Oh, Bobby, Where Art Thou?

When Dr. King was assassinated, Bobby Kennedy took up his message and led Democrats to a message that is just as powerful today as it was 50 years ago. King identified economic injustice as a root evil feeding the racism and militarism that is strangling the American Dream. Kennedy astutely recognized that poor whites have more in common with African-Americans – they struggled to share the crumbs of an economic system that funneled wealth to the wealthiest. They were drafted to fight and die in the same wars that the privileged were exempted from and even were enriched by.

Bernie Sanders had the right idea. He is right about the real evil dividing and poisoning American society. It was one reason why his message was resisted as much by the Democratic Establishment which sought to inherit the same system, rather than change it. There is no one else in the Democratic Party who understands the problem and has the courage to speak against that power. That doesn’t bode well for our Country.

In Michigan, we are about to elect new Governor. We have our own Bernie in Shri Thanedar, who has some very well thought out policies and the integrity to run his campaign consistent with his ideals. And we also have the other Democrats who seek power by compromising rather than leading. Michigan is going to be divided in the same fashion that has maintained the same unjust economic system that creates Flints, crumbling infrastructures and failing schools and billionaires at the same time.

Bobby Kennedy was a man who was transformed from a man who was a foot soldier in the political machine that was steering our country further into the moral abyss identified by King. He changed and ended his life as a moral leader taking up the cause of the American Dream for the American people. WE desperately need leaders like this to emerge in our politics today. The question I’ve been pondering is whether or not the system has become so irredeemable that those leaders are crushed before they have a chance. The Democratic Party nationally and in Michigan has been a closed club for many decades, and the result has been manifest in elections.

The bottom line is that it is not elections that are the matter at hand. Those are rigged  – not for one political party or another, but with the same compromised morality leading to the same crushing injustice.