I drink a toast to you, the bitter-enders

[WilliamPitt]

"All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the less of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it."

- Herman Melville, 'Moby-Dick'

I drink a toast to you, the bitter-enders. I drink a toast to the ones who have stood, who have marched, who have spoken, who have written, who have raised their fists and voices in these 1,267 days since the sun rose January 20th, 2000.

I drink a toast to the Democrats, to the DLC, to the centrists, to the liberals, to the progressives, to the Greens, to the Nader folk, to the socialists, to the communists. I drink a toast to supporters of Dean, of Edwards, of Clark, of Graham, of Kucinich, of Kerry, of Gephardt, of Lieberman, of Moseley-Braun, of Sharpton, of Bill Clinton, of Al Gore.

You have stood these 1,200 days, you have worked, you have believed, and despaired, and believed again. You have fought, with one another, and with me, and I with you, and all of us against our common foes. You have never lost sight of what you believe in, and though we may disagree, for that you are extraordinary.

Some of us have been called crazy. Some of us are. All of us, in one way or another, have become Ahab. If our chests could become canon, we would fire our hearts in the name of what which we believe, that which we love. There is no shame in this. The times, desperate as they are, require an Ahab to battle this white whale we have been saddled with.

I drink a toast to you, and I offer two poems:

Some stood up once, and sat down
Some walked a mile, and walked away
Some stood up twice, then sat down, "I've had it" they said,
Some walked two miles, then walked away. "It's too much," they cried.

Some stood and stood and stood.
They were taken for fools,
They were taken for being taken in.

Some walked and walked and walked.
They walked the earth,
They walked the waters,
They walked the air.

"Why do you stand," they were asked, "and why do you walk?"
"Because of the children," they said,
"And because of the heart,
"And because of the bread,"

"Because the cause is the heart's beat,
And the children born
And the risen bread."

- Daniel Berrigan

My other poem is offered in the spirit of hope which, I think, motivates us all. I offer this poem in the name of our inevitable triumph, in the name of that new day for this country and this world that must, and will, come to pass. On that day, after our Agincourt, we can sit upon the grass, roll up our sleeves, and show our scars.

I pray you will see this as I see it, and ignore the male pronouns. This is, and will be, for all of us.

This day is called the Feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a-tiptoe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall see this day, and live old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors
And say, "Tomorrow is Saint Crispian."

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with added luster,
what feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so lowly,
This day shall enoble his rank.
And gentlemen in England, now abed,
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here;
And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

- William Shakespeare, 'Henry V'

I drink a toast to you, the bitter-enders. In all things, the most committed wins.

:toast:

[Zomby Woof]

1. my end isn't bitter

Just sore from sitting on it reading poetry and wiping whale snot off my keyboard. :toast:

[WilliamPitt]

4. I think you call that ambergris

:)

[Throckmorton]

54. Isnt that whale puke?

Oh well, back to Billy Budd, Fore Topman.

[leftofthedial]

2. toast back at ya

here's to you
and here's to me
here's to the sky
and here's to the tree

:toast:

[VelmaD]

3. Yet again...

you manage to leave me at a complete loss for something to say. So I won't even try to put it into words. :hug:

[pinto]

5. amen.

[Must_B_Free]

6. 2004? huh?

fill in the blanks for us mentally challenged, please...

[Wonk]

10. "1,267 days since the sun rose January 20th, 2004." William is in 2008?

:shrug:

[WilliamPitt]

11. D'oh!

I'm so used to typing 2004, my fingers worked on muscle memory. Thanks for the heads up. pzzzzzzcheeeezzzzz....

[Must_B_Free]

18. One small step

Victory in 2004 is not everything. Like the prosecution of the attack on Iraq, that alone is not the end. We need to be thinking of the post war plan.

We don't have adequite protections any more. These facists will study their failures and temper themselves appropriately. They'll buy movie chains and cartoonists to further control every aspect of communication. They will come again, trying to perfect this vision of total control of mankind.

Victory in 2004 is but a scary step on a long road to progress. Celebrate our accomplishments, but recognize that we still have a long way to go.

[WilliamPitt]

20. Exactly

Which is why I say 'bitter-enders.' This has only just begun. Hell, it hasn't even begun yet. If we win in 2004, it will be Year Zero, and all of us will have busted our asses for the privilege of just getting started.

