With the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial today in Washington D.C., Dr. King finally and formally takes his place among the pantheon of national heroes. But, as we find ourselves in a time of simmering turmoil, there is one glaring difference between Dr. King and the rest of the American icons whose marble eyes gaze out over the Potomoc River - he’s the one we could really use right now.

Dr. King certainly saw himself as a moral leader, and for good reason. His morality is what drove his actions, but it is those actions of which we find ourselves today in such admiration and in such dire need. As eloquent as his Letter from Birmingham Jail and other writings were, what we miss most today is not just what he said or what he wrote, it’s what he and his cohorts actually did. Had King restricted his work to writing and speaking he would be a historical footnote today. Like previous revolutionaries, King understood that they way to change was not through words alone, which are so easily ignored, but through action that can’t be. Boycott.

When Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, it was a bold but not unprecedented action. Others had done the same, but what highlighted Ms. Parks refusal was the boycott of the bus lines primarily used by African Americans. It was the boycott enjoined by so many people in solidarity, not the incident on the bus, which sparked what we now call the Civil Rights Movement. The boycott hit those who sought to oppress their African American neighbors where it really hurt, not in their hearts or minds, but in their wallets. The reaction was swift, and King’s house was bombed and he was put in jail, which helped him become a national figure and provided a stage for his brilliant talent as a speaker. The boycott lasted over a year and culminated in the Supreme Court upholding a lower court ruling that de-segregated buses.

King’s model for Montgomery was Mahatma Gandhi’s Salt March of 1930. While Gandhi and his people could not live without salt, the power of the non-violent march culminating with the production of it in disregard of the law imposed by the British was seminal to the end of their rule. King recognized that the equation for modern revolutionary change is a basic one: justice+non-violent action+financial action=revolution. All three components must be present for change to happen.

What King could share with us, if he were to miraculously re-appear today, would be to show us that the equation of today’s protest movement is incomplete. Since King’s time, we have seen untold numbers of protests in our country, which have done nothing. All the protesting over the Vietnam War, upon which so many ensuing efforts have been modeled, where wholly ineffective and polarizing. The War far outlasted the placard waving and chanting and did not end until a full five years after the tragedy at Kent State. Similar protests over the Iraq War were even less influential.

The greatest lesson Dr. King left to us was not just how to be righteous, but how to be righteous and win. You don’t win by simply clogging streets and parks and waving signs. No one who works on Wall Street is even remotely threatened by the “occupy” movement, and in fact the smart ones are no doubt thrilled to watch the opposition to their avarice turned in to a Renaissance Faire farce. What will worry them, and in fact send them into a panic however, is if the opposition to them- supported by a majority of Americans- gains enough momentum and support to actually organize financial action.

Today, in addition to reflecting on the great words of Dr. King, we should also reflect on his greatest lesson. Revolutionary change will come not just when we are righteous, not when we are righteous and demonstrate non-violently, but when we are righteous and demonstrate non-violently in long lines to take our money out of the banks who rape us daily and who have brought our country, literally, to the brink of financial ruin.

Change is not something we need to believe in. It’s something that we have to create.

Like all other American cities, Oakland, California is not “occupied territory.” Not even close. Not even symbolically. Have banks or engines of any financial muscle been seriously picketed, hampered or boycotted? Government offices? No. Oakland’s business as usual, dysfunctional and pathetically self-defeating as always, goes on despite this latest street theater farce in Frank Ogawa Plaza. Ogawa Plaza, what passes for Oakland’s city center, is apparently the only site the usual, anarchist wannabe suspects can think of to don their hoodies and make jokes of themselves. What is most troubling is that tired and silly pseudo-60’s pantomimes like these are what now purports to be “the Left,” ensuring that real themes financial disparity and social justice remain undefined clichés is particular and written off in general. While the Tea Partiers gain more and more political clout and power, clowns like the “occupy Oakland” crowd make sure that alternative voices are not taken seriously. And for good reason.

Consider this from participant and oaklandlocal.com poster Richard Wright:

“Although the movement has been open, inviting and encouraging of People Of Color (POC) involvement, it still requires POC organizers to enter a space that can be culturally alienating, and the power dynamic of POCs bringing POC issues to a predominantly white forum, even with the best intentions of progressive and radical white folks…. can be problematic.”

Where to start with so dopey an observation? First of all, there is no “movement,” and Mr. Wright’s delusions of grandeur aside, there are no leaders to “invite or encourage” people of color. If it were a movement, invitations would not be necessary and people from across the social and cultural spectrum would be involving themselves as they did during previous social upheavals. That’s what happens in real social movements.

