Yearly Kos - Golden's Final Report

The last installment of three reports submitted by author, activist and former talk-show host Jeff Golden on his experience at the Yearly Kos convention. Thanks Jeff, for your eyes, ears and the posts below.
Yo-Duh

Saturday, the bloggers say, was a watershed moment in their mission to democratize politics. Mike Gravel, Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Dennis Kucinich filed into the large meeting room and sat down for just shy of two hours of questions. All seven of them declined an invitation to speak to the Democratic Leadership Council , Bill Clinton’s invention and launching pad, last weekend. Do the math.

All seven paid tribute to the blogosphere. For the first time, they said in various ways, there’s a real possibility to bring in enough grassroots people to force the political elite to loosen their death-grip on the system. In a breakout session afterwards with about 50 people, Bill Richardson, whose candor can be hard to resist said “Yeah, we were all sucking up to you out there--- we kind of have to now.”

The forum was mostly fun to watch. John Edwards asked for everyone’s pledge to swear off of “Washington lobbyist” money and got a few takers. When asked Hillary flatly said she would make no such promise---she wants to represent everyone, she said, and lobbyists are people, too. That, and a general claim that lobbyists really don’t influence all that much, laid her wide open, and Obama and Edwards moved in for a vicious one-two pounding.

Afterwards the candidates split up into smaller room. I went to the Edwards session. He seems on fire, with an ultra-populist riff about taking privilege away from PHRMA, the insurance, oil, banking industries, the whole pack of plutocrats. “What America needs is someone who’s stood up against these guys and has beaten them, and I’ve done that over and over and over and over again. He got the wildest and most excited response. Watching him bounce in the room, with people lunging to touch him, listening to his cadence rise and his tone intensify, seeing that shock of hair waving back and forth, you couldn’t help but think (if you’re old enough) of RFK. I’d have to say he’s in the A-tier now.

The day ended with a huge outdoor barbeque hosted by the Teamsters. Teamster Prez Jim Hoffa (Jr) and blog Czar Marcos embraced on stage and talked about the unstoppable new Alliance of the old (Teamster) and new (blogger) Democratic party. Lots of hugs, backslapping, whooping and hollering. I got about 10 minutes with Hoffa over an overcooked hamburger afterwards and asked how we were going to deal with the old disagreement on environmental issues, since the Teamsters seem to support every dam or pipeline or drilling project that the enviros hate. “Yeah,” he said through a wad of burger, “that’s a tough one.” He went on to say some not very clear things that seemed to amount to the view that environmentalists need to get a life.

Is the next year going to be boring? Not if you’re political.

Historical Revisionism - Everybody's Doing It

Historical revisionism is nothing new. The power elites have been re-writing history to suit their own ends for as long as humans have populated the earth. And people wonder if skepticism is hardwired; and if so, why. Uh huh, no brainer that. We've all heard the old adage that to "...ignore history is to repeat it." I guess that depends on just what "history" one refers to.

Today, discussions around inaccurate historical portrayals even extend to video games.

In the real world, the most visible and egregious historical revisionism is going on in Japan. Conservative lawmakers last week denied that there was ever a "rape of Nanking." No, the massacred Chinese must have died in some other manner 70 years ago this anniversary year. The Japanese Prime Minister insists that the Imperial army didn't use "Comfort Women;" and now, new textbooks that ignore the military's edict to loyal residents of Okinawa to commit suicide rather than surrender to the Americans have so riled the island natives that their parliament has issued a statement condemning the oversight by design. Read about it here. How is it that a country that makes such great cars and robots can get accurate historical reporting so wrong? Unbecoming at best, a PR disaster at worst.

And of course, Japan, China and Korea are engaged in a vocal and sometimes naval confrontation over several small groups of disputed islands that are largely uninhabited but hold some sway over fishing and oil/mineral rights. Each side has historical claims to buttress its arguments.

Holocaust deniers; apologists for repressive dictators; and, the obsessed with power and security are always - it seems - busy re-writing history for their own ends. Nowhere is this phenomena more prevalent than in long-running ethnic and territorial disputes. Take the Northern Irish "troubles," the Turkish/Kurdish wars; the Middle East morass; Tibet, and just about every case where indigenous populations were displaced by colonizers for example. And when potential war crimes are involved, the re-writing of history reaches a fever pitch. Wingnut Christian fundamentalists are even trying to re-write American history to ignore the animists, theists, Unitarians and agnostics among our founding fathers and their families. And I won't even get into the major historical debate recently stimulated by a fiction novel: The Da Vinci Code. There's no shortage of relevant contemporary efforts to re-write history.

Not to be outdone, the Bush administration has taken the trend to new heights. For this crew, history is a fluid, moving target that can be altered and substantially re-written on a minute-by-minute basis dictated by need. Reality does not play an important role in the equation. And the main-stream media appears to be willing participants in the charade. In this environment, it is encouraging to this observer that citizen journalism and bloggers have risen to provide alternative sources of information, analysis and opinion. Leave it to the grassroots to get it right, governments and the traditional media are doing a great job of proving that no-one else can be trusted.