MPaulamrams writers blog: congenial-speak

Saturday, March 11, 2017

congenial-speak

My horse(s) were enmeshed in their blinders. Out side the division mounted. Trump at times brought a foreign object into the debate hanger. Spanky and the gang, the frigid, hypocritical women of wrestling cheer themselves. A neurosurgeon softly spoke. Little Marco, lying Ted and oily faced ol' Jeb's worth a million with matching heir.

It is comedy. It's dirty schoolyard vintage follies. Picking old wounds and dancing as they bleed, as the red-faced megalomaniac howls in contempt. Cruz unearths the spoonful of bucks Trump's daddy fed him. He is a wounded elephant in need of a tranquilizer.

I watch the Repulican debates for entertainment. I watch to see how low people will go, how they will disgrace and humiliate themselves on national TV for the residential nomination. The Bush legacy. Another one? Do we need an iron cross? A sven saw to fell the Bush no one ever hears.

Bernie and Hillary aren't nearly as entertaining. They stick to the issues and refrain from taking pot shots. The Vermont senator is an Independent candidate running as a Democrat. He speak the words I hear much too rarely in America. He put the disproportion in its perspective. In my suburban, liberally-fed opinion, Hillary and many Democrats before her, do not cut to the chase. They don't steer clear of the upper echelon middle-men, the wolves and Wall Street emissaries hungry for a buck at the opportune moment. They don't draw boundaries clear enough to avoid the petty profiteering at the expense of citizens united for health-care.

The stump speech rings out each debate, and the 75-year-old challenger says it like it is, how it has been for—ostensibly—since the great American experiment began. He dose not say how it could or should be. He does not talk about how strong we are together, nonetheless a very apropos message, but lays out the cold hard reality. Both candidates agree we need affordable health-care, tuition or the lessening of college debt, jobs that pay a minimum wage that will go further than supply the paste for the end of a brush and equal pay for women. The latter of the goals is often heard louder coming from Clinton.

Sanders never changes. I watch him nip a Hillary's stamina heels as he keeps the margins close nationwide. Clinton has baggage. She's collected it from lawyer days, from things surrounding her husband, from the senate, from her time as secretary of state, but maybe with the most relevance to this campaign, from a poorly thought out decision to use a private email server. Sanders defends her and says in debate number one, “I think everyone's tried of hearing abut your damn emails!” (Now that I think about it he may have just increased the propensity to scrutinize her email.) Wittingly, unwittingly, set-up or misstated, the fact was she had baggage she brought as a candidate. Should the mere suspicion and speculation, hours of FBI grilling with a conclusion that found nothing, impune a lifetime of working toward equality for all? I say no, but that is for the majority of voters to decide.

And then came Philly, the birthplace of the whole American experiment. I watch fear, distemper, kerfluffled bite chomps on national TV. I listen to Michele Obama and Elizabeth Warren speak of a Trump world. He wanted to make America great again, as though it was never great. POW right in the kisser. Trump sure likes to give America a black eye, to denigrate it, to say African Americans have “Nothing left to lose” (in voting for him), to say the inner-cities are basically dung heaps burning in wait of an affluent ignorant extinguisher, to grab lady liberty by the pussy. Everyone else want to make America greater, to expound on the lags and bounds, the marches and clarion sounds that ring so well when not a venerable soul is listening. I held my breath. I was so sure the message, the democracy idea was going to continue into the 22^nd or 23^rd centuries at least. Hillary steps out on stage, the last night, dismissing vapor trails of Benghazi and emails as footnote fodder. The ceiling was etched in minds of women and men. The roof Shirley Chisholm had made a significant dent in 44 years before. Hillary, as a white woman, won the Democratic nomination and took a chunk out, weakening, crippling the metaphor's foundation. I really thought this was it.

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To the Front of the Bus: Movement toward a fair Democracy- review

I thoroughly enjoyed To the Front of the Bus, a must read for the politically curious and anyone who is paying attention to our current state of the country......who we as a nation, and how we got here. As someone who is not well versed in U.S. history, I found Amram's book refreshingly easy to read, the sort of book that can be fodder for discussion for the political novice or political savvy----there is something for everyone on these pages. The "Author's Note" and "Afterword" bookend the social movements which are humanely detailed in the book, and provide moving context for the how the political is always personal. In his latest book, Amram has expanded on his previous Ten Years and Change: a Liberal Boyhood in Minnesota (another excellent read), describing the struggle for equality which has consumed our nation since it's inception. What is most interesting is how Amram seamlessly weaves historical and current events, tying the two together in an effortless read that belies the painful sacrifice and struggle for human rights that continue to this day. There is an incredible amount of research contained here. I often find historical/political non-fiction interesting, but too dry for me personally to get through. To the Front of the Bus is the opposite reading experience, as this book is a compulsively readable page-turner, balancing well documented fact with personal and societal ramifications. I wish I could order a copy for every high school and college classroom in the country, as the truth telling of the "movement toward a fair democracy" is important. Thanks to Michael Amram for his words, which are an inspiring call to action for each one of us to use our voting power wisely and not squander our political and social power. Highly recommend.

Premise of Bus

There is a bus, careening through history, through decades of people moving, being transferred toward a fair Democracy. Like attaining Democracy, seeing it work, reaping its sporadic benefits, a bus stops and continues on, each time furthering a majority, growing stronger. But it also wanes as people are let out, and an interminable cycle of an unfulfilled Democracy (bus) ensues. In To the Front of the Bus: Movement toward a Fair Democracy bus is a metaphor as a method of movement, of protest (freedom rides). It speaks of the forced and willful movements of people throughout history, from the slave trade to the Native Americans' “trail of tears,” to the “great migration,” to the current deportation of immigrants. Bus is used in the literal sense of black Americans' ascension to the front, or anywhere they choose, on buses.

To the Front of the Bus: Movement toward a Fair Democracy follows the transports of three major groups who were denied basic rights as Americans. Their evolutions, their respective revolutions' order was left to be written in history as having been subconsciously prioritized. It was pre-destined, each having made a fluent transition, a natural selection, a humanely appropriate ascension, to the next. First came the removal of chains, the freeing of feet and minds, to fighting a Civil War and decades to win civil rights. Then came the women in their defined movements through decades for suffrage and equal rights. Time had come to pass. The abrogations of blacks and women's injustices readied the minds and streets for the disabled. Both cleared the way (as people on buses often do), expanded human consciousness enough, removed guilt of oppressing the prior groups enough, for the disabled to come out of the institutions and almshouses, to be accepted in society, to speak out for certain rights, and to be able to sit to the front of the bus.

To the front of the Bus: Movement Toward a Fair Democracy

“To the front of the Bus: movement toward a fair democracy follows the transports
of three major groups who were denied basic rights as Americans.
Their evolution, their respective revolutions' order was left to be
written in history as having been subconsciously prioritized. It was
pre-destined, each having made a fluent transition, a natural
selection, a humanely appropriate ascension, to the next. First came
the removal of chains, the freeing of feet and minds, to fighting a
Civil War and decades to win civil rights. Then came the women in
their defined movements through decades for suffrage and equal
rights. Time had come to pass. The abrogation of blacks and women's
injustices readied the minds and streets for the disabled. Both
cleared the way (as people on buses often do), expanded human
consciousness enough, removed guilt of oppressing the prior groups
enough, for the disabled to come out of the institutions and
almshouses, to be accepted in society, to speak out for certain
rights, and to be able to sit to the front of the bus.”

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Saturday, March 11, 2017

congenial-speak

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To the front of the Bus: Movement Toward a Fair Democracy

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