Politics and Hurricanes/Halloween, 2012

            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 17^th 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.