Dystopian Paradox

Note: We will hold our second meeting on January 25 at Diane Jay’s home in Ridglea Hills from 6pm to 8pm. You can sign up here. The weekend of our first meeting on December 14, supporters of this grassroots movement organized over 4000 similar meetings in 2,000 cities and in all 50 in states, each group adopting whatever name it chose.

The following by Ridge Dickey
December 16, 2008

Early this year, I began working in the effort to get Barack Obama elected president of the United States. Like millions, I made small contributions in response to the Obama Internet money raising campaign. I followed and worked in the Democratic primaries and the race against McCain. I checked pollster.com and fivethirtyeight.com several times daily the last month or so of the campaign.

I worked the last 10 days through November 4 in Roswell canvassing door to door. Grunt work. But other than the birth of my two children, participating in the New Mexico effort was one of the two most profound experiences of my life. The second was a trip to Kenya on a camera safari in 1994.

By electing Barack Obama as our next president, the nation gave birth to an historic moment. I had the privilege of not only witnessing history, but also participating in it. Every eligible voter who voted, whether for Obama or McCain, participated in making history and should be proud for having done so.

And then it was over. Postpartum depression set in.

But I began getting emails from the Change.Gov website of The Office of the President-Elect. Then the first of December, an email said “attend an event.” There was one to be hosted by Diane Jay at her home in Ridglea Hills last Sunday evening December 14. She is an Obama Fellow and spent four months in Las Cruces New Mexico working for Barack’s campaign. I had no idea what the agenda was to be Sunday evening, but twenty people including me showed up.

There was an agenda and it was from the Obama camp headquarters in Chicago. The agenda was for us to identify the biggest challenges facing our country and thus our community, and what we as a group can do to in our community to help bring about the changes necessary to overcome those challenges.

Diane Jay did a super job of facilitating the meeting. Two hours later through our interaction and not by edict from Chicago, we identified by consensus what we felt are our toughest challenges and how to proceed. We also decided that as a first effort, to contact friends to join with us in donating to the Tarrant Area Food Bank. We will be delivering what we collect to the Food Bank Monday afternoon December 22.

We also came up with a name for our group which is Tarrant County Bridge to Change.

We intentionally left Obama out of the name of our group. I’ve learned that Barack is a pragmatist rather than being an ideologue. As he said to America and the rest of the world on the evening of November 4 from Union Square, he will be the president of all Americans whether or not they supported him in the election, and his presidency will not be about him but rather all of us.

He is not bringing to the presidency his personal agenda or the ideological agenda of any one segment of our society. Just as his agenda as president of the Harvard Law Review was to produce the best publication possible, his pragmatic agenda as president of the United States is to lead the effort to make America the best place for our citizens and future generations to live and to have the opportunity to realize our potentials.

Tarrant County Bridge to Change is about all of us in our community. For us to be successful in overcoming the most daunting challenges since World War II, we must set aside our ideologies express of implied and attendant to being or calling ourselves Democrat, Republican, conservative, liberal, Libertarian, progressive, populist, religious or whatever. Our willingness to deal effectively with each other must now take priority over our desires to advance our respective ideological agendas. We must take advantage of the opportunity presented to us by unprecedented challenges to join together and build the bridge to change.

Democrat and Republican congressmen alike have stated that they will be reaching across the aisle to address these challenges. We the members of Tarrant County Bridge to Change will be reaching out to all members of our community, including private citizens, elected officials and public and private institutions. We want and need others who support our purpose to become a part of our group and work with us irrespective of differing ideologies. A group composed solely of those who think alike and don’t consider differing views becomes inbred. It is a breeding ground for monsters.

The Obama effort is transitioning from a campaign to get him elected to a grassroots movement to organize the community which is the United States of America for the purpose of bringing about necessary change for the betterment of both our local and larger communities. The success of this movement will produce a result that will be the most important asset we will have at hand in our foreign policy. This most valuable asset is success at home. Who are we to tell others how to behave when we can’t take care of ourselves? That question is not rhetorical.

The weekend of our first meeting, we were one of more than 4000 initial house meetings of supporters of this grass roots movement. Supporters organized these meetings in 2,000 cities and all 50 states. Will be working in our communities to bring about positive changes for us all. A lasting change is that it won’t be politics as usual.

Trickle-down economics and politics, however well intentioned, haven’t worked. A renaissance of a vital society requires a joining together of us at the grassroots level with those in positions power at the political, economic, charitable and public service level. The result will be a true democracy. Together we can make it happen.

My postpartum depression has lifted. Now I must keep my euphoria in check and channel that emotional energy toward becoming a small but effective part of the effort to improve the lives of all members of our community.

