What Goes Around Comes Around
Think of everything being different as the only thing that has changed and you will have a pretty good reading of this time we live in. Every time has its own story to tell; it has always been so. There are all sorts of claims as to what the oldest profession is, but storytelling is certainly in the running.The story's longevity can be checked off to a quality that would be counter intuitive to many a park bench psuedo-philosopher today: the core story never changes. Learn the core story and you will forever be a master at it in any time and place. The only thing up for debate will be those pesky details. Here is what I think the core American political story has always been and will always be: he who makes the best case for empowering people to meet the challenges of the time wins. Period. As my mother liked to say, "The proof is in the pudding."
I think of my coming of age as that time and place when I turned 16 and headed off for New York to play my cornet in '31. The business man had been king for so long he had no idea that his time had come and gone. The last thing he could imagine was that America would be so full hardy as to trust a bunch of wacko, we are all in it together, nutcases with the helm. In '32 when the great FDR took hold of that helm they were saying that it was a flash in the pan madness that level headed Americans would get over. Kind of like what the social tight asses of the 20's said about Louis, the 30's said about Bing, the 40's said about Frank, the fifties said about Elvis and the sixties said about The Beatles. Yes sir, just a momentary madness as an interlude between business as usual.
Well that temporary madness lasted with a few minor interludes otherwise between '32 and '68. My daughter was 18 and given her temperament understood what was coming. My son was 16, and if in a few years he would be gone in Vietnam, his temperament would have never allowed him to admit that the age that had shaped him and given him his sense of himself was coming to an end. I don't remember when I came to believe it, but I also thought that by '68 it had turned into something other than the empowerment that a great age depends upon.
I remember reading a book, something about the coming depression, by that Krugman fellah who writes for the times. He almost off the cuff said something that wraps this whole thing up. He said something to the affect that by 1980, it was economic man who was making the case for the means of an individual to get ahead; that we had left the age of social empowerment and entered the age of economic empowerment. I believe he hit it right on the nose. Whether a black man could raise himself up or a woman could get a break, simply would not do compared to the notion that a rebirth of a dynamic marketplace could float everybody's boat. It was a powerful argument, and its time had come again.
It is now forty years later from that great crackup in '68 when Martin Luther King and that man who was beginning to be seen then and has been frozen in time as embodying such possibilities, RFK, were lost to bullets. Some have spent the last forty years bemoaning those lost possibilities. Bemoaning empowers nobody, and on this day a woman who could very easily, and many would say rightfully, have simply bemoaned her fate, rose to the occasion and to the needs of the time, and to a correct understanding that we stand at the beginning not at the end. Hillary's speech would have been an extraordinary speech on any occasion, but on this one, she wisely gave voice not to what is, but to what might be if we only reach out and grasp it.
My daughter is no liberal, and may not even welcome the age that we stand at the cusp of, but she was in tears listening. You see there are some things that overwhelm even who we think we are. She knows a new age is upon us. This will be my last one, but I will be ever grateful for having witnessed its birth. Let us be wise stewards of it. For we who welcome it and gladly kissoff that which is receding into history should remember what the jesters told the victorious generals: all glory is fleeting. Put another way, that which goes around comes around.
Hi Frankie,
You've been busy this morning and I've enjoyed your posts. Like you, I
think Hillary's speech was worth the wait. It made me proud and I'm in awe
and admiration of her. I don't know how she managed these last few weeks
with such grace and composure. All along I've said I could vote for either
one in November but, with her withdrawal, I find myself feeling sad and
disappointed. I feel like we (me, women, our society) just lost something
that would have been very good and meaningful to us. I will certainly
still vote for Obama in November, but I think we need BOTH her
"experience", level-headedness, determination, etc. as well as Barack's
hopefulness and inspiration. I was hoping for the dream ticket with her at
the top (for 8 years, then Obama). After the shame and debacle for this
administration, we need the strengths of both (and I'm not sure the reverse
dream ticket will take advantage of Hillary's strengths) - one without the
other is not likely to accomplish as much. My first hope for Obama is that
he will surround himself with the right people, including Hillary, to be
able to do more than anyone ever imagined. He will need all the help he
can get and he certainly has my good wishes.
I remember my father once saying to me concerning people who just don't
understand our act. He told me that there will always be people who don't
understand something, hell, I don't understand them. Then he leaned in and
whispered so my mother woudn't hear, "screw them." I also recall the famous
Old Joe Kennedy quote concerning the money he handed out in West Virginia,
putting half the local Democratic pols on the payroll, when JFK needed to
beat Humphrey there: "I don't mind paying for a win, but I will be damn if
I going to pay for a landslide." Put another way, we are too often
disappointed by not getting everything when in fact there is no particular
reason to be unhappy about what we in fact got.
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