Regardless of varying viewpoints, most seasoned commentators agree, there’s little to be gained (except perhaps more abuse) from answering angry outbursts of readers or listeners who take personal umbrage at critical comments one may have offered, that challenge their own heartfelt beliefs. This commentator whole heartedly agrees and so, has opted not to respond to a vituperative verbal flogging, delivered by a listener, last week. But her obvious anger at the very idea, that one who disagrees with her viewpoint should be allowed to express a varying opinion is in itself a disturbing by product.

The vital essence of this ongoing and often messy experiment, we call ‘Democracy’ is the freedom it offers, to consider and express differing and even unpopular viewpoints. The despair that impelled my essay, last week arose from the ultimate and sad realization, that someone who had projected a candidacy, based on a promise of leadership toward a new national vision, had regressed into a pattern of status-quo politics, out of desperation. That, in itself, might have been indulged as a momentary glitch. What showed it to be a much more serious flaw was the candidate’s willingness to accept ethical compromise. This commentator is still non-plussed by the thought that Hillary Clinton could ever have accepted a P.R. spokesperson for the notorious corporate Blackwater security firm, as a key advisor for her own political campaign. But one also becomes more troubled by the extent to which she might (for any reason) have allowed desperate desire to impel a thoughtless promise, to plunge the whole middle east into an all out nuclear war. How can all this possibly mesh with her once enlightened projection of herself, as a champion of progressive thought and action? This was not an easy reassessment to make, especially for one whose equal rights advocacy was lauded by members of the National Organization for Women, more than thirty years ago, as mine was.

Compromise can be an overwhelming means toward a necessary popular end or a cowardly means of narrower personal profit. The election of one woman to a post of national leadership, by negating equal consideration for the betterment of many women, children and men, of all classes and colors, would in itself be a national tragedy. We are poised at a crossroads which can point us in either direction or toward an even more cowardly compromise, to opt for a status quo choice, which would only beget more years of painful delay, of the kind that has already endangered our future.

If those who became our most notable leaders have taught us anything, it should have been that one cannot cherry-pick their way to greatness. A time is coming – and soon – when all of us will be called upon to make a most difficult choice. This commentator still hopes enough of us have the courage to make it the most principled one.

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Veteran pols and practiced political analysts all affirm that Hillary Rodham Clinton has pulled off what was thought the impossible: reviving an almost doomed campaign for yet a second time, in her quest to capture the Democratic presidential nomination. This resuscitation, though, may also have revived a monster most Democrats and many Americans had hoped never to see, again. It’s also given us a disquieting view of a would-be national leader, whose self-advertised tenacity looks more and more like an obsession, not so much to answer her nation’s necessity, as her own heart’s desire. At this moment in our political history, selecting the person best equipped – by personality and principle – to help fulfill our national hopes and dreams is far more important than helping any person fulfill their own ambition.

In an intense dash through the countryside of her Pennsylvania childhood, toward a primary outcome that her own and other analysts had determined a must, Hillary Clinton displayed a persona more in keeping with the ‘winning-is-the-only-thing, at-any-price’ credo of a Vince Lombardi, than of someone intent on saving her country. It’s a troubling mindset she’s continued to exhibit, into the next-scheduled Indiana primary race, in which she’s obviously decided to enlist those old veteran stirrers of discontent: ‘prejudice’ and ‘guilt,’ to swing undecided voters in her direction. In two closely watched harangues at rallies in mostly lunch-bucket working class white areas, she stressed her own kindred upbringing, shaped by involvement in church-school,girl-scout attendance and the sad sense that profligate politicians had allowed these to disappear and replaced them with a decrepit social malaise of single moms, backward schools and encroachments of drugs, crime and community decay, fed by a shrinking job pool.

Her appearances were notable in their lack of mention of the real culprit, an endless and unnecessary war that has drained our country of resources and hope, saddled our working and middle classes with the continuing burden of spirit-sapping taxes, price hiked costs of living and a growing onus of war-vet degradation. An understandable omission on Hillary’s part, since she’s yet to express regret or responsibility for abetting this Bush-rigged catastrophe. Even more disquieting is her sudden bent for hawkishness. Could anyone who once watched Hillary’s passionate aspiration to serve as a Democratic New York Senator even think of a Clinton framed threat, to turn the Middle East into a wasteland of nuclear winter? Yet here she was, last week, threatening just such an action against Iran. Somewhere, one could almost hear a devilish cackle, from the ghost of Barry Goldwater.

Hillary’s harangues now are peppered with a new patter, that offers “solutions, not speeches.” An obvious put-down of Barak Obama’s pitch for national unity , to accomplish together what she promises as a string of personal exploits. In the process, she seems suddenly unaware, that no national leader can accomplish any agenda, however promising or propitious, without a well organized and willing Congress.

This new desperate and determined Hillary seems bent on creating a clash of congressional divisions, for her party’s leaders to sort out. Perhaps the saddest of all outcomes are the rifts she’s creating between groups of differing ages, classes, colors and genders, who might have made up the coalition capable of bringing us to a unity we so desperately need. What was that poignant ballad Frank Sinatra used to evoke a tear with, almost every time he sang it? “Didn’t we almost make it, this time?” One can almost hear the lyric reverberate, as John McCain prepares to take the oath of office, that could have been Barak Obama’s.

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Whatever it was that once made Americans admirably different, we’ve surely lost it. With this belief in mind, the thought occurred: whatever happened to fair play; the unwritten rule that shaped so much of what we did write into law? As Somerset Maugham has so aptly described it, conscience was the guardian of rules we evolved for the preservation of the kind of community we envisioned. Not anymore. Today, we go to untold lengths; use every advance in technology, just to ensure fair actions and outcomes in almost every sport the American public follows. We employ instruments with microcosmic readouts, slow motion photo replays, not to mention the focus of countless numbers of umpires and referees, just to ensure that baseball, football and basketball games are fairly played and won. But the most significant and pervasive contests, that affect the lives and well-being of our entire population, are superficially overseen by disinterested functionaries, may of whom are actual appointees of those who have the most to gain from the least stringent scrutiny.

The sorry disappearance of fair-play, from the political arena and the apparent ‘ho hum’ acceptance of gotchaism and negative one-upmanship, by the media and its audience, only reinforce this disillusioning view. So, the extent to which any candidate uses conscience as a rule in determining the fairness and propriety of his or her posture and actions has become a matter of personal conviction. Which is why this commentator finds himself so disappointed and angered at the political posture evolved by Hillary Clinton and her campaign coterie.

Some analysts with at least a show of objectivity have chalked Clinton’s strategy up to desperation, at the pressures certain campaign outcomes have created for her. That in itself is a disheartening revelation. The obvious traits of leadership are the calm forthrightness and clarity with which one meets adversity. Such times provide the telling tests we often don’t get to evaluate in advance. This commentator’s ire is also sparked by the dogged litany of disparaging detail, with which Hillary has systematically destroyed the visionary aspect of Senator Obama’s endeavor. Lord knows, a vision to reawaken our national unity and pride is something we’ve sorely needed, and her insistent deriding of it is reminiscent of the elder President Bush’s failure, once, to grasp its significance. Such shortsightedness can only detract from her own image in the public eye.

As to the issue of fair play, this commentator is mystified at Clinton’s dismissal of a key campaign director, who lobbied for a bill she opposed, while not uttering one word about his representing the nefarious Blackwater security apparatus in Iraq, a contract for which she had previously criticized the Bush administration for initiating. Something she had to have known all along. Samuel Johnson said it best: Among the calamities of war must be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods that self interest dictates. One increasingly has the sense that Hillary Clinton is still more her husband’s candidate than anyone else’s.

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The fortieth anniversary of the Reverend Martin Luther King’s assassination, last week, recalled a terrible event, the aftershocks of which are still unsettling the lives, fortunes and honor of this nation’s citizens, more than two centuries after they became Americans. The extraordinary nature of this terrible act still shades an ongoing era that, more than ever, seems driven by leaders of the most ordinary stature.

This time in our history has been characterized by a mastery of mechanical complexity, that’s stunted our capacity for insight; belittled the kind of conscience driven perception that inspires tolerance and fairness. Instead, we’ve sucked our reservoirs of sympathetic understanding dry. In the process of making our means of communication awesome commodities, we’ve whittled them down to uncivil and self-serving exchanges, one level above ughs and grunts. To reinforce this, we’ve entrusted the most critical aspects of our nation’s governance to the largest and most diverse collection of self-serving, unethical, distorters of principle ever mustered for a common purpose. Our national survival has seldom teetered on such a flimsy fulcrum.

Such ego-centered emphasis on the exaltation of human deficiency only accentuates the uncommon qualities that formed the character of Martin Luther King, a clarion voice that spoke frank and fearless truth to the conscienceless wielders of rampant American power, when most Americans seemed oblivious to its destructive nature. Now, even as we commemorate the senseless negation of this irreplaceable human treasure, too many of us still seem unable to comprehend the essence of its value. The power brokers, procurers and franchisers who control the contours and directions of our lives have subsidized mediocrity as a standard for public leadership, just as they’ve substituted the fiction of market forces for the weight of common sense and conscience, in our collective decision making processes.

In the commerce, conversation and consciousness of today’s America, commonplace is the criterion. The corporate puppet makers and political puppeteers who manipulate us invest heavily, to ensure the continuity of this yardstick. In yet another context, ours has been extolled as the century of the common man But if this lofty view is ever to prevail, it will only be because enough of us ignored differences in class, ethnicity, color and gender to raise our voices in support of it. This will require an uncommon number of extraordinarily unselfish proponents. Another incisive reminder, that extraordinary human beings are not found easily or often.

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If ever there was a time when the adage: ‘Less is more,’ had validity for Americans, that time is now. We are awash in so much of everything that it’s almost impossible to focus on the intrinsic value of anything. The result is exactly what the pickpockets of power had in mind, when they launched this grand scam, that’s largely dependent on keeping all of us too overwhelmed by a bedlam of demands and diversions, to recognize what they’re really up to. If it’s still possible for us to think our way out of the national mess we’ve been stampeded into, our only means of doing this has to start with turning off the torrent of wordy debris, that continues to inundate us from the plain truths we need to consider.

What I’m suggesting is more than difficult, if not seemingly impossible but the disastrous result of our failure to try justifies any effort we might make. This commentator has decided to spell out some of his own reasoning, in the hope of convincing listeners not so much to agree, as to energize their own orderly thoughts. To begin, we must first force ourselves to ignore the robotic reduction of the entire American electoral process to a mind boggling manipulation of numbers. This has been specifically calculated by the corporate controllers of the media to keep us from using the innate ability each of us possesses to add facts, subtract unimportant distractions, factor in historic leverage and come up with a logical conclusion. Not necessarily a perfect one but one we can live with, because we know how and why we arrived at it. Simply put, this is the basis for taking individual responsibility and that’s the essence of the collective process we call democracy. It also recognizes the seriousness of what we’re about… lifts it out of the degraded status of some sporting match or crap game, as the corporate money makers have purposely packaged it.

As to the all important electoral campaign that’s now ongoing: It’s amazing, how a media empire that’s predicated and promoted on a process of dumbed-down fractured language, innuendo and shading the truth is suddenly obsessed with analyzing the essence of every answer given, to questions that are deliberately put to disparage the answerer. Is there anyone alive who hasn’t mis-spoken under pressure? And does this give us an accurate picture of anyone’s true character? History has proved, our most effective leaders were profound thinkers who didn’t shoot from the lip but what they said was worth listening to and more often, what they truly meant.