Maureen Dowd in her NYT column today bemoaned to the offshoring of domestic journalism including reporting. I posted the following comment to he article:

The USA will soon be a third world country unless the government takes back control of the generation of US money (read “dollars”). Private money generated by private financial institutions is accounted for with a dollar sign. Deregulation of the private financial sector combined with Nixon’s announcement to the world in 1970 that dollars will be redeemed only in Treasury debt has resulted in what we see today: the deterioration of our industry and the financial credit (debt) crisis.

Globalization has resulted in the inflation of non-productive assets, that is, assets that don’t find their way to fund increased industrial productivity. Interest income does not equate to increased productivity but only accumulation of dollars for those who own the assets that produce the interest. That has meant stagnation for those who work to make a living, including journalists.

Displacement of US industry with offshore facitlites and labor is but one result of our unregulated international financial system. Get your brighter investigative journalists to educate themselves about the interworkings and dynamics of the international private financial system.

Use the power of the pen you now hold to advance the well being not only of domestic journalism but rather all aspects of American industry. Get educated and then educate your readership before the owners of the NYT take your pens away from you.

I checked and my comment has been published (number 128 on the sixth page) but it didn’t make the editors’ selection list. Maybe the NYT management has on its editorial board the equivalent of a KGB political officer who serves side by side with military officers to keep them in line.

The Group of Twenty published a Declaration on November 15 at the summit meeting in Washington. It describes the cause of the crisis as follows:

3. During a period of strong global growth, growing capital flows, and prolonged stability earlier this decade, market participants sought higher yields without an adequate appreciation of the risks and failed to exercise proper due diligence. At the same time, weak underwriting standards, unsound risk management practices, increasingly complex and opaque financial products, and consequent excessive leverage combined to create vulnerabilities in the system. Policy-makers, regulators and supervisors, in some advanced countries, did not adequately appreciate and address the risks building up in financial markets, keep pace with financial innovation, or take into account the systemic ramifications of domestic regulatory actions.

4. Major underlying factors to the current situation were, among others, inconsistent and insufficiently coordinated macroeconomic policies, inadequate structural reforms, which led to unsustainable global macroeconomic outcomes. These developments, together, contributed to excesses and ultimately resulted in severe market disruption.

As to the world financial crisis, the primary culprit is our unwillingness to accept reality. President Reagan egged us on to our profligate ways and we bought into it: prosperity with no accountability.

Carter had warned us in 1980 in his state of the union speech:

Our material resources, great as they are, are limited. Our problems are too complex for simple slogans or for quick solutions. We cannot solve them without effort and sacrifice. Walter Lippmann once reminded us, “You took the good things for granted. Now you must earn them again. For every right that you cherish, you have a duty which you must fulfill. For every good which you wish to preserve, you will have to sacrifice your comfort and your ease. There is nothing for nothing any longer.”

In part because of the Iran hostage crisis, Carter had zero political capital by that time. Reagan won a landslide. Enter huge deficits, deregulation, opportunists, greed, corruption, arrogance, irresponsibility, and perverted ideologies clothed in religious garb.

There is no free lunch and there is no free shopping spree in reality. The IOU has come due.

Obama inherits this horror show and starts out with some political capital. Let’s hope he invests it wisely so that it grows, giving his administration the power to tackle effectively the environmental crisis and render fear-based politics ineffectual .

Ridge Dickey

While having little use for any Republican presently holding office, I don’t automatically support the Democrats on every issue. Obama and Pelosi are calling for a Detroit bailout, which I don’t support.

My view is that the present management of Detroit and its present shareholders should disappear. They chose a parasitic agenda- short-term profits while the host dies. They must be accountable for the consequences of their choices.

Let Detroit either expire or morph through Chapter 11 proceedings. If it emerges from Chapter 11, then hopefully the process will have turned a syphilitic spirochete into a butterfly.

Once in Chapter 11, the fed can come in with funds with lots of strings attached, including strict criteria on vehicles powered by something other than carbon fuels, and the cost of USA produced parts being the majority with final assembly here.

Corporations are suppose to hold the public trust. Greedy management, shareholders and government leaders have conspired to destroy this concept in our collective public consciousness. We must make the term “public trust” a part of our daily lexicon in the context of our present economic woes. The constitution neither mandates nor sanctions monopolies of wealth and power.

GM, Ford and Chrysler are examples of corporate and shareholder greed sucking the blood out of the future economic potential of this country, resulting not only in our own loss but that of future generations.

And the financial industry should be no more sacrosanct than Detroit. As to their management and shareholders and government officials who support them including Henry Paulson, let them all eat dirt.

It’s been almost 15 years since I got a new pair of glasses. Monofilament nylon that runs in a grove on the bottom of lightweight plastic lenses secures them in the wire frame. Two times I’ve had to have the monofilament replaced.

