{"id":47800,"date":"2011-10-22T02:05:31","date_gmt":"2011-10-22T06:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=47800"},"modified":"2011-10-23T07:22:58","modified_gmt":"2011-10-23T11:22:58","slug":"the-silent-majority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/the-silent-majority\/","title":{"rendered":"The Silent Majority"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

My Dad — bless him — used to talk about the silent majority<\/a> as if he were a part of it, which seemed to me a kind of psychic rewriting of his past. Back when the nation was experiencing a cultural meltdown prompted by the draft and the Vietnam war, Tricky Dick Nixon won his reelection by identifying youthful protesters as a “vocal minority,” splitting them away from what he called the “silent majority.” It was a clever political ploy, creating a division between those critical of the war and those offended by criticism of American nationalism. The boundaries of authority were already precariously stretched and Dick kicked the can over, spilling it for political purpose. Part of the infamous Southern Strategy, these divisions became a civil war, splitting families, institutions and regions of the country.<\/p>\n

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These were the social changes necessitated by the Pluto\/Uranus opposition, starting with the bright promise of psychedelics, love-ins and peace marches, and ending with Charlie Manson, a series of shocking, disheartening assassinations, and the Symbionese Liberation Army<\/a>. It was a period of transition for all of us, surely, and some of it was scary, but I don’t remember my father being a stuffed-shirt conservative back in those days. He was always the guy you could go to to talk things out, judgments put aside. For reasons of his own that I don’t understand, he recreated history in his later years to side with fear and repression.<\/p>\n

As a member of the Greatest Generation, Dad was marked by the self-protective, traditional bent that so many of the Pluto in Cancer folks brought to the table, but he had an innate sense of cool about him that attracted kids. That’s probably why he became a high school teacher, a mentor and a philosopher, in that order; the last two were avocations when he finally left education, which was largely a political decision. In the late ’60s, education sustained some changes that my father thought undercut his ability to teach. It’s probably no coincidence that right about then education began a downward spiral it’s still struggling to reverse. So Dad gave up classrooms and summers off to join the business community, but even then he always seemed to have a youngster around, teaching them his craft. There was little in his psychological makeup to mark him as a radical. In fact, a lot of people identified my father as their hero over the years. I even heard it a time or two after his passing this July. Dad would have liked that.<\/p>\n

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My parents were married fifty years; my mother died unexpectedly soon after their anniversary. Everything changed for Dad, who simply couldn’t cope alone. When he remarried, he selected another strong woman, but where my mother was both liberal and tolerant, the new mate was hyper-critical, her life-experience much narrower. Dad’s view seemed to get smaller as moderation went out the window. Although opinionated, he wasn’t overtly political, but that began to change.<\/p>\n

As any two-person relationship is represented to the world by the third entity created by their combined energies, the negativity of that merged personality mix began to spill over. The shift in my father’s personality grew stronger by the day. He became one of those pain-in-the-inbox Republicans forwarding dire (and anonymously written) warnings about liberal media, flag pins and real Americans. He ignored Bush and Cheney, grousing instead about the Congress and all its wrinkles. Later, Obama was, at minimum, a Kenyan and perhaps more, while the UN was the font of all world evils. At the end of his life, he had come full circle: back to the state of his birth, back to the racial and cultural bias that he had stepped away from, back to childhood patterns of victimization he had escaped for decades. As some of you may know, I struggled with this, publicly and personally, but made every attempt to gently ignore it.<\/p>\n

Dad’s plunge into radical rhetoric kept me on my toes. For him, the silent majority was comprised of people just like him, wary of diversity and fearful of a future no longer reflecting American dominance. He was threatened by the undocumented alien issues of the Southwest and the Homeland Security issues of the Mid-east. He was heartbroken when Lou Dobbs left CNN. Still, FOX News told him he was right about the things that went bump and assured him that the majority of the public was with him. I checked out the Hannity show the other night and that’s still the message, of course: Hannity holding forth on how Obama is responsible for the social unrest of the Arab Spring and how all those newly freed countries are going straight to hell in the Arab Brotherhoods hand basket, soon to war against “free” countries everywhere. Starting with us, I presume.<\/p>\n

It’s virtually impossible for FOX to allow Obama a win on Qaddafi’s fall from grace, nor can they affirm the international success without undercutting their message of national doom and gloom. To make up for lack of substance, they wallow in name-calling that would not be tolerated by any reputable channel, although CNN, under new management, is beginning to take on a similar tone, I fear. Obama’s announcement that troops would be out of Iraq by Christmas was met with crosstalk by doubtful pundits. Every time this president does what he promised he would do there is a dull roar of disbelief. I’m never going to be convinced that’s anything but racism.<\/p>\n

