Mother's Day Reflections:
I've often posted about my pragmatically Progressive family, my father of blessed memory was a four-year combat veteran of the Pacific Theater, my mother was a trained educator, dancer, and marionetteer who worked in the Philadelphia Navy Shipyard during WWII. They grieved when Stevenson lost twice, they marched in the Civil Rights marches, my father wearing his Purple Heart marched in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and was the greatest fund-raiser for the United Negro College Fund at his workplace, the Main 30th Street Post Office here in Philadelphia. They understood full well the march of the Industrialists and the World Economy and that in the end, it is the money which rules, even after all the perceived-as-fair-to-the-poor-and-middle-class adjudication by the Courts.
My Mother of blessed memory was a pessimist: she felt that the Earth was deteriorating societally even after it had the opportunity to ascend and achieve. She was particularly upset with Democrats who did not defend the Liberal tenets of the time. She both despised and understood the Republicans, the Conservatives, the racists and anti-Semites. But she saved her real enmity for those who ostensibly stood with the working class but betrayed them at the highest levels. (My father, on the other hand, accepted it as part of the landscape.) One of the seminal moments of my young political life was a family story about Harry Truman. The paragraph was repeated EXACTLY thus: "When Truman became President, they showed him the plans and the mission to drop the atomic bomb and told him that that was what was going to happen, and he said, 'OK'". MY mother was appalled that they hadn't dropped the first one off the coast of Japan after warning the Japanese that there would be a demonstration. But the point of the story was that Truman, in her opinion, had no control over any of the military or industrial aspects of the country. She went on to state that this was borne out by Eisenhower's Farewell address, which was quoted more often in my home than Shakespeare, and that was saying a lot. When Kennedy was assassinated, well, that was the end for her. She knew that he must have been bucking the Powers That Be, and got 'hit' for it. Reagan, Bush, and Bush-the-Lesser were just nails in the coffin.
Well, the older I get, and the more I see of what is happening with "Business" around the world, the more I believe that she was on to something before it was in fashion to be keenly aware of who and what is running the show. She would look at TPP as she looked at NAFTA at the time and said that we're sending decent jobs out of the country to sweatshops around the world and this is a patriotic thing to do according to these people.The Plan is in place and by all accounts there is no one and nothing as far as they're concerned which is going to stop or even slow the pace of implementation.
You were right, Mom. (For the most part, you were 'always' right!). Happy Mother's Day - I miss our talks and our political-conviviality as we watched the burning and the sacking of our Country.