The day before the election, the left lens fell out because the monofilament broke. I’m legally blind without my glasses. I figured there would be no one in Roswell who could provide a fix.

Wrong. Second phone call is to a locally owned eyeglasses place who knew what I was talking about and said they could fix them while I wait.

Ten minutes later I’m there. It’s in a strip mall. I walked in and they have frames on display and I could her a lens being ground by a machine. This place was its own lab.

A lady in her thirties said she would be with me in a minute. Off to the right was a baby in a carseat who was obviously the child of lady and her mate, who was behind the counter working on something.

I was embarrassed to show her my glasses they were in such sorry shape. I built a fiberglass airplane in those glasses and there is a glob of epoxy on one of the lenses. The wire frame had broken in one place and were so wobbly even with the monofilament in good shape, I had superglued the lenses in the wire frames to keep the thing together. Over the years, the nose piece disappeared and the plastic ear pieces wore through to the bare wire.

The lady didn’t look down her nose at me nor did she make any condescending comment. Rather she asked if I wanted to her to try to find another frame that the lenses might fit into. I said no, that I just needed to get these patched up so I can get back to Fort Worth.

After showing them to her husband, she came back out and asked if she should look for a new nose piece and ear pieces. I said yes.

Ten minutes later her husband brings the glasses to me, and like his wife, without any sort of patronizing behavior. He said it would be $7.00. I gave him a $10 and told him to keep it. He said, “Are you sure.” I said absolutely.

That sort of experience would have been great anywhere, but to have it happen while eight hours away from home and without a backup pair of glasses made it special. People like that will be the salvation of our country and the world.

November 6, 2008

The ten day period culminating in November 4, 2008, is one of the two most profound episodes in my life. The other was a trip of about the same length to Kenya in 1994.

What I got to see in 1994 was an example of the results of nineteenth century European imperial colonization of sub-Saharan Africa: the destruction of much of its environment, overpopulation and squalor, and the elimination of who knows how many indigenous cultures.

From October 26 through election day, I had the privilege of working with a group of like-minded people in Roswell, New Mexico, to help in the effort to elect Barack Obama president of the United States. What I learned from my experiences there will take more than 30 words to relate. But I’ve got to start somewhere or not at all.

Perhaps one of the most meaningful aspects of the experience was working with a group of people from Austin, El Paso, New York, Kansas and California that included entrepreneurs, electrical engineers, nurses and lawyers who were more than willing to work in the trenches. We canvassed door to door day after day and made phone calls seeking support for Obama. Volunteer groups with similar makeups were doing the same thing in all battleground states for weeks before the election.

This type of work is not fun. We gave of our time doing things we did not enjoy doing for a cause we strongly felt was in the best interest not only of our country, but of all living things on our Mama Earth.

But each day, we had good feelings when we talked to people who were going to vote or already had voted for Obama. At that instant, there was a connection and warm feelings between strangers.

I heard no rhetorical questions like “why don’t the locals do all this volunteer work?” I discovered a long time ago that a very small percentage of the population gets involved in political campaigns. 2004 was my first time and because of that unpleasant experience, I thought at the time it would be my last.

But Obama came along and I knew after reading Dreams from My Father that I would help in his campaign for as long as he was in the running. Growing up in Indonesia and visiting his siblings in Kenya provided Barack with a world view essential to deal effectively with the challenges we now face.

And then we won. That’s the way Obama would put it. It’s about us and not Obama. It’s about all of us. He made that clear Tuesday night when he said that he would be the president not only for his supporters but also those who did not vote for him.

Abraham Lincoln was the white man who emancipated our African American slaves. We now have an African American president who hopefully will lead us all to freedom from the bondage of our arrogance, hubris and greed.

There is nothing providential about the United States or its people. All that defines us as citizens are having been born within its geographical borders or becoming such by a naturalization process. We have no god given right to our parasitic way of life, and the rest of the world has no obligation to provide it to us. Nor do we have the right to dictate how the rest of the world should live or govern themselves, or to assume the role of the world’s police force.

My hope is that we Americans regain some humility (if we ever had any) and accept the reality of our limits. We are not exceptional, and the pretense we are has resulted in the economic crisis and a planet in peril.

There is no free lunch. The many we thought were free were on credit which has now come due.

A great thing happened to me today. My good friend and law school buddy Don Cuba practicing in San Antonio called me this afternoon with one thing on his mind which we finally got to after an hour. The first hour we talked about the election and where things were headed.

Don was a Hillary supporter while Don’s wife Nan, who is also a great friend of mine, was for Obama all the way. Like so many Hillary supporters, Don came on board the Obama bandwagon.

