Marriage of Heaven and Hell or A Plea For Democratic Unity

[McCamy Taylor]

I. Strategic Considerations

Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human Existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy.
Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell. William Blake The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,877493,00.html

The Odyssey of Hubert Humphrey
TIME Monday, Dec. 06, 1971

Humphrey, who lost the presidency to Richard Nixon in 1968 by a mere half-million votes, insists that his chance for a second nomination is good…. Humphrey claims that on the Viet Nam issue he has as "good" a record since 1968 as any of the potential candidates. But there are those on the party's left who will never forgive him for not breaking with Lyndon Johnson over Viet Nam in the 1968 campaign. A Humphrey nomination could very possibly send them scurrying to a fourth-party movement…. Among high-level Democratic politicians, Humphrey is the best-liked personality of all the party's candidates.

In 1972, Hubert Humphrey was a well loved and well respected Democrat. And it was not just the Party leaders. Unions, African-Americans and other members of the Democratic base supported him. Therefore when the members of the Party’s left wing smeared him as a corrupt war monger “no better than Nixon”, charges that are repeated in the early chapters of Hunter S. Thompson’s essentially live blogged Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 (which was published in installments in The Rolling Stone ) Humphrey and his constituency and Party allies took offense.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0222-25.htm

(Hunter S. Thompson) loosened it up with a vicious style that captured the situation in just a few words. In the 1972 Democratic primaries, Hubert Humphrey "campaigned like a rat in heat," and Edward Muskie sounded "like a farmer with terminal cancer trying to borrow money on next year's crop."

The matter came to a head after McGovern secured the nomination. Suddenly, it was essential that he mend the rift within the Party. However, after months of being accused of perpetrating dirty tricks against McGoverm which had actually been the work of Nixon’s CREEPy operatives, Humphrey was in no mood to make nice.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,906201-6,00.html

George McGovern Finally Finds a Veep
TIME Monday, Aug. 14, 1972

Finally, Humphrey candidly explained why he would not run. He said that he would do anything to help McGovern get elected and hoped to swing some of his followers to McGovern's cause. He had enjoyed talking to McGovern again after the long primary battles. "Just to be his buddy again was a wonderful reward for me." But he added: "Imagine Hubert Humphrey on that ticket, and then you start showing the things we disagree on. Or poor old Hubert, he just had to get on. He just couldn't remain off. He smelled the sawdust again and there he's in the ring. Well, bull. I don't need to be in the ring. I'm just not going to leave myself open to any more humiliating, debilitating exposure. I don't want anything from George. There isn't a single thing he can give me, not one damn thing. And I can maybe help him in a way that nobody else can because I know a lot of people who say they aren't for him."

None of the Party’s established Democrats wanted to be associated with McGovern after its fractious primary campaign, so he ended up selecting an un-vetted Senator with a psych history known to few---except the FBI which reportedly had his hospital file and which under Hoover had done dirty tricks for Nixon before. The Eagleton Affair started McGovern’s long spiral from Democratic winner to general election loser. While a 1972 unity ticket might not have won the election for the Democrats, it almost certainly would have prevented the overwhelming loss----all states except Massachusetts---that McGovern suffered. And, if you translate 1972’s numbers to 2008, where there is no GOP incumbent running and the economy is in the toilet and the Iraq War is much more unpopular than the Vietnam War was then, the difference between a splintered weakened Democratic Party and a unified Democratic Party could make all the difference in the world.

II. Political Movements

Know the strength of a man,
But keep a woman’s care!
Be the stream of the universe!
Being the stream of the universe,
Ever true and unswerving,
Become as a little child once more.

Know the white,
But keep the black!
Be an example to the world!
Being an example to the world,
Ever true and unwavering,
Return to the infinite.
Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching

In Women, Race and Class Angela Davis writes of Lucy Parsons, one of the pioneers of the U.S. labor movement. Wife of political martyr Albert Parsons, socialist, one of the original women to join the International Workers of the World along with Mother Mary Jones, Parsons suffered under the dual burden of being Black and female in America.

