Yep,
Sandy raised a little hell on our mountaintop: winds howled around the house,
rain fell, trees went down, power went out. It was quite a spectacle, as any
great storm is in the mountains, but nowhere close to Irene. Less damage but
still damage. People lost their homes.
People died. But the river didn’t jump its banks, and the bridge over it
remained intact. It wasn’t Irene, but the response of the people who live here
was much the same. Once the rain and wind stopped folks came out of their
houses looking to see what they could do to help. Repair trucks from the phone
company and the electric company arrived almost immediately. Highway crews had
been out there throughout the storm. Clear, calm voices manned help lines. The
17th century divine and poet, John Dunne, wrote, “No man is an
island. No man stands alone.” As I watched the mountaintop begin to recover
those words came to mind. We were all in this together. Every man and woman out
there – union people, most of them – exemplified what I was taught as a boy:
Americans get the job done. The fallacy of the self-made billionaire lies in
the illusion that he is an enlightened individual who goes it alone, some kind of
wizard worthy of our reverence. He’s in his house now while thousands of
skilled workers hustle to get his power back on. Police keep order on his
street. During Irene, the National Guard and state police were out as well.
Crews clear obstacles from his roads. Paramedics pick up the sick and elderly.
Hospitals take them in. Nobody does it on their own, not the Koch brothers, not
Sheldon Adelson, not Mitt Romney. I trace the cult of the American CEO back to
when Lee Iacocca first appeared in a television ad commanding us to, “Lead,
follow, or get out of the way.” Talk about swagger. “Follow me and don’t ask
questions. Follow me because I have all the answers, and you don’t have even
one.” As the years went on one CEO after another began starring in their own commercials, adding to their personal myths as super mensch. Even as disreputable and biased an organization as Fox News can’t give us
a single picture of one billionaire packing sandbags. There’s been no news of
either of the Koch brothers bringing needed supplies for the epicenter. No help
from Sheldon Adelson, either, whose face could be mistaken for a ghoul’s mask
on Halloween. The strength of our nation is its middle class that fights our
wars, puts the wounded back together, fixes our highways, works in hospitals,
teaches our children, cleans up after natural disasters. The middle class made
us the strongest nation in the world after they won WW2, and I will bellow and
scream against the plutocracy for as long as I’m on this earth. I’m not
discounting the singular skill of being able to amass huge amounts of money.
Certainly, it is not a skill I have, but just because an individual amasses
wealth does not qualify that individual to govern. Business/Government – two
different ball games. Wealth does not automatically make one a patriot, either.
Patriots don’t send jobs to other countries. Patriot’s would not do business
with enemy countries. Patriot’s don’t regard rapes as divine justice. Patriots
don’t lie us into wars and send our young men to fight and die in them without proper
equipment. Patriots fight for the rights of us all. Patriots don’t turn dogs on
citizens or keep them from voting. Patriots support free thought and equal
opportunity, and I’ll be damned if I’ll willingly let casino owners determine
what I can do and the direction my country takes. Even though I was in the
Marine Corps as a kid (not a hero just a glorified grunt), I never thought of
myself as a patriot. I never thought I wasn’t. I simply didn’t think of it at
all. Now, I do. After years of hearing that word bandied about by people who
wouldn’t know the Constitution from a Cabela’s catalogue, maybe I am one of
those things: a patriot after all. It’s not for me to say. But, I tell you
this: I hold dearly having been raised as an American kid. For that reason
maybe I have become a patriot. I want my grandchildren to experience the
majesty of this nation as I have.
Semper Fi.