But second, and more tellingly, is the galling sense of patronizing self-importance of Mr. Wright and his cohorts who time and again involve themselves in flash in the pan demonstrations that serve only to underscore their impotence and cement their status as poseurs of the first order (or sadly to debase the memory of Oscar Grant, the young man killed by a BART police officer, by smashing windows and grabbing free sports shoes). Does Mr. Wright really think that “people of color” are so dim-witted and unaware that they need invitations? Or would he argue that such is the weight of social oppression upon them that they require aid to enlighten them? Even the briefest of History lessons would clue Wright in that people of color have not in the past found protest to be “a space that can be culturally alienating.” Perhaps instead most people, regardless of background, simply find these comic events to be self-defeating and stupid and would never consider being associated with them?

It’s certainly understandable that we all- even the top 1%- are extremely nervous and uncertain about our collective future. There is a palpable sense that everything around is going off the rails and few among us think the next few years will be good for us personally, nationally, or globally. Our financial institutions, unbridled by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, have created a snarled, worldwide mess that will almost certainly wreak havoc upon all of our lives in the near future. Our political system is totally paralyzed as it was largely intended to be, and can and will do nothing. The lackluster, if well intentioned, Barack Obama has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that “change” ain’t coming from the government and the thanks he’ll get for trying is a one-way ticket back to Chicago next year to make way for Mitt Romney, the poster boy for the 1%.

Of one thing Mr. Wright is undoubtedly correct- that the only positive change for the rest of us that will happen in this country will indeed be by dint of a social movement, but it will be a financial one. Instead of trying to replicate the 60’s and 70’s with meaningless crowd gatherings and hackneyed chants and signs that most people tune out, it will happen by collective financial action. If we all stopped dividing ourselves by perceived color and/or social lines and realized that WE- all of us- loan banks money to operate and not the other way around, we could wrest control of finance in ways Marx could only dream about. If the big five banks faced the real prospect of even 1% of their customers lining up in the same week to withdraw their money, they would lie prostrate before us all. Five bucks to use my ATM card? I don’t fucking think so!

But as long as the best we can muster for social action is to have a bunch of bored youth who play dress-up like zombies, actively seek the most unattractive hairstyle imaginable and tattoo and face staple their way out of being taken remotely seriously, camping out uselessly on streets and in city centers, nothing at all is going to change. At least nothing good for the 99%.

In the year to come, we’ll be flooded with an endless avalanche of polls and great hype will be put on a variety of numbers. We’ll hear about the President’s approval and “likability” ratings, nation-wide preference, “right track/wrong track” and on and on. But in the end, there’s only one set of numbers that matters, the Electoral College.

The Republican challenger, less some dramatic late entry, will either be Rick Perry or Mitt Romney, and given where the party is right now, it’s Rick Perry’s to lose. If he can stay on his message and not go off on some campaign ending diatribe, get caught taking an envelope of money or get filmed performing oral sex on a undocumented busboy, he’s the guy his party wants so badly to love. And love him they almost certainly will. A win for Perry in New Hampshire primary seals the deal and those in the White House who are licking their chops bursting with confidence that Perry to too radical to win had best look again at the electoral map. And a History book because the map could very likely end up looking like the one here.

First, there is the issue of voter turnout. As the first African American to be the nominee of his party, Barack Obama enjoyed not only over 90% of the African American vote, but the black turnout was far and away the largest ever, particularly among black voters in the 18-24 year-old range (up to 55.4% from 44.7 in 2004). The black vote was crucial in Obama’s wins in Indiana and North Carolina. But it’s hard to see how Obama maintains those numbers with unemployment over 20% among African Americans and given that you can’t vote for the first black president twice. Congressman Maxine Waters from the Congressional Black Caucus is publicly exasperated with the president and she’s by no means alone. He’s done virtually nothing to connect with black voters as president. Obama also enjoyed support from the Hispanic community but has likewise done nothing as president do shore up that support. Then take a look at the Progressive vote. Obama has hardly been a progressive champion and what progress he has made, on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell for example, was so long overdue it’s almost hard to consider it an achievement. You see the pattern. Obama decided early on to eschew communities and his base to focus his appeal on middle-of-the-road Independent voters and as a result there is just not going to be a groundswell of enthusiasm coming from any corner for the president.

Next, of course, is both the dismal economy and, fairly or not, Obama’s perceived impotence in dealing with it. Unemployment will almost certainly be about 9%, closer to 15-17% in real terms and with Washington in gridlock, nothing much will happen in the next year and a half and the American people will be even more scared and out of their minds with frustration. We’ve seen poll numbers like this twice before- low consumer confidence, “right track/wrong track,” etc- and that was in 1980 and 1992, the only times America has denied a president re-election since Herbert Hoover in 1932.

Now consider Governor Perry’s constituency. Should he be the nominee, Perry would energize the base of Evangelical and socially conservative voters who dutifully line up to be bussed to voting booths- and who were the margin for George W. Bush’s wins and were so unimpressed by John McCain that they conspicuously stayed at home in 2008. Perry would also have the wild card of a running mate, which would almost certainly be Florida’s Marco Rubio. The equation of motivated Republicans versus demoralized Democrats does not bode well for the crucial swing states that will decide the election.

