Democratic Working Class Activists

Yesterday was Monday lunch, and I served up a bounty from north Idaho. We started with an Italian style pork and cabbage risotto. Pork, of course, from the pig my friend, Elizabeth, raised for me. Cabbage and onions from my friend, Marcia’s, garden. Rosemary and tomato passata were from my garden. Rice, unfortunately, came from California. The salad, I call it an Astoria Salad, but it’s just a Waldorf Salad made from my Bosc pears, local hazelnuts, toasted of course, and Marcia’s celery, but again, mayo and walnut oil from elsewhere. The rolls are my usual every week Italian style roll. And dessert was a Bosc pear pie, on homemade buttery crust, with a toasted hazelnut crumb topping, following Mario Batali’s suggestion that what’s in one dish gets echoed in another.

Well, lunch was wonderful, but the online headlines from Seymour Hersh are another story. Indeed, instead of something positive and good, we’re talking full-boat negative psycho. How could Cheney and Bush still plan on going to war with Iran, even though the CIA says there’s no evidence that puts Iran close to being able to make a bomb. These guys are psycho. They make up their own stories, believe or pretend to believe them, and then do whatever they want to do. I used to wonder why people believed these guys, but then I realized that the media just caters to their psychoses. We’re lucky at the moment that we have an alternative, internet media, but it certainly makes it difficult to convince the general public, at least the general public in north Idaho, that their media is just one of the major corporations that are trying to run most of the world right now. It’s the old story of money vs. the working masses.

MyDD (www.mydd.com) touched on this yesterday in a discussion of James Carville’s complaining about Dean’s 50-state strategy. The writer, Chris Bowers, referred to the difference between the monied elite of the Democratic party versus the activist working classes. I believe this dichotomy exists and in a powerful and ever more confrontational manner these days. The working classes are becoming stronger and stronger and I think that became quite evident in the responses to Carville’s statements. Now, if we could only get the working classes in north Idaho on our side, then we would be a power to reckon with. But for some reason, many of these guys vote Republican. It will be interesting to see what the next two years hold.