I saw the light, and felt the Bern!

In October, 2012, I knew the world was changing, and I couldn't believe it after a very disillusioning first term of the Obama Presidency, that he's slightly redeemed in his second termbut not enough for anyone to care. I'd given up on Obama and the ridiculous notion that you had to vote against your will and between the best of two bad options, a stance I accepted only once in my life as an American voter, that really didn't start well into my '30's. I voted for John Kerry against George W. Bush and still feel stung by his cowardice when he didn't challenge the election night results decided by a slim W. victory in Ohio, that John Conyers, of the Black Congressional Congress, wrote a report on called "What Went Wrong in Ohio." (Plenty!) I'd never felt so politically cheated in my life, and it was a moment that proved to me Kerry really was a dishonorable man, when the chips were down, but I digress.

By 2012, I'd given up on the two party system for the second or third time but this time instead of being an apathetic Gen X loner I decided to vote Green for the first time in my life. Sure, I wanted to vote for Nader in 2000, but didn't have my shit together, and frantically went to the Nader headquarters in the Central District days before the first Tuesday in November, election day, to see if I could do anything about it but I was too late. I'm sure the Nader supporters saw my dedication and gave me a lot of "Nader dollars" that I used in a collage of the 2000 election, so you could say I made my vote heard but not literally. The same wasn't going to happen to me in 2004, but I was an ardent Dean supporter and spoke up for him at the 2004 Washington State caucus in a room of people, and had the support of a neighbor couple in my apartment building from Vermont, the same state Bernie Sanders is from, but I knew all was lost because the Kerry supporters were rallying support quickly on the issue of electability in the general election, a favorite Clintonian/Second Wave Boomer trope, that always used the failed campaign of George McGovern in '72 as proof positive that you had to sell out to Republican principles to win a Presidential election, a stupid idea that Bubba played out until the late 90's when he got bored and had Lewinsky, an office intern, wet his whistle. In 2004, I first remember the idea floated out there that triangulation might only work for Clinton, and maybe that was true because we didn't get to see Kerry play it out.

So, this brings me to the Green Party political event that I paid $10 to attend, and bought a couple of buttons. It was in Town Hall, a great old building in First Hill (Pill Hill, where the hospitals are), that must've been a church at one time, since there are several old great Catholic Churches around it. The place was packed and I went alone because Jenny was taking care of our diabetic cat, and though I attended most every shot he ever had in one way or the other, I took the night off in the name of Oliver because he was in cohoots with Fidel Castro, and would've liked nothing more than for me to attend a socialist gathering, that would've gotten me busted in the McCarthy witch hunts, if I was a famous Hollywood screenwriter, but I'm not. I was wearing a "Bobby Kennedy for President '68" button that I wore for at least a year or two when I was a "Bagist" with Seaside Johnny (check out the FB page for Ataraxia), and all but started an art movement. Not a day would go bye without someone talking to me because of my button, and that was remarkable, absolutely remarkable. I can't explain it but I became something more than me.... I became "Bobby Kennedy" for every lost sad left wing soul hoping for a better world, and it was an overwhelming feeling.

I live in Seattle, and have been on Capitol Hill for what feels like a lifetime and would literally speak on behalf of Bobby Kennedy EVERYDAY, so I may have well been running for President, as much as Obama, a sell out in 2012, or Mitt Romney, a shape shifting flip-flopper for time immemorial. Most everyone filtered the beautiful Saint like effigy that Bobby and John Kennedy have become for every dreamer, and I let strangers project their ideas of Bobby Kennedy on me, an unbelievable feeling. I was only ridiculed or taken down by a right winger twice: once was in Peet's coffee shop on the Sunset Strip (now gone, and forgotten!), and once was at a Firestone Tire Dealer in Seattle, but this was NOTHING compared to all the approval I got but wasn't seeking. I became a Catholic/Jewish well for suffering over the fate of the U.S.. and when the Occupy movement started, the feeling only got bigger. Artistically, I knew I was the only person in the world who could pull this off, because the Kennedy's are my heroes, like some claim Bowie is theirs, and I lived and died for them, as an American. I admired revolutionary leaders more than politicians but every agent of change is judged by his culture, and in the U.S. the Kennedy's ruled, as far as I was concerned. The Kennedy Curse was also an insanely fated and weird narrative to digest and understand watching my Country crumble in the Go-Go Reagan '80's, and this makes me think of the revolutionary post pop punk rock group "The Go-Go's" who every L.A. pre-pubescent girl thought were the best thing since sliced wonder bread, so the boys thought they were pretty cool too.

