I got an email, today. From someone whose name I cannot pronounce—spelled “Reince Priebus”—(and who is Chairman of the Republican National Committee, he says, no less). I have no idea how he and I became correspondents. Could it be because, in my errant youth, thinking I was going to work cheek-by-jowl with Norm Ornstein (a hero at the time, and, still an unbelievably lucid, well researched and informative commentator, news analyst and “resident scholar”), I interned at that bastion of reactionary politics, The American Enterprise Institute? That’s relevant and germane to the discussion I am laboring to get off the ground, here, by the way.
The American Enterprise Institute was the holy of holies during the so-called “Reagan Revolution.”
Under this organization’s auspices and through its sister organizations, the “Star Wars” defense system and “Iran Contra” were cooked up, along with what became known, variously, as “Voodoo Economics”, “Supply-side Economics” and “Trickle Down Theory”, massive national debt, and what became the largest Federal Government in history, up to that point—despite the fact that this was the same institution which wrote the lip-service, lip-synced script on reducing government that every Republican lawmaker worth their salt was spouting then and is still spouting, today. Although the Republican spout is turned rather more toward the Tea Party for inspiration at the moment, perhaps, I fear the AEI will be at the heart of things, in right-wing US politics, forever and ever, amen.
I was a lamb fed to the wolves over there. For their member newsletter, they had me review a book one of their “fellows” had just written about the Red Cross and how their vetting and control system for collecting blood was flawed and would contribute, hugely, to the AIDS epidemic. Here I was, a young liberal college journalist, wet behind the ears and dewey-eyed, thrown to the right and asked to attack that bastion of social order (in my mind at the time), The Red Cross. Stabbed to the heart of my First Amendment beliefs and having to bear up under the strain of having them challenged at my own hand. And I only got to hang with Norm twice.
So this Reince dude writes me that it’s time to pull up our socks and contribute a few necessaries to the impending Reagan Centennial Celebration, “Oh! Lawdy, Lawdy! I must go! Gawd Almighty Hisself is one hunnert years ole!!!!!!!”
I don’t know what Reagan did, really. I do know that he was probably the first sitting president of the US to actually be completely out of his mind, literally, while in office. I don’t know who, actually held the reins for him. I do know that he’s credited with breaking down Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” and bringing Democracy to the world. (Never mind, Greece.) At least, according to the “left-leaning, East Coast, liberal elite media” (as the AEI was wont to call the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle, CBS, ABC and any other media outlet they disagreed with).
This sort of thinking brought me around to a conversation I had with Keith Richards on a pent house roof in Manhattan around the time the Berlin Wall was pulled down by German hands on either side of it.
“Politicians say the wall came down because people want Democracy,” KR said. “That’s bullshit. It came down because the kids want rock and roll and jeans. The music brought that wall down, man. The music.”
And I look at images coming out of Tunisia, where the men and women in the street kicked out the despot Ben Ali, and see a beautiful handmade poster waving above a crowd of beatific faces, declaring, “Power To The People” in handwritten English script.
And I look at images coming out of Cairo, today, and see another wonderful sign, hand-painted, screaming “We Want Internet”.
And another, slightly more toned-down, saying “We Walk Like Egyptians”.
And I think to myself, “Politicians have nothing to do with anything but promoting the interests of the monied classes."
Today, as I look at this email from ‘what’s his name?’ I think, “The Internet is finally reaching its true potential to be the great equalizer in this world.
"But, yeah, Keith, it was the music which brought the wall down.”
©2010, Paul Martin.
All rights reserved. May be used with attribution, but not for profit, without permission.
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