I’ve never been a big fan of the term “corporate Democrat.” In too many instances, it becomes a term of reproach for anyone in the Democratic Party who doesn’t embrace consistently and unapologetically left and progressive politics. Deployed in this manner, it fails to capture the complexity, fluidity, and direction of positions and sentiments among Democratc Party officeholders.

Predictability, it turns allies into enemies, scales down coalition opportunities, weakens struggles electorally and legislatively, and fractures the Demcratic Party and the democratic front at a moment when maximum unity is imperative. If that posture strikes you as wrong headed, counterproductive, and sectarian, then we are on the same page.

That said, I had no problem when Bernie recently labeled Joe Manchin – the Build Back Better killer – as a corporate Democrat. If anyone has earned that title of opprobrium, it is Manchin.

As you would expect, Manchin took issue with Bernie’s type casting of him. In his reply, Manchin said he is a “moderate.” Sorry Joe, you can’t hide behind that claim. Your voting record, public utterances, differences with Biden and Democrats on issues, like BBB, close affinity to everything corporate and, above all, the immense damage you have done over the past two years to the chances of tens of millions of people gaining some relief in these difficult times betrays your claim.

Bernie is right. You are wrong. And no dance or denial on your part can change that fact. Nothing can clean up your betrayal. You’re a corporate man and, objectively, a water carrier for Trump, Fox, and the white nationalist authoritarian right.

The Saudi regime is attempting to buy respectability in the international community via the golf course. And it comes as no suprise that a number of big name golfers, attracted by the big paydays, are jumping aboard the new golf tour, sponsored and financed by the despotic Saudi regime. The PGA tour here is no model of egalitarianism, but still a Saudi sponsored tour is a bridge too far.

A song for this moment. And a voice for the ages!

I only ask of God. That i am not indifferent to the pain. That the dry death won’t find me. Empty and alone, without having done the sufficient.

I only ask of God. That i won’t be indifferent to the injustice. That they won’t slap my other cheek. After a claw (or talon) has scratched this destiny (luck) of mine.

I only ask of God. That i am not indifferent to the battle. It’s a big monster and it walks hardly on. All the poor innocence of people.

I only ask of God. That i am not indifferent to deceit. If a traitor can do more than a bunch of people. Then let not those people forget him easily.

I only ask of God. That i am not indifferent to the future. Hopeless is he who has to go away. To live a different culture.

I only ask of God. That i am not indifferent to the battle. It’s a big monster and it walks hardly on. All the poor innocence of people.

I read this poem more than a half century ago in a college literature class. Up to then reading poetry was something I didn’t do. I played sports, drank beer on country roads and cemetaries, and, with a little fire water in my belly, acted stupid at record hops. According to my high school yearbook, my favorite saying was, “I find every book to long.” The only reading material I devoured at the time was Sports Illustrated, but not much else, book wise, found it way onto my night table.

Thankfully, and I’m not sure why, but my attitude shifted upon entering college. Perhaps my step mother who told me in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t succeed in college, I wasn’t coming home, but going straight into the army had something to do with it. In any case, I buckled down upon arrival and became a fixture in the library. In my second semester, I was assigned and read “Augeries of Innocence,” in a literature class. I don’t know how much I understood at the time, but it was hard not to appreciate on some level the beauty, images, and rythmn of Blake’s poem.

Fifty years later, I can’t claim to be any better interpreter of Blake’s poem than I was then. But I still like to read it aloud from time to time.

Like during Blake’s time – early industrializing England – we live in a time of transformation, contradiction, and shakeups in economic, political and cultural life. Life affirming and life denying signs show up in the public square. Morbidity, meaness, and ecological destruction runs up against new visions of freedom and new waves of freedom fighters. What goes unanswered, for now anyway, is which side, which way of life will win out. What fate awaits the Wren?

Anyway, here’s an excerpt:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage
A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thr’ all its regions
A dog starvd at his Masters Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State
A Horse misusd upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fibre from the Brain does tear
A Skylark wounded in the wing
A Cherubim does cease to sing
The Game Cock clipd & armd for fight
Does the Rising Sun affright
Every Wolfs & Lions howl
Raises from Hell a Human Soul
The wild deer, wandring here & there
Keeps the Human Soul from Care
The Lamb misusd breeds Public Strife
And yet forgives the Butchers knife
The Bat that flits at close of Eve
Has left the Brain that wont Believe
The Owl that calls upon the Night
Speaks the Unbelievers fright
He who shall hurt the little Wren
Shall never be belovd by Men
He who the Ox to wrath has movd
Shall never be by Woman lovd
The wanton Boy that kills the Fly
Shall feel the Spiders enmity
He who torments the Chafers Sprite
Weaves a Bower in endless Night
The Catterpiller on the Leaf
Repeats to thee thy Mothers grief
Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh
He who shall train the Horse to War
Shall never pass the Polar Bar

• If the hearings last night made anything crystal clear, it was that Trump was the main organizing agent of the January 6 insurrection. What wasn’t so obvious was the footprint of the Republican Party in this insurrection and its aftermath. But the GOP was anything but onlooker. Some Republicans were active participants in the conspriracy, while others, intially shocked by this singular event in U.S. history, quickly morphed into spin doctors, at once sanitizing what happened, minimizing Trump’s role as the primary agent of insurrections, and eargerly embracing and spreading the Big Lie – a rigged election that Trump actually won.

• I was struck by the extent of the coordination between Trump and his inner circle and the proto fascist groups, like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. In the immediate aftermath of the elections I underestimated the likehood of a violent insurrection to overturn the elections and impose, if not all at once, a white nationalist, anti-democratic, authoritarian political order. Not the first time I was wide of the mark, and probably won’t be the last.

• 20 million people watched the hearings. And according to one report, focus groups of independent voters were disturbed by what they heard and saw. How that will translate in the voting booth this fall is anybody’s guess at this point.