So, now let’s look again at the map. There are the states that are never in play, such as California, Utah, and Texas. President Obama won several traditionally red states in 2008, such as Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina. He won’t win any of those in 2012. The race, as it usually is, will be decided in a handful of states in the Mid-West and Florida. The winner on either side will almost certainly have to win two out of three in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio. The math is almost impossible otherwise. Perry would obviously hold all of the solidly Republican states in the South and West, while Obama would surely hold on to the West Coast and North East. Any defections would signal a landslide of epic proportions. With an energized base behind him, Perry would look a very good bet to carry the purple states of Colorado, New Mexico and Missouri. With Rubio on the ticket, Florida almost certainly goes red despite the unpopular Republican governor. Without Rubio it would just lean red.

So that leaves the real battleground states. The new picture ID voting law in Wisconsin will no doubt significantly reduce turnout of low income and voters of color and makes that state a tossup. If you give Obama Pennsylvania, which would be generous to put it mildly, he would still have to win Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Hampshire to reach exactly 270 electoral votes to Perry’s 268. Perry’s appeal in the “Live Free or Die” state would be significant, and it could very easily come down to those three electoral votes.

There is still time for President Obama to do something to improve his standing and his image as a weak, well-meaning ditherer. He has announced a September speech that will outline a proposal to address unemployment, but given his pattern of nibbling around the edges of policy wonkish tax credits and patent reform and his tedious and ineffectual calls to “come together to solve problems” it’s unlikely he’ll produce anything but yawns. And yawns ain’t gonna win you Ohio.

In 2008, most of America thought Barack Obama was a new political colossus that had been given the keys to the most powerful office in the world and would change America forever. The Right feared he would usher in a new era of higher taxes and legalized weed and same sex marriage to sound of James Brown beat out on African drums. The Progressive Left hoped that the web of evil corporations would be driven back into their caves, the planet would be saved from the disaster of climate change and the social safety net would be defended. While both extremes were unrealistic, neither side was prepared for the shockingly ineffectual president that Barack Obama actually turned out to be. In reality, almost nothing has changed at all and there has been, to put it mildly, no Obama Revolution.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to burn our money and our people, Guantanamo Bay is still open for its horrific and indefensible business, “too big to fail” banks operate on even riskier lines than before on borrowed money, Goldman Sachs people still run the Treasury and “climate change” has virtually disappeared from politics, despite epic weather events and record heat waves. And one hopes that no one seriously brings up the words “heath” and “care” in the same sentence in Obama’s defense. The monstrosity that was finally dismantled enough to pacify, and obscenely benefit, the health insurance lobby to be signed into law was not only a farce but it was not even his plan to begin with. From the start he punted to Congress who naturally turned to lobbyists to write the legislation.

The President handled the debt ceiling disaster, which was created in the vacuum that he himself so naively left in the lame duck sessions in December, exactly the same way he’s handled every political challenge that has come before him, and no one should be surprised. Instead of being on the field mixing it up and pushing the ball forward, he opted to play referee and we all should now clearly understand that this role is essential to who the man is. He is conflict adverse himself, but relishes resolving the conflicts of others, and that is exactly how he has seen his presidency from day one- to be the person who could bring “red and blue America” together, and to become the Lincoln of our times. But he, and we, were all tragically mistaken. He never got that he was supposed to lead the blue team. A referee who treats all parties impartially and instinctively steers towards the middle ground was the very last thing we needed. It’s why America got half a lifeboat in the storm and is now essentially leaderless and in political crisis.

What Barack Obama didn’t understand was that his election in 2008 was a handoff from the American people, not the start of a working relationship. People worked to get the vote out and then cried in joy on election night, drank toasts on inauguration day and then went back to work, at least those of us who still had jobs, and expected him to get on with making the world a better place. And then a funny thing happened. Nothing. He proposed no legislation, laid down no directives, set no parameters and basically just spoke in mushy, professorial generalities. Were it not for the dynamism of Speaker Pelosi, who politics aside was one of the most skilled Speakers for decades, we would certainly not have seen any of what was produced in his first two years, the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act- or even the dismal Health Care bill which never felt Obama’s fingerprints until he signed it.

The presidents America remembers as great are the ones who seized the debate and, well, dictated. That really is what we want. Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt steamrolled legislation over the congress often with dubious legal authority and we love them for it. Even Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush managed to get their disastrous way. Barack Obama is not a stupid man, quite the contrary, and as the Ossama bin Laden episode testifies, nor does he lack the guts to gamble. But while he’s gifted at painting in broad rhetorical strokes on the campaign stump, he clearly lacks “the vision thing” and the ability to drive the agenda. But the Tea Partiers have clearly overplayed their hand and now is exactly the moment for him to break out and really show some leadership. The country is ready, begging for it, and we can only “hope” that he will “change.” But, sadly, don’t put any money on it.