[anarchy1999]

55. Wow, you just said it the best. We are only getting to have the privilege

of only just getting to start over. Look back 100 years. That is all you have to do. The battles are still the same only they seem to be uglier now, the corporations have far much more control and are much uglier and meaner. There are just a few getting richer and lots lots more getting poorer. Health care and education are just two of the issues at the top, but probably the two most important of any issues there are. If we loose those two safety nets what does this country have left. Only the military. And we, the people, we have been warned about the military industrial build up of this country and the downfall it will bring. This warning is at least 200+ plus years old. It goes back to Jefferson and Franklin and comes all the way forward through Ike Eisenhower and John Kennedys, oh and yes all the sorry rest.

Will we the people ever learn to listen to the true founders and leaders of this great nation or will we forever more be like lemmings, will we continue to run off the cliff on behalf of the corporations?

Sorry for the rant, and please forgive me in advance.

Just another sad, patriot, fool, just trying to find her way.

[merh]

25. They are already buying theater chains (Loews). (n/t)

[Philostopher]

60. Wasn't the actual inauguration

January 20, 2001? 2000 was the election year ...

[fishnfla]

7. my math sucks

how many days now since 1/20/04?

[Cleita]

8. Okay

:toast:

But I ran out of scotch so I guess I'll have to do it with tea.

[DrWeird]

9. Yeah, but everybody on the Pequod dies.

Frankly, I would have stolen a life boat and rowed to Tahiti.

[WilliamPitt]

12. Ishmael survived

and was rescued by the ship Rachel.

[DrWeird]

16. Oh, that's right.

My stoned teenage memory had him floating on some jetsam, facing certain death. That's probably where it said, "this book is stupid, I wonder what's one TV?"

[KoKo]

13. That's very nice, Will. If you hadn't said "Bitter Enders" I would have

thanked you. I'm not a "Bitter Ender," and I don't know many others here who would fit that term or want to be described that way. :shrug:
But, I agree about those here who have slogged along doing their fax/phone/e-mail,marching against this Invasion of Iraq, joining campaigns, getting out the vote, working their butts off against very bad odds with little thanks. And, all the creatives who moved us along by writing, drawing, producing whatever they could that would get the Bushies out, deserve much credit.

Our voices were early but that we were here meant eventually someone listened and then many listened and a new movement has been born.

That's not a "bitter ender." That's folks who had courage to fight for what they believed in and enough hope and perserverance to stay at it.
It's joyful and not bitter,to be riding the first wave of long overdue change in our political system.

[WilliamPitt]

15. My obligatory Koko scolding

Excellent. :)

[DustMolecule]

24. Well said

no bitter-enders here - that's for sure!!! Thank you for your eloquent response :-)

[WillyT]

14. And In The End...

The love you take
is equal to
the love you make...

Here's to you too, Brother Will!!!

:toast::hug::toast:

[puerco-bellies]

17. 1,267...

I think it was otter who commented on Bluto's "Did we quit when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, Hell no!"

Shhh he's on a roll

[WilliamPitt]

19. NIEDERMEYER!!!

He's insane, but absolutely right.

[Nevernose]

21. Henry V quote might be more approproate for *

The sentiment is nice, and I appreciate it (as do we all), but Henry V was a war criminal, wasn't he? I mean, after the battle, he put the townfolk's heads on pikes as a warning, along with all other manner of terrible things. It's the story of a megalomaniac who drums up the slightest excuse for war possible, then leads his army along on trumped up appelas to patriotism and courage.

There's one out of Richard II I really like, and another from Henry IV.1. Now where the hell did I put that book...

(in case you hadn't noticed, I've been toasting myself all night long ;) )

[WilliamPitt]

22. Shoosh

Don't get in the way of good poetry. :)

[merh]

23. Lovely post. Thank you, thank you so very much.

I raise my glass to yours and share your toast. :toast:
And I raise my glass to you and toast your efforts and your strengths and your sharing.
:toast:

[MUAD_DIB]

26. Raising a glass to you and all DUers right now.

Cheers!

[FlemingsGhost]

27. Awww ... t'was nuthin'

Like travelling, being in good company always helps.

