Lately Common Dreams

In the last few days I've written several posts, not for this too often neglected weblog, but for Common Dreams. But so far I’ve only posted one of those there.

Time goes by too fast for me.

I’ve often said that in the past, but each day only increases that rate of acceleration. By the time I’m nearly ready to post something on Common Dreams, it’s another day and they’re running a dozen or more new articles, each with an already long stream of comments trailing out from it. Sometimes it takes me a while even to find the article on which I intended to comment.

So time races by too fast, and Common Dreams is too much of a good thing. It’s the reason why I’ve never commented on sites like Kos and Atrios. Each post in those huge sites is followed by hundreds of comments, most of which I am certain were permanently lost in the ether the moment they were submitted.

These several comments that I’ve written lately all have to do with the present Iraq Warfunding furore. Sometimes I wonder if the Democrats will survive all the attacks it is enduring in numerous Common Dreams threads, because of that vote.

I have noticed that it is a popular pastime for the erstwhile supporters of the Democrats to be even harder on them than they are on the real ogres, the Republicans. The Bartcop site is a good example of that.

I always feel uneasy when Democrats are attacked, because I feel they are the best hope for a better U.S.

These Common Dream critics and article authors have more faith in the public than they do in the politicians. But I wonder.

Through all my three-quarters of a century, nearly all the many fellow Americans that I have encountered have acted decently toward me. I would never deny that. But that was as individuals. The group stuff that they often support and tolerate and which creates so much fear in so many directions is another matter entirely.

As just one example of that, take the Jim Crow culture that most Americans today have never experienced but of which I was a victim through all my formative years. That same public that so many people still think is capable of great things was in general comfortable with Jim Crow for generations, and it took a Herculean and still incomplete effort to change their minds, and for that I will never excuse them. And that was just one part of the continuous indignities that have been part of the Rainbow (“black”) experience in this country for nearly three centuries.

My experience, therefore, has led me to believe in individuals more than in groups, to the point where long ago I cooked up the motto, “You show me more than 10 people gathered together, and I’ll show you a bunch of slobs.”

It is easy to refute that motto, but I keep wondering how well those refutations hold up in the long run.