Now, it’s true we’re at a historic juncture. The election of a woman and/or an African-American President is long overdue but more important than either of these, is our choice of a thoughtful, decent, fair-minded and courageous leader, of whatever color or gender. As to impatient calls by some, to shorten the process, any selection of a leader, as important to our future as this one admittedly is, should last as long as it takes, to get it right. What’s most important is the collective sense (when it’s over) that we’ve done the best we could to do just that, are ready to accept the outcome and willing to strive together to make it work. Now, how about a little less loose talk and more hard thinking?

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Aristotle said it: “Sometimes it takes poetry to explain history.”

LAST INNING

History’s not the stuff of bare events
But what gifted people make of them.
Add the incidence of a genesis
Or requiem to an ordinary
Space and it’s impelled toward
A place of prime significance
That evermore’s enobled, because
Of what was realized there, inlaid
With value, beyond a given price.

Baseball’s precise nature creates
Such focus, no way to embellish what
Isn’t there, how much one cares won’t cut it,
Only how well you hit, run, pitch,
Snatch a score from victory’s door with a
Shoestring catch, a nail-at-home peg,
Thrown, perhaps balanced on a single leg.
Hours of fruitless trying until one finds
He can and then sets himself to replay
That moment, each time the same,
Name it habit, grab it for posterity
To venerate, generate a code
From which we all might profit.

Across the years it appears a very few
Could broach that line of separation,
Approach was difficult enough, the last
Step almost impossible, its gloss
At last broadened to omit prejudice,
This bias removed to spawn the dawn
Of colorless embrace, race
A bar no more and gender, unaccepted
Excuse for an ideal’s exclusivity.

We thought a goal that gave us meaning
Was at last believable, made real
To forever seal Baseball’s accolade,
Install it as America’s game,
A metaphor for a nation’s name
that underscored our valid claim
to international esteem.

All this enshrined at Cooperstown,
That hallowed place where acolytes
Immortalized a standard that was set
To make excellence the only reason
For its members to belong there, own
A share in immortality, declared
Only when they’d earned it, learned at last
A lesson that was meant to teach us all.
And could have if not for the fall
Of its architects from grace, the very
Powers who set guidelines for them all
To follow, wallowed in the spindrift
Rhetoric of “conduct unbecoming,”
Summing up discredit for each denial
That they levied with the heavy handed
Judgements only hypocrites hand down.

The powers-that-be have now concluded,
Too much truth has been uprooted,
Too much smut, their own included, has
fouled the air our scruples were meant to touch.
So, with regret, this year is set
To be the last of the immortals’ innings.
If you must, don’t chalk it up to sinning,
Call it vision’s clash with exigencies of cash,
Or a mishmash of schedules star players
Now find it too hard to keep.
“If we build it they will come,” was meant
For some; the few, the truly great and such.
The rest, the rich who’ve reached the top tier niche,
For them - as for us - fame costs too much.

Paul Elisha

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It’s not without reason, they call it the ‘oldest profession,’ and yet, no diligence or expertise could confer the kind of acceptance or status its advocates seek. Prostitution is among the earliest mentioned prohibitions, in the holy scriptures of every fundamentalist religion. It’s been accorded the most extreme and brutal punishment, yet the leaders of every prohibitive sect have not only accommodated its practice but provided alibis and protected settings for its continuance.

With so much professed abhorrence, one wonders why paid-for sex is still such a hot-button issue, especially among media professionals who argue that it’s of minor consequence, even as they proceed to devote more space and time to it, than matters of far greater importance. As to the events that have unceremoniously catapulted Governor/ ex-Prosecutor Eliot Spitzer out of all public contact with political life in his state, there are still things, unsaid, that need to be heard and heeded, by New Yorkers.

Despite the protestations of that prestidigitative manipulator of jurisprudent sleight-of-hand, Alan Dershowitz, who glibly defines it as a victimless crime, prostitution isn’t, nor will it ever be that, because it offers too many possibilities for profit, to the most corrupt elements in every community. It’s impossible to legitimize any activity, by virtue of just declaring it licit, because no such stricture was ever able to protect it against capture and dominance by criminals. For every independent entrepreneur who sells sexual favors from a local saloon, curbside or hotel room, there are hundreds (nay, thousands) in the grip of depraved pimps and even more brutal and conniving controllers, who are highly organized and efficient. The most successful and ambitious are able to circumvent the most diligent international law enforcement agencies and have turned the long sought cooperative efforts of international deterrence into fantasy. Police in the so-called progressive countries have seen their cooperative treaties become mere wish-list assertions. So the status of the prostitution ring is no different than that of any other organized criminal activity. Our public officials continue to prosecute low level practitioners, who clog our prisons by the thousands. Meanwhile, the kingpins and their bankers remain not only free but shielded by vested powers, who vie with each other to present the most prototypical tough-on-crime profiles to an increasingly cynical public..

Whoever picks up the gauntlet of fighting organized prostitution, so callously dropped by Eliot Spitzer, faces a tough and thankless task. That said, those with the more prosaic and less lascivious aspects of our ex-Governor’s responsibilities face a strangely similar challenge. In its simplest terms, prostitution provides something of personal value that’s normally freely given, for a price. Sadly, now, that’s just what’s become of the service many of our greatest political leaders once gave to this nation, out of their love for it. Our new Governor and his allies need to put an end to such crass purveyance, before the quoted price is too high for all of us to pay. They’ll need all of our help to do it.

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As the ordered progression to replace the most destructive national administration in United States history reaches a fevered peak, there’s a seeming rash of published hypotheses, on how this political bankruptcy came to pass. Struggling to shore up its fading facade, as the most trusted arbiter of America’s collective intellect, this past Sunday’s New York Times Book Review Section provided not one but two newly published dissections of our present chief executive’s persona. As though revealing the bare bones of this simulated excuse for protoplasm gone awry, can somehow inoculate us against a dreadful repetition. One of these studies follows the tortuous route of a father-son relationship; forgetting the age-old insight of the blind poet, Homer who, more than any sighted savant, saw that sons are rarely similar to their fathers and most are worse.

A second biographic analysis arrives at the forced hypothesis that an impressionable George W. patterned himself, after; in-fact, tried to out-shine the patriotic brilliance of Ronald Reagan. If true, then the real guilt adheres to those villainous impresarios, who fashioned a puny papier-mache’ patriot out of a simple and malleable amoralist; transposed him from celluloid prom-prince to a convincing archetype of courage.

The extent of this country’s historic amnesia is astounding.. Is there no one left, who can recall the oversight, the rules and regulationss put into place by FDR’s brilliant National Recovery Act, which rescued America’s banks, after unfledged speculators and errant corporate colluders, demolished the Stock Market? That it was Harry Truman’s all-out congressional pursuit of corporate war profiteers, that helped create the industrial post-war giant America became? That when Ronald Reagan commanded the Russians to take the hated Berlin Wall down, it was the genius of a General George Marshall that actually made it happen? For years we were mollified by yea-sayers who lulled us with assurances of no disastrous repeats; bcause, they boasted, there were all those safety switches, in place. And who took them away? The voracious corporate cons and their power-hungry and degenerate offspring. Some were copy-cat mimes who simply recoined themselves ‘neocons.’ And who was their pied-piper? Why, Dutch Reagan, of course: slayer of the fictional Commie dragon that – he lied – ruined the Screen Actors Guild and other unions. Decimator of the Air Traffic Controllers Union, still waiting to be rehabilitated, to this very day. The for-hire sleight-of-lipster, who set back health-care insurance for decades, calling it creeping socialism. And worst sham of all: the stay-at-home, super-fictional war-veteran-hero, who ended up creating the largest post-World-War II military machine, American taxpayer money could provide.

How’d we get here? That answer’s easy, for anyone with the courage to see our spin-doctored selves as we truly are. The real question remains. How many of us have the will to insist on and help see to it, that some well-fixed but inexperienced and reckless political ‘wanabe,’ like George W. Bush, doesn’t take us down the same stony road, again?

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There’s a point, in James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” where an exasperated Stephen Dedalus says: “History’s a nightmare, from which I’m trying to awake.” One can’t help wondering if there aren’t advisors to Senator Hillary Clinton, today, who must feel like saying the same thing? As of this moment, political savants and data collectors are pretty much in agreement, that Hillary was not only dead on, with the bottom line in her proposed health care plan but also in her analysis of the flaws in Barak Obama’s. Too bad she couldn’t have just stuck to her guns on these points, without the verbal vitriol, her frustration evoked. Of course, what sparked Hillary Clinton’s temper tantrums weren’t really the inferences and innuendos in Obama’s campaign flyers. It was the cruel quirk of fate, that gave a host of youthful partisans the edge in a string of delegate contests, her supporters had considered pretty well secured. Now, Hillary and a loyal legion of supporters who still believe in her focused determination may well have to face an April, in which Youth must be served. Those young hearts and minds flocking to Obama’s standard are focused on other targets, perhaps not as specific as Hillary’s but pregnant with hope and inspiration, and for a nation still in need of them, this may not be such a bad outcome.

But Senators Obama, Clinton, and a gaggle of other well-intentioned politicians and volunteers, seeking to reclaim a more progressive initiative, may have more serious issues to deal with than these. There’s leftover detritus from the last presidential election, now come back to haunt us all. The ghost of a candidacy, ‘unsafe at any age,’ has reappeared in the person of Ralph Nader. For this commentator, Nader represents a White alter ego to Al Sharpton. The lone speculator who moves in, when folks and times are most unsettled. Neither is a builder but both are experts at harsh criticism and destructive rhetoric. That’s where they shine and their most ardent supporters are practiced malcontents. Anyone still prone to give a Nader candidacy any credence should first look at his political record and ask themselves, why Nader’s never created an honest-to-goodness organization: one with elected officers, organized representatives and at least a few self-governing rules to follow? That’s too much like democracy and that’s one thing an autocratic Ralph Nader would never tolerate. Autocracy is what defines a Nader administration of anything.

Unfortunately, for him, this time around, Ralph’s up against the same jinx as Hillary. It’s those young eyes, fixed on a horizon older orbs, like his and some of ours can’t quite envision, without a good pair of reading glasses. The time has come for a younger breed to lead and this time, like it or not, they’ve got the votes to make it happen. And you know what? This kind of shot-in-the-arm may be just what our country needs.

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Talk about adding irreparable insult to unforgivable injury; not content with igniting history’s most horrendous conflagration, by launching a devastating invasion of the wrong country, at the wrong time, George W. Bush has finally discovered Africa. After all-but-ignoring or selectively messing with disparate fragments of what is (for him) a truly ‘Dark Continent,’ throughout most of two atrociously deficient terms, our President has now contrived a whirlwind tour, designed to emblazon an enduring legacy of statesmanship on his fractious tenure, as head of the world’s most powerful Republic. Even the outset of this hastily arranged series of helter-skelter touch-downs has been typically devoid of diplomatic honesty. Trumpeting his intention to erase Malaria from Africa’s lexicon of devastating diseases, Mr. Bush announced he was bringing millions of mosquito nets, to protect potential sufferers from the lethal bites of infectious insects. So this junket becomes a perfect companion gesture, to his prior refusal to distribute condoms and other preventive accessories, for the desperate African struggle against HIV and other dangerous sexually transmitted diseases.

To be perfectly honest, though, our current Chief Executive shouldn’t be made to bear the onus of diplomatic perfidy alone. It’s a game America’s political movers and shakers have played, with equal fervor, on either side of the partisan aisle for years. How often have we hastened to recognize the independence of newly declared revolutionary governments, that separated from parents that we’ve identified as antagonists. How often, too, have we paid lip service to the struggles of enslaved peoples seeking freedom; encouraged them with implied promises of help that never materialized and then, facilitated diplomatic maneuvers to keep their status in limbo?

