The progressive moral majority
"Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes
There's gonna have to be a different man"
David Bowie, "Changes," 1971
"Go right ahead. Publish it."
Ralph Bowman
I consider Ralph Bowman a poet. He offers a warning about something in the zeitgeist.
I read him the way I did Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, or Bob Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man." Dylan's Mr. Jones is unhappy because he doesn't quite know what's going on, does he? But it is something.
Bowman was responding to two posts I wrote earlier this week about Democrats and Sunday school. Bowman sent me this:
Peter,
You have hit on it. I keep feeling watched and judged by my liberal church. Each member is GOOD. Educated in politics, environment, social work, school systems.
They know. They know MORE than you because they are convinced of their RIGHT over SIMPLE, their INSIGHT is DEEP and UNCLUTTERED. They understand SPIRITUAL They understand the DOGMA, they got the right take on THEOLOGY.
They know the ORDER of the service. They do not CHAT. No SMALL TALK. They wiggle their hands instead of LOUD CLAPPING. They read the LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT as approved by the tribe.
And they belong to groups that do GOOD WORKS. And have TRANS speak in the services. They are all white people who have kids who have INTERMARRIED with other RACES. All or most all are DEMOCRATS.
I had written that I respected Jimmy Carter and his presidency, but recognized that his dedication to doing the right thing was a moral virtue but a political liability. It is dangerous to be better than the people one seeks to govern, even if one genuinely is more Christian in every Sermon-on-the-Mount way. And maybe it's being genuine makes it especially uncomfortable to voters.
Progressive Democratic policy leaders are sure they are the good guys at the vanguard of social justice. Many Americans read it as holier-than-thou posturing. Too intentional. Too civilized and precious. Or maybe it is just change, but in an irritating "oh-for-Christ's-sake" way. Democrats have a moral majority vibe. Of course it is sensed and resented by the MAGA crowd. But people on the left feel it too.
That is the warning signal sent up by Ralph Bowman. The left has developed a Sunday school vibe and it is a turn-off.
Here is a strange thought. Maybe Democrats need to erase that vibe by choosing a scamp for a leader. A Bill Clinton type, with a little of the "bad boy" in him. (Does any Republican think Trump is telling the truth when he tells them he did not have sex with Stormy Daniels? They know he is lying, and they don't care.)
Here's a stranger thought; What if the GOP's trolling insults directed at Kamala Harris, the ones that made snarky allusion to the idea that her political success came from having provided sexual services to Willie Brown, were, in fact, a net positive? Maybe Americans are more comfortable with a hypocrite than they are with a moralist.
If you think going to a liberal church is funky, try an evangelical church where people roll around in the aisles and speak in "tongues." As a teen I had a boyfriend whose idea of a fun date was to take me to his church meetings, then he'd slip off and smoke out in the graveyard with his friends while I was bumped into and slapped by people undergoing a religious frenzy. I had come to expect that anything goes in church, however, because when I was a kid I was dragged by my grandparents to a small Southern Baptist Church in Mount Shasta where the preacher wouldn't let us go at the end of the service until someone went up the aisle to be saved. He'd drone on and on about the importance of saving our souls and urged people to come forward with his eyes closed and hands swaying in the air. He'd also make us croak through the chorus of "The Blood of the Lamb" over and over again. Us kids were starving and wanted to get on with the potluck after church, so we started taking turns going forward to get saved. If you were already saved you could claim you needed to do it again because you had a sinful thought. It worked. Soon as at least one of us went up to get saved he ended the meeting in triumph and we all went over to the church hall for mystery casseroles with potato chips crumbled on top and jiggly Jello desserts. No one questioned why us kids needed to be saved so often. By the time I was 13 I figured I had a guaranteed place in Heaven because I'd been saved so many times. Of course, that allowed me to lead a hedonistic life thereafter.
The direction of your recent posts--both yours and the current guest--reflects despair that politics should be decent. The characterization of progressives as police officers for political correctness is a self-indulgent travesty. I don't see leading progressives, such as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Jeff Merkley talking about such things. They focus on justice at home and abroad. That's what makes a progressive a progressive. It was "centrist" Democrats--Carter, the Clintons and Obama--who got in bed with Wall Street and abandoned the working class. This is what paved the way for a right-wing populist. While they managed to stay in office, during their terms the Republicans made huge gains at the state level, which ultimately impacted representation in the House of Representatives. Quit picking easy targets and confront the big picture, in which the concentration of wealth that started in the late 1970s under Jimmy Carter and accelerated through subsequent administrations--Republican and Democratic alike--is the key element as far as politics goes.