[markses]

28. That's a terrible analogy: No thanks on Ahab

And not only because Ahab dies in his mad quest. Ahab's monomania embodies the worst characteristics of humanity for Melville, the concentration of all existential dread into a living object. Ahab is racism, sexism, sadism, all manner of scapegoating. The threat from nowhere is falsely located in something: "all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil,...were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick." This is not a good place to be. This is a pathology of the most dangerous kind, for Melville as well as for today. As much as I fight the Bush Administration with all my strength, I know that Bush is not responsible for all ills, I don't condense the "sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down" on to the Bush Administration. To do so would be a terrible misunderstanding of life and a dangerous, dangerous understanding of politics. The passage you cite from Moby Dick is often cited to show where Ahab has gone terribly wrong. I'd rather not be associated with that kind of pathology. Here's the danger, from Wallace Stevens:

Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Point being, Ahab's madness is the illusion of the jar that takes "dominion everywhere," like nothing else, Will, in Tennessee. There can be little doubt that the defeat of the Bush Administration requires a steadiness and a single-mindedness, a gray and bare comportment, a discipline. And yet we should not forget the bird and bush as we combat Bush; we cannot. We cannot forget the rough joy and dread of life; single-mindedness must always be tempered with the twisted viney wilderness. It must always be double-mindedness, in this sense - not the obsession and reification of life's suffering in the whale (Nietzsche's resentful man gone ascetic priest), but a play of masks - sometimes the activist in this cause, sometimes just grooving, sometimes mischievious, sometimes thinking, sometimes even deceiving in this great wilderness. If you're looking to melville for a model, look to the confidence man, not mad Ahab.

[Nevernose]

29. So now we've shit on his Moby Dick and Henry V analogies

What's left? Time to screw around with that other poem?

:evilgrin:
:evilgrin:
:evilgrin:

[WilliamPitt]

31. I hate bread! I hate children!

:)

[markses]

35. I have no problem raising a toast

Or making light. But you make light here, and this is a deadly serious question for all of us. I won't begrudge it, but i won't like it either.

[Nevernose]

44. High carbs. Overpopulation. No text.

n/t

[WilliamPitt]

30. But it is appropriate

because things have gone terribly wrong, and it takes the single-minded focus of the zealot to make a dent. Some might call this megalomania, but in this case, call it discipline.

[markses]

34. I've already called it discipline in my post

And I've already addressed that. Discipline doesn't save us from becoming terrible ourselves. You're just so wrong on this Will I can't tell you. It is not appropriate. It is self-destruction, pure and simple. Which is, of course, Melville's point. But his other point is more telling here: it is not only self-destruction, but destruction of those in your charge, the vast and varied crew of the Pequod - all of humanity, in Melville's understanding. Yours is the worst possible reading of Moby Dick; indeed, and at the risk of stabilizing Melville's intention, it seems to miss the point of the novel entirely. Ahab has a damn good excuse for his hatred of Moby Dick - but that excuse and discipline is not justifiable ultimately for reifying the daily and endless variety of life (it's sufferings as well as joys) in the whale. Re-read the chapter on the whiteness of the whale - or better, read "The Metaphysics of Indian Hating" chapter in The Confidence Man. You always have an excuse for the single-minded pathology, because suffering is quite real. But the pathology is the worst thing in the world. I just can't tell you how wrong you are about this. It is a question of fundamental ethics.

[Amaya]

32. Well,

I'm not bitter. Not at all. Just a lot. Cheers :toast:

[Octafish]

33. Clink! To your health!

And to that of all good people!

[Missy Vixen]

36. I drink a toast

to the man that coined a phrase that burns in my heart, still:

Anger is a gift.

I am here now, till the bitter end, and beyond.

Julie

[Journeyman]

37. I don't like the appellative "bitter ender". . .

it connotes attitudes and beliefs I don't share and seems to echo Rumsfeld's idiotic "dead-ender" description of the Iraqi fighters.

No, I much prefer to be known as a "ten percenter," as one of those who stood against BushCo when 90% gave him their support. I feel greater pride in that accomplishment than I will even in his defeat this November, for it was our collective stand in the dark days that made possible this looming daylight we may yet enjoy.