Doesn’t anyone find it disturbingly strange, that we’ve been implacable foes of “Godless Communism,” almost since its advent; have armed and supported opponents of its largest practitioners with money, munitions and no end of undiplomatic machinations? Yet, who was the first major capitalist nation to facilitate trade with both the USSR and Communist China? Even more quizzically bedeviling, who is now our most voluminous trading partner and our most consequential creditor?

While you ponder these questions, try this stumper on for size: Just for argument’s sake, suppose you were a political leader of a Taiwanese faction, that had threatened to declare independence for years but were cajoled to cool it, by the push-pull tactics of your American allies. How would you feel, the day after President George W. Bush became the first world leader to recognize the inflamatory declaration of independence, by Kosovo, in the face of all the international urgings against it? How did de Tocqueville put it… ? “The love of wealth is at the bottom of everything that Americans do.” At least that one foreigner had us figured out, almost from the get-go, didn’t he? But to paraphrase an old Bolshevic ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin, “How many battle-ships, planes and tanks has de Toqueville got?"

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As the news was flashed to a waiting and breathless world, that the TV ‘megalopoly’ and the Writers Guild had actually agreed on a tentative deal, to end the wearisome writers’ strike, one couldn’t help but recall that marvelous remark of Peter Finley Dunne’s Mr. Dooley: the wry observation that miracles are laughed at by a nation that reads thirty million newspapers a day and supports Wall Street. All that’s needed, to bring this wisdom up to date, is to transpose “newspapers” into an accurate count of TV sets, computer screens and camera-phones. Except for the media moguls who must shell out the bucks to pay them, and the strikers and their dependents, does anyone really care about the impact of all this on American history?

In 1961, FCC Commissioner Newton Minnow challenged the heads of the National Association of Broadcasters to take a close and critical look at what he described as the media’s TV “wasteland.” If they did, they certainly sidestepped an honest appraisal, because the debauched ravaging and creative dry-rot have barreled on into the twenty-first century, without the slightest pressure of a brake or directional turn.

Any honest assessment of the mud-wrestling Armageddon on which today’s media antagonists have wasted so much time and energy would have to admit, that whatever either side accomplished, only amounts to paltry dollars and cents of profit and take-home pay. What they’ve hammered out won’t make a scintilla of difference to the understanding, creative ability or intellectual capacity of a single American viewer or listener, in any age range. In fact, if we can believe the hints of those in charge, the programmatic result will just multiply the volume of half-baked amateur juvenilia that producers now pass off as ‘reality programming.’

The disclosure that should dismay Americans to distraction is the realization, that so many of them are among the audiences who habitually suck from the withered teats of this sour-milk cash cow, that media hucksters have the chutzpah to call professional entertainment. Fact is, the TV wasteland has taken on a new configuration. A true description would now have to define such programming as a flat-out series of fleeting interruptions, in an endless cacophony of blatant and moronic commercial advertising. They even overlay ad copy on the program pictures you watch, between commercials.

In the Prohibition days of the 1920s, the infamous hostess Texas Guinan opened every speakeasy show with the shouted greeting to her patrons: “HIYA, SUCKERS!” They laughed at a sad truth, with few alternatives. The difference now is that there are all kinds of available options, if audiences will only exercise them. So now the dreadful strike’s settled… the GRAMMYS went off almost as their promoters planned and all those counterfeit trophy collectors who pose as professional artists have swelled their bankbooks and their egos. The real artists were barely mentioned and went unseen and unheard, hidden by media dumbdowners, who consider them as liabilities.

Another thing, too, was missing: a knowing EMCEE, to start this year’s show with an honest shout of: “HIYA SUCKERS!”

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In the midst of a plethora of preparations to select a new President, we’re suddenly beset by a blizzard of babble about a sitting president’s legacy. The occasion is George W. Bush’s final State-of-the-Nation address, before consigning himself and his baggage to history. It’s interesting, that few of our national leaders have seemed to address the subject much before their final year or two in office. It’s also of interest, that we don’t call this address by its rightful nomenclature, as a record or an accounting. The mere choice of the term, ‘legacy,’connotes an inheritance, that’s subject to contrived shaping and color. The object, a means not so much of revealing our choice of a principal leader but projecting how intelligently we fulfilled our selective responsibility. That’s also, probably, why we’ve collectively applied ourselves so willingly to the process.

Fortunately for us but not for our progeny, technological prowess has provided all manner of means to recast and disguise a leader’s character flaws and deformities. Added to this is the greed and narcissim that prods others to help recast falsity as truth. In the case of our current Chief of State, though, this swan-song should prove to be a well nigh impossible realignment. Given the arguments put forward by those who’ve now effected their own political comebacks with pledges of straight talk and plain truth, the wish to spare us from divisive cavil and get on with long overdue repairs, has shirked a critical object lesson: the fact that in a true democracy, not even the greatest among us, can or should be immune to the laws that govern us and the justice that defines us.

No matter how this Chief Executive’s legacy is recast, in words or graphics, an endless montage of brutal living history provides constant rebuttal. As one of our greatest Presidents so tellingly reminded us: “The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down to the last generation.” This, more than any other reason, has impelled this commentator to the belief, that all other arguments notwithstanding, the power to determine the kind of world ours is to be and the means used to achieve it, rightfully now belong to those who will have to bear most of the burden and its cost: America’s youth.

Some would-be leaders now will argue for experience. Others will reassure us with familiar visions, wreathed in a semblance of youthful vigor. But for this huge task only a new start, equal to our very beginnings, will suffice. The sight of young faces, who until now mostly turned away from our coercions but have suddenly reappeared, in droves, to answer Barack OBama’s call is enough to convince this former reticent. Some skeptics will disparage OBama’s lack of specifics. Others will bemoan his short span of personal accomplishment. Those who first fashioned this nation from an idea had little more to go on. What they did have was great need, towering optimism, a willingness to unleash their imaginations and an inspiring belief in the capabilities of an unfettered human spirit. These can accomplish no less now than they did then. There’s another reminder from Lincoln, that now bears repeating: “We must disenthrall ourselves,” he said, “and then we shall save our country.” For this observer, if ever there was such a time, it’s now.

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It’s now nearly a century-and-a-half, since the Emancipation Proclamation was issued and those who profess this to be the world’s most exemplary democracy are still struggling with slavery’s ugly residue. Truth is, no matter how we look at it or think about it, America’s legacy of slavery can’t be just wished away. The seeds were planted too deeply, by those who (with malice aforethought) incorporated them into our so-called manifest destiny. Each passing era has left an indelible imprint on our national psyche. This is largely because of the impermanent way in which we’ve attempted to strengthen the weakest places in our democratic fabric. It’s as though the fabricators affixed placebos that they somehow believed would give off the look of curatives, while still allowing them to retain the benefits their prejudices had brought them. The fact that democracy, itself, is essentially a work in progress, also doesn’t help. It allows other conspirators to use masks, to revive villainies, that should have been long dead.

This commentator believes the root of the problem of our racial and other prejudices lies in our failure to correctly identify the source. Hatred is but a symptom and its forms are merely modes of application. The real culprit is power, the wealth it feeds on and delivers. Those who pursue and amass it are not only aware of this, they depend on it. That way, they can continue their pursuit with less interruption, while others are kept busy, focusing on their hatreds.

In the most democratic sense, the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should be waged with all the persuasions at their command, to try and convince prospective voters that each is qualified to be the nation’s chief executive, by his or her training, experience, record of public service to-date and how they expect to use these, to achieve the national objectives they envision. They also should be able not only to argue for their capabilities but to point out each other’s lack of them, with specifics. They should but they can’t, because soon as they do, the spectre of prejudice envelopes and redirects the electorate’s attention. All this is driven by the media’s greed for dominance. Practiced bigots not only understand this but also use every opportunity to exploit it.

Are Americans really ready to elect an African-American or a woman to the presidency? This commentator fears not… but hopes against hope that this time, Americans will prove him wrong.

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Nobody ever said that democracy was or would be perfect. But it can be awfully frustrating, when the variables that go hand-in-glove with a culture based on the exercise of free-will put the plow that’s meant to help us plant democracy’s seeds, in front of the horse that’s supposed to pull it. This observer wonders if anyone else has noticed how the selection process for our nation’s chief-executive-officer has gotten similarly skewed? This true believer in the most extensive possible modus, to expose applicants for this job to the most intensive public scrutiny, is especially distressed, at the way in which facilitators have turned the spotlight on themselves. Whatever became of the principle, that the reporter should never become the story?

Frankly, I’ve never believed that the banal and bumptuous judgement of a Tim Russert was a suitable substitute for my own, just because he was able to secure a front-row seat in the media mezzanine, by the use of Moynihan muscle. And he’s not a rare example. On any given day of any week, a face in the crowd of ‘goo-tube’ wannabes can be projected into a star spot, not by an iota of the intellect and expertise of a Murrow or Cronkheit or the handful of other men and women who’ve earned viewer trust, with the honest sweat of their abilities, but by the whim of some network nerd’s knee-jerk decision and the hype that inevitably endorses it. The result of this lame routine has dropped the selection process for this nation’s leaders into the lap of any self-serving hot-shot who can way-lay a prospective candidate, with a well placed ‘Gotcha!’ question.

In his insightful study of Hillary Clinton, biographer Carl Bernstein reflects on her dismay at not having aced the D.C. Bar exam, the first time she took it; a fate of many, before and afterward. In her case, though, this apparent earmark of failure that affected many of her subsequent career decisions was also a symptom of the incredibly high standard she set for herself. It’s a great loss, that too few Americans will get to read Carl Bernstein’s book. Most will be bombarded with the eye-blink vignettes generated by one or another self-serving, smart-aleck video visage, in pursuit of a short-cut to stardom, as the author of a question that made one candidate or another hesitate or misspeak. It’s a loss that victimizes all of us. Wouldn’t anyone think the leadership of this nation better off, in the hands of a perfectionist than a clown, who wears ignorance as a proud badge?

This pro-democracy Pollyanna still hopes for a day, when a dissatisfied electorate will demand what it’s paying for, from those who’ve bent its right-to-know into a misshapen dollar sign. Who knows, there may yet come a time, when panels of ordinary citizens, from all walks of our national life, will be the ones to query candidates on our behalf; when instead of blurs and unfounded blogs we’ll be able to access simple but substantive facts. Not all of us will get it right but then the system was never meant to be perfect, only the best we’ve had to date. That’s not too much to ask… just what our Constitution and our history say we’ve a right to.

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It’s as true today, as it was when Ben Franklin first said it: Any religion that’s obliged to call for the help of a civil power, is a bad religion. This wasn’t a new idea, that Franklin suddenly glommed onto. Back in 200 A.D., Rome’s Quintus Tertullian, who fathered the Christian Church literally said the same thing. And yet, here we are, two millennia later and some ‘would-be’ presidents of the world’s most salient democracy (so-called) are still trying to bury its gasping remains, beneath a sepulcher to the everlasting primacy of one religious classification over all others.

Of whatever else they may be trying to convince us, about their characters and propensities, too many of the current gaggle of prospective candidates have proved they’re deaf, dumb and blind to stipulated facts of American history. Either that, or they’re irrevocably steeped in the hyperbolic hogwash of the spin-doctors they’ve hired.

Now, before all the holier-than-thous, out there, begin to holler, let’s get one thing straight: this isn’t about a belief in a God. It’s about those self-righteous crazies (or crazy-like-foxes) among us, who’re hell-bent to play God. So they’ve decided to make us all march to the same theocratic lock-step, that’s brought nothing but deprivation, torture, death and destruction to millions, over the several millennia since some smart apple first discovered, there’s profit in harnessing Divine Providence to human ambition.

Pastor Mike Huckabee can package his pontificated product any way he chooses, with or without a hokey guitar accompaniment. Mitt Romney can hype his Latter Day metaphysics as just another ‘okay-any-day’ patch, on America’s many colored Christian quilt. Rudy Giulianni can try to sanitize his ice-thin ethics contortions with hugs from an evangelist hypocrite but they all add up to the same bottom line: an attempt by egocentrics to superimpose their warped notion of stereotyped servility, on a system whose bedrock basis is the right of each individual to think about, express and act on his or her own religious belief… as long as it doesn’t deny or inhibit anyone else’s.

Our founders were so fixed on this idea, they singled it out for special attention and restraint. Most of them were believers in a deity. Some were members of specific denominations. A few, even, were atheists but all were adamantly against giving an edge to any organized religious belief. They understood what today’s denominational dunderheads don’t. A mere spate of persistent procreation can give that edge to any sect, turn this miraculous political experiment into a nightmare. We need to make every prospective political candidate and office holder adhere to this simple rule: In America, government is everyone’s business. But for Americans, one’s religion is nobody else’s business… especially the government’s.

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Those of us who wear the ‘liberal’ label with all the pride its essence conveys find much to dismay us, as euphoric sights and sounds announce the onset of a new year. At the root of our depression is a seeming lack of hope, to brighten our customary visions of the future. That was the feeling of this commentator, as he approached the chore of preparing an essay, to air at the beginning of Two thousand and Eight..

I use the past tense “was” in all honesty, because moments later, I came across these words of Coleridge: “Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve. Hope without an object cannot live.” Too many, on the brink of despair, approach this time with amorphous wishes for unqualified change. They hope for a huge “SHAZAM!” to erase all vestiges of darkness and despair in their lives… make all that’s troubling, just go away. Life isn’t like that.

We true progressives need to remind ourselves, as Coleridge does, that hope without an objective, can’t live. We also need to remember that whatever the power or creed in which we believe, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Children, totally dependent on their parents for everything, pray for externally applied miracles. Adulthood should bring the wisdom that we’re not just helpless recipients. Momentous or mediocre, change requires our involvement. Those who ask for miracles should expect to expend major effort.

Fortunately we’re still part of a democracy and the last time I looked at it, democracy was still defined as a government of the people. If this truly includes us, we liberals have a lot of great paragons to copy: neighbors and fellow citizens who volunteer for humanitarian and environmental causes in our communities and country; non-partisans and partisans who help to make our form of government work. If this says anything to us, we also have a lot of work to do. So pick an objective or several. Put on your thinking caps and roll up your sleeves. Then pitch in. You’ll be amazed at how hopeful things will begin to look. This commentator feels better already. As the year, two thousand and eight, gets underway, let’s make it a hopeful one. And the happiest of New Years, to you all.

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Hearing former Senator George Mitchell announce the avidly awaited findings of his probe into steroid use in Baseball, last week, brought Alexander Pope’s acute phrases to mind: “At every word a reputation dies. The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang, that jurymen may dine.” Now everybody, from our oblivious Executor-in Chief, down to thousands of upset fans, is waiting for the other shoe to fall and wondering, just what will happen, now?

If our painful but pointed history is any omen, this observer would say: nothing. At least nothing substantive, that might bring about some improvement. Of course, there will be words, spoken and written; an endless gush of them. Most will be uttered to validate and exalt the positions of those who assert them. But the upshot will punish one or two selective patsies and a handful of hapless celebrities, whose trinkets and trophies will be snatched back, their laurels eternally tarnished and entry into the special shrine of the immortals, forever barred. For the rest, it will be ‘business as usual.’

A select-few sacrificial lambs among baseball’s lower management ranks, as usual, will be culled from among those who’ve amassed the wherewithal for early retirement. They’ll fight prosecution and end-up making deals that spare them jail-time but allow leeway, to publish ghost-written books about the mess and accept endless interviews, in which they can continue to obfuscate the issue. The real victims will be the few stars who made tempting targets for owners, anyway, because of what they’ve cost, or how they’ve shone too brightly and asserted too much ego, or all of these; not to mention the future physical pain that still awaits them… and the pleasure and trust stolen from fans.

This likelihood isn’t just a wild pipe-dream. It’s based on facts of the so-called ‘War on Drugs,’ that this country’s national leaders and justice agencies, supposedly, have been waging for more than half-a-century. One need only look at the record of investigations, prosecutions and actual penalties. Today, illegal drugs are not only still a major national problem, but one of increasing severity and extent. And their import and domestic distribution are still the basis of a thriving monopoly, owned and operated by a hierarchy of America’s criminal elite. Sure, we’ve penalized and incarcerated some consumers, small-time venders and even a few second-tier capos. But the big-timers, the crime-syndicate CEOs and their protectors (the political big-wigs) are still out there, playing their roles of huff-and-puff hypocrisy to the hilt. And the worst of this is the largess, by which those who support crime, by deflecting the sting and stigma of penalty from its directors and patrons, not only escape justice but continue trading on their immunity.

It seems a unique earmark of our ‘Corporate’ culture, that those who show up at a church or temple on holidays and make big enough contributions to religious, benevolent and/or political causes are rewarded with power. That’s what makes this prophecy a virtual certainty. In this bastion of capitalistic democracy, money not only talks, it determines.

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Despite the urgings of sages like Fortesque, Shakespeare and Swift, all of whom condemned comparisons as odious, the comparers are still at it. This time, it’s the religious issue that continues to plague Mitt Romney’s campaign, to become a Republican Presidential nominee. After a major and clearly desperate speech to rid himself of this albatross, political pundits and media mavens leaped at a “Let’s look at Kennedy,” paradigm for comparison, ignoring the reality that none is actually valid.

The major reasons for this are the differences, both in the times and their tenor.

When JFK went public with his now historic pledge, of strict conformance to Constitutional church/state separation, it was to reassure Americans that his first allegiance, as Commander in Chief, would always be to the republic and the canons that created it. And here lies the greatest difference, between then and now. John F. Kennedy sought to convince the electorate of his fealty to principles on which this democracy was founded, regardless of the demands of any religious faith. Mitt Romney speaks words to placate but he sounds much more concerned with obtaining public approval for his choice of a faith, than in declaring independence from the dictatorship of a faith. And here’s another telling difference. John Kennedy’s speech was a response to his perceived concern, that a majority of Americans doubted he could maintain consistent leadership, in the face of demands a dogmatic faith might make and so, he might not defend the republic against any incursion, that could weaken a stringent church/state separation. In Mitt Romney’s case, there seems to be a perception, on his part, that the electorate is really more concerned about the sincerity and strength of his belief, in a particular religious faith.

Here’s what’s being lost in the welter of afterthought and debate: Whether or not his faith is one deserving of fealty or not, is purely a matter between Mitt Romney and his conscience. Whether or not that faith has a stronger call on his fealty, than the republic, is of concern (or should be) to every American. That’s the question we all should be asking every potential candidate for office to answer. That’s the answer Mitt Romney and every other candidate should concern themselves with providing.

Now, the real and continuing question is: do Americans have the requisite courage, to demand an affirmative answer?

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For this commentator, a World War II veteran who survived extensive combat in the Pacific, December 7, 1941, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, has always held singular significance. But pursuing information on an entirely different subject, a few days ago, I came across a terse note, in a cold compilation of dates. It reminded me, that the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution was Delaware, on December 7, 1787.

A spate of recent cinematic attention has rightly reawakened a necessary interest in World War II and the Americans who waged and helped to win it. Now that this rush seems to have peaked, it might be well for all of us to refocus our attention, from the date of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, to that other, first December 7, in 1778, when our tiniest state took the first giant step, in the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Interest in this historic event, sadly, has never been more lacking or needed.

The federal Constitution of the United States is not only what sets our democracy apart from all other attempts at such visionary self-governance, it’s probably the single most significant reason, our still-unresolved and delicately balanced experiment has endured so long. But never, in history, has the concept that inspired it been in greater danger of destruction, both from within and from outside our borders.

It was not that long ago, oppressed people in feudal, fundamentalist and fascist dictatorships, plus others, who’d newly won independence or were still fighting for it, gleaned hope and courage from our example. Not just from the fact of our independence but the principles that guided our actions, to ensure that the same standards of access, involvement and justice were applied – equally – to all our citizens. Now, that shining example has been tarnished by our own greed, callousness and false pride. Now, a different American image spurs potential potentates and power-mongers into actions and assaults that blunt and stifle every aspect of democracy, our government once epitomized.

The most flagrant and egregious insults to our hard-won repute have been spawned by the incumbency of President George W. Bush. The most egregious seem to be actions by which he’s sought to misconstrue, circumvent, or subvert the Constitution he’s sworn to protect and defend. This is an important reason to rue a lack of congressional will for his impeachment, which would have given proof of a resolve to revive our own democracy. Perhaps now, though, we can take hope from others. In South America, for instance, where we’ve supported too many tin-pot dictators who were insults to the democratic ideal, Venezuelans have said “No!” to bribes and blandishments for a power-grab by President Hugo Chavez. We might yet follow their example; not just by saying “No,” but demanding of candidates for every office, that they protect and defend our unique constitution. And by giving notice, that if and when they don’t… we will.

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News Media and other observant pundits, both in and outside this country, have expended much space and sound, of late, to address a generally presumed withering in the value of the U.S. dollar. This value is – of course – predicated on purchase power, which is itself a presumption determined by confidence or the lack of it, among potential sellers and lenders. The problem with this widening conclusion is the way in which those who’re picking up the “Weak Dollar!” chant, in this country, seem to care less about the possible reversal of contributing factors than the depressing conclusion.

This isn’t the first time in our history, that prospects for the U.S. dollar have dimmed. It is one of the rare times, though, that the possible has shown itself to have strong characteristics of probability. Apparently, worries about and ambitions for the dollar have been with us, almost from the time we became a nation and our own anxiety predates any, of foreign observers, who came to analyze and explain us. Within our first several decades as a nation, the great early American author, Washington Irving described the U.S. dollar as “that great object of universal devotion throughout our land.”

For the growing legion of those bent on discovering similarities between our present predicaments and the era of World War II, here’s something to think about. On December 8th, 1941, when President Franklin Roosevelt addressed a joint session of the Congress, asking them to declare a state of war with the Empire of Japan, after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor the day before, not a single voice was raised to ask the question: “How many dollars is this going to cost?,” or “Where will the money come from?” In fact, “E PLURIBUS UNUM,” the motto on the back of the American dollar, never seemed stronger or more promising. So much so, that Admiral Yamamoto, the Japanese architect of that attack, was moved to openly voice his fear, at having aroused America.

For this observer, the indicators that should give us cause to worry are the differences no one seems to notice: the change from an America once capable of inventing and producing not only things of value, world-wide, but ideas as well, to an America that’s now one of the world’s leading outsourcers of them. What’s worse, we’ve now even outsourced our capability as a lender of dollars, to become a major borrower of them.

As to how we turn all this around? We’ve only to look at the leaders of our government and its economic engines, for the most visible clues. Most of them are more worried about their own fortunes than the nation’s.

We’ve also only to look at the final phrase in our first national document: the Declaration Of Independence, for the most significant clue. The then signers wrote, that in support of the declaration, they mutually pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honors.

All we need do to turn the world’s view of the American dollar around, is to find us some new leaders, ready and willing, not only to make the same pledge… but to mean it.

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The trouble with the so-called age of ‘High-Tech’ and ‘High-Speed’ Communication, is a seeming inability to achieve a profound or empathic reaction. The system’s great for capturing instant photo ops and replays; or ad infinitum dispersion of shallow sound-byte situations, that convey quick conclusions without a basis. But when’s the last time anyone tried to arrive at a thoughtful and reasoned judgement – about anything of public importance – without earning brickbats of impatient annoyance? As a result, those who depend most on high-tech/ high-speed methods, to air decisions of momentous and wide-spread effect, invest far too little time, themselves, to be able to convey their true depth. In sum, this highly touted age has enabled corporate and government ‘Poo-Bahs’ to talk the talk, without making an honest effort to walk the walk.

One area of glaring defect is the endless reality of America’s aging citizens and the problems this inevitable process spawns. In recent days, any interested witness should have been able to plainly see, just how hypocritical many of our most articulate political leaders have become, on this subject. At the very top echelon, the nation’s Chief Executive has spared none of his meager store of persuasive rhetoric, to convince seniors that a maze of undecipherable clap-trap was actually produced for their benefit, not for the crowd of his foxy pharmaceutical cohorts and contributors, who designed it. It’s also now painfully clear, that members of the United States Congress have become so addicted to the perks and benefits of their own health and welfare system, they’ve lost all semblance of will, to allow its like for others.

Another glaring example of rampant gluttony is displayed by members of both houses of the New York State Legislature, who have readily used every conniving subterfuge, simply to lard their pockets. This includes not only holding the hard-earned livelihoods of State Judges hostage but targeting some of our best and most experienced older jurists with mandatory retirement. State legislators in both houses and of both parties use no end of hyperbole, in blatant broadsides they mail out, at taxpayer expense, to tout images of themselves as saintly defenders of seniors’ rights. What they don’t tell us is the grungy truth, that in New York’s legislative exchange, everything’s for sale, at a price. And nothing’s sold, without the leadership and its lackeys taking their cut.

This commentator has never favored ‘term limits,’ as a cure-all for the harmful dry rot that plagues our present political system. That’s because turning out habitual incumbents, who’ve come to take their posts for granted, still leaves the party bosses who put them there firmly entrenched, to pick other dependent puppets. Rethinking the problem, though, one might see a major exception, worthy of restricting the elective tenure of all state legislators to age, sixty-five; unless or until they enact measures that remove age limits for jurists, and establish salary levels that match the national average. Right now, state- and nation-wide, wisdom seems in increasingly short supply and our seniors own much of it. Lucky for us, they’re an unselfish lot.

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There’s an adage as old as the electoral franchise, itself: “Politics is the art of the possible. Governance is the craft of the necessary.” New Yorkers are currently blessed with a caring and competent governor. Unfortunately, he’s not nearly as effective a politician and in the thorny thickets of today’s democracy, this can be a serious fault. Those who study politics, both as practitioners and observers realize, that other elements notwithstanding, in politics, timing is everything. A crucial truth, Eliot Spitzer either overlooked or ignored. Whichever the case, left uncorrected, it could prove fatal.

That said, no timing could have been more pivotal than that of Veterans Day, 2007, not only in the affairs of New York State but in this Nation, as well; an occurrence that cries out for critical comment. Most disturbing is the arrogant indifference with which elected officials, at all levels, have politicized the significant and – too often – painful contributions made by veterans, to ensure the precious lives and rights of Americans.

Outright neglect of veterans’ views and needs, except for pretentious verbal nods, on a few politically special occasions, is bad enough. But downright criminal, is the willful application of patriotic necessity, to actions plainly taken for political or personal gain. Such machinations are tantamount to the misconduct, once described by the great federal Justice Learned Hand, as maliciously shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater. That’s just what the Bush/Cheney conspirators have done, in their foisting of a willful, unnecessary and mismanaged conflagration in Iraq, on this ill-prepared and uncomprehending nation. Adding insult to injury, they now withhold critical funds, needed for treatment of those they sent to fight their dirty war, who’re simply considered battle scarred veterans.

What’s even worse about such malicious mischief, is the spate of cheap, copy-cat imitations inspired among lesser political figures, at lower levels. Typical are the howls of New York Republican legislative leaders, Bruno, Farley and Tedisco; bellowing their false warnings about terrorist threats; then rushing (they claim) to protect New Yorkers from imminent attacks by immigrant terrorists, wielding fraudulent licenses. Then, Farley, using taxpayer funds to mail huge broadsides that trumpet the news: “Senator Hugh Farley is Keeping us Safe.” Which all of us, including Bush and Cheney should be happy to learn.. Of course, none of the aforementioned has seemed at all upset, that the 9/11 conspirators had valid licenses that nobody questioned.

Well here’s news for all those protectors, from our flight-jacketed Commander In Chief, down to the closet commandos, who’re defending us on the dangerous Albany firing line: Not since Aaron Burr tried it and failed, in 1807, has anyone been able to organize and arm a private force, capable of attempting a fifth-column takeover of the United States. But with our present President’s help, the Blackwater bunch is well underway to that capacity now. Try using some taxpayer funds to raise a howl and save us from this sneaky bit of treason. Odds are, you’ll get little argument from honest-to-goodness American veterans, this one included.

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Sir Francis Bacon once noted that voting is a process in which voices are numbered but not weighed. That observation was made about four hundred years ago but it’s probably more to the point, in the present election year, than ever before. We’re told by the pundits, that this off-year election isn’t as partisan or pivotal as the coming referendum, in ’08, to elect state and federal officials and legislators. If that’s so, no one seems to have told the partisan hierarchies, whose tentacles and deceits are plainly visible throughout the process, in just about every municipal, town and county contest. What makes them so obvious are the flimsy falsehoods, used to mask the stark fact, that hell-bent politicians are leaving nothing to chance, right down to the smallest precinct.

This year’s local and regional contests actually are more significant than any incumbent or firmly entrenched politician will admit. They’re not just vitally important for them but even more-so, for us. At stake are two issues, the outcomes of which will favor or impair our form of government for years to come. On a partisan level, these referenda allow the pols to glue organizational mechanisms in place, that help to ensure the outcomes of the looming state and national elections. On a personal level, they allow officials, whose tenures have become habitual, either to create incumbencies for or pass their own on to dependant sons, daughters or other close relatives, as virtual inheritances.

Think of it; thousands of New Yorkers, already struggling with difficult debt, to cover the cost of preparing their own children, to earn their livelihoods, are further saddled with the painful burden of supporting dependants of elected officials, many of whom were responsible for the size of the tax burdens they already carry. It’s become an onerous habit for these pols, simply to slip their offspring into electoral vacancies, as they occur. We end up paying for on-the-job training, of these novices, plus the costly mistakes they make along the way. Even worse is the damage done to an electoral system, in which blood ties outrank ability and equal opportunity is replaced by paternal preference. Too often, the worst offenders are also the most brazen of the ‘pro-democracy’ breast-beaters.

Then, too, there’s an added issue, that makes a mockery of the very meaning of local elections; once considered the bedrock of the American ideal: the epitome of the notion of mutual responsibility, where neighbors chose some of their number, to share the burden of planning and dealing with issues common to them all. The money and the extent of paid-for services now expended by political organizations, to affect the outcomes of local elections, is as much a travesty as the slick, deceitful broadsides that show up in our mail boxes, before election day; in which arch-cabals, with blueprints for sell-offs and sell-outs in their hip pockets, sell candidates to us, as paragons of promise for environmental purity, a ban on ruinous commercial development and an end to hurtful tax hikes. So, a caution: before you close that voting booth curtain, lift the mask. Ask questions. Find out who’s really behind the whom, you’re being urged to choose.

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Sir Francis Bacon once noted that voting is a process in which voices are numbered but not weighed. That observation was made about four hundred years ago but it’s probably more to the point, in the present election year, than ever before. We’re told by the pundits, that this off-year election isn’t as partisan or pivotal as the coming referendum, in ’08, to elect state and federal officials and legislators. If that’s so, no one seems to have told the partisan hierarchies, whose tentacles and deceits are plainly visible throughout the process, in just about every municipal, town and county contest. What makes them so obvious are the flimsy falsehoods, used to mask the stark fact, that hell-bent politicians are leaving nothing to chance, right down to the smallest precinct.

This year’s local and regional contests actually are more significant than any incumbent or firmly entrenched politician will admit. They’re not just vitally important for them but even more-so, for us. At stake are two issues, the outcomes of which will favor or impair our form of government for years to come. On a partisan level, these referenda allow the pols to glue organizational mechanisms in place, that help to ensure the outcomes of the looming state and national elections. On a personal level, they allow officials, whose tenures have become habitual, either to create incumbencies for or pass their own on to dependant sons, daughters or other close relatives, as virtual inheritances.

Think of it; thousands of New Yorkers, already struggling with difficult debt, to cover the cost of preparing their own children, to earn their livelihoods, are further saddled with the painful burden of supporting dependants of elected officials, many of whom were responsible for the size of the tax burdens they already carry. It’s become an onerous habit for these pols, simply to slip their offspring into electoral vacancies, as they occur. We end up paying for on-the-job training, of these novices, plus the costly mistakes they make along the way. Even worse is the damage done to an electoral system, in which blood ties outrank ability and equal opportunity is replaced by paternal preference. Too often, the worst offenders are also the most brazen of the ‘pro-democracy’ breast-beaters.

Then, too, there’s an added issue, that makes a mockery of the very meaning of local elections; once considered the bedrock of the American ideal: the epitome of the notion of mutual responsibility, where neighbors chose some of their number, to share the burden of planning and dealing with issues common to them all. The money and the extent of paid-for services now expended by political organizations, to affect the outcomes of local elections, is as much a travesty as the slick, deceitful broadsides that show up in our mail boxes, before election day; in which arch-cabals, with blueprints for sell-offs and sell-outs in their hip pockets, sell candidates to us, as paragons of promise for environmental purity, a ban on ruinous commercial development and an end to hurtful tax hikes. So, a caution: before you close that voting booth curtain, lift the mask. Ask questions. Find out who’s really behind the whom, you’re being urged to choose.

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In my most recent essay, I denounced hypocrisy that allowed today’s most vociferous censurers of genocide to hedge and temporize a long overdue labeling of the massacre of Armenians, by Ottoman Turks, from 1915 to 1923. Reflecting on this, I’ve realized how important and intertwined words and actions are; also how the degrading of language, in this era of technological advancement, seems to have been matched, by a breakdown in civility and common decency, in our dealings with one another. Since the most readily recognized suspects in this degradation appear to be the communications media, I undertook a quick survey, among a few colleagues in print and electronic outlets, hoping – perhaps – to shed some light on the subject. Alas, I’ve come away with more questions than answers and more despair than optimism, about prospects for the future.

Hardly anyone I spoke with could remember, exactly when area newspapers stopped carrying local or syndicated columns on etiquette or appropriate behavior, in our social relations with one another. But all assumed, it was because of a shrinking interest in the subject, among readers. None liked my intimation, that media might have an editorial responsibility to keep their readers informed about propriety. All, however, lamented the continuing emphasis on degraded language and degrading forms of entertainment, especially as evidenced on commercial radio and TV outlets. Of interest, those in all media outlets decried the shoddy, often inhumane and sometimes downright brutish biases and language, currently expressed on now hugely popular computer blogs.

This commentator agrees with many of those in the media, who hold that it’s unfair to lay the entire blame for today’s social decay on them and their formats. They also remind us, of our founders’ implicit belief in the right of all, to unfettered and unlimited information. This, of course, opens another critical door, to the unsavory way in which greedy corporate interests are expanding their control over all our commercial informational outlets. But my colleagues are right about spreading the blame. One of them noted this interesting culprit: the automobile. It’s turned us, he said, into a horde of self-centered, inconsiderate bullies, with gender not even a factor. And this intriguing observation: On visits to the city, one said, he found users of mass transit more considerate and congenial than most motorists in the suburbs and beyond.

Those I queried had the harshest words for politicians at all levels. Most pointed were criticisms of our national administration, also New York’s Governor, State Senate Majority Leader and legislative cohorts of both, who seem more interested in wounding each other, than in healing wounds of the body politic, some of which they’ve inflicted. But one couldn’t help notice, the most recent example of bad manners, thuggishly displayed by a New York State assemblyman. Especially painful, since the offender is a former New York State Trooper, once a proud exponent of the State’s best mannered service. But who were the first to flash his remarks, vulgar language and all, statewide, for New Yorkers to admire and emulate? Why, the commercial media, of course.

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In a 1945 broadcast report from London, where he’d just returned from his first visit to a captured Nazi concentration camp, Edward R. Murrow said this: “I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard but only part of it. For most of it I have no words.” This is understandable, when one considers the horrific impact that a camp for mass extermination of human beings, by design, must have had, even on a great wordsmith like Murrow. At the time of his broadcast, the term “genocide” had been coined only a year earlier, by Raphael Lemkin, an obscure Jewish lawyer from Poland, who lacked the sophisticated means that Murrow commanded, to communicate it widely. Several decades earlier, a less ambitious but vicious and nameless effort in Asia Minior was largely ignored.

Since then, thanks to enlightened communicators like Murrow and determined champions of human rights, like Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, plus a notable cadre of proponents they inspired, all on intimate terms with rhetoric, every world leader worth his or her salt, now understands the term and its implications. What should disturb those of us who also understand it, is the apparent readiness of certain contemporary leaders, in whom we’ve placed our trust, to manipulate and degrade this horrific definition, for reasons of political convenience.

Our own national leaders have spent the precious resources of Americans, for generations to come and sent fellow Americans to spill their blood and that of others in foreign lands (by the thousands) in the cause – they say – of freedom and human rights. If one understands correctly, these leaders now tell us it would be counter-productive and extremely untimely for us, to publicly note and repudiate that earlier, historically documented act of genocide, by a former Turkish government, against a defenseless Armenian minority. Taking such note now, they say, would be highly inconvenient, because the present Turkish regime, on which we depend for help with our misadventures in Iraq and elsewhere in the middle-East would be angered and rescind its support of our actions. So much for the Bush/Cheney dictum of using force in defense of freedom and human rights. For them, it all depends on whose, and when and at what political price. What they’ve done is advertise to the world, that in the realm of this Capitalist democracy, human rights and the truth about them are ordinary commodities, for sale to the highest bidders.

What’s particularly painful for this observer is the acute silence of all those voices, raised to fever pitch but weeks ago, against a visiting Iranian leader’s slur, that Hitler’s grizzly holocaust against European Jews is still unproved. Theirs should have been the first and loudest cries of ‘Shame!’ at the Turkish denial of justice. There’s a lesson, here, as Pastor Niemoller’s regret, at not having spoken up when he could have, against the Nazis, reminds us. There’s no monopoly on genocide. It’s an equal opportunity evil, against which speaking out early and often is an absolutely necessary antidote. And silence (even after the fact) is unacceptable.

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One of the curiosities of this ongoing experiment in democracy, that we call “The United States,” is the proclivity of its citizens for cultural seductions that are anything but egalitarian. The most distasteful of these is a throwback to ‘noblesse oblige,’ that now and again warps the good sense of Americans against their own survival. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, we seem to have been infected with a severe case of this, when the so-called ‘Robber Barons’ held sway over both the economic and political aspects of our national enterprise. Some even sought to certify this dominance by labelling it ‘manifest destiny.’ The dominion of the rich and powerful became so onerous, in fact, that President Grover Cleveland was moved to levy severe criticism. “It’s a mockery, he said, to propose that the government protect the rich and that they, in turn, will care for the laboring poor.” It then took another forty-or-so years of upheaval and a deadly depression, to show just how much of a mockery this was.

Today, hard on the heels of a Mid-east military debacle, in which we’re still enmeshed, the nation’s current chief executive seems hell-bent on moving America back to that time, when wealth gave its possessors the right not only to shape their world but to reshape ours, as a means of ensuring the continuity of theirs.

At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, writers decried conditions in which children were forced into dreadful work environments, that not only stunted their bodies, minds and spirits but literally shortened their lives. It’s taken a continuous battle, begun in the administration of Franklin Roosevelt and still continuing, to enact protective measures against many conditions, abusive to children. Still, this President glosses over his veto of a congressional effort to increase coverage for healthcare which includes middle class children, that skyrocketing costs have priced out.

Mr. Bush has tried to whitewash his inhumanity, as an intrepid act to save us all from what he sees as an unsavory step toward socialized medicine. If he means a coming together (which is truly what ‘socializing’ entails) he’s simply got it wrong. It’s about time Americans came together, to secure healthier and more satisfying futures for all their children. He probably would have killed programs like the CCC and WPA, aimed at rebuilding our infrastructure and providing useful work in the great depression, when millions of Americans faced lives without jobs or hope. As usual, George Bush has misread his presidential script, which this time he thought to mean: preserving the nation’s wealthiest, instead of its wealth, a huge chunk of which is its children.

Of all the sage axioms attributed to Ben Franklin, one of the wisest was this: The true estimate of a democracy, he wrote, is not how it responds to the overriding shout of its majority but to the whispered needs of the least heard among its populace. But then, this President would give short shrift to any advice, from a source signed: ‘Poor Richard.’ He knows rich from poor, better than anyone; he thinks. And we’re all the poorer for it.

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H.G. Wells wrote, that “We live in reference to past experience; not to future events… however inevitable.” He should have added, that ignoring past events, more-often-than-not, makes their re-occurrence inevitable. That point’s been driven home, for this observer, by the seemingly precipitous explosion of the sub-prime mortgage disaster, an event that most of the nation’s financial gurus have exclaimed loudly about… after the fact! It’s also hard to believe those who claim, they had few clues beforehand. Even the supposedly super-insightful Alan Greenspan has admitted that he may have been taken by surprise. At least, that’s what he inferred was his reason for not sounding a prior alarm. But this commentator wonders whether he’d have warned us, if he’d known?

If the great poet, Carl Sandburg had only realized, when he penned the words: “The past is a bucket of ashes,” how many Americans would take them to heart, he might have thought twice about that utterance. The clues that history’s sent us about the probability of a sub-prime mortgage melt-down are as manifold as the actions of today’s sub-ethical entrepreneurs and their political parasites, who’ve willfully stripped every protective act and agency, put in place more than fifty years ago, by the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, precisely to prevent such pernicious calamities from wrecking our economy.

Alas, the difference between then and now lies in the motives of those who try to influence economic outcomes. Roosevelt’s prime objective was to defend millions of ordinary middle and working-class Americans, who were vulnerable to the crass machinations of those who manipulated the nation’s money supply for profit. Also the speculators, whose side bets only worsened the woes that the lenders created. Today’s national leadership has but one objective: to line the pockets and treasuries of its supporters (and eventually, its own). As to the well-being of the estranged populace? It was never more than estranged in their view, anyway.

No matter how widely Alan Greenspan’s hints and assertions may have affected our national economy, it’s important that we not forget, he’s still first, last and always, a loyal and supportive member of this nation’s super-wealthiest one percentile. The same (once) might have been said of FDR. The difference was in his much closer acquaintance with pain and its imprint on his humanity. What America needs now, more than ever before, is a leadership that cares enough to spare its people pain, is honest enough to concede what it doesn’t know and humble enough to ask and accept the kind of help, that history is able to offer. This may be too much to whish for. But by now, there should be enough of us who know enough, to demand it.

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President George W. Bush has done it again. He’s categorically proved that an essence of ignorance is believing much and understanding little. For the second time he’s shown, that it’s impossible to learn, simply by repeating an already defined misstep. It’s also obvious, this President will never assimilate Thomas Jefferson’s wisdom, that history only teaches us what bad government is and does.

Mr. Bush’s first act of glaring intemperance was his senseless and rashly melodramatic landing on an aircraft carrier, in the wrong place, to proclaim a victory in a conflict he started for the wrong reason; an act as incendiary as pouring gasoline on a fire. The gutless gold-braid commanders of America’s Armed Forces, who meekly sanctioned the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld shock-and- awe circus, could have had more sensible advice to offer their boss and his cohorts, if they’d only re-read the chronicle of how the Japanese actually failed to conquer the Philippines, in WWII. Outnumbering and outgunning the Islands’ American defenders was but the beginning of their problem. For the rest of the war, canny and determined Philippino guerrilla forces, intimate with every crimp in the local topography, kept an army of several hundred thousand Nipponese occupiers at a constant risk of mishap and mayhem, playing a crucial role in their eventual defeat.

Now, our blandly presumptuous Commander-in-Chief has compounded the initial crime of his willful ignorance. Staging a pre-zero-hour promo for his launch of the ‘Petraeus Presentation,’ packaged purely to pressure the Congress into yet another ‘surge-mode’ surrender, Mr. Bush staged a photo op with a lone Sunni Chieftan, who dared to turn his supporters against the currently rampant Shiia majority, in a sector, also too-soon- tagged, with a ‘Mission Accomplished’ label. VOILA! Another ready-made Iraqi hero has bitten the dust; fingered for the enemy, by our own chief executive’s rampant appetite for undeserved applause. Radical Shiites claimed the credit for this assassination but Mr. Bush earned it, as if he’d tossed the bomb, himself. Chalk up another miss-hit, for the Bush bent of ballyhooing a wishful coup, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Just how long those with the official power to end such mindless hypocrisy will continue to tolerate it, from a hell-bent and bungle-prone President, for whom justice is long overdue, no one knows. One can only hope, that somewhere in the current mishmash of ambiguous governance, that’s called the United States Congress, there’s at least a simple quorum with sufficient courage, to justify their thus-far unearned salaries and the electorate’s disregarded demands.

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On this morbid anniversary of the event that set our nation on an inevitable course of self-destruction, this commentator chooses not to expound on it. If the mass of our citizenry hasn’t gotten the true picture of the most flagrant government deception in United States history, nothing anyone would say, can make a difference in their thinking. I choose, instead, to focus on the importance of imagination, to the quality of political leadership.

Imagination is an attribute which our current President not only doesn’t possess but is unable to recognize or appreciate, in others. One of New York State’s most imaginative governors, Nelson Rockefeller once noted, that the qualities which define a national leader are apparent long before he or she reaches national stature. How tragic that no one saw their lack, before Mr. Bush set his sights on the office which allowed him to deprive us of their value.

In a case much closer to home, for New Yorkers, no such dearth exists. The reference, here, is to the vision displayed by Senate Majority Leader, Joe Bruno, in channeling funds to synergize major scientific explorations, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and to finally energize a renaissance in sorely needed high speed rail transportation, for the Northeast Corridor. At a time when government leaders in both major parties, including Mr. Bruno, are immersed in senseless political feuds, that have nothing to do with governance and everything to do with self-image, Senator Bruno seems to be the only government leader, whose vision is more focused on public need, than ego need.

This is not meant to overlook or pardon alleged iniquities, by the senator, the commission of which is yet to be proved or disproved. These must and should be determined by our justice system and its dispassionate workings. It’s simply a discovery of the sad truth, that of the overwhelming number of governmental forces, needed to achieve what’s right and as yet unaccomplished, for the well being of all New York State’s citizens (present and future), the Senate leader seems to be the only one willing and able to address them.

It’s been written, that imagination is a specific gift, characteristic to the human mind. In the politics of government, it also seems to be a rare one; one we could wish was equally evident in the Empire State’s new Chief Executive, who may have found a life, unlike a news reporter he recently chastised, but still needs to buttress his vision with a little more humanity and a generous portion of understanding.

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In a famous American verse, a poet asks: “How fares the union?”… meaning the Nation. In the wake of Labor Day, 2007, it’s also a fair question to ask about other unions, that once were such a vital part of this nation’s life and well being. A fair answer might be: They were done in by an undue love of money and the power and depravity it purchased, to corner the market, on opportunity.

The history of organized labor, in America, is as vital and heroic as American history, itself. If America’s currently recumbent railroad empire was acquired on a silver platter of national ambition, its now-equally-impotent labor unions were anything but. The nation’s oldest and once most respected unions grew out of the struggle of railroad workers, White and Black, for dignity and wages commensurate with the demands of their jobs. It took years of overcoming denial, resistance, bullying and bloodshed, for railroad workers to gain the stature they deserved, for maintaining an arterial network that delivered this nation’s vital human and other resources, as needed, intact and on time.

The unions that freed garment workers from the hellish sweatshops that wasted their bodies and lives, for pittances, had to face down rebukes, threats and bodily harm. But they prevailed, as did the mill-hand, metal and auto workers unions, and now all-but-forgotten United Mine Workers. In a time when John L. Lewis headed this union, its members could and did resist the chicanery of owners, who paid for depletion and ill-gotten gains, with the lives and health of human captives, who had nowhere else to turn. The teamsters and longshoremen’s unions won unimagined independence and recognition, only to debase and mortify their members by selling their trust to the racketeers of organized crime.

The final nail in labor’s coffin was hammered home by mealy-mouthed politicians, who unraveled vital cords of unity with promises of untold affluence, for individuals, in America’s new marketplace of ideas and mischief. Politicians-without-principle became the pawns of corporate-empires-without-borders; the bell tollers of American Labor’s demise. Some were more telling than others. Dutch Reagan turned thousands of innocent screen workers over for decimation by the unholy un-American ‘Blacklist;’ then compounded his crime as President, by decimating the Air Traffic Controllers Union. The deadly ‘Right-To-Work’ Laws that sprouted under Taft-Hartley were pushed by Presidents Nixon, Reagan and George Bush, Sr., while the pro-corporate stance of a Bush-Cheney administration has helped make global outsourcing, standard operating procedure for international business.

Can American Labor ever regain the unity and stature it once enjoyed? That’s as troubling a question, as that of our nation’s unity. As Edmond Burke put it: When bad people combine, the good must associate or they fall, one-by-one; an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

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“Democracy,” observed Plato, “is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder. It dispenses a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.” Nothing’s brought this description more closely to mind, over the past several days, than the maneuvers of this so-called ‘democratically elected’ administration, to lend some legitimacy to the failed policies and lack of planning, for its illegitimate war in Iraq.

President Bush and the grey eminence he correctly calls his ‘vice’ President, have gone to what they view as their well of loyal supporters, for yet another time. This one, to cobble backing for a report that was supposed to bear out their optimism, on how the U.S. is winning its war to refashion the chaotic and volatile mayhem in Iraq, as a model of a western-style democracy. Their stratagem was fatally flawed from the start, since the highly touted report of General Petraeus, itself, turned out to be less-than-wildly optimistic. A second blow was suffered on the eve of the report’s delivery, when the G.O.P’s own former Armed Forces Committee chairman, Senator John Warner, publicly pleaded with the President to fess up his failure and warn the Iraqis, that we’re running out of patience. He also joined the burgeoning view, that the tri-partite Iraqi mish-mash, Bush is trying to pass off as a feasible federation, is (in-truth) a papier-mache’ coverup for a sectarian Islamic blood-letting. This left the administration’s top echelon with its last leg poised on a banana peel or should have. But the Bush-Cheney cabal still banked on a historic magic bullet: the cachet of the flag-draped proscenium at veterans’ conventions and the time-honored tradition of blind patriotism, that’s allowed villains to make a mockery of the real thing, for their own skullduggerous political flim-flammery.

The essential question for our focus now, though, is why any organization, founded to promote the best interests of a worthy group, should be taken-for-granted as a political prop? That’s what’s happened, not only to most of the veterans’ organizations in this country but also to many of its once most vaunted, specialized public interest advocates. Chief among these is the corporate colossus, that still has the chutzpah to pass itself off as the leading advocate for the well-being of America’s senior citizens.

The politicizing of America’s veterans isn’t a recent problem. It’s been occuring for years. Originally, the stated primary reason for being, of both the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, was to defend the status and earned rights of veterans, and their dependents. Somehow, over time, they’ve become advocates for the most hidebound and jingoist political viewpoints in the nation. Both were, for a long time, overtly racist and segregated. When the pernicious German-American Bund held a massive pro-Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden, in 1939, only six months before Hitler invaded Poland, the only vets to offer on-site support to the gutsy Journalist, Dorothy Thompson, who showed up to protest, were the Jewish War Veterans. The American Legion, in fact, backed flyer, Charles Lindberg’s view, that America could: “do business with Hitler.”

To their enduring credit, Viet Nam Vets and Disabled American Veterans have never allowed prejudiced patriots and selfish pols to pervert their pro-veteran and pro-principle positions. But in these crucial times, more and louder voices need to be heard. Americans of all ages must join the chorus of righteous indignation. Only a sound of honest outrage, at the trashing of what too many Americans have fought and died to protect, can convey to politicians who lack conscience, that theirs is a lost cause. Let’s hope enough Americans find their voices, before their silence spells: ”too late!”

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If there’s any way to grade how we Americans absorb the lessons of our mistakes, an objective observer would have to label us (for the most part): ‘slow learners.’ In 1959, ten years before this commentator accepted an offer to become part of the official machinery, by which state government is administered and (supposedly) improved, Nassau, one of New York’s fastest growing counties, at the time, was struggling for answers to a crucial problem: how to provide adequate and affordable housing for a rush of city dwellers, who saw Long Island as a nirvanal answer to their discontents.

This suburban seduction was begun in the decade after World War II, by a state parks and bridge authority commissioner, Robert Moses, who ran amok, applying his own: “If-you-build-it-they-will-come,” theory. He made sure, that the bridges and roads all led to Long Island’s state parks, which just happened to abut some of the most beautiful shoreline areas on the nation’s east coast. He then sold another idea to two brothers, who’d tailored a design for the dream cottage, every ex-GI and his new bride hankered for: the Levitt House. A cookie-cutter template made it affordable and a federal GI Bill provided ready mortgage money. The banks licked their chops and the Levitts made sure to build as near to the exits of the Moses roads, as the law allowed. The rest is history, helped by rapacious realtors who hyped “White Flight” and local politicians, greedy for their share of the take. Realtors raised the ante by ‘block-busting;’ feeding fears of city folk, spooked by an incursion of southern Blacks, desperate to shed Jim Crow’s onerous curse. A new infusion of cheap labor, from Puerto Rico, engineered by smart city pols who smelled revenue, also helped.

As for Nassau’s problem, it began with ‘Z’ and ended with ‘G’ and was spelled ‘ZONING.’ Specifically, local officials made sure to pack their zoning laws with restrictive covenants; weasel words, to ensure the suburbs would stay lily White and lucrative. The covenants covered new developments etched from farmland but a sprinkling of small Nassau cities then became receptacles for the underprivileged and poverty plagued. Decades later, Suffolk County, east of Nassau, suffered a similar fate.

Now, witnessing a spate of upstate cities in the Hudson valley, struggle against the encroachments of suburban sprawl and gentrification, that still spell separate and unequal, this commentator sniffs debacle in the wind, as politicians, here, look for quick fixes, via funds to paper over the hopeless facades of run-down slums. Obviously, the lesson’s still unlearned. In cities large or small, we can’t wall-out crime by walling-in poverty and hopelessness. Integration means unity and that still takes everyone, to bring about. The problems of poverty, drugs and crime didn’t haphazardly fall into certain areas of certain cities. They were planted there by greed and callous neglect. The blight that exists, now, can’t be wished away. It will take recognition and a desire by everyone to eradicate it. If you’re one of those who really cares, don’t just demand that public officials do something. Ask, instead, what you can do to help?

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In this democratic (small ‘d’) society, which so often touts its respect for the rule of law, it’s not enough in the case of misdoing, simply to establish innocence or guilt. Those responsible for establishing it are impelled toward every effort, to determine motive. When cases are reported in the media, more likely than not the first question to arise among a querying public, is – “Why?” It’s as though the discovery of a rational reason would help us to understand and perhaps, even, in some way endure such perpetrations, by others among us, who, except for such irregularities, resemble us. A cursory glance at the pages of any daily newspaper or a few moments of watching the news on TV or hearing it on the radio, reveals the details of any number of alleged misdeeds, by public officials, corporate kingpins, employees – even of philanthropic organizations – actions in which they’re alleged to have illegally sought or acquired funds, or perhaps abused positions of trust for personal gain. And invariably, the question arises: “Why?”

Especially in this often touted ‘classless’ society, we tend to question whether class had any determining influence on the misdeed committed. How did that parody on a famous Kipling poem put it? “Pile on the brown man’s burden, to gratify your greed.” And so, we seek out such answers. We wonder how strongly this may have influenced the actions now coming to light, about a decorated and admired Albany police detective and a highly visible social activist, who sought still-undetermined profits, in murky real estate deals.

In the ongoing spate of charge and counter-charge, around the saga now dubbed “Trooper-Gate” (or as one scribe aptly labeled it: “Copter-Gate”) the query: ‘Why?,’ as applied to both parties, is blurred by the honest question, ‘What?’ And the answer to that is veiled in swirls of deliberate spin-drift. To unscramble it, it’s important for us, lay-folk, to keep in mind that obfuscation is the politicos’ stock-in-trade. Where else but in the arcane world of New York State politics would one find a State Senate leader, who’s a master-of-the-art of skating on thin ice, turn the tables on a virtuoso prosecutor-turned-Governor, by a sleight-of-hand inversion of charges? It’s as though a slick second-story man, caught with the loot, in-hand, cries “Foul!” because arresting officers fail to ring the front doorbell and formally announce their mission. Everyone, even the lowly citizen-taxpayer, knows what the G.O.P. Senate Leader was up to. The same ploy that Democrat office holders have plied, when in power: the swathing of sordid politics in an official coverlet and a flimsy one, at that. The answer is simple: Make even a fraction-of-a-second of non-official purpose, a reason to deny any official the use of a State aircraft or any other State-owned appliance. Simple? See how long it takes our State Legislature to pass that piece of business.

As for what portends, in our ongoing quest for an answer to ‘Why?,’ when those in whom we place trust abuse it; the most incisive answer might be one this commentator remembers from childhood, that his father used to give him. “’Why,’” he’d say, “begins with a crooked letter.”

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One of the pat phrases with which the present unprecocious American President likes to pepper his off-the-cuff orations, is the assertion that ours is a nation of respect for law and order. As the King of Siam said to governess, Anna, in the play that bore their names; “That is a puzzlement!” Has this country ever had a national administration, as wantonly oblivious and demeaning of the rule of law? Revisiting the rash of legal tactics, applied by various Congressional committees, in recent days, in a fruitless pursuit of information that the constitution certifies, the public has a right to know; and noting the downright imperious disregard of the President and his accomplices, one wonders: whatever’s become of such standard legal determinants of criminality, like “Conspiracy” and “Aiding and Abetting?” Not to mention the brazen seizure of illicit power.

First, there’s the aberration of a rogue Vice President, who’s taken powers unto himself rarely evinced by previous presidents and has either so buffaloed or cowed the man who selected him, that his actions not only go unquestioned but are flat-out sanctioned. Some sources have insinuated, that the selection itself might have been managed by this President’s father, former President Bush, Sr., with whom the now sitting Vice-President has a long history of collaboration. If so, that act in itself has the smell of conspiracy. But however his ascendance to the office came about, there’s no previous precedent or warrant for the mischief or illegality, actively pursued by Dick Cheney and recklessly rubber-stamped by the very Commander-in-Chief whose powers he’s overtly usurped.

As for the litany of obvious misdeeds by this President and his cohorts, there are so many that fall within the distinct scope, either of criminal intent or criminal dereliction, it’s astonishing, that none of those who’ve experienced them haven’t publicly called for the President to answer for them, in an appropriate and official setting. The excuses of avoiding a long and acrimonious impeachment trial or a further painful division of the country, are a lame defense by spineless officials, enthralled with personal gain and concerned more about this nation’s next election, than about its next generation.

Where’s the danger, in allowing all this to go unchallenged? In 1770, the anonymous epistler, Junius, put it this way: “One precedent creates another. What yesterday was fact, today becomes doctrine.” And if this miscarriage continues, here’s a great idea for attorneys, in search of new outlets for their expertise. They might advertise advice for those seeking to circumvent laws they find too restrictive. Or perhaps apply the defense of ‘executive privilege’ for corporate officers, not wishing to divulge the means they’ve used to bilk investors or consumers. After all, if the nation’s top elected official and his minions can get away with tying the law into unprecedented knots, why shouldn’t any enterprising citizen have a crack at it?

In this new and ruthless America, evil should at least be an equal opportunity provider.

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All the fabrication and spin that’s beamed at us of late, with its stress on the misdoings of celebrities in just about every niche of our culture, leads one to believe that possibly, we’ve been back-dated, to an era that the Roman satirist, Juvenal, described as a time of ‘bread and circuses.’ Having conquered most of the known and traveled world; its elite moneyed class in possession of the most uncommon luxuries and an overwhelming remainder of its citizens in rank and ravaging poverty, ancient Rome teetered on the brink of implosion. The then Emperor and a supine gaggle of Roman senators decided something must be done. Not so much to improve the situation but to distract a growing aggregate of protesters, whose complaints were beginning to attract a wider and meaner audience. The antidote they devised was the ‘Circus Maximus.,’ This diversion that began with gladiators fighting to the death soon escalated, out of a frenzied fear of spectator boredom, into a more grizzly spectacle of truly savage levels, with various social undesirables torn to shreds, both by human monsters and animals. The bread was the loaves the audience received, for showing up. The size of the ration, tied to the size of the crowd and its mood.

Over the centuries, since, artfulness and avarice have pushed the plotters of crowd control to contrive performances, that may be less brutal but rob participants of any vestige of benevolence. The bait, here, is money (scads of it) and the exultation of special status, it seems to buy; the euphoric rush that mindless adulation delivers, for those who more-often-than-not, have once dwelt on the fringe of our perception. Those least intimate with celebrity are the most prone, not only to misunderstand it but to over-value its privileges. Once addicted to stardom, they’re impelled toward ever greater effort, not to lose it. Its resultant abuse, though, is the fault of all of us.

From dispassionate reports, we now know that Michael Vick didn’t suddenly rush into his latest misconduct. Some, who know him best, have labeled him a ‘bad apple.’ But this blatant abuser of professional football celebrity is only the currently prominent tip of a problematic iceberg. What bothers this observer most is the lack of a national viewpoint, that not only should find the whole practice of coating our athletic and theatrical stars in Teflon abhorrent but show it, by chastening their promoters’ pocketbooks. It’s not even certain, that Vick’s latest foray into canine-massacres-for-money would have drawn the amount of attention it has, without the outrage of animal rights defenders and pet owners. As usual, fellow citizens, the problem reverts to us; how we see ourselves and the kind of social environment in which we choose to live and raise our children.

The entreprenneurs who’ve recast celebrity from a state of earned respect to one of just being known for well-knownness are impelled by but one motivation: profit. By helping them gain it, we stand to lose much more. If the ‘Circus Maximus’ paradigm holds true, we could be well on the way to losing a country.

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As most of this audience knows, WAMC’s weekday morning show, ‘The Roundtable,’ has a daily ‘Poll Question,’ that seeks responses from Northeast Public Radio listeners, on issues of current interest. Last Thursday’s entire Roundtable program was devoted to the phenomenon of Harry Potter books and posed the Poll Question: “How do you get your kids to read?” The query evoked a strong listener response but not as insightful as one might have wished. While those who responded cited many obstacles and diversions that make it more difficult for today’s parents to motivate their children toward habitual reading, none mentioned the most culpable culprit, opposing any parental or scholastic effort in this direction. An offender, by the way, that not only deflects youngsters’ eyes and minds from any interest, that involves the written word but also has trashed and continues to debase literature’s essential vehicle: language.

The public enemy Number One that merits this negative focus is none other than this country’s corporate media and its arsenal of commercial TV, radio, I-pods, photographic cell phones and what-have-you. Now, at this point, every paladin-publicist and apologist for the corporate community will leap to wrap their pursuit of venal profit in Capitalism’s most patriotic buntings. We know them by heart: The sacrosanct 1st Amendment protections, freedom of choice and of course, that old time-worn shibboleth: ‘it’s all part of what makes us the greatest, most imitated and sought after nation on earth:’ (pause for drum roll and fanfares).

The apologists, too, will cite the myth that they believe mere repetition certifies: the frayed embroidery about the fractional time segments specifically allocated to public interest and educational broadcasting, by media owners. It’s a bromide that might well be a joke, except for its painful implications. Those touted time-frames, like the mythic buried loot, in “God’s Little Acre,” have been plopped around the media’s backyard into a scatter of such shrunken holes, what’s actually there isn’t worthy of mentioning.

Experts tell us, the bottom line in any effort to prod youngsters into good reading habits, is a pattern – instilled early-on - by parents reading to their kids. If anyone’s bothered to notice, there’s now at least a generation of adults in this country, who’re themselves weaned from both any habitual connection with decent literate language or books that might reflect it. This so-called ‘mature end’ of the TV/computer/cell phone culture seems to have neither the time nor the desire to read anything to their kids.

Let’s face it, the corporate media’s rampant message is aimed at the instant intake of superficial knowledge, aired to impel us toward purchase. The wasteland’s spoilers are impatient with any pursuit that takes time, for in-depth thought or examination. Today’s young parents are steeped in an illiterate and what-you –see-is-what-it-is life style. As Marshall McLuhan told us, in 1963, the media ‘IS’ the message and the answer for today’s parents applies to all of us: The hand that rocks the cradle controls the switch.

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Jonathan Swift wrote: “We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” If this commentator seems to have been on a singular mission to hammer home the imminent threat of fundamentalist subversion, to the all-important separation of church and state, in this democracy, it’s because evidence of that danger has never seemed so prevalent as it does now. Past commentaries have noted the strong and logical opposition of most of our founders to the thesis, that the two should be totally disconnected from each other, in any aspect of the governance process. Today, the disconnect appears to be more prevalent in the understanding of government administrators and legislators, many of whom seem bent on pursuing and inventing ways to bring organized religion and our government into closer and workable partnerships.

Perusing our history, one finds that not only our founders but subsequent Presidents and many of America’s greatest minds have expressed themselves on this critical subject. Beyond his gritty courage, in reversing the tide of the Civil War, for a Lincoln administration, hard pressed to preserve ours as a union free of slavery, Ulysses Grant was not seen or described as one of the more brilliant of our chief executives. Still, he, too, had this to say about keeping the union free of theocratic interference: “Leave the matter of religion to the family, the church and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions,” Grant urged. “Keep the church and the state forever separate.”

Our current President rants much and often, of his determination, not only to keep this democracy free of any danger to its continuance but also of his obsession, to make democracy a regime of preference for certain governments, where neither the form nor its concept is now practiced or tolerated. How can anyone believe, that Mr. Bush honestly subscribes, either to such a belief or such a mission, when he has overtly abrogated the First Amendment to the Constitution with a war, that seeks to impose an Islamic government on Iraq? The Bush administration openly supports the current Iraqi government, which is headed by a Shiite President who’s in league with the religious leaders of a fundamentalist Islamic sect. For the sake of going along to get along, our President has knowingly endorsed this Shiite Presidency. But then, why not? This American President has done more to overtly insinuate and even involve organized religious participation in the administrative affairs of our government, than any American President, in United States history.

Once and for all, let’s get both the language of the law and adherence to it straight. The framers were succinct. They ordained that the free exercise of religion by anyone, could not be prohibited… but also, that government could take no action to establish religion… any religion. The great Justice Learned Hand said, the constitutional right of any American, to make a fist, ends at the end of another’s nose. It’s time this President and his religious cohorts removed their fists from a chafed country, filled with American noses.

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The difference between factual history and fabricated myth is not just in the telling but how, why, by whom and for how long. It’s been two decades, since then-President Reagan stood before Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate and uttered the phrase: “Mr. Gorbachev – Take down this wall!” The incident and its results have become hallowed history. Two weeks ago loyalist Republicans proudly reminded the world of this historic moment. The nuanced salvo of repetitions that followed this less-than-thirty-second pronouncement have all but obliterated the historic fact of a brilliant economic plan, created by the genius of a then-Secretary-of-State George Marshall and advanced by the persistent courage of President Harry Truman. Anyone with common sense could see how the constant pressure of creative competition would eventually sap and demolish the tightly controlled citadel of communist tyranny. But the timing and transmission of this one well-delivered broadside, allowed Dutch Reagan to move from malleable movie actor to mythic national hero in a single leap. Also, for decades, it acted as a mythic potion, holding loyal American Democrats in an apologetic trance, that still affects them.

The forging of myths from historic perversion is as old as the art of yarn-spinning itself, which can be traced even to biblical origins. As Eric Hoffer reminded us, lying is the oldest form of creativity. In opposing it, truth tellers are demoted to the roles of mere reporters Add to this epochal process the dimensions of technology and pernicious engineering, and you have the kind of insidious procedure, now being pursued by sinister G.O.P. spin-doctors, bent on creating acceptance for a wholly misplaced president, by wrapping him in a mammoth mantle of whole-cloth fabrications.

Myth-making shenanigans can also work in reverse. Only a few days ago, NPR’s apology for corporate deception, packaged under the misleading title of “Marketplace,” aired a not-so-subtle attack by corporate supported propgandist, Amity Shlaes, who’s now made a special target of former President Franklin Roosevelt. In a salvo of detractions from a new book she’s peddling, Shlaes depicts FDR not as a hero, who led this nation out of the double-whammy calamities of a giant depression and a world-wide war, toward unimagined greatness and prosperity but as a sly huckster, who slipped unearned kickbacks to undeserving millions, at the expense of overburdened entrepreneurs, who are still encumbered with tax-shackles, that she claims his profligate deception forged.

It’s a wonder President George Bush hasn’t yet snagged Shlaes for a post in his misbegotten distortion factory. She sounds like an ideal candidate to help him demolish the few remaining historic monuments, like Social Security, that FDR created to benefit America’s common folk. There’s a deliciously droll definition that Ambrose Bierce penned. Myth, he wrote, is a body of primitive belief about a people’s history, heroes and deities… as distinguished from the true accounts, that they later invent. But for this observer, Will Rogers said it best: “Nothing’s harder to see, than the naked truth.”

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In an 1859 essay, on liberty, John Stuart Mill complained that too few, in his time, dared to be non conformists. One was strongly reminded of his words, watching a recent press conference, with political leaders, of both stripes