Context For Battle

         (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

While writing about the Florida flavor of politics for the last couple of months, I’ve been watching nationwide battle lines being drawn over Obama administration initiatives to fix some of the more badly broken pieces of The American Dream – the healthcare system, the environment, the working middle class -- for starters.

And I want to get in the game. So while I’ll keep covering Sunshine State doings, I’m also going to start writing more about core national issues, and the related legislative reform efforts so necessary to restore -- and create anew – some semblance of socioeconomic equilibrium in our American Democracy.

But first, I need to get some Big Picture context off my chest – hanging a frame, if you will, in which the canvas of those and related stories can then be methodically mounted for maximum cumulative impact.

Because, if taken individually and out of their larger context, each of the aforementioned political battles now raging – and those yet to come -- may seem to some Americans to be just another round of partisan political bickering and business as usual BS – which is just what cynical Conservative and Republican politicians and pundits want people thinking.

Because, if taken together and placed in their larger context, those same political battles stop looking like yet another round in an endless prize fight, and instead combine to paint a vivid side-by-side portrait of a country engaged in nothing less than a seminal -- albeit semantic -- socioeconomic and political Civil War.

On one side, we have the Multi-National Corporate & Special Interests that ascended to unprecedented, virtually unchecked levels of political and economic power during the Bush-Cheney administration – and their posse of enablers, protectors and defenders in Congress and Media. Also on this side, for now, are the millions of Americans who fall prey to the politics of disinformation, distraction, and false context.

On the other side, we have President Obama, his administration, his supporters and advocates in Congress and Media, and the grassroots activist movement he now leads. Also count on this side the millions of Americans who, if not active participants in the grassroots movement, are informed and discriminating enough to recognize and reject political deceit and duplicity, and to demand true context.

As a proud member of the latter coalition, let me offer a little bit of honest, personal context. I was a veritable toddler when President John F. Kennedy took his oath of office in 1961. Whether through actual or acquired memory, I have a vivid tape that still plays in my mind on occasion, of JFK’s inaugural speech, and in particular of that one indelible line: “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
For me, in my adult life as a very political animal, that line has always been the catalyst for an ongoing internal debate about what the role of American government should be in our society, and in our private and family lives.

It’s the same “debate” that modern-day Republicans and Conservatives settled quickly, so they could commence bludgeoning the American people with their ominous conclusion -- that government intervention was in fact the root cause of all of our systemic troubles, and that the private sector, The Free Market, was better equipped to diagnose and treat America’s socioeconomic ills.

There you have the Reactionary Big Picture, the false context…The Big Lie.

The Big Lie that in an earlier, 1920’s incarnation, led to the Great Depression that almost brought down America – until Democrats under the leadership of FDR offered true context – a political counter-narrative that inspired a nation and reasserted the rightful, responsible role of a “government of the people, by the people, for the people”, as Abraham Lincoln described American Democracy.

The current version of the Big Lie was crafted in earnest during the “Greed Is Good” days of the 1980’s… The Reagan Years, an era that began with another notable quote from a presidential inaugural speech -- as Reagan, the B-movie actor turned mainstream moderate politician, turned born-again Conservative ideologue, turned President, sounded the clarion-like call for so much of what has since gone wrong in America:

"Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem…"

In the twenty-nine years since that speech, Republicans have tried hard to paint Reagan a hero, and to ascribe heroic status to their own ceaseless follow-up efforts to reduce the role of Government – not in the lives of the American people, mind you, but in the effective oversight and regulation of the powerful Corporate & Special Interests whom they serve.

So, how has that worked out for the millions of lower-income and middle-class American families that comprise the overwhelming majority of our population?

No need to elaborate much more on that -- many have already written with great detail and eloquence about the GOP’s ruthlessly demagogic manipulation of lower-income, less educated, predominantly Christian white voters -- check out Thomas Frank’s 2004 book, “What’s The Matter With Kansas?” for more on that.

On the bright side, yes, seeing how much damage the corrupt, profiteering Bush-Cheney crowd did to just about every aspect of American life has helped to energize and activate millions of Obama and Democratic Party supporters, while raising the consciousness of millions more.

But on the darker side, for all the new, progressive grassroots activism that has come in the age of Obama, there still remains a dangerous residue of public suspicion and mistrust about the kinds of big government solutions to big societal problems that are so desperately needed now, as we try to dig out from under the wreckage of the previous administration. We have years of effective reactionary brainwashing to thank for such doubts and misgivings.

The point is that moving forward, nothing can ever be taken for granted when it comes to mass public understanding of or lasting support for the specific legislative initiatives needed to fix the various broken pieces of our Democracy – not when Conservatives and Republicans keep trying to cast each and every issue and reform effort in the false context of The Big Lie.

From the Obama team and its grassroots movement, to groups like MoveOn.org, to the progressive blogosphere – all have in fact been taking very little for granted, thank goodness, keeping a collective “pedal to the metal” as the engine for Change that is this new Progressive coalition keeps chugging right along. The challenge will remain, to continue allowing for healthy internal debate while still building consensus about exactly how the vanguard should engage the public at large, issue-by-issue and reform-by-reform.

However, no amount of unity or industriousness will change the fundamental reality of our current political climate: The Big Lie will always be looming overhead like a storm cloud, waiting for congressional conservatives like McConnell and Boehner, for right-wing rainmakers like Limbaugh and Gingrich, to pick right back up wherever they had last left off in their never-ending wind-up-toy war dance of obstructionism.

In order to inoculate the American public against such a duplicitous but sometimes effective strategy, there has to be a simple, overarching counter-narrative that can be repeated over and over again -- a filter that both clarifies and repudiates The Big Lie at every twist and turn.

More than two years before his election, our forty-fourth President of these United States of America may well have captured it in a nutshell -- True Context, that can easily be compared to and contrasted with the Conservatives’ False Context of confusion and dogma of deceit:

“If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all else is lost.”

BARACK OBAMA, Aug. 28, 2006

So, we’ve all lost enough in the now almost three years since that speech. Time to go on a long winning streak.