Ray Raphael’s Founding Myths is kicking my ass. One thing he maintains in the early chapters — I’m only just past Valley Forge — is that our sense of history and the founders has been sanitized.
www.rayraphael.com/...
Some of that is for teaching although it then debases historical accuracy, BUT most of it is to conceal the total importance of group power. Raphael doesn’t phrase it like that and I’m reading between the lines, which is all that’s possible until a new mountain of scholarship occurs. BUT the point is that Stronger Together IS what succeeds. Sam Adams became a cartoon version of an instigator when the deeds and whatever the times required were accomplished by a semi-organized combination of thousands including a militia component and a well organized political component. That last one could be called leadership but they are just the component that did the organized political stuff, so they were mostly wealthy owners of property who could write and talk about what they knew. We saw a lot about the political side of our next step on television. But it is the Group Power of it all that matters. I have certainly never seen a political movement organize under such a sensible concept of discipline. Do something. Do it with us. Get involved. Vote. And then do something more than vote. Examples include donating small amounts of money and getting out the vote.
Everything that is standing in our way represents group-power conglomerations. For the Political Revolution it will be a true challenge to congeal enough and be forceful enough (Strong Together) to really budge the House while electing Hillary and gaining back the Senate, aka our immediate challenge. Thereafter the real work starts, probably balanced on what sort of House we get. Contestation. We must advocate our point of view as well as take concrete actions to promote our [PLATFORM — insert issues here] and try to subvert elements of the status quo that impede progress(iveness). I am one of the people here who still has strong reservations about Hillary. And I am all in for Hillary, now. My reservations fit just fine in my pocket and we’ll see what comes, but every day is urgent until the election.
I think the sort of flexible negotiation and wholehearted (also calculated) welcoming of the Bernie-side at our convention couldn’t have gone any better and really fulfilled our initial hopes. But we are NOW in a much better position than we had any hope to be in. Because of HILLARY and STRONGER TOGETHER. Because that is realistic. It is up to a mob of people like me to help get this Political Revolution we believe in so much started.
www.commondreams.org/…
This campaign for Hillary, the Senate, the House, and state and local races and initiatives is going to form lifelong attachments between people who really are Hillary people and Bernie-side organizers who are in it for the Political Revolution. Because of the essential mission-critical role played by Group Power, this is nicely organized to begin with. I say this before all Trump breaks loose. But Trump will give us a lot to work with while Hillary’s people who own stuff and party activists hold down their part of our conglomeration. Us. The next best thing in this range of upsides is to have Barrack Obama in the private sector. We should be preparing for his first day out of office. Maybe that will be the MOST PROMISING day of my lifetime. Our beautiful retiring President. Our beautiful new President. A promising day. And that will be just another beginning.