The Democratic National Committee (DNC), to which I have often contributed, quite clearly favors Hilary Clinton’s campaign. Which is not surprising, but is somewhat distressing.

I am not anti-Hilary.

I expect to be thoroughly happy casting my vote for her in November 2016. But I greatly admire Bernie Sanders and will almost surely give him my vote in the Connecticut primary, simply to make my admiration clear to the powers that be. As a result, I am distressed to see the DNC pulling the rug out from under the Democratic Socialist’s campaign. (After all, I, too, am a Democratic Socialist, and have been since completing, in 1968, my high school history project on Norman Thomas. My grandfather was called a socialist for helping to establish, decades ago, the first teachers’ union in Alberta.)

But why am I distressed? Why do I fear the party’s bias?

First there is the DNC’s scheduling of most candidate debates on Saturday nights, when only the most wonkishly devoted political nerds will tune in. As a result, the rank and file will not hear the well-elucidated alternatives to Hilary’s presumptive party platform.

Secondly, in today’s news I learn that, while hackers have made all Democratic candidates’ information open to the competition, only Bernie Sanders’ campaign—which already fired a staffer for taking advantage of that open invitation—has subsequently been denied access to the information that any candidate needs in order to reach the voters.

I understand what really guides decisions by the old-boy-and-[recently]-girl network of the DNC. I know that they know I will vote for Hilary, or any other Democrat, no matter what neanderthal the Republicans cough up. My vote is secured. So why should the DNC fear alienating me?

Well, I urge the DNC to think long-term.

I am not devoted to the party. I am not convinced that Democratic candidates are typically or usually less corrupt than those from the opposition.

I, too, am a disgruntled and alienated voter – and have been for years.

The DNC must not assume that the present madness of the Republican candidates guarantees a fixed place in my heart for the Democrats.

You must, Dear DNC, build your role in our republic by refusing to play the tawdry game of one-ups-manship that sours almost every voter on politics.

You must, I urge you, build a secure place in our hearts.

In our sense of principle and concern, and of the health of the nation.

 

Here’s an image that showed up on my Facebook feed this afternoon.

It stands out among those infuriating postings that call me to take action, to express empathy and concern, for people who are in fact being ridiculous and self-aggrandizing.

I am of course not indifferent to the little girl who holds up the poster which has so clearly been written by an adult desperate to modify her father’s behavior. If we actually believe the poster’s announcement, it was written by that father himself.

Did he actually do this—actually write the announcement, actually pose his lovely daughter holding it, and actually promise to do what any intelligent parent would do, but only if those thousand “likes” pour in? Oh, lord!

If a thousand likes will do the trick, please, Dad, simply do it yourself. Don’t make your daughter carry water for you here. Whoever you are, we don’t want you to dodge emphysema or the Big C solely because you have a delightful little girl. We’d oppose your carcinogenic choices even if you had no family at all.

Here’s what you should do: Quit smoking for her. And for yourself.

Whatever you do, please stop suggesting that if we don’t “like” her supposed efforts – if we don’t honor her needs in this tawdry way – you’ll simply go on killing yourself.

And thus neglecting her.

 

 

tonight I stood in my bedroom and shed my clothes
to stand naked, pink and hairy and supposedly innocent
before the tall mirror on my closet door

and listened to reports of the latest mass shooting
this time in California but like the last time
in Colorado and those other times in Newtown

and Charleston and Seattle and New York and on
and on and on and who cares where within these
United States of Hysteria where guns are a right

while nakedness is sinful and hopeless flesh
is always a target and I, in this bare room,
as bare as any target, as any trembling soul

alone in this torn world could be, wonder
about the other just plain folks who might take aim
and mow us down, tear us down, mow us down,

tear us all apart, tear us into tattered parts
and so we are
not whole

This poem does not speak to what immediately terrorizes us today, which needs no “forethought of grief” to leave us grieving (even though it breeds such forethought). It is, however, a beautiful poem, by a wonderful poet, and I am glad that someone I do not know shared it on Facebook today and that someone I do know, by “liking” it, brought it into my world. (Thank you Deborah K.)

