
We all deserve a place at the table.
I sincerely believe we have finally been invited to break bread.
Let us.
At last, at long, long, long last, let us all break bread together.
“And find the land we were supposed to be…….”2
I remain your loving brother in the eternal struggle of freedom.
James Dawson
New York
November 3, 2008
1): The United States Declaration Of Independence. Many Authors.
2): James Dawson. “The Livin and the Dyin”. Copyright 1976.
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