New Political Music
by Joseph Barrett
Issue 102 - February 27, 2008

There is not one campaign, one ideological faction, one party or one anything else that can say with any credence “the American people are saying this or that or want such and such". There is not one person or group who can say that the “American people have spoken."

Everything is on the table, every thing, every idea is at risk and the American people are divided six ways to Sunday.

The only conventional wisdom is that there is no conventional wisdom. Nobody speaks for anybody. And there ain't no one listening to nobody.

Here are several things that are very obvious, if you are watching, and it doesn’t take any genius to see them.

1. Endorsements from famous people have no shelf life other than the 30 minutes or so that it takes for people to go on to the next event. No one has any durable credence.

2. Talk radio as a medium for fermentation and fomenting dissent is alive and well. Talk radio as far as talk jockeys being the formers of political action is not all that alive and well.

3. There is no prevailing philosophy of political or self governance that holds the loyalty of even a significant plurality of the people. There are no terms that catch the imagination of even a plurality of the people. The purveyors of such have lost the heartbeat of most Americans

4. The people are listening to each other via email and friend to friend and family member to family member. There is a communication revolution.

5. Pundits and talking heads don't have any idea of what is occurring. They are five steps away from what significant segments of the people are thinking or about to do, and falling behind.

6. There are no significant leaders who have a hold on the majority of the people. No one seems to know the pulse of the people, only various segments of it, if that.

7. The terms liberal, conservative, moderate etc have no viable meaning. They are terms of self description. Each individual knows what he or she thinks they are and why. It differs for person to person. Each individual has his or her meaning of who and what they are.

8. Rejection of what is. People just do not like the current way of doing the business of the people. There is no national collective wish list of what should be. But there sure as hell is an overwhelming rejection of what has been and is, and who has been doing all the posturing and talking.

There are growing new forces in contention for the American political soul. In the GOP there are three groups so far. Nationalism, represented by John McCain, Christian populism represented by Mike Huckabee, and corporate and market conservatism—Mitt Romney, Rush, Fox News etc.

Within the Democratic Party—the party of client statism—there is Hillary Clinton and the vested Democratic interest groups, the dream seeker with Barak Obama and others, and finally the leftist anti nationalists and rejectionists—the vestiges of the intellectual and Hollywood/New York cultural elite.

No one has given or is attempting to give intellectual structure to all of this—yet. But soon some will try…

For the first time in a long time, large groups of Americans are, on their own, individually seeking their own political truths and viability. History and politics abhor a vacuum. Some folks somewhere very soon are going to put the words to the music.

“have you heard the people sing"
it is the song of angry men—"

You know the rest-- it is going to be a bumpy ride. I wish I will be around to see what happens.

No one but an idiot or a fool gives battle on a terrain without scouting out the area. No one but a clown yells “charge” when they have no followers. But the history of man is full of such people.

We are living in very interesting times.