Can We Make A Movement?

Okay, I'll admit it. I think I could do a better job than President Bush. But then again, I think just about everyone I've ever met -- Republican, Democrat or German shepherd -- could do a better job than President Bush. The problem isn't with envisioning better solutions to our problems, it's with getting the chance to enact them.

But unlike the president, I’ll tell you I'm a divider not a uniter, because I don't like a lot of what I see among my putative compatriots in the loyal opposition. In '04, I was a Democratic candidate for Congress (i.e. an anti-war candidate who got clobbered in the primary), but I'll gladly join the chorus calling the Democrats a spineless bunch of second-rate Republicans who stand for nothing. The radio show that gave birth to the Homelessness Marathon was my show, "The Nobody Show: Your Unabashed Voice of the Left and Left Out," but I won't even call myself a leftist anymore; because I'm sick of the left's anti-Semitism and racism; it's penchant for saying "People First," while putting the party line first (even when there's no party); and its endless addiction to self-congratulatory masturbation. As for the supposed good guys who just selflessly work for humanitarian groups, I invite you to take a look at the chart on the Marathon's web site that shows just what some of them are paying themselves.

And on top of that, everyone I know is scared.

So when I look at how I look at things, I don't think I'm really movement material, and I'm one of the lucky ones, because, despite a lifetime of useless maladjustment, on a good day I can pay my bills, or at least the minimum balance due. Maybe someone reading this will have a brighter view, and God bless you. In fact, God bless you if you don’t have a brighter view or any view at all. But I can’t be the only one who sees a disconnect between the size of the movement we’ve got to build and the material we’ve got to work with, by which I mean ourselves.

So the first thing I’d like to ask in my first post on this beautiful blog by which my work is so honored is this: now that the vast majority of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, how are we going to turn it around?

By the way, if anybody wonders how I can say a German Shepherd could run this country better than Bush, it’s easy. A German shepherd couldn’t give the order to go to war, and it wouldn’t hesitate to piss on the Patriot Act.