George,

I am often reminded of Orwell's "1984" character, Winston Smith , when Smith says, "if there is hope, it lies with the proles."

Bill Moyers' last program featured, as one of his final guests, Jim Hightower. After Hightower defined a populist versus a liberal, I immediately thought of Orwell--Hightower feels liberals tend to intellectualize everything while populists tend to get their hands dirty. My sense is the proles would prefer populists over elitists.

Witness the behavior of the majority Democrats in the Congress as they roll over on virtually everything the Right opposes. The Health Care legislation that finally passed was so watered down and weak, it just seemed to be a gift to the insurance companies. Compared to universal healthcare in other industrial democracies, it was a toothless pretense. A genuine populist ranting at a healthcare system geared to privilege and wealth would have made a believer out of those who suffer the most.

Witness Obama's constant attempt to bring bipartisanship to the table as the Right giggles at him and rejects even those things they, themselves, propose. Why he doesn't rage at the obstruction and hypocrisy eludes me ... I think the proles would be more inclined to follow that pitch than his being "Mr Nice Guy"!

Witness the military manipulating the president into believing victory is possible in Afghanistan. Even if this abstraction was possible, what would we "win"? Certainly not the idea that "winning" can stop the terrorists--so far, I see incompetence as our salvation against terrorist attacks, from a shoe bomber, an underwear bomber or an American terrorist who couldn't ignite gasoline in Times Square and locked the keys to his getaway car in the mobile bomb! Thank the lord for bumblers!

All this in spite of hassles we endure at airports at the hands of TSA bureaucrats or BILLIONS more plus 30,000 additional young Americans in peril fighting terrorists in Iraq and, to a greater extent, Afghanistan.

Plain incompetence saves us from more death and destruction.

It isn't difficult to understand the anger of many when they see the same crooks that virtually destroyed our economy getting bailout money for their companies because "they're too big to fail" ... while the proles lose their homes, their jobs and everything else built around the pitch of the "American Dream".

And BILLIONS in bonuses as a reward for Wall Street's elite shysters with Gucci shoes and "Beamers".

Glenn Beck demagogues his slavish followers as he draws squiggles and circles on his chalkboard--even attacks a truly great president, Theodore Roosevelt. Texas removes all mention of Thomas Jefferson from textbooks and substitutes Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. The "wall of separation" is enough to prevent TJ from making the cut.

This garbage should NOT be intellectualized and brushed off as ignorance and provincial, it is dangerous to our Democracy and the need for firebrand populists to counteract this "know nothingness" has never been greater.

The proles have nothing to gain from these monsters of the Right, they only need to hear something resembling the truth!

We need the ghost of Harry Truman to walk among us!

Harry Tenney (Electronic mail, May 12, 2010)