In her eyes, Black people and women did not suffer special forms of oppression and there was no real need for mass movements to oppose racism and sexism explicitly. Sex and race…were facts of existence manipulated by employers who sought to justify their greater exploitation of women and of people of color…”Are there any so stupid,” Parsons asked in 1886,” as to believe these outrages have been…heaped upon the Negro because he is black?”

Not at all. It is because he is poor. . It is because he is dependent.

Women were no less dependent, and though their husbands and fathers gave them an allowance, they had no wealth of their own and their labor was—and is—rewarded with disparate pay, often forcing them and the nation’s children to live in poverty if there is no male in household.

The IWW was the first labor movement in the country open to everyone regardless of race or gender. For this reason, it was dangerous to the status quo, which attacked its leaders and members, like Joe Hill, with a particular fervor. As far as the right is concerned, there is something much more dangerous than rioting in the streets, and that is the specter of oppressed groups overcoming their apparent differences to work together. Woodrow Wilson, Democrat used the U.S. entry into WW I, widely regarded as a war of choice, as an excuse to restrict civil liberties, passing the Espionage Act of 1917, the equivalent of John Adams’ notorious Aliens and Sedition Act. This law allowed the feds to imprison socialists and union members for opposing the draft, leading to the decline of the 100,000 member organization.

Angela Davis argues that MLK Jr became a threat to the establishment when he moved beyond civil right for Blacks and began to focus on poverty—an issue that embraced many groups.

http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/1998/01/x01.htm

Interviewer: One of the things that struck me as I've gone back and revisited this history —is that Martin Luther King starts this movement for economic justice just before he's assassinated. The Black Panther party is just getting off the ground here in California and in a way there seems like there was a march towards merging these issues of class and race in the late 60s that somehow got derailed.

Davis: Yes, I think it's really important to acknowledge that Dr. King, precisely at the moment of his assassination, was re-conceptualizing the civil rights movement and moving toward a sort of coalitional relationship with the trade union movement. It's I think quite significant that he was in Memphis to participate in a demonstration by sanitation workers who had gone out on strike.

King had become interested in migrant issues. He had shown tolerance towards gays. His movement was becoming one for all oppressed people---which put him on the right track to effect real change by getting the 50% of Americans who do not vote because they think that no one represents them to the polls.

It is no accident that John Edwards was the Democratic candidate targeted for removal by the corporate media. Though Lawrence O’Donnell dismissed him as southern White man, his message of ending poverty touched on an issue that is of particular concern to women, Blacks and Latinos as well of working class Americans threatened by the sour economy, and therefore his campaign had the potential to unite a huge number of the nation's oppressed who could have formed a sizable Democratic voting block.

While it is great to have a candidate who can mobilize African-Americans as never before or one who can mobilize women as never before or one who can mobilize Latinos as never before, think of the possibilities of a ticket that can mobilizes Blacks, Latinos, women, gays and lesbians. If everyone except the wealthy and powerful voted and voted Democratic, the working class would finally take control of this country.

That is why the corporate media is trying so hard to keep Hillary and Obama and their supporters at each other's throats.

III. Division in the Ranks

Now a word about the parties of Interzone…
It will be immediately clear that the Liquefation Party is, except for one man, entirely composed of dupes, it not being clear until the final
absorption who is whose dupe.....
Liquefactionists in general know what the score is. The Senders, on the
other hand, are notorious for their ignorance of the nature and terminal state of sending, for barbarous and self-righteous manners, and for rabid fear of FACT-. It was only the intervention of the Factualists that prevented the Senders from putting Einstein in an institution and destroying his theory. It may be said that only a very few Senders know what they are doing and these top Senders are the most evil and dangerous men in the world. . . .
The Divisionists occupy a mid-way position could in fact be termed moderates....They are called Divisionists because they do in fact divide. They cut off tiny bits of their flesh and grow exact replicas of themselves in embryo jelly....Every replica but your own is eventually an “Undesirable”.
William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/15/blogtalk-pro-clinton-bloggers-walk-out-of-kos/?scp=1-b&sq=Kos+Hillary+Obama&st=nyt

Corporate America cheers as Daily Kos explodes before their eyes, the meltdown recorded for all to see on the pages of the New York Times. This is divide and conquer at its finest.

