My friend The Voice In The Wilderness posted a comment in my most recent pro-Beto O’Rourke piece Beto: A Response To The Question “He talks pretty. What has he done?” (http://www.boomantribune.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2019/1/20/122646/155)
Here it is:
Just saying that after many disappointments including Dean and Sanders and now Pritzker, I’m saying “Show me first”.
Maybe [O’Rourke] is real. Maybe the Prize Patrol is going to show up at my door with a check for a million dollars.
More likely it’s going to be a village with a notice that my mailbox letters aren’t regulation height or my car’s bumper is extending three inches across the sidewalk.
I started a reply. It grew.
Read on:
Barry Goldwater famously said “”Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”
I don’t know what he meant, exactly. I was too young to pay much attention to him when he ran for president…too wild, too preoccupied with all of the possible pleasures and adventures of a young man’s life. He would have had to at the very least define exactly what he meant by “extremism” and “liberty” before I paid him any attention beyond the “Oh. Another glib snake oil salesman.” reaction that almost all possible presidential candidates since RFK have elicited in me.
But…I have a similar phrase to counter your post above:
Cynicism in the face of criminality is no virtue.
This country is either going to recover from the lies of the past 50 years or it’s not. If it doesn’t? I hesitate to even think of what’s going to happen. Too many possibilities, all of them bad.
But if it does…if the sheer mass of truly good, well-meaning people that is being tapped by Beto O’Rourke and so far no other likely candidate…does not rise up and say “Enough of this bullshit!!!”?
We’re sunk.
Man…I can walk down the streets of the small towns and cities of this country as well as those of the great cities…and easily bump into what appears to me to be as much as a 90% majority of people who just want to live their lives without intrusive competition from corporate owned-and-operated state and federal government bureaucracies. You say as much…although with a sad tinge of defeat…with your phrase above:
Maybe he is real. Maybe the Prize Patrol is going to show up at my door with a check for a million dollars.
More likely it’s going to be a village with a notice that my mailbox letters aren’t regulation height or my car’s bumper is extending three inches across the sidewalk.
The question is not whether O’Rourke is “real.” His authenticity shines through his actions and has done so since he entered politics. In truth, that’s all he is. Real. Authentic. That doesn’t mean he’s going to vote the straight “progressive” line, no matter how one defines that overused term. But it does mean that he is going to vote his conscience…leavened hopefully with enough of a dose of political pragmatism to actually get things done…and he is not going to vote against his conscience when the chips are down.
Does that mean he’s going to win?
I don’t know.
But…as far as I am concerned, anyway…it’s enough (coupled with his undeniable charisma and charm) to get me to support him. There may be other honest people in the race…Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders come to mind immediately…but neither is as revolutionary in the sociopolitical sense as is O’Rourke. He uses social media as a tool with great effect because he grew up during the social media revolution. In point of fact, he has worked for and operated internet service providers for much of his post-college career. He knows the game on an experiential level. A cellular level.
So I’m on board.
Is he a true progressive?
I don’t recognize that term anymore. If the war president/mass surveillance president Barack Obama was a true progressive…which is apparently believed by any number of people on this supposedly “progressive” blog…then I suppose that I need a new name for whatever it is that I want to support.
Meanwhile…and until further notice…I am in the O’Rourke camp.
Later…
AG
P.S. “Progressive?”
Maybe “Pro-Human” might do.
How about “”Pro-earth“???
Pro-something, anyway.
The word “Progressive” simply doesn’t produce much resonance anymore.
Too many failures,
Too many lies.
Too many hustlers.
Sorry…