I sat in a front pew with Kashana Sawant right in front of me before she had won her city council seat that has all but changed the face of Seattle, and was on the cusp of success, and saw her speak and sat next to her family. I can't rightly speak it but I broke down in absolute tears in the pews with my Bobby Kennedy button on like always and just couldn't stop crying. The only other time I remember feeling like that over a political event is when Jenny and I watched a documentary on Bobby Kennedy in the nightmarish "W" years, and when they showed all the Americans along the Eastern Seaboard running from D.C. to Massachusetts (?) to be near him one last time, and feel his hopeful eternal soul. The assassination and martyrdom of "Bobby" and was just too much for us to bear, and we started wailing. It didn't help that I was infused with stories of the greatness of Bobby since I was a kid because my Mom lived in New York City and said one day she dropped her groceries, and Bobby Kennedy picked them up for her, and was struck by his translucent blue eyes, that she called the most beautiful she ever saw. But my Mom was no socialist she just loved beauty of the Kennedy's and they had that in spades making them popular to a vast breadth of the American psyche.

I came home to Jenny with new buttons all over me and told her that I had seen a new world after balling in tears for a good hour to every speaker, feeling like every socialist dream I'd ever had for America, starting in childhood, and extending into my youth, had finally been realized. A real democratic socialism was possible in spite of one of the lamest Presidential elections in history, Obama vs. Romney, a half black man seeking reelection against a Mormon, and that alone should've made it memorable, but to no avail. I knew a new America was coming and that I had literally felt it so strongly and truly I couldn't stop crying for pain, joy, loss, hope, forgiveness, fear, and every other emotion that there are no words for, because the feelings reached deep into my very being, to my childhood at a hippie school in LA. to my F.D.R./Truman era Grandfather living through the Great Depression and shooting down a cherry blossom squadron in WW II. I felt every political emotion I ever felt that night even if Jill Scott, the Green Party candidate for President, wasn't the best speaker of all time. I could tell by my tears that there was hope, because I wasn't expecting to feel anything, but a forlorn wish that I didn't have the organizational skills to mobilize.

Well, my vision has come true only four years later in the visage of Bernie Sanders and not even I could have predicted it. The Democratic Party strategist in me really thinks that Hillary Clinton is not going to be able to pull this one out for a number of reasons, but mostly because she's run out of gas, and even though she might be a couple of years younger than Sanders, she has lived a lot more, and has nothing more to give. She can't even make being the first woman President the gestalt of her campaign and this is troubling for her. She's now trying to run as Obama's third term, making her the third Black President in the history of the U.S. behind "Bubba" Clinton, her husband, and Obama, a half black man torn between Hawaii and Kansas. But Hillary is neither woman or black now and has nothing to run on, but good Benghazi hearing that nearly took her down a few months ago, and that she wants to forget. Her emails are also going to be dropped throughout the campaign season by a judge's order, a Clinton appointee, ironically.

I wear a Bernie Sanders pin that I bought for $5 the day that Bernie got the microphone taken from him by the Black Lives Matter group, and hope that anyone I change with it is changed by me, but I'm no martyr for a dead idealist like I was for Bobby Kennedy. Bernie is alive and well, and about to win the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary prepping him for a long protracted Democratic Primary with Hillary that will drain the Clinton Vampires of all life, because they can't figure out how to suck their fangs into Bernie, and are "Feelin' the Bern.' Not even Chelsea could do it trying to take down Bernie over Health Care and Women's Rights, but she's not as cute since she makes about a Million a Year because of nepotism, and married an investment broker like a good Clinton. The day's of triangulation are over.