Join The Drum Circle!

No guest on Bill Maher has ever gotten a standing ovation-- until Friday night when clownish Republican Party chatterer P.J. O'Rourke accused Alan Grayson of being a hippie drum circle symp... and Alan tore him a new asshole (video above). The studio audience-- apparently also in sympathy with the 99% of his who were ripped off by the predatory banksters and their political enablers-- burst into applause for Grayson several times and then stood in the aisles cheering him, much to the visible chagrin of a sputtering, muttering O'Rourke. Out of the blue, small donors started flocking to the Blue America page donating to Grayson's campaign.

If any author inspired and set up the intellectual raison d'être for the OccupyWallStreet movement currently sweeping the country, it was surely David Korten in his 2010 book Agenda For A New Economy. The ecological aspects of this movement are yet to fully unfold, at least for the general public observing from afar. But, as Korten explains, it's as integral to it as banksterism. "This crisis," he writes, "is reducing Earth's capacity to support life and is creating large-scale human displacement and hardship that further fuel social breakdowns."

The failure of the credit system is only one manifestation of a failed economic system that is wildly out of balance with, and devastatingly harmful to, both humans and the natural environment.

Wages are falling in the face of volatile food and energy prices. Consumer debt, housing foreclosures, and executive pay are setting historic records. The middle class is shrinking. The unconscionable and growing worldwide gap between rich and poor, with its related alienation, is eroding the social fabric to the point of fueling terrorism, genocide, and other violent criminal activity.

At the same time, excessive consumption is pushing Earth's ecosystems into collapse. Climate change and the related increase in droughts, floods, and wildfires are serious threats. Scientists are in almost universal agreement that human activity bears substantial responsibility. We face severe water shortages, the erosion of topsoil, the loss of species, and the end of the fossil fuel subsidy. In each instance a failed economic system that takes no account of the social and environmental costs of monetary profits bears major responsibility.

I'm part of an e-mail discussion group that's filled with people who are as politically liberal as it is humanly possible for a conservative to be. Huh? Yes.

Today I noticed a fruit I'd never seen in my regular grocery store. I asked the fruit and vegetable guy and he waxed eloquent on how delicious they-- hachiya persimmons-- are when ripe, which would be in another 2 or 3 days. I bought a few. I put them in a basket on the kitchen table to ripen. I live in a high rent enclave on the east side of L.A. but there are almost no Republicans in the neighborhood and almost no one who dresses up in suits and ties on a regular basis. Kyle from up the street is an exception-- on both counts. It's a Saturday and he knocked on my door at 4 pm in a suit and tie asking to borrow a punch bowl because his broke and he's having some friends over. No problem. He followed me into the kitchen and immediately wrinkled his nose and pointed accusingly at the hachiya persimmons. "What are they," he demanded. I told him I'd never tasted one but that they looked interesting so I bought a few to add to my breakfast shake on Monday. He found that amusing, called me a "hopeless hippie" and left with my punch bowl as I asked him if he'd be showing reruns of the Values Voter Summit at his party later. Robert Jeffress wears suits and ties too.

On the way home from the store-- with the hachiya persimmons-- I spoke with my old friend Helen, a school psychologist who lives in Westchester County. She started telling me how "everyone" on the East Coast uses paper plates and plastic spoons and forks all the time... and that when she arrives at the local supermarket with her own cloth shopping bag, people laugh at her and call her a hippie. (Full disclosure: Helen and I were hippies in college in the mid-1960's and neither of us likes disposable plastic shopping bags.)

Back to the e-mail discussion group with the conservative liberals Gee they hate hippies. The immediate response to OccupyWallStreet from some of them was embarrassment that people "on our side" were dressed "like that" and not wearing suits and ties. Suits and ties-- like fucking Kyle up the street? And they dismissed the whole thing-- the way P.J. O'Rourke tried to do-- as a big giant drum circle... which I guess is some kind of crypto-conservative suit and tie way of saying a "circle jerk." Historian Rick Perlstein would seem as aghast by this idiocy as I was: "Rhythm," he wrote, "is the most powerful tool human beings have to coordinate their activities. Always has been, always will be. William McNeill even wrote a book about it. A gathering that harnesses it is a more powerful gathering. It's one of the things that makes the human microphone down there that Richard Kim writes about so eloquently a galvanizing thing. It's why people chant. Better, I think, to look beyond the aesthetic outrage and negative adolescent associations and recollections and figure this out as a resource."

When the OccupyWallStreet thing was just starting to roll, I asked New Jersey congressional candidate, Ed Potosnak what he thought about it. Like all progressives, he's very supportive. And he started talking about the right-wing media drum beat that the protesters have no focus and don't stand for anything or whatever the p.r. people hired by Koch or the RNC or whoever is hiring them keep repeating to journalists. Ed's take is that "media criticisms of the group’s lack of focus are ridiculous. What are they expecting, an OccupyWallStreet TV commercial and jingle? The focus of these REAL people is Wall Street and the pain our families and businesses are enduring at their hand.

"When I was in High School," he continued, "I boycotted McDonald’s for using polystyrene and you know what, they changed. Consumers are powerful when they stand up to the Big Guys. Together ordinary people can provoke changes the government has failed to accomplish by coming together, standing up, and pushing back. Hopefully Congress will fight back too, I know I will."

That's the kind of hope and the kind of change we all tried to persuade ourselves we were voting for in 2008-- even those of us who knew better. Won't be fooled again? Obama said he'd walk the picket lines with unions before he was elected. I haven't seen that as unions struggle for their lives against a powerfully coordinated and richly financed fascist assault. I hope from now on I'll only be voting for people who embrace drum circles for real. Alan Grayson and Ed Potosnak are on the same page.

Friday The Nation published Naomi Klein explaining why OccupyWallStreet is the most important thing in the world now.

If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over.

And there is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately, it’s a very big thing: the 99 percent. And that 99 percent is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say “No. We will not pay for your crisis.”

That slogan began in Italy in 2008. It ricocheted to Greece and France and Ireland and finally it has made its way to the square mile where the crisis began.

“Why are they protesting?” ask the baffled pundits on TV. Meanwhile, the rest of the world asks: “What took you so long?” “We’ve been wondering when you were going to show up.” And most of all: “Welcome.”