"An alert and knowledgeable citizenry..."

This was Ike's (the President, not the hurricane) prescription against the triumph of the Military Industrial Complex, and the domination of our cherished free and democratic institutions by the forces of corporate greed, fear-mongering, and unregulated triumphalist capitalism. And I just wish I'd had the good sense to save the clip of his farewell address from YouTube (where I saw it), so that I could embed it here. Because it was amazing to me: both just how prescient and prophetic Eisenhower's observations have turned out to be, and also how different our society is today from what it was half a century ago.

The Civil Rights Movement. The "Summer of Love." Vietnam/Watergate. Feminism. Stonewall. Earth Day. Pat Robertson, the Moral Majority, and the Rise of the Religious Right. "Voodoo Economics" and the Reagan Revolution. AIDS. The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the End of the Cold War. The End of History and the Clash of Civilizations. Global Climate Change. Oh, and lets not forget about the information technology that has driven so much of the acceleration of our culture: computers, cell phones, the Internet. Or our global addiction to fossil fuels, and the politics of oil which have replaced Communism as the number one perceived threat to our national security.

And yet, rather than an alert and knowledgeable citizenry, we seem to have opted for bread and circuses...or at least cheap fast food and "reality" TV. We complain about the price of gasoline (when it's probably HALF of what it ought to be...), and watch with fascinated horror as the longest and most expensive Presidential Election in history enters its last 60 days, and suddenly becomes Reality TV writ large. Where's Jerry Springer when you need him? As the former Democratic mayor of Cincinati, he certainly should understand what's high in the middle and round on both ends. An election that seemed impossible for the Democrats to lose now looks more and more like a Republican shell game, all coming down to a final roll of the dice in the too-close-to-call crap shoot at the end. It's no longer about issues or policy. It's all just about holding on to power for another four years. If you can only confuse the electorate for another eight weeks.

At least Camille Paglia claims to have a handle on it all...

But what of Palin's pro-life stand? Creationism taught in schools? Book banning? Gay conversions? The Iraq war as God's plan? Zionism as a prelude to the apocalypse? We'll see how these big issues shake out. Right now, I don't believe much of what I read or hear about Palin in the media. To automatically assume that she is a religious fanatic who has embraced the most extreme ideas of her local church is exactly the kind of careless reasoning that has been unjustly applied to Barack Obama, whom the right wing is still trying to tar with the fulminating anti-American sermons of his longtime preacher, Jeremiah Wright.

The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances. [salon.com 9/10/2008]

Meanwhile, on an almost completely unrelated note, this is what I looked like back in 1976, just before I took advantage of my opportunity to "exercise the franchise" and vote for Jimmy Carter my first-ever Presidential election. I appear exceptionally alert and knowledgeable in this photography, don't you think? The strong, square chin. The long, curly flowing hair. The six-pack abs. Talk about changing times!