And so we should all understand how the stage is set for the rest of the Obama presidency, however long it lasts. The Republicans will continue to show resolve born of conviction and the Democrats en mass will continue to waffle and squeal ineffectually about “fairness” and “hypocrisy” as they get spanked and backpedal from a debt they can’t defend. They will continue to look at each other in the hope that someone else will step up and make a play, but no Democrat will because that’s the president’s job. But this one ain’t gonna do it either. And since no Democrat is going to present our first black president with a primary challenge no matter what he does, so unless Obama slams his fist on the table and starts hitting back, we can look forward to the Republicans being the only team on the field and controlling the debate for years to come.

Soon it will be “Morning in America” again. We’ll see endless iconic images of farms and statues and fireworks and candidates will play dress-up in flannel and sit on tractors and shake hands in diners they would never otherwise dream of urinating in unless they were truly desperate. The American people will be urged yet again to “take America back” from the enemies which threaten our very existence so that we might return to a mythic and idyllic past when a cold glass of milk and a slice of pie waited on the kitchen table for every kid after school.

Those who are surprised by the emergence of Michelle Bachmann as a serious player in this game need a history lesson. Gaffes and breathtaking displays of ignorance and stupidity have never been disqualifiers in presidential politics for those like Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush who can play the part in the big arena political theater. They only kill the Gerald Fords, Walter Mondales and Barry Goldwaters who can’t.

Many Democrats hoped that former California governor Ronald Reagan would win the Republican nomination in 1980 because they were sure he was too right wing, and too stupid, to actually win a general election. Like Bachmann, Reagan said some jaw-dropping things, such as that he saw no problem with the University of California selling off it’s collection of Mark Twain’s handwritten pages as long as they photocopied them first, or his “seen one redwood tree you’ve seen ‘em all” line. His subsequent adoption of “Star Wars” missile defense boondoggle made good on the rich promise of his dim-wittedness. But what Democrats didn’t count on was an actor’s ability to play a scene and for a simple man’s ability to connect with simple people.

Reagan’s staff borrowed the Nixon Playbook and reduced their candidates narrative to that of a cowboy facing the impending menace of a Soviet bear ready to pounce any moment and maul what was left of “the shining city on the hill.” His 1984 Bear in the Woods campaign ad, with it’s horror movie music and dire warning, worked just the same way exterminators try to sell you on the threat of termites to your healthy house so that you might engage their services. There was no “bear in the woods,” of course and the Soviet’s never budged an inch after World War II. The best they ever managed was pathetic proxy wars in places like Angola. Nor was there ever a remotely serious threat of “commies” here in America. Communism posed as much of a threat in the 20th Century as “Sharia law” does today, but that doesn’t stop the Nixonian fear mongering.

As Michelle Bachmann’s campaign proves, that old theater schtick still works. She catapulted herself into the national spotlight reading from the Nixon script, telling MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that congress should investigate “anti-Americanism” not only among her fellow congressmen, but specifically concerning presidential candidate Barack Obama. She did not, of course, actually define what “anti-Americanism” is or make any specific accusations. Vintage Nixon.

What Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes understood, and what Bachmann clearly gets, is that politics in a democracy, is the game of making the complex appear simple to simple people. Those candidates who are the most successful are not those who cite CBO figures or discuss tax policy, but those who are able to stir the imaginations of the people and then enlist their support to their imagined shared goal. The pertinent skill is to produce meaningless, fluffy cliches such as “Putting People First,” “Morning in America,” and “Hope and Change” and let the anxious people who care, or are frightened, enough to vote fill in the blanks as to what they mean. Republicans aspiring to the “Southern Strategy” with its bounty of uneducated, uber-religious voters trained to eat garbage and accept things unblushingly on faith without any evidence have an even easier job.

Don’t be surprised if a nation with 15% real unemployment standing wide-eyed and mesmerized with fear as airport employees rummage through their underpants lines up behind this year’s Reagan model. If Ms. Bachmann plays her media cards right, as Reagan did, and doesn’t say anything really stupid, she could send Hillary Clinton sprinting to the bathroom to hurl and become the first woman to become President of the United States. It would be as American as apple pie.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of one young man’s graduation from Oakland Tech High School. The young man, who we’ll call D, just barely made it and wryly suggests that the reason he did graduate was not so much his work but rather because the school was eager to see him move on. Like a lot of underachieving students, D overflows with tales of disinterested teachers who didn’t like him, who weren’t clear about assignments and due dates and who were generally “bad teachers.” D hated school.

Like a lot of High School graduates, D, who lives at home with a single parent, took a year off to decide what to do, but is now no closer to an answer. But what’s even more striking is that he has no desire or drive to find a solution. When pressed to name a profession that holds any interest for him at all, let alone a dream job, he can only shrug his shoulders. He likes cars but is not sure he wants to work on them all day. Instead he spends his time on Facebook, playing video games and watching TV, particularly any sort of fighting. Mixed martial arts and “ultimate fighting” are his favorites. He’s eager to discuss UFC 57, but the talk of career prospects and furthering his education produces nothing but eye rolling and a sudden compelling need to check his cellphone.

Like so many American kids, D is living in an alternate, sheltered reality oblivious to the rude awakening that is most assuredly coming his way. The sad reality is that, while there could be an almost endless litany of potential factors in D’s poor academic performance, shortsightedness and fundamental inability to grasp just how challenging the rest of his life will be if he doesn’t get up and start planning for his future, D is far from alone within his generational peer group. While it’s obviously true that some communities are less advantaged than others, it isn’t simply an income or “race thing.” D’s story of lack of academic interest and work ethic replicates daily across Oakland and across America. Contrary to our knuckleheaded former president, our children “ain’t learnin’.” And more distressingly, they ain’t caring.

Too many young people like D don’t recognize the connection between doing the homework, grades and college degrees and professionally and financially successful lives. Moreover, they don’t see that a lack of education is increasingly a one-way ticket to the bottom in an unrelentingly brutal global economy that has displaced unskilled and low skilled jobs. The old fashioned bricks and mortar retail is disappearing and even the infamous stop of last employment resort, working the counter at the video store, is no longer an option. And living at the bottom in the near future won’t mean food stamps, Section 8 or welfare, it is very likely to mean a tent under the overpass and the dumpster.

Unfortunately, Oakland Unified School District’s Superintendent Tony Smith’s new five-year strategic plan for “Full Service Community Schools” sadly doubles down on virtually every thoroughly bankrupted notion that has been kicked around chin stroking academic discussion groups and endless, paralyzing community meetings and then run into the ditch over the last forty years. Public schools across California have gone from first to worst since the 1960’s. And now, in an era of evaporating resources and widening gaps between affluence and poverty, Smith seeks to spend precious resources to somehow magically turn OUSD into “a full service community district that serves the whole child, eliminates inequity, and provides each child with excellent teachers for every day.” Seriously? Eliminates inequity? Serves “the whole child?” A school district with a notoriously dismal track record that cannot provide even the basics, and is slated to lose at least $12 million in funding, is suddenly going to be able to “eliminate health, social and educational, inequity?” What drum circle is he playing in?

It bodes terribly for Oakland’s already beleaguered schools that Smith’s five-year plan is so untethered from reality. Even in the best of times, a successful school district can never adequately replicate a Health and Human Services Department. School districts simply can’t take on “the whole child” and be responsible for their home lives, their parents, their health, their housing and on and on. Smith should be focusing what resources he can marshal into infrastructure, healthy lunches, books and supplies and the best teachers and principals he can find. Instead of endless meetings he should be developing rigorous, college-bound curriculum that departs from the “Johnny’s the last winner” mentality towards a meritocracy that mirrors real life. Life has winners and losers, and that fact needs to be reinforced early and often so that children can decide which they want to be.

The conclusion to this absurdly whimsical plan asserts, “We are entering a time when we have named that inequality is everyone’s problem and that quality is everyone’s responsibility.” Poor English skills aside, never encouraging in an education plan, consider just how ludicrous this sentence is. Is “inequity” really everyone’s problem? Do we not all strive to rise above the average, to create inequity, both in terms of income and accomplishment? Inequity is our goal in life, not our problem. But even if inequity was indeed everyone’s problem, would it not always have been so? Are we really “entering a time” that is somehow different on that score? Is it not true that inequality was considerably worse when slavery was embedded in our law? And whomever the “we” is, who have so pretentiously named our time thusly, no doubt from the cloisters of a quixotic Education grad program, are they not a few hundred years tardy? It’s a dumb, ill thought-out sentence that illuminates a dumb, ill thought-out plan.

Neither Tony Smith nor OUSD can entice the thousands of disinterested students like D into getting an education if they don’t see the light themselves. No school district can account for, let alone overcome, the challenges of income inequality in our society, our country’s legacy of racism or take on the gargantuan task of motivating disconnected parents to propel their children into successful pathways. Children need to be loved, well fed and decently housed and cared for, but OUSD is not the agent to do any of these things anymore than it can plan and launch a mission to Mars. OUSD can never fix, let alone even adequately address, the myriad challenges facing our youth, especially those in low-income communities. All it can ever do is provide a way out of them for those who choose to pull it together and take it.

Writing in observance of Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday in Slate, John Dickerson said “When I started listening rapturously to Dylan as a teenager, in the mid-1980s, I wanted to know what his every word meant, including a, and the, and um…Emotionally, I was in his thrall, but I also wanted some glimpse of how those words might all add up.” Among the many fawning references to Dylan in her recent memoir, Just Kids, rocker Patti Smith recalled one of her early performances when the “aura” of the venue changed and she had known that “He” was in the room. Worshipful, even grovelling, sentiments like these about Dylan, who has held an almost Dali Lama-like presence over American popular culture over the last fifty years, have been commonplace. Equally ubiquitous have been the seemingly endless books and essays that have searched, even agonized, in vain to understand exactly what that presence was and what, if anything, Dylan was ever talking about.

Bob Zimmerman came to New York at the dawning of the Kennedy Administration and “the 60’s.” Like so many of his generation, he found a counter culture developing among those who had come of age in the bland but secure 50’s and were now devoted to finding more meaning to life and art than the pedestrian consumerism of the Eisenhower era. Most were influenced by the self absorbed writings of Jack Kerouac and the “beat scene” poets. What Dylan, as he renamed himself, realized was that the prosaic passions of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seegar, and protest songs about hunger, poverty, civil rights and social justice had given way to the conceited search for amorphous quasi-spirituality. The communal experience of folk music sing-a-longs were replaced with getting high, staring at color patterns and declaring things to be “‘heavy.”

On Dylan’s seminal album, Freewheeling Bob Dylan from early 1963- before Vietnam or the Kennedy assassination- he offered a worthy anti-war protest anthem, Masters of War, but it was his foray into riddles that got the attention. Blowin’ in the Wind, despite offering nothing but whimsy, became a “heavy” song that launched a million chins a scratchin’ under Ray Bans and trendy pork pie hats and berets. What did he mean by “the answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind?” Even more scrutiny was applied to A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, which echoed the thousand plus year tradition of forecasting the “End of Days.”Coming just months after President Kennedy’s Cuban Missile interlude, was he predicting nuclear rain? The album made the young Dylan sound to many like a prophet and people began clamoring for answers to his riddles as they elevated him to a cultural papal status.

But of course, the young coffehouse singer from Minnesota had no answers. But he was a bright and certainly ambitious spark and he realized his talent lay not in politics or prophecy but in word-smithing. His true genius became his ability to write things that didn’t mean anything at all yet that sounded as though they were bursting with meaning and intellectual heft. For example:

I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Throughout his long career, the trick for Dylan was to write “heavy” riddles and dodge anything remotely resembling answers behind a caustic and sarcastic persona. The more he stonewalled, the more the press and his contemporaries groveled at his feet for crumbs of enlightenment. When he sang “something’s happening but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones,” no one wanted to be Mr. Jones- even though everyone was except Dylan himself, who no doubt watched with great amusement as we all chased our tails.

But, like all of us, even Bob Dylan matured and realized he didn’t actually know everything and the passing years only widened the black hole of uncertainty. As the 70’s waned, we were all treated to a more and more bizarre and desperate Dylan who painted his face, mimicking Charlie Chaplin, and then most embarrassingly, began to play hopscotch with organized religions. His courtship with Born Again Christianity, and galling attempts at pseudo-Gospel, was akin to watching a once respected dinner guest vomit on himself at the table.

In the end, Dylan honed the skill that purveyors of Jesus mythology and other religious figures must have in order to function- be vague and allegorical and steer customers towards filling in the blanks that reaffirm what you need them to believe in order to close the sale. The difference is that, while religious salespeople routinely claim to have cornered the market on interpretation, Dylan never knew what he believed beyond wanting a woman to “lay, lady, lay.” Like most of us, he simply craved fame and money and spent decades just writing clever riddles and carefully crafting a cultural brand that knowingly winked at us as though he was leading us all to discover great truths for ourselves. But, like all great con men, he was bluffing the whole time.

As anyone who’s seen a Western movie knows, the law of the Old West was that the quieter a guy was the more you had to worry. Clint Eastwood, Gary Cooper and other Western icons made careers out of minimal dialogue and maximum squinting. Real tough guys, then as now, don’t run their mouths. And they don’t hang “mission accomplished” banners.

As soon as Barack Obama rode into town, the locals all did their usual sizing up. He looked skinny and green to most eyes and seemed to be an easy mark for the “Democrats are soft” charge. This was exacerbated by Obama’s compromising in order to get deals done which liberals and progressives wailed were almost useless in their final versions. From health care to financial reform, no one seemed satisfied on either end of the political spectrum. With hard fought legislation yielding unsatisfying resultes, the Afghan war looking more and more like another endless debacle, the economy in the tank, and unemployment hovering at 9%, the 2012 election would seem like an ideal opportunity for any serious, and not so serious, Republican hopeful.

But a funny thing happened. No one wanted to take on the guy sipping silently on his shot of whiskey. One by one, the Republicans who seemed best poised to take him on demurred. And that was before he made the gutsiest call a Commander in Chief has made in decades when, out of the blue, the world’s number one villain suddenly and silently had a bullet shot through his eye. After all the bullhorn promising and “in Texas it ain’t swaggerin’, we call it walkin’” horseshit that spewed from Connecticut transplant George W. Bush’s mouth, it was the quiet guy who showed the set of stones and made the tough call the Bush himself has wussed out on in 2005 when presented with a similar opportunity.