[govegan]

38. Rachel searching for her lost children, and

A sign on a tree in a public park in Madrid, Spain:

"I am the warmth of the hearth on cold winter nights. I am the shade screening you from the summer sun. My fruits and restoring drinks quench your thirst as you journey onward. I am the beam that holds your house; the door of your homestead; the bed on which you lie, and the timber that builds your boat. I am the handle of the hoe, the wood of your cradle, and the shell of your coffin."

In a book by Helen and Scott Nearing:

The essence of life consists in living. In the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, "To travel hopefully is better than to arrive, and the true success of life is to labor."

"And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away." PB Shelley

Toast on!

[ibegurpard]

39. You're being awfully magnanimous today

That's usually a sign that some bitter pill-swallowing is in order soon. :scared:

[WilliamPitt]

40. ?

[ibegurpard]

41. I have found that attempts to make nice with people

with whom you have had a history of antagonism is often an indicator of something coming down the party pipeline that I find repugnant. For example: do you know more about this:http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1846026&mesg_id=1846026 than you are letting on?

[Hutzpa]

45. Ok made a few pointers

was those vote effective? how many can you point that where effective.

[WilliamPitt]

46. LOL

Hee! No. Zero. I get my tips from Newsweek, just like you.

I posted that because the words 'Gephardt' and 'Vice President' cause visible twitching, snarling and smashing amongst a large segment of the DU populace. I was just floating the hard data to inject some fact into the froth.

But thanks. You give me credit for having excellent sources. Not even the networks know who Kerry will pick, but somehow, I do. :)

[Hutzpa]

43. Yeah ?

would like to know too bitter pill

[jus_the_facts]

42. an exerpt from The Barons Bold......

The People firm, from Court and Peers,
By union won Reform, sirs,
And, union safe, the nation steers
Through sunshine and through storm, sirs:
And we swear that equal laws
Shall prevail o’er lordlings’ words,
And can prove that freedom’s cause
Is too strong for hireling swords:
Then honor we
The victory
Of the people brave, united;
Let all our bands
Join hearts and hands
Our wrongs will all be righted.

William Johnson Fox 1895

[fabius]

47. Thanks for the poetry Will. How about this...

I won't even carp about the role models. Heck, Henry really was a king; Dumbya isn't even a real presnit.

Since I've had a couple of toasts so far...


For Dumbya and the neocons

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and smirk of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Georgie Dubya, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

With apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelley

[Bake]

48. "If our chests could become canon"???

Do you mean "cannon", as in "fire the cannon?" Otherwise, you're mixing insoluble metaphors.

I luv ya, Will, but methinks you've been a little too deep into the scotch tonight... This is a bit (a) pompous; (b) negative - bitter enders, etc.

On the other hand, I've been into the bourbon tonight, and I salute the sentiment.

Cheers,

Bake

[Joe the Revelator]

49. Hell of a post Will..

almost made me cry

[anarchy1999]

50. All I can say is thank you Will. Scott is going to be in Dallas tomorrow,

without you. What a plus you would have been. Oh, well. Thank you for the inspiration you are and what you give to us all. You are a rock. Everything you write and that you speak brings tears to my eyes. You are a true Patriot. Thank you Will.

[grasswire]

51. when people have told me...

...they could take no more of this fight (despite the fact that in this new world they were fighting by moving their fingers over keys, in their sweats and skivvies with iced tea and hot coffee and comfort), I have urged them to look at the history of the Civil Rights movement. There was no giving up when dogs snarled and fire hoses stung and batons split skin from skull. There was no reprieve from heat of sun and blistering glares of white folk. There was no sweet spot as the Daily Show just ten paces from the cyber battlefield, for respite.

There was only keeping on, keeping on, keeping on.

We're at that point. I don't expect the fight to end with the election of John Kerry.

Look to that model. From the time of William Lloyd Garrison to the NAACP today, still fighting, in solidarity.

Are you in?

[Skittles]

52. A proud member of the ten percenters here

YES INDEED.

[JCMach1]

53. 'Remember the 10%ers'

:)

[DinahMoeHum]

56. But we still have a ways to go. . . Eyes on the prize. . .

one day at a time.
:toast:

[mmonk]

57. To the bitter end

:toast:

[bobthedrummer]

58. Make mine alcohol-free please. CHEERS!

:smoke:

[bobthedrummer]

59. Make mine alcohol-free please. CHEERS!

Now somebody should recite "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner".:smoke: