The Left

Here's a nice picture that the excellent Sanford Zale snapped of me outside of the Eugene V. Debs home as we passed through my home state of Indiana. Sandy was a good soul to put up with my odd requests such as visiting the Debs homesite, the Creation Museum (more on that later), Holcomb, Kansas etc. Debs has always been a hero of mine and I can't believe that anyone could ever make a compelling argument against him being the greatest Hoosier. It is so odd to think that Indiana, such a grossly arch-conservative state, could have produced the most famous and influential American socialist. I am the black sheep socialist born into a family of Republicans (all of whom are much more socially liberal than they would ever let on) so it is natural that I would have been drawn to Debs. Now, granted that I am a hopeless romantic, but I've never believed that the left, specifically socialism, is dead. Today's Democrats are, for the most part, nothing more than Republican posers anyway - which is one of the things that I love about living in such an unabashedly liberal state like Vermont. We do have, in Bernie Sanders, the only socialist Senator in the US. However, even the Republicans in Vermont are a different breed, and I always argue that the average Indiana Democrat is more conservative than the average Vermont Republican. As the economic situation grows more and more dire, and the rich carve off more and more of the world for themselves, there has to be an alternative. The latest sobering statistic I saw is that one in two Americans is either living in poverty or has a low wage job. 50%. Is this what has become of the American dream? And yet we as a nation continue to dream that we'll, against all odds, become the rich ones, the ones that shouldn't have to pay the "death tax", the ones who shouldn't have to fund governmental assistance that more and more of us are queueing up for every year, the ones who will soon, soon, all too soon, benefit from the loop holes that allow the rich to escape without paying taxes. The Europeans, and with a touch of sadness, will sometimes speak of the passing of American democracy - has the same thing happened to the American moment? To me, the moment is past if we continue down this ridiculous path. For all of the old fear about socialism killing the American dream, in the end it might be what saves the American dream. But how to get there? Maybe the key question is figuring out whether the Occupy Wall Street movement actualy means something or if it is just fashion? Still, you have to start somewhere. As Marx reminds us, "I am nothing, but I must be everything."