Now Age Minute - 8.7.11
The Day The Music Died
When we lost the Big Man back in June, the music died for me in a way not felt since the death of John Lennon. From his obituary in the NY Times,
Clarence Clemons, the saxophonist in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, whose jovial onstage manner, soul-rooted style and brotherly relationship with Mr. Springsteen made him one of rock's most beloved sidemen, died on Saturday at a hospital in Palm Beach, Fla. He was 69…
…From the beginnings of the E Street Band in 1972, Mr. Clemons played a central part in Mr. Springsteen's music, complementing the group's electric guitar and driving rhythms in songs like "Born to Run" and "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" with muscular, melodic saxophone hooks that echoed doo-wop, soul and early rock 'n' roll.
It's been more than a year since my last "weekly" installment of this column. As you would imagine, I've been stumped as to why I've been in such a writing funk. Certainly, ideas would come, only to be knocked down by other ideas, and so on. But now, in the aftermath of the debt ceiling torture, it's become clear. I've been suffering with PDSD (Post Democracy Stress Disorder). It's clear to me now, that the music had died for democracy in America, and I had gone numb.
When politicos and media talking heads began talking about citizens as "consumers", and our towns and cities as "markets", our democratic nation became a "corporatocracy"? But when did that begin? According to Michael Moore, it happened thirty years ago. From his article "30 Years Ago: The Day the Middle Class Died",
From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, "When did this all begin, America's downward slide?" They say they've heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent's income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how "lowly" your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated.
Young people have heard of this mythical time -- but it was no myth, it was real. And when they ask, "When did this all end?", I say, "It ended on this day: August 5th, 1981."
Beginning on this date, 30 years ago, Big Business and the Right Wing decided to "go for it" -- to see if they could actually destroy the middle class so that they could become richer themselves.
And they've succeeded.
On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who'd defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.
Perhaps you don't agree, though, that we're living in a corporatocracy. You need a little more convincing? Thanks to our friends at the Center for Media and Democracy, here's the tale of American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve "model" bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a "unique," "unparalleled" and "unmatched" organization. We agree. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door.
Everyone has their moment. For me, the day the music died for American democracy was December 9, 2000, when the Supreme Court ordered to halt the Florida recount in the Bush vs. Gore election. When the Court says the votes don't count, the democracy is finished. The real winners, as we now see: the corporations.
Where we're headed now is a mystery. But what's not mysterious, is that the solutions won't come from the establishment political class. Through the debt ceiling drama, the corporately-controlled Republicans finally revealed their true intentions: to undo New Deal and Great Society social programs. And the Democrats? While there are some very well intentioned Democratic members of Congress, their leader, the president, is not inclined to battle with the Republicans. It's just not his style. Or, maybe he, too, is a tool of the corporations. Either way, it's America's loss. Sucks.
The music's over. Time for a new song. Any ideas?
-Craig Gordon
"Everybody's got something to hide, except for me and my monkey"
John Lennon
