Words&Dirt

“I am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to speak, with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late box of the general postoffice of human life.”

––Ulysses, by James Joyce, pg. 486

“‘When I talk about a political revolution, what I am referring to is the need to do more than just win the next election. It’s about creating a situation where we are involving millions of people in the process who are not now involved, and changing the nature of media so they are talking about issues that reflect the needs and the pains that so many of our people are currently feeling,’ the senator said of his presidential run. ‘A campaign has got to be much more than just getting votes and getting elected. It has got to be helping to educate people, organize people. If we can do that, we can change the dynamic of politics for years and years to come. If 80 to 90 percent of the people in this country vote, if they know what the issues are (and make demands based on that knowledge), Washington and Congress will look very, very different from the Congress currently dominated by big money and dealing only with the issues that big money wants them to deal with.’

That may sound like a romantic notion. It may be a romantic notion. But politics, at its best, is about more than cold calculation. It is about believing in a ‘left wing of the possible.’ What distinguishes Bernie Sanders, however, is that some of his romantic notions have succeeded.”

–– “Afterword,” Outsider in the White House, by John Nichols, pg. 344-5