“Mr. Obama’s advisers said they were startled, if gratified, by the jubilation that greeted the news of Mr. Obama’s victory in much of the United States and abroad.” [NYT today]

A genie is out of the bottle here, friends. The Democratic Party peckerwoods are going to try to ignore it and hope it flies back into confinement.

Given the nature of emerging realities and the blast of new hope, it seems possible it won’t oblige so easily this time…

Look, victories are won daily. Cochabamba is a small example. Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez, and others are trying to think out of the box. The world is much more connected than when I was a kid and thus so is labor. I don´t believe in either-or anymore.

I believe change occurs slowly and incrementally and if I can help in one small way in one small battle then that is fine by me. “Don´t make the perfect the enemy of the good” I heard once or twice. And while the world I seek is better than the one I´ll get, people´s lives matter and if we can score a small victory towards a more compassionate world then let´s go.

And that’s IF the victory of humanity (the revolution) ever seems imminent. I suspect it won’t even get that far — assuming it isn’t already too late. (And if it don’t happen soon, it ain’t never gonna happen.)

Speaking of hope, here’s a cheery thought: What’s to stop at least one (probably dozens or hundreds) Dick-Cheney-type saying defiantly, as the victory of humanity (which the Dick-Cheney-type would certainly equate with, as incidentally do I, the victory of the revolution) seems imminent, “I’d rather destroy the world than let the commies win” and launching the nukes or the virus or whatever? This would put a full stop to humanity with the same utter finality with which a period puts a full stop to a sentence. All the words written by Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. (none of whom even imagined that scenario, of course) are answered irrefutably by that possibility, which, when I think about it, seems almost a certainty in exactly the same way that flipping 50,000 coins will almost certainly result in at least one “head”, with only wishful thinking justifying any hope at all that all 50,000 of them will without exception come up “tails”. Socialism is not just a good idea, it

And don´t forget that under FDR there were huge strikes and agitation. The Wagner Act which “gave us the right to strike” was passed under a Dem admin–FDR. (Because the Congress needed to control how out of control the workers were then by limiting the strikes. That´s right. “Legalizing” strikes put the stamp of enforcement on it by government.)

Same for Dem Truman who actually rolled back many of the gains made by workinig people under FDR.

(He called in the military against workers and pushed Taft-Hartley.) Thus the greatest protests and “hit the streets” mentality in the past century has basically occured under Dem governments.

The chance of change, for the promotion of real democracy occurs when the people know what is isn´t working 8anger) and can see or are inspired to envision what might (hope) Thus the Obama administration is a perfect place to begin the work needed.

When anger is mixed with hope, the only examples of street heat I can think of are like St. Petersburg in 1905, when the people marched to petition the czar to please ease up on the oppression just a tad (like Oliver Twist holding up his empty gruel bowl and saying “Please sir, may I have more?”), which didn’t turn out all that well for them (though Bloody Sunday did at least inspire people for the rest of that year and for 12 years later who no longer shared that naïve hope).

So I can only add that I hope the people don’t now fall asleep under President Obama but stay awake and angry and take less than 12 years to be disappointed of their naïve hope!

Remember that the Seattle anti-capitalist eruption happened under Clinton, and hasn’t been heard from under Monkeyman.

And what I’m saying isn’t hope for something from above. I’m saying let’s return to organizing, and kick this cracked door open!

Thanks for the feedback!