The bigger part of the bin Laden story, which appears largely lost in the American press, is the reporting that Obama was perfectly willing to fight any Pakistani military that might have intervened in the operation, which given Abbottabad’s status as a military town was not unlikely. Obama was going to get his man, period! But Obama is not Bush and has been largely spared the international outrage Bush would have gotten had he done this. Unlike his dimwitted predecessor, Obama appears to the international community as the good guy not the bad guy. He has shown respect for the rest of the world, from his first broadcast to an Arabic language outlet, to his much ridiculed deep bow in Japan. He has in every instance shown solidarity with “the people” in their quest for self determination which was America’s default posture until the series of “Cold War” administrations decided that cozying up to the globe’s worst dictators was the best way to contain the Soviets, and of course to continue to be the energy gluttons of the planet. Obama is the first to buck that short-sighted and destructive trend that did so much longer-term harm to our image and relationships in the rest of the world.

So now there’s blood on the ground and the fair, nice guy is now also the tough guy who killed the bad guy in broad daylight in front of the world. No one mistook this operation for yet another American bigfoot move and no one made a peep of complaint other than the Pakistani officials who had to make at least a squeal to save face. The stakes have now been raised and the pressure is on the Pakistanis in a major way. And everyone now knows without a doubt that Barack Obama is no pussy.

And so Mike Huckabee, grown fat and comfortable making bullshit history propaganda cartoons for kids from his Fox lounge chair, cleared his throat, put his hat on and joined Jeb Bush, Chris Christy, and every other Republican with half a clue and “Pardon me’d” his way out of the bar before they got embarrassed. Indiana governor Mitch Daniels is almost certainly follow suit leaving the field open to a rich assortment of B leaguers, crazies, uber-ambitious, laughingstock douchebags like Newt and Donald Trump and an oddball pizza CEO. It’s early yet, and a lot could still go very wrong for President Obama, and the very nature of America is clearly divided. But if the best the Republicans can push out into main street at High Noon is Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty, best get the measuring tape out and get their boxes built ahead of time.

In the end there was a lonely and pathetic old man wrapped in a blanket literally cut off from the rest of the world and unable to even open up a window to see the sun. While Ossama bin Laden’s last years were not spent in a cave it probably would have been an improvement. Not to detract from the spectacular job done by the Navy Seals, and the steely gut of President Obama, but after years locked in a bedroom, stripped of all power and influence and with nothing but a pad of paper to doodle impotently about blowing up train bridges, death probably came as a relief to the world’s most hunted man.

As the CIA and Defense Department digest the “treasure trove of intelligence,” which will hopefully lead to others involved in 9/11 so that more justice can be meted out, it will also become clear that the mythic Ossama was no longer a functional threat to anyone and his once vaunted network has long since evaporated. Though it produced sympathizers and a few dim-witted copycats, the reality is that the “Al Queda” that has dominated the American imagination for a decade didn’t survive much past the notorious event that brought them international infamy. It’s few members were either caught like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or prudently decided to put off testing the seventy two virgins in heaven theory and ceased operations and went underground. The Bush Administration, desperate to put its testosterone on international display, shifted into Elliot Ness’ Untouchables mode, and filled the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center with unlucky children, cab drivers and hot dog venders. These people were tragically subjected to unspeakable treatment, despite having no information beyond stockpiles of mustard and ketchup, so that America could send a ham-fisted message- mess with us and a shitstorm’s a comin’. For almost a decade, George W. Bush made America look like himself, stupid and ignorant and the country will suffer for it for a generation or more.

There is no question that Ossam bin Laden and his handful of cohorts were dangerous men who perpetrated a heinous act of violence against innocent people. For that act, all involved deserve to be tracked like dogs and punished. It is right and fitting that the world know that, in the words of Dick Cheney’s charmless ogre of a daughter, if you engage in an act of terrorism, “the Navy Seals will put a bullet in your head.” But while it was essential that bin Laden was caught, what’s equally important is that he be recognized for what he was- a criminal. He was not a serious leader and never personally really had much of an operation beyond a few guys with boxcutters and an audacious plan to exploit lax airport security. There was never another serious attempt, and most certainly was never the upgrade in operation or sophistication that a functioning “terror network” would have demonstrated. Despite literally endless opportunities, from open shopping malls to unguarded shipping ports, Ossama’s “al Queda” could never mount a serious follow up. He just wasn’t, in the end, “all that.”

The bigger lesson in the bin Laden episode for Americans, who have now spent almost five trillion dollars, lost six thousand soldiers and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens chasing his shadow, is to stop being sucked into myths of evil boogiemen. Like Al Capone, the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh and Saddam Hussein before him, Ossama bin Laden became another media concoction of villainy on a cinematic scale far in excess of their actual accomplishments or power. Sure, the Soviets had nuclear weapons and the KGB, and had their bluff called in Cuba in 1962, but what did they ever really do? Wage war in Angola? The “Cold War” theorists are hard pressed indeed to come up with a case where the “communists” ever lived up to their hype. The fear of the “domino theory” and so modest a figure as Ho Chi Minh is laugh out loud ridiculous today. While bin Laden cost America three thousand people on 9/11, and another six thousand soldiers, the Korean War and Minh and Vietnam together cost us 325,000 dead and wounded (and, while we’re at it, World War I, which has yet to be figured out by anyone, cost this country 320,000 dead and wounded).

