Purple Rage, by Lewis Thompson

In his brilliant and encyclopedic new book, Why the Right Went Wrong:  Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond, E. J. Dionne, Jr., spells out in exhaustive detail how the Grand Ol’ Party evolved from the Middle American conservatism of Dwight David Eisenhower to the rabid, ranting, rage of Donald Trumps’ avid band of Storm Troopers.  In a nutshell, it happened when the bedrock conservative vision of Barry Goldwater–which had given rise to the hopes of millions of conservative, white working-class people that their superior status among the races was assured—sustained set-back after set-back politically in the decades to follow.  
Not only did Goldwater lose in a landslide resulting in the election of LBJ who ushered in the Voting Rights Act but the next Republican president, Richard M. Nixon turned out to be a stealth liberal whose term ended in utter shame and embarrassment. In his 1978 memoir, RN, Nixon wrote, “I won a majority of every key population group identified by Gallup except the blacks and the Democrats.  Four of those groups—manual workers, Catholics, members of labor union families and people with only grade school educations—had never before been in the Republican camp in all the years since Gallup had begun keeping these records.”  [Why the Right Went Wrong, p.74.]
“Now,” Nixon wrote, “I planned to give expression to the more conservative values and beliefs of the New Majority throughout the country….I intended to revitalize the Republican Party along New Majority lines.”  [ibid.]
The migration of white Southern Democrats to the GOP had been going on since LBJ’s hay-day as president.  But it was Ronald Reagan’s failed 1976 campaign, whereby he “rais[ed] a banner of no pale pastels but bold colors which make it unmistakenly clear where we stand” that launched the “Reagan Revolution” toward which the Party stills displays undying fealty.  It was a banner that Gerald Ford hastened to pick up, as has every GOP president since, though George H. W. Bush dropped it more than once.
His son, George W. Bush, who liked to call himself a “compassionate conservative”, further frustrated those who considered themselves to be “true conservatives”.  His bumbling engagement in two costly wars in southern Asia and the Middle East further alienated his conservative base and the Great Recession which closed out his term in office left many of them in a sad way economically.
In Dionne’s view, this, combined with the ascension of a black man to the Presidency, is what led to the level of vitriol we now see on the faces of the men and women who comprise a typical Donald Trump mob today.  They are the new base of the GOP.  They come from “red states” as well as “blue states”.  (Thus my title for this piece, Purple Rage.)  They see change not as something they can believe in but as something to fear.  It is not stalemate in Washington that they lament but an arc of history that for them is bending toward the Left.  For almost 50 years, they have witnessed one frustration after another coming out of Washington.  The only bright light for them is Ronald Reagan.  He made this country, in their eyes, “great”. 
Now, along comes The Donald, promising to make America great again.  He is unlike any politician they have ever known—brash, tough, taking no crap.  He is rich, he is powerful and he’s bold.  Perhaps they haven’t noticed that his posture on stage, his swagger, suggests no one–as someone on the Bill Maher Show last Friday pointed out—so much as “Il Duce” himself, Benito Mussolini.  I like to think of him as “Donito Trumponi”.
I don’t know how similar the situation in the United States today is to that of Eastern and Southern Europe in the days following World War I and the Great Depression.  But I do believe that the kind of change the world has undergone over the past 60 years can produce a great deal of fear—and the concomitant anger—in those whose core values appear to be steadily eroding.  I have seen their faces in the crowds surrounding Mr. Trump and it frightens me.  I am frightened even though I have made the attempt to understand from where they are coming.  But when I think of what lies in store for America and the rest of the world should Mr. Trump become the most powerful man in that world, my knees start to rattle.  It is not too late to interrupt this eventuality.  I still believe that there are more Americans who welcome progress toward a better life for all than resent it.  But those of us of that mind must follow through on what we know is the only peaceful means available to interrupt that darker vision and that is to vote for the side that still believes that justice for all and animosity for none is the better way.
P.S.   Here’s a quote that I just ran across.  The source is unknown:
“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
© 7 Mar 2016 
About the Author 
I came to the
beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the
state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the
Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly
realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as
our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger.
Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my
path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

Purple Rage, by Lewis Thompson

In his brilliant and
encyclopedic new book, Why the Right Went Wrong:  Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party
and Beyond
, E. J. Dionne, Jr., spells out in exhaustive detail how the
Grand Ol’ Party evolved from the Middle American conservatism of Dwight David
Eisenhower to the rabid, ranting, rage of Donald Trumps’ avid band of Storm
Troopers.  In a nutshell, it happened
when the bedrock conservative vision of Barry Goldwater–which had given rise
to the hopes of millions of conservative, white working-class people that their
superior status among the races was assured—sustained set-back after set-back
politically in the decades to follow.  
Not only did Goldwater
lose in a landslide resulting in the election of LBJ who ushered in the Voting
Rights Act but the next Republican president, Richard M. Nixon turned out to be
a stealth liberal whose term ended in utter shame and embarrassment. In his
1978 