Deviled Eggs - Democratic Underground

H2O Man

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Sun Sep-27-09 12:44 PM
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Deviled Eggs

{1} I can remember my father saying, "You can only hard boil an egg once," years ago, when he and some other family members were discussing LBJ’s approach to US policy in Vietnam. It was around the time that George Ball was advising the President not to take the military’s recommendations. Ball had paraphrased Carl von Clausewitz when he told Johnson that "to the extent that the response to a move can be controlled, that move is probably ineffective. If the move is effective, it may not be possible to control – or accurately anticipate – the response."

People can agree or disagree on the issues involved with the US response to 9/11 in Afghanistan. However, it is simply impossible to think that we can unboil the egg the Bush-Cheney administration created, when they dropped the ball in Afghanistan and invaded Iraq. Attempting to use the tactics that might have worked yesterday, today, is destined to failure. I wish that President Obama had a George Ball today.

{2} The group "Mobilization for Health Care for All" is planning a series of nonviolent civil disobedience actions across the country, to bring attention to the need for true health care reform. Their activities are based on the sit-ins at lunch counters, etc, from the Civil Rights era. During the primary season and general election, I had noted in my support for Obama that the democratic left would be required to follow the civil right’s movements strategy for dealing with JFK, in order to accomplish our goals. Since the election, I’ve suggested that we need a Poor People’s Campaign, in the style that King planned in ’67 and ’68. This is a good start. For more information, visit this site:

www.mobilizeforhealthcare.org

{3} I think that DUers who have had the "pleasure" of dealing with the corporate media, when advocating for a just cause, can appreciate exactly what Sibel Edmonds is dealing with. Our own experiences may have been on a smaller scale, but the nature of them is the same. Ms. Edmonds, like you and I, is a human being, and thus imperfect at best. But the tactic of accusing her of being "dishonest" when she repeats something, to the best of her memory, that may well have been fed to her without a solid foundation, should not confuse anyone who has either first hand experience, or has invested the time necessary to study the career of public figures such as MKL and RFK.

{4} My sons are nearly done with their work on a book on my experiences with Onondaga Chief Paul Waterman. In a move connected with this, my wife bought me seven new display cases (with a total of 21 shelves), which allowed me to get out of storage several boxes of artifacts that sat with boxes of old files. Combined with my other shelves, I now have over half my collection on display. Shelves include smaller, individual collections from Olduvai Gorge, northern Africa, Europe, and of course the northeast in America.

Their goal is to share the thinking of modern, high-tech society’s older sibling. We are all part of the Human Family, and this generation is confronted with many difficult problems that can only be solved or dealt with by bringing about a different level of consciousness, starting in the United States. There are no magical solutions to the crises we face, only rational thought and common sense.

{5} Last week, a person working for an organization collecting money for democrats running for the US Senate in 2010 became frustrated and then rude while talking to me on the telephone. I was attempting to make clear exactly why I did not a single penny of my money to go for certain democrats in Congress. He said that it was obvious that I was not old enough to know about how LBJ got the Civil Rights legislation passed.

I politely asked him two simple questions. When he answered the first one incorrectly, I provided him with some accurate information on LBJ and Congress. When I then asked him about the Dixie-crats, he made it clear that he did not want to speak to me any more. However, I am confident that he realized I am old enough to remember the Johnson administration quite well.

{6} The lynching of Census worker Bill Sparkman reminds me of William Faulkner’s words in "Intruder in the Dust": "The past is never dead. It’s not even past."