Yes, it was terrible to live under Soviet totalitarianism or in Saddam’s Iraq and Ossama bin Laden was a mass murderer who required a covert intelligence operation to track down just the same way drug kingpin Pablo Escobar did. But with the exception of World War II, since the turn of the last century America has engaged in seven wars that have cost us a staggering three quarters of a million killed and wounded- and they have all been against mythical boogiemen who posed no more serious threat to America than Dracula or Darth Vadar. That is virtually the equivalent of all the people who have sat in an NFL fooball stadium over the last forty years combined. The reality is that, other than Pearl Harbor thousands of miles from the American mainland, no one has posed a credible or serious threat to this country since the British in 1812. And the wasted money? It’s literally incalculable.

And yet here we are with a hundred thousand troops sitting in Iraq and Afghanistan killing and dying for a confused cause no more real or tangible than the dragon of St. George. The reality is that sending our military around the world to chase mythic dragons is no more effective than school desks were in protecting the school children curled up underneath them in anticipation of a rain of Soviet nuclear bombs, which of course, never came close to being launched. In fact, our military only exacerbates the problems that we have in the global village. But, sadly, maybe we’ll never stop seeing Darth Vadars to send our soldiers after until we understand that the world is a complex place that a hammer can’t fix. And more importantly, until stop seeing ourselves as the ever righteous and “exceptional” Luke Skywalker.

As we observe the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War, the United States of America is clearly more divided than at any time since those cannon balls flew. Contrary to the wishful thinking of the president, there clearly IS a “Blue America” and a “Red America.” And, despite the absence of the core issue of that war, slavery, the boundary between the two largely, though not completely, remains the same line over which the Civil War was fought. And that line remains the battleground of almost every major issue over which we fight today. The question bears asking, with slavery no longer at issue- does the union of Lincoln still make sense?

America is quite obviously not the same place it was in 1860 but many of the issues that separated us then continue to do so today. “State’s rights” remains a primary factor in any policy calculus from social issues to education to virtually any deployment of government spending. The inability of the federal government to enforce any national standards for education for example, particularly in Red States, ensures not only that America remains ranked behind an embarrassingly large number of first and second world countries but that a significant portion of the population is so benighted that it questions Evolution and the threat of global warming. In these “Red States” the prospects for the next generation are grim indeed.

The issues and attitudes that separate red and blue America are not diverse ones. They can be summed up as a dispute over the size and scope of government. Red staters say they want less taxes and less government, especially around the concept of regulation, but a strong and activist judiciary to enforce social constructs such as marriage, sexual behavior, blasphemy and abortion. Blue staters generally have the opposite view, they are more willing to pay taxes and want government to set standards, regulate corporations and businesses and to protect the health of its citizens, but not to get involved in social issues.

Though not a participant in the Civil War, the former Indian Territory of Oklahoma embodies another issue, tax revenue and distribution. Nowhere in the union will you hear more vehement Red State, anti tax, anti government rhetoric than in Oklahoma, but the truth is that the state exists largely on the teat of the federal government. There are six military bases there and were they to move or close it would devastate the fortunes of the “Ok state.” But even without the bases, Oklahoma currently receives almost a full dollar back for every sixty five cents is pays in federal taxes. In fact all of the Red States are tax handout states with the exception of Texas, Florida and just barely Georgia (North Carolina is virtually even). Yup, that’s right, for all their carping about taxes and big government, the Red States are straight up, hand out, welfare states.

Consider the benefits of separation. The Red States who ring the Gulf of Mexico could “drill baby drill” all they want and handle their own cleanup. They could outlaw being gay, divorce and make abortion a hanging offense. They could teach their children nothing but the Bible and expel all the Muslims and Spanish speaking people they want. An electrified border fence manned by guards armed with scope rifles across just Texas would be much easier to build than one all the way to San Diego. The Blue States could stop subsidizing handout states, end make-work defense spending projects, pursue science based education and have Medicare for all, all of which would essentially erase the debt. They could lift the bars against people marrying who they like and a host of other social issues currently blocked by Red Staters. Win-win for everyone.

Sure there would be issues to sort out, currency, borders, military cooperation (though the chances of anyone attacking North America are zero and neither side really needs much defense spending…all of what we do now is offense spending.). But the reality would be two nations that could live and apportion their resources how they see fit instead of having a single country that is paralyzed and moribund and on the verge of collapse.

Oh Johnny Rebel, perhaps we hardly knew ye…

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