I was telling Don about going to Roswell to work. Don, who is very much self deprecating while lavishing praise on others, told me he rented a bus Tuesday and drove over 400 people to vote. Don and Nan got 100 percent bang for the buck. It made me fell great that they had participated in this way and to have them as my friends.

Sunday, November 2

Yesterday was my seventh day canvassing and time is going fast. Only today and tomorrow to canvass and then a bunch of work on election day.

General Wesley Clark is staging a get-out-the-vote rally today at 11 am at the MIA-POA Park. What’s amazing is that after the rally, he will be canvassing for several hours along with the rest of us. My theory has always been that to be a great leader, you have to be willing to do the grunt work along with those whom you lead.

Some would classify General Clark as an overachiever because he’s risen to the top of every venture he’s ever been involved in. To me, an overachiever is someone who finds themselves in a position they are aren’t qualified for. George W. Bush meets my definition of overachiever.

By contrast, General Clark and Barack Obama are people who continue to realize their potential. They are leaders who attract me. I’m willing to follow them and with enthusiasm.

It’s becoming more and more fun out here as time grows short, even though most of the day is spent in the trenches. But everytime I meet an Obama supporter at their front door, I get a great payoff that makes the work seem more than worthwhile.

Yesterday was the hardest yet. Because I’ve got a gps, Robert gave me the mission of making sure that the town of Lake Arthur would go Obama. It’s 30 miles southeast of Roswell and in the same county. Geographically this is a big county, but the population is well under 100,000 people.

There’s more chihuahuas in this county than people. Every household has two or three of the little ankle-biters.

Lake Arthur has about 20 square blocks laid out in a grid over maybe 640 acres. I figure there’s max 6 people and 24 chihuahuas per acre so the human population is less that 150. My guess is we’ll take Lake Arthur based on my canvass.

The rest of the day was a semi-wild goose chase in the countryside. I drove over every type of road known to mankind arriving at twenty homes in an area of 40 square mile. I was carsick after four hours. Each place had several chihuahuas and some with junkyard dogs. Most were unaccessible. Several addresses were raw land so someone’s playing the voter rolls. I talked to only one or two people and did see some Obama signs. I saw even more McCain signs.

McCain and wife Cindy are showing up Monday afternoon for a big rally at the airport. If they want to get some more votes, each should have chihuahuas under both arms.

The campaign is going well here in Roswell, Chavez County, NM. I have no idea what that means in terms of whether Obama will take Chavez county. What I do know is that the people who have come here from out of town and out of state are working hard.

The Obama field coordinators, John and Whitney, are putting in 14 hour days. I’m a slacker, doing only about 7. But in my defense, I’m old and my single task is to canvass door to door which is tiring no matter what age.

But some of the volunteers are canvassing like me and then coming in at night and putting in a couple of hours inputting the day’s canvassing results into the database. Yep, I’m a slacker.

Which brings up the canvassing program that begins tomorrow, November 1. It’s a new round with about 4000 doors to knock on over the next two or three days. That’s a bunch of doors. But that’s the way a grass roots campaign works.

This campaign strategy is a legacy of Barack’s community organizing experience in South Chicago. I can see his administration operating with the same efficiency, and with competent people in place at every level.

Probably the most satisfying aspect of this experience is working with people who know what they are doing, why they are doing it, and whose primary agenda is getting Obama elected. I see no self-seeking here. Not only are the paid people professional, but also the volunteers. All of us know without telling one another that we are working in a professional, efficient campaign for a common cause. That’s a joy.

But all work and no play sucks. The spirit of Halloween is with us. I walked in this morning at 9 am and Robert is at his computer donning a white witch’s wig. He’s young but looked almost as old as me. Maybe I should die my hair. Maybe we’ll have a Halloween party tonight. I won’t have to wear a wig to scare people.

NYT Op-Ed columnist Ed Cohen’s article this morning brought home a main point of Obama’s story as Barack tells it: “For as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on earth is my story even possible.”

Cohen tells his story in his piece.  He is a naturilized American, having been a citizen of Britain where sublte barriors of religion and class exist.  He spent part of his childhood in apartheid South Africa.  Cohen can certainly relate to Barack’s story.

I posted the following comment to Ed Cohen’s article:

Thank you for your story. There are so many reasons I’m behind Barack, but the emotional one is being a part of history, the very real prospect that an African American will be president. His victory may not redeem our past, but it will go a long way toward making amends.

I’m white, grew up in Texas in the ’50s and still live here. Somewhere along the way, intellectually at least I shed my racism.

Barack’s loss will likely result in our continued rapid descent into the darkness of fear and its progeny: hate, prejudice, greed, intolerance, and intractable ideologies.

The greatest gift this country can give to the world, and more important to itself, is an Obama victory.