There are forces in nature that offer comfort, and insight, even when parts of human nature make us despair.

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

I sincerely applaud those who post their prayers for the people of Paris on Facebook. I cannot imagine any reason to condemn their sympathy for the suffering in France.

But I am not committed to the Internet memes expressing that sympathy.

Here’s one reason: I don’t think the look of my profile picture will have any impact on the killers nor upon the mourning and healing of the families victimized by the vicious attacks. I know such postings are sincere, but sadly, I cannot believe they matter.

Here’s the other reason: I have not altered my profile colors for the 43 Lebanese killed by ISIS bombs in Beirut on Friday; nor for 147 students killed in Kenya by Islamic terrorists yesterday; nor for the 80-some Yemenis mowed down at a wedding by an American drone strike; nor for the thousands of Nigerians slaughtered by Boka Haram; nor for all the Americans gunned down in their theaters, malls, and schools. That’s why I haven’t granted the French special status. I am not indifferent to the terror and pain in Paris. I am overwhelmed by the terror and pain suffered by people throughout the world.

No one nation’s colors can capture that pain.

If you are Larry David, and if you hate all that Trump represents, and if you find yourself on Saturday Night Live when Trump is hosting, and if you see that the writers have given you a chance to call out Trump for blatant racism, and if that explicit point is quickly undercut by your referencing the anti-Trump forces that will pay anyone who calls out Trump for blatant racism, and if you acknowledge the payment (as part of the joke), and if you do not simultaneously point out the fact that the charge of racism is still valid…then…you have done essentially nothing to advance the truth, to fight the oppression, to secure your own integrity.

And so it goes, it seems, in the world now defining political campaigns, especially, as I ask and wonder, about the ways in which journalism and pop entertainment have merged since Clinton first blew sax on Arsenio Hall and questions about boxers vs. briefs became meaningful to the American mind, so that a media outlet’s need for media clicks overwhelmed its need for something touched by integrity, concern, or a mere or passing touch of the truth.

When did published writers (and their copy editors) stop recognizing the difference between verses and versus? Here’s an example from Salon on 10/14/15:  “[Rubio called the debate among Democratic candidates] basically a liberal verses liberal debate about who was going to give away the most free stuff.”  (The fault may be Salon’s, not Rubio’s, who may have spoken, not written, the line.)

When did fraught, which the dictionary tells us means literally “freighted” (like an ocean liner or garbage scow), come to mean “heavy” or “complicated” or “burdened”? In other words, when did people eliminate “with” from the idiom—as in “fraught with difficulty” or “fraught with polarizing feelings”? Now folks simply write of “fraught situations.” What?!

And here’s the big one!
When did there’s stop meaning “there is” and start meaning “there are,” making it possible for absolutely everyone, no matter how formal or respected the forum, to say things like this: “There’s several reasons to hate this trend”; “There’s three storms threatening the mid-Atlantic states”?

He hoped for delightful memories, something joyous                                                                    or, if it wasn’t asking too much, something soothing.

Not the odious plates in the drying rack the morning after Elaine                                        stormed out, gone where? Not those plates agleam with emptiness.

Not the memory of trimming Mother’s toenails in the home,                                                when he nipped her skin and felt awful, as if he were the one bleeding,                        until she whined like a brat, old face contorting.

Last summer had been too hot. Now winter wouldn’t end.

He found himself staring at the shoes lined up at the back door,                                              a first layer of bricks in a wall he could feel himself building.                                             Even their laces were orderly, pulled tight in their eyelets.

He believed he had been playful as a boy. He found old toys                                                      in Mother’s attic and tossed away the ragged terrier with marble eyes,                          the book of verse illustrated with victorian imps at play.                                                    Well-groomed children engaged in harmless mischief.

When he couldn’t sleep, he’d walk beneath the street lamps talking                                          to wraiths in the maples, vaprous and slightly thrilling, like mists                                 touching the sea, he thought, fit for strange-gilled monsters, silent mermen.

In the morning, he drove to the store, lifted the grillwork shutters,                                        prepared himself for sliding change across the linoleum counter.

Note that this has been added to the list of “Poems.”