Last Sunday, I attended an "American Dream House Meeting," organized by Move On to discuss questions of national importance. I was the oldest, no surprise, next my wife, Elizabeth, a dozen years my junior, then a baby boomer, others only slightly younger, plus our host, who looked in her mid-thirties. The two other men were a physician and newspaper pressman, the three women didn't mention occupations. Kate, our host, was a poet and writer and taught writing.
She had a carefully prepared agenda. We introduced ourselves, 90 seconds, and in a short sentence described the state of the American Dream. My answer: "Struggling but alive."
After five minutes to think, we had to 1) speak about a personal experience in the struggling economy since it crashed in 2008, and 2) something that made us feel proud to be an American. Then Kate passed out pages each with ten issues.Here are four, one from each page:
Put Americans Back to Work.
End all Bush era tax cuts.
Medicare For All,
Eliminate Corporate Personhood.
From these forty, we each had to select the three most urgent. After a busy two hours, we shook hands and left. I'd liked to have gotten to know them all better, but we were not there to make friends.
It was Move On's response to Tea Party gatherings and the differences were both of substance and style. Our American Dream meeting was quiet, rational, participatory, like a small town meeting in New England two hundred years ago. The Tea Party events I see on TV are noisy, emotional, and follow-the-leader, like revival meetings two hundred years ago or last week.
Humankind is thought to be the most rational of God's creatures. Birds. I've read, are the most instinctive and emotional. The great contest looming to its climax in November, 2012, may reveal whether the human species is veering toward or away from becoming a nation of bird brains.
She had a carefully prepared agenda. We introduced ourselves, 90 seconds, and in a short sentence described the state of the American Dream. My answer: "Struggling but alive."
After five minutes to think, we had to 1) speak about a personal experience in the struggling economy since it crashed in 2008, and 2) something that made us feel proud to be an American. Then Kate passed out pages each with ten issues.Here are four, one from each page:
Put Americans Back to Work.
End all Bush era tax cuts.
Medicare For All,
Eliminate Corporate Personhood.
From these forty, we each had to select the three most urgent. After a busy two hours, we shook hands and left. I'd liked to have gotten to know them all better, but we were not there to make friends.
It was Move On's response to Tea Party gatherings and the differences were both of substance and style. Our American Dream meeting was quiet, rational, participatory, like a small town meeting in New England two hundred years ago. The Tea Party events I see on TV are noisy, emotional, and follow-the-leader, like revival meetings two hundred years ago or last week.
Humankind is thought to be the most rational of God's creatures. Birds. I've read, are the most instinctive and emotional. The great contest looming to its climax in November, 2012, may reveal whether the human species is veering toward or away from becoming a nation of bird brains.
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