The old guy, seemingly unaccountably, finds himself scratching his bald pate about three questions as he sits mopping his brow in the cooling shade of the River Tree. Didn’t know I could mop my brow while scratching my head did you?
What the heck does Martin Van Buren have to do with the mess we’re in as a country?
Who the heck cares?
If you take a look at pictures of this guy, where the bejeebers did he get those wacky muttonchops?
Good old Martin’s the fella who’s given credit for not only originating the Democratic Party back in 1828, but pretty much the whole concept of the modern American political party with all its limitations, machinations and long-term potential for creating havoc on our nation’s and this world’s direction, function and physical and mental health and well-being.
Our founding fathers essentially saw “political parties” as divisive factions. However Hamilton, who’d made his political chops advocating for a national bank to ensure the future of folks who wanted to make sure their financial investments in this new nation were protected, enlisted fellow believers in a strong central government and business focus to form what they called the Federalist Party and Jefferson and Madison, to combat it, and because of their belief in an idyllic plantation/agricultural economy and states rights, organized that opposition into what they called the Jeffersonian or Democratic-Republican Party. These were essentially coalitions of national political leaders. With the demise of the Federalists due to their opposition to the War of 1812, the Democratic-Republicans themselves fractured in 1824 when they had no organized opposition, fielded four presidential candidates, and not one won a majority of electoral votes.
Good old Martin decided this focus on specific issues or candidates was no way to run our elections or ensure the future of the young nation so he encouraged the formation of a truly “national” party with shared principles rather than a focus on individual personalities. He called it the Democratic Party. He’d ensure its success by insisting it organize at the local level nationwide and conclude with a national convention which would select its presidential candidate and reward “good” party workers with government jobs if the party won.
Opposition coalesced in the form of first the Whigs and then the Republicans in the next three decades. But after the convulsions of the parties leading up to the Civil War, the Republicans and Democrats have faced off against each other ever since, despite various evolutions in their respective platforms in the ensuing years. The most pertinent and convulsive being the Democratic Party’s embrace of black civil rights in the 1960’s which essentially “forced” the Republican Party to increasingly embrace southern white voters and their proclivities against strongly addressing racial inequality or legislation or cultural efforts which might in their view “excessively” focus on recognition of that inequality.
Meanwhile, both parties structural inhibitions against bringing forward candidates who could adequately attempt to address the growing, often artificially created and fomented cultural, religious, racial and ethnic divides have brought us to the point we’re at today; candidates willing to tell outright lies about their opponents and their supporters and whose interests are increasingly focused on getting elected as opposed to realistically working to solve our growing problems as a people, nation or world.
What can we do? Hey, as I’m increasingly aware, I’m just a feeble old codger on the trail to the last roundup. But, here’s my thought.
We’re American citizens, the most privileged and powerful human beings who have ever lived. Not hyperbole. Just fact. This makes us ultimately responsible for where we’re at not only as a nation, but as a world. And as such, we’re hopefully conscious, either spiritually or morally and ethically, of the direction we must take. And it doesn’t involve letting rampant corruption, murders, assassinations and malfesence run rampant anywhere.
Just sayin’, folks.