On Friday, it got to be too much for Alegre, a diarist on the flagship liberal blog DailyKos, who frequently writes in support of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“I’ve put up with the abuse and anger because I’ve always believed in what our online community has tried to accomplish in this world,” Alegre wrote Friday evening. “No more.”
Objecting to the tone of attacks against Mrs. Clinton and her supporters on the blog, the diarist called for a “writers strike.”
“This is a strike - a walkout over unfair writing conditions at DailyKos. It does not mean that if conditions get better I won’t ‘work’’ at DailyKos again,” Alegre wrote, promising to come back only “if we ever get to the point where we’re engaging each other in discussion rather than facing off in shouting matches.”
Snip

One user, Sentient, called for a “permanent succession”

There are 1001 variations of Thomas Paine’s famous “If we do not hang together we shall surely hang separately.”

What is the net result of this division of left wing sites? Each one will become its own little homogeneous republic, a mutual masturbation circle in which the members repeat the same ideas, varying only the adjectives with which they praise their fearless leader and castigate the enemy.

When did the Democratic Party become the party of Burroughs’ Divisionists?

IV. Geraldine Ferraro is a Grandmother

Only Love itself can explain Love,
Only Love can explain the destiny of lovers.
The proof of the sun is the sun itself:
If you want proof, don’t turn your face away.
Rumi

When speaking to Keith Olbermann about the Rev. Wright, Barrack Obama made several excellent points. While he disavowed Wright’s choice of words, he did not reject the man himself, whom he considered like a family member. He also showed compassion when he put himself into Rev. Wright’s shoes, mentioning the painful memories and anger which African-American men of his generation carried, which explained the difference in Wright’s opinions and Sen. Obama’s.

After today’s speech, in which Sen. Obama spoke about his maternal grandmother’s lingering prejudices about African-Americans, Keith Olbermann made a painful admission about his own grandfather, whom he considered a “good” person but who said something unforgivable about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

As the story of Rev. Wright has unfolded, I have waited for Keith Olbermann and the particular wing of the Democratic Party which took up arms against Geraldine Ferraro to notice that everything which Sen. Obama has said applies to Ms. Ferraro as well. She entered public life at a time when women were expected to stay home and have babies.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/13/ccn25.tan.ferraro/index.html

As the Democratic Party's vice presidential nominee in 1984, Ferraro had come a long way from her upbringing as the daughter of working-class Italian immigrants.
"I went from being a kid who lost her father and who lived in the South Bronx to almost going in to live in the White House," said Ferraro
snip
Born August 26, 1935, in Newburgh, New York, Ferraro earned a scholarship to Marymount College in Manhattan, where she got her bachelor's degree, then worked as an elementary teacher by day while putting herself through Fordham law school at night.

As a wife and mother, she was expected to raise her three children at the same time that she practiced law.

For those who say “So what?” as

Shirley Chisholm said “Of my two "handicaps" being female put more obstacles in my path than being black.”

She lived through an era when members of the women’s movement were commonly told to wait in line after the civil right’s movement—---as if the struggle for human liberation was not one struggle. Note that equal pay, day care, reproductive issues add to the burden of poverty under which the nation's children live.

Olbermann’s response to Ferraro was to demand that Clinton reject Ferraro the human being---in a way that neither he nor Obama rejected their grandparents and in a way that he did not expect Obama to reject his minister.

A compassionate person never rejects another human being. That is what the Rumi quote tells us. "Don't turn your face away." The metaphor is a deliberate one. You can not be compassionate with your reason alone. Sometimes, in order to show compassion, you have to expose yourself to emotion, and some of the emotions will be uncomfortable, even painful. A loving person is not afraid to confront those feelings. A loving person does not run away. A loving person seeks to understand the other individual. That is how KO and Obama responded to their grandparents. That is how women all across the country, who view Ferraro as a role model, responded to her.

If you turn your face away from another, you deny their existence. This is the moral equivalent---on a smaller scale--- of what the Nazis attempted to do to the Jews. They believed that if they could excise certain people from the face of the earth, the earth would be a better place. This is what certain religious sects do when they “shun” people. When you reject another human being, you deny that person’s humanity---and you cut away a little piece of your own.

It is humane to reject or condemn a person’s actions so that the other person can learn from his or her mistakes. It is never humane to reject another human being.