On the brighter side, the protests of these last weeks seem to be lifting all liberal boats, including Obama’s. Perhaps even our older generation is beginning to wake up, now that the conversation has turned away from taxes and deficits and toward unfair apportionment of wealth. Even if the right insists it’s only hippie kids and unemployed loafers occupying financial districts around the country, they can’t deny that we are suffering a fiscal crisis not born of necessity but engineered and micromanaged by greedy elitists.<\/p>\n

It’s becoming increasingly evident that if you are not one of the top 1%, you are considered hostile by the right, which has taken on a completely pro-corporate identity. It’s so stunning that we should probably wonder if they’re consulting Magic 8 Ball for 2012 campaign advice. As the Pubs stand against job creation, against banking reform and entitlements, and for austerity measures that will create a bleak and painful future for us all, they are backing a dead horse. It’s increasingly difficult for their own to defend them. Here are the newest numbers, showing the economy as the great equalizer in public opinion:<\/p>\n

65% of protesters and 64% of (all) voters think government should guarantee public health care.<\/p>\n

77% of protesters and 68% of (all) voters want to raise taxes on the wealthy.<\/p>\n

65% of protesters and 70% of (all) voters believe government should guarantee secure retirement.<\/p>\n

And last but hardly least, a recent CNN poll recorded 53% of Americans disapproving of the Tea Party, while a mere 28% approve, the lowest numbers tracked in the brief history of the movement. The radical-right no longer owns the silent majority in this nation.<\/p>\n

There can be no question that the 99% are the silent majority now, and silent for so long that we forgot we had the power of numbers and the moral imperative. We are only just now finding our voice and our feet — yes, we<\/em>. It’s not only kids that comprise the 99%; it’s parents and grands and greats as well. It isn’t just the progressives occupying the streets, it’s the independent voters and the conservatives and those who refuse to be labeled, demanding accountability from those who wield the power. It isn’t just the unemployed doing the demanding, it’s all those who believe this country must find its balance if it is to survive.<\/p>\n

This protest is a cry for ethical government that can’t be bought by the highest bidder. It’s a demand for fair distribution, for rule of law, for common sense solutions. It’s a plea for an end to victimization and institutional lies. And as we listen to the newly-energized voices of this growing movement, we get the sense that at long last lies told to the American people will no longer be tolerated. At one of the Occupy events, an ex-Marine carried a sign that said, “2nd time I’ve fought for my country, 1st time I’ve known my enemy.”<\/p>\n

The enemy is obvious now. It is the result of deeply polarized power, and the bad actors perpetrating it are the enemy that we must stand against, not government, itself. The right may tell us that government is capable of doing nothing, but we’re finally realizing that it is, instead, unfunded and obstructed government that has nothing to offer. Back in the 1960s, those of us who marched and picketed knew that the enemy was the consciousness that allowed war and profiteering to trump peace and prosperity. How is it that we forgot something so critical? How is it that we looked away? Why did we let greed get the upper hand?<\/p>\n

We were preoccupied, of course. We turned our backs on a military industrial complex so ego-oriented and intent on privatization that it is twice as powerful today as it was when it was defined by the lyrics of The Big Muddy. We stopped fighting the corporations that were so shockingly inhuman that they never hesitated to incinerate jungles and Vietnamese civilians with white phosphorous and napalm, oblivious to destruction, pain and suffering. Were we just so self-involved that when the draft was canceled, our interest was as well? And how is it that some of us, like my Dad, allowed fears of migrant workers and jihadists and environmentalists\/ecoterrorists to warp our democratic ideals?<\/p>\n

The last e-mail Dad sent that didn’t reflect his flagging health was a sharply-worded rant about the silent majority coming together to take a stand, against what I don’t recall. I like to think that where he is now, he’s got a larger perspective, perhaps even THE larger perspective. I suspect we could agree that our differences are as nothing compared to our commonalities and our prayers for one another. And I’m pretty sure that he and I would be on the same page, finally, regarding the silent majority, the 99% who will no longer be silenced.<\/p>\n

We, the people, ready for a sociopolitical revolution and the end of inequality. We, the human family, ready to end the separation that divides us. We, who must finally learn to love one another and our neighbor as our selves. We, a majority ready to start again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves My Dad — bless him — used to talk about the silent majority as if he were a part of it, which seemed to me a kind of psychic rewriting of his past. Back when the nation was experiencing a cultural meltdown prompted by the draft and the Vietnam … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}