don't vote for me

john dos passos, a lesser-known but not of lesser quality expatriate writer, became disillusioned after seeing what transpired in the spanish civil war. in one of his unfortunately glossed-over works, U.S.A., he wrote the following:

"america our nation has been beaten by strangers who have turned our language inside out who have taken the clean words our fathers spoke and made them slimy and foul

their hired men sit on the judge's bench they sit back with their feet on the tables under the dome of the State House they are ignorant of our beliefs they have the dollars the guns the armed forces the power plants
they have built the electric chair and hired the executioner to throw the switch

all right we are two nations."

well gee. it's no exagerration to say that those words could well have been strung together yesterday by someone fuming over alito or over the valerie plame scandal or over intelligent design being taught in public school (although we must tip hats to the judge in dover) or what have you.

there are lots of things that could be extracted from the above passage and applied -- detail for detail -- to the present time, and while that's lots of fun to do and makes one feel really insightful and tricky, there'’s something else that lies within these words that i think is the real crux of the matter, and the thing perhaps most crucial for those of us living today to consider.

"all right we are two nations."

awhile back i sat in the balcony of the 92nd street y and listened to doris kearns goodwin speak. a heroine of mine since high school, she was talking about her new book, a biography of lincoln on which she'd worked for more than a decade. there have been about a million biographies written about abraham lincoln. yes, i believe the number is approximately a million. ms. goodwin in taking up lincoln, then, faced the substantial challenge of finding something new and worthy on which to write. lincoln'’s story on its own, been there done that. she needed something new and being the brilliant doris kearns goodwin as she is, she found it. her book is not just the story of lincoln himself, but the story of his politics and most notably the rather remarkable decision he made to stock his cabinet (as in people in governmental posts, not tomato soup in cupboard) with none other than his rivals for the presidential race he had just won. to clarify, lincoln's closest political advisors were essentially his political enemies. interesting concept, that. one could say he was just "keeping his enemies closer than his friends," as the old idiogram has it. but it was more than that. ms. goodwin also brought attention to the fact that lincoln often changed his mind. in doing so, he inevitably contradicted what he had said at a previous time. his answer to critics or challengers when he altered an opinion? "i am smarter today than i was yesterday."

so you can let that settle. but it got me to thinking. we all know the state of affairs over here in yon america basically bites the big one. we love to talk about how horrible things are and how much we hate so-and-so and how much so-and-so hates such-and-such and how wretched it is that our political world be wrought with corruption on scandal (we all of us -- conservative or liberal -- do the same thing; just plug in different names/events/specifics/etc.). "so isn't it an atrocity the delay is such a lying cheat?" asks liberal john doe. "uhh yeah, about as aotrocius as you and your baby-killing, morally reprehensible pals are," has conservative joe shmoe. and around and around and around we go. it would be a looong time before either side ran out of those, no?

so my point. or dos passos' point, rather: "all right we are two nations." [jaw clenched-ly attempting not to dwell on the preceeding parts of that comment that of course i just had to include -- i mean the possibilities there are endless; i get excited just thinking about what could be done with dos passos' punches in relation to those evil, evil people out there who have "...turned our language inside out who have taken the clean words our fathers spoke and made them SLIMY and FOUL" ... but ok. see if i get stuck in that i'm going to end up devalidating my own point, which is never desirable...]

so my point. or doris kearns goodwin's point, rather. lincoln succeeded as president because of what pretty much amoun tot counter-intuitive strategies; promoting political enemies, publicly acknowledging mistakes [ahem, w? oops. dammit, i'm trying].

and now my point (for real, this time): in considering the current state of affairs, these ideas blend together for me. there is a common thread. here we are divided; that is certainly an apt description. so why the division? because i think it goes beyond a normal potlitical sort of scope, right? there will always be two sides of the proverbial coin -- it's a physical inevitablililty, but what we are experiencing right now is a truly profound split. this goes beyond big government vs. small government, or pro-choice vs. pro-life, or tax cuts or capital punishment or any of it. the people on the political chessboard at present -- and of course i acknowledge this is a generalization -- are wholly disjoined.

"your ideas are wrong."
"your strategies are wrong."
"your beliefs are wrong"
"your lifestyle is wrong."
"your god is wrong."
"your lack of a god is wrong."

two nations.

many would argue that no president experienced this phenomenon more profoundly than abraham lincoln. and though it would take years and years -- many more than he would ever witness himself -- there is undoubtedly something to be said for lincoln's construction of the reconstruction. he was humble. he was open. he was forgiving. he built his cabinet from the very men comprising his opposition. he worked from the middle. from the median, so to speak. centrism.


i am a liberal. personlly, i'd love to see a flaming lefty in the white house pushing all the things in which i believe. it'd be very, very satisfying to finally be able to say, "take that. see, bush? we can play that game, too. look at the oval office, look at the house, look at the senate. TAKE THAT."

and while that's true, if history serves as any sort of lesson (and don't you just find that despite what you want to believe it always seems to do so?), can i honestly say i believe that to be the "right" course? would dean have unified this country anymore than bush has? i don't know the answer, but i think it's a worthy question.


so here we tread. for the time being, at least. stuck. maybe we should take a stab at getting stuck ala that old song that, as far as i can tell, no one actually knows who sings, just to see: you know, "stuck in the middle" for awhile.