Olbermann has a platform in his show in which he can heal the rift within the Democratic Party by allowing members to look into the face of the sun and see the humanity of that which they are currently calling the enemy---and in the process, they will heal themselves. Their inhumanity towards each other is responsible for the Party’s sagging numbers in the polls as they forget about the real issues—--the war in which 4000 soldiers will have died any day now, the coming economic collapse—and focus on name calling and mud hurling. Olbermann could alleviate all of that, if he chose. So, why does he prefer to officiate at a Democratic Primary turned Monster Truck rally?

V. Obama Called For Unity Just Hours Ago.....

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

And it came to pass as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Genesis xi, 1-9.

Congressman Jack Murtha is a war hero. Congressman Jack Murtha did the whole country a favor when he stepped forward and announced what everyone knew, but some were afraid to say it for fear that the Bush-Cheney machine would call them “soft on terror.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/17/AR2005111700794.html

The top House Democrat on military spending matters stunned colleagues yesterday by calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, while many congressional Democrats reacted defiantly to President Bush's latest attack on his critics.
Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), a decorated Vietnam War veteran, said many of those troops are demoralized and poorly equipped and, after more than two years of war, are impeding Iraq's progress toward stability and self-governance.

"Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency," Murtha said in a Capitol news conference that left him in tears. Islamic insurgents "are united against U.S. forces, and we have become a catalyst for violence," he said. ". . . It's time to bring them home."

Murtha’s statement earned him attacks from the right, but it emboldened his fellow Democrats, which almost certainly contributed to their victory in 2006. We all owe Congressman Murtha a huge debt of gratitude.

However, today Murtha did the unthinkable. He decided to support Sen. Clinton in her presidential bid.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5145491

The thread is entitled John Murtha (D-Military Industrial Complex) endorses Clinton. Here is how John Murtha is treated on DU now.

I've never been able to stand Murtha. He's one of the most conservative dems and one of the most corrupt Congress critters. Cali

Looks like Murtha's been fondling Hillary's war chest greguganus

surprise surprise not.. He's "into" government contracts & lobbyist money SoCalDem

He may be a war hero but he's also a crook. And a fucking big one at that. Bigleaf

John Murtha (D-Military Industrial Complex) (Washington Fat Cat) (Pork Barrels) figures meow mix

And then from the people who think that they are on the other side (except that they are mistaken, we are all in this together, some of us are just confused right now and don’t know it) there is this monster rant from all the oppressed groups that did not get a special mention in Obama’s unity speech. I am not going to copy all the posts. They are mostly “Hey, what about the women?” “Hey, what about the gay and lesbians?”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5140440

Hey, what about the underlying message? Was anyone listening?


:dem:

[McCamy Taylor]

1. Right now, this man is the biggest obstacle to the Obama campaign

David "I'm just a Daley style dirty political consultant" Axelrod.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/david-axelrod-frenetic-_n_92057.html

"They would do anything to win, and that means anything," David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, told me Monday. "There is a frenetic energy around them to commandeer this election in any way they can."

Axelrod went on: "She is the ultimate Washington inside player. She is always asking, 'How do we wire the vote? How do we wire the system to get the results we want?'"

Real unity speech, that, and such perfect timing (do I need a sarcasm emoticon?) Did MLK Jr. have a creep making hateful remarks about JFK the night before his "I Have a Dream Speech"? He may have spoiled the whole thing for you.

Who is charge? Obama or Axelrod? The answer should be Obama. Senator, please put a sock in this loser's mouth and take charge of your campaign.

[AllentownJake]

2. What's good for the Goose is good for the Gander

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2004203740_clinton26.html

Ok, after a month, a solid month of everything but the kitchen sink thrown at Obama by a fellow democrat and he's suddenly at fault for the unity thing?

If he responds to the kitchen sink he's divisive and ruining his message of change. If he doesn't he's a wimp and how will he be able to stand up to the GOP. Make up your mind on him.

I'm sorry....We are not the ones that destroyed the unity. Sorry the genie is out of the bottle and we aren't the ones who took it out. The reason there are one set of rules for people with the last name of Clinton and one set of rules for everyone else in the party.

[McCamy Taylor]

9. So the politics of tit for tat is what Obama is really about and unity is just a gimic?

I think Obama would disagree. Who is contradicting his message? The MSM? Freepers who pretend to be his supporters? His own campaign manager?

[susankh4]

7. And I'll agree with McCamy here as well.

This "talking bad" about the Clinton camp ..... while all the while trying to appear "above it all" is really raising red flags for me.

I believe Axelrod is the race baiter in this primary season. And he is also the reason why Mr. Obama will very likely not win in the GE. He may be able to take down the Clintons... because they actually CARE what the African American community thinks about them. The GOP will have no such concern.

[LizW]

3. K & R n/t

[chimpymustgo]

4. This is a great post MT. EVERYONE, PLEASE READ. We must unify. Huge K&R.

[LizW]

5. Kick n/t

[susankh4]

6. Thanks to McCamy for this!

"After today’s speech, in which Sen. Obama spoke about his maternal grandmother’s lingering prejudices about African-Americans, Keith Olbermann made a painful admission about his own grandfather, whom he considered a “good” person but who said something unforgivable about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

As the story of Rev. Wright has unfolded, I have waited for Keith Olbermann and the particular wing of the Democratic Party which took up arms against Geraldine Ferraro to notice that everything which Sen. Obama has said applies to Ms. Ferraro as well. She entered public life at a time when women were expected to stay home and have babies."

I have been so discouraged at the double standard here. The cruelty to Ms. Clinton & Ms. Ferraro... when placed next to the "aw shucks" attitude toward Mr. Obama and Rev. Wright... is maddening.

I want to be able to support Mr. Obama if he gets the nomination. But, my rage at the double standard is making that very hard for me.

[Tyler Durden]

8. Good Luck. It didn't work for me.

I suggested bridge building a couple of weeks back, and LARGELY (with a COUPLE of exceptions) the Obama Supporters pissed upon me from their great height.

Get out your umbrella.

[McCamy Taylor]

10. You have to keep trying over and over again. That is what I do.

When I first started posting about anti-immigration being racist, people here and at Kos were afraid to even touch the issue. They thought that it was poison for the Democrats and gold for Republicans. I knew that they were wrong, so I kept posting and posting, doing a series of journals until I had made it clear that the anti-immigration movement was nothing but a racist/fascist con job being used to keep workers down.

You can not open peoples eyes all at once. When they have been brainwashed, sometimes you have to walk them through things.

[McCamy Taylor]

11. Buzzflash--lip service to unity---9 Hillary bashing posts 3-18 and 3-19.

And you just know that if Hillary says even one word about Obama, the Left Wing Moral Police are going to jump up and down and scream "Look! She broke the Unity!"

Off the check Huffington Post. The left wing press just does not get it at all. They do not want to be unified. They want to increase their circulation by printing inflammatory, baiter stories that get Democrats mad at each other.

Addendum: Huff. Post only has two Hillary bashing pieces, one by Arianna herself, and we know that she has a deep seated personal dislike for Hillary that goes way back, so she probably can not help herself. The lack of Hillary bashing could be due to the fact that this is an "All War" issue, so I will check tomorrow before I give them too much praise for unity, but they get big thumbs up for writing about the War instead of this stupid primary.

Gore Vidal once suggested that we limit presidential elections to 4 weeks and put it all on PBS. That was before Reagan, I think. We would end up with movie stars every time if we followed his plan.

[geardaddy]

12. K & R'd

Excellent post McCamy. There must be REAL unity for us to take the WH in Nov.

:kick:

[InfiniteNether]

13. I'll post my reply on other threads, too.

I noticed that Mr. Taylor's threads don't get many replies. I guess the readers here like their short and sweet thread "30 second sound-bite news" just as much as the average American voter. Listen to what he says. Doesn't it strike you as odd that some of the people who worked for Nixon, namely Karl Rove and Pat Buchanan, are still around sliming up the political landscape? And pulling the same stunts that they did in '72? This whole primary season smells like a setup. It's not just Obama and Clinton going at each other. "Dirty Tricks" are in play once again. We've all been setup to hate each other. These clowns are probably giggling and spanking off at the thought of a bitterly divided, brokered Democratic Convention. As far as I can tell, McCamy Taylor is the only one bringing this up.