I honor the Vietnam veterans today. These were young men, who, at the behest of their country, picked up a gun and put their lives in the line of fire. Their courage and sacrifice is no less significant than that of any other generation.
Twenty years after the war was over, Vietnam veterans began to speak out. They were the first generation to break the silence, and tell the American people about war and how it affected them. They told us of the nightmares, of courage and fear, of the confusion of not knowing who the enemy was, of doubts about the war they were sent to fight.
They weren't the first generation to have these feelings. They were the first to speak up.
I was privileged to be around to hear those stories. In 1987 I produced a public television program about American Indian Vietnam veterans.
Here's a quote from Harold Barse, from my documentary Warriors

Indian people have recognized that war changes people. For centuries and centuries and centuries, they've known this. So when you send a person to war, something happens to him out there. But- they are not held in any low esteem. It's recognized that- these people did something that is completely against the law of the universe. They stepped into total turmoil, disruption. And they did this for their people.

I want to thank the Vietnam veterans for all they've survived. I want to thank them for putting themselves on the line for us. I want to thank them for teaching us what it truly means to be human.

The last election was not won by "moral values". It was won by propaganda.
Surely that's too extreme, you say. Both sides do it.
Here are a few basic propaganda devices, as identified by the Institute for Proganda Analysis.
See if you recognize them.
• Name calling
Name calling, or labeling, links a person or an idea to a negative interpretation.
Commie. Pinko. Fascist. Terrorist.
Adjectives or phrases are often added to provide more weight.
Bleeding heart. Tax and Spend. Social engineering.
• The Glittering Generality
Words are used that imply cherished virtues of significant emotion.
Democracy, Patriotism. Christianity. Family Values.
Name Calling is effective because it rejects and condemns without examining the evidence. The Glittering Generality works just the opposite. It seeks to make us approve and accept without examining the evidence.
• Transfer is when institutions or symbols that hold authority, prestige, and cultural sanction are attached to particular ideas.
The Flag. God. Science. Morality. Life.
Plain Folks is when a speaker identifies himself with "ordinary" people, and brands his opponent as being out of touch or elitist.
• Fear
Warnings are made of disastrous consequences if a particular course of action is not followed. Fear is a powerful way of manipulating the audience's emotion. The most effective fear campaigns also provide a remedy, a simple action to avert the disaster.
• Bandwagon
Here one evokes the fear we all have of being different or left behind, and works on our need to follow the crowd. Polls are one such method of influence, and why they are so popular.

"All of the artifices of flattery are used to harness the fears and hatreds, prejudices and biases, convictions and ideals common to a group. Thus is emotion made to push and pull us..."
-Institute for Propaganda Analysis

Much of the media has happily followed along without questioning the pundits and soothsayers. The media falls for a glittering generality like "moral values" and then hops into a bandwagon- rather than use it's power to deflate myths, inject some healthy skepticism, research the facts or refuse to pander to unanswerable speculations.
That's dangerous for democracy. Very very dangerous.
To keep sane, here's a few excellent articles, new links, and some actions you can take.
The inimitable Maureen Dowd,
A Moveable Feast of Terrorism
Jesse Jackson deconstructs Moral Values
No GOP Monopoly on God
Actions you can take today.
Petition to investigate the vote.
Petition the news media for balanced coverage of the Iraq war.

I don't have a mind for symbolic logic, but if you ask me, what we just saw, by the Bush campaign, was coup by logical fallacy. Fear mongering. Smears. Halos.
Left on the sidelines, once again, we end up screaming unfair, unfair, while the Republicans, who violate the rules at every turn, race the ball down the field.
Do we want to emulate their tactics? No. Can we capture moderates if we just learn to love guns, reference God more, and reject gays?
No.
First, we have to look at what we thought were the rules, and how that has changed.
Then we need to recapture the realm of values, but we need do it on our own terms, not theirs.
And thirdly we need to engage the media. That is the one place we need to follow the Republicans and take up the thirty year plan. You have to be able to broadcast your ideas.
It's very difficult to beat an incumbent president.
If there is one reason why John Kerry failed to do so, given Bush's execrable record, it's because the mainstream media has turned rightward. It treated Bush with kid gloves and consistently downplayed the challenger. Kerry talked about issues, Bush responded with personal attacks. The media treated those as equal. They are not. Kerry was cut into sound bites and boxed in with punditry.
If you doubt it, look at the debates. After the public got a chance to hear him, Kerry's stock shot up. Moderates, made uneasy by the flip flop and swift boat charges, were reassured. He continued to gain in the polls every day up till election day.
So how did Bush win?
First of all Americans feel uneasy turning against a President, especially in the midst of a war.
Secondly, the personal attacks left a mark. Failing with flip flop, the Bush campaign droned home with the weak-on-terror rant. Charges that are patently absurd or false, still have to be forcefully answered.
When Kerry spoke directly to the public, it worked. So too, did the personal testimony ads. Mothers who'd lost their sons. Educators. Ordinary people. Message that were simple, eloquent, powerful.
What do we do now?
First of all we need to make it clear to our elected Congress people that Bush has no mandate.
We need to tell Republicans as well as Democrats that we are here, we're not going away, and our vote counts.
We need to be strong, vocal, and make sure that our side has backbone. All this cringing, whinging, and tear jerking, is hardly likely to endear us to the American public.
We lost, but we aren't losers.
No Surrender
O.K. Get Back to Work
Here's a few things we can do.
Demand that the Democratic Party elevate good candidates in visible positions instead of simply following through with seniority or politics as usual.
Cultivate African American and young voters.
Here is am encouraging article about a Minnesota suburb, Edina. It's a promising signpost to things yet to come, if we pull ourselves together.
Kerry carries Edina, and Pigs Fly
Another intriquing sign is this one, about fault lines in the victory party.
"The President did not fare well in the election with moderates and independents. These voters may be further turned off if the GOP panders to the religious right." Deliver Unto Us
Action alert. According to New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh in a Q & A in the Washington Post:
"The Minority Leader should be Chris Dodd, who's bright, articulate and attractive, but Harry Reid of Nevada, no shining public light, will get it."
We can do something about that.
Write your Democratic Senator and tell them to draft Dodd. Tell them this is no time to play politics as usual, and the best candidate should get the job, not the one who's lobbied the hardest. And while you're at it, tell them.
Bush has no mandate.
Bush has no mandate.
Bush has no mandate.

Tears came when I took the Kerry buttons off my jacket. I was dejected all day.
In the wee hours of that fateful morning, my beloved partner roused himself for a video residency teaching at a school for the blind.
Before we'd gone to bed, it looked bad, everywhere on TV were exultant Republicans.
"What am I going to do?" he said.
"You put the camera in their hands, let them feel the buttons, and point them in the direction of what you want them to see." I said.
For weeks I had to put aside the thought, which comes back to me now, of the Stygian stables Kerry would have inherited. Quagmires have a way of eating up Presidents, no matter who started the war. If it continued to go badly, Kerry, who was not that popular even among Democrats, would have been excoriated, day after day, by those same conservatives who defended Bush's lies.
So that, perhaps, is a blessing in disquise.
We put everything into winning, and it's Bush who is stuck with his catastrophic war and overwhelming deficits.
In Minnesota, in what's been called the largest registration drive in U.S. history, America Coming Together, together with other progressive organizations, brought 10,000 new voters to the polls.
What that meant, in my state, is, not only did our hard-won electoral votes go to Kerry, but a surprising upset and net increase of 13 Minnesota House seats reversed a conservative trend and has given the DFL new clout.
It took a decade for resistance to build an opposition to Vietnam. It took thirty years of suffrage to get women the vote. It took a hundred years before freed African Americans slaves were allowed to use a public drinking fountain designated for whites. We didn't win the presidency in the Vietnam era, either, but we stopped the war, and set the groundwork for Democratic control of Congress for the next thirty years.
I'm not with those who want to wallow in recriminations. Let those who support the war do soul searching.
We built an amazing grassroots network in lightening time. If we feel discouraged, individually- the organizations we've built are not. The National Resources Defense Council, one environmental group I subscribe to, has a million members.
At the Steelworkers Union, in Minneapolis, where I canvassed, our pep talk leader was thrilled with how coalition building has given his organization new ideas and new life.
Knowledge is power. The American people's decisions are only as good as the information they receive. The Republicans won because for the last thirty years they've been building a network of conservative think tanks and media outlets to broadcast their smear campaigns. They have captured AM radio, and now have a firm hold on TV. If you don't know what the Powell memo is, if you haven't seen the film Outfoxed, if you don't know the work of linguist George Lakoff...
Educate yourself.
Here's what we can each do during the next four years.
Join those online organizations that allow you to take action on the issues you care about.
Let your Congress people know that Bush has no mandate.
Turn off your TV. Be a squeaky wheel. Complain in writing, not to your friends, but to editors, company owners, advertisers.
Tune into Al Franken's radio show.
Get information. Hook up with other like minded people. Subscribe to progressive magazines like Mother Jones, Harper's, the Nation.
Start talking about values.
People have been regretting that we knocked off Howard Dean, who had momentmum, passion, and personality. Howard Dean hasn't let defeat stop him. He's full of energy. Read his book, You Have the Power.
And most of all, have fun. Garrison Keillor got it right in this essay. We live in an amazing society full of possibilities. Read poets. Hang out in art museums and little cafes. Go to Europe. Throw parties. Have intimate dinners with friends. Reach out to someone who is struggling. Teach someone to read. Laugh often.
We're flying blind now. I don't know where we are headed, exactly. Kierkegaard said that life can only be understood backwards, it has to be lived forwards. If we point ourselves in the direction of the things we love, those things will save us. Of that, I am certain.

My great great grandfather was imprisoned in Libbey Prison during the Civil War. My great aunt, inspired by the suffragette movement of her childhood, founded a school so that women could become educated and have the power to truly take their place as the equals of men.
I've been thinking about them because of a conversation I had with a young black mother who had just registered to vote. Her children's father is in prison. She is working part time, and the $10 an hour she is making is barely enough to make ends meet. She's attracted to the conservative idea of self sufficiency. To believe she can it on her own terms, through her own sweat and wits and determination, suits her character. But she understands economic oppression, she knows her sweat, her heart, her hands, are worth more than $10 an hour.
Self interest is a powerful force. What does it take to care, as passionately, about the common good?
My great grandfather put his own life on the line for a principle. My great aunt gave her life's work.
Why has America lost the sense of the common good? How do we get it back?
My first day out canvassing of my fellow canvassers came back from a house with her face shining. She said, incredulously, "They said they never voted, because they never been ASKED to vote."
What we are doing, in these working class neighborhoods, is helping people know that they are important. Their vote counts. We can't do it alone, but we can do it together.
That is what I am most proud of in this election. That we are drawing more people into the process. That we are working to make every American have a voice in the process.
Faith in America
The great spiritual traditions tell us we have to let go of the outcome, but never forget what it is we are fighting for.
Every vote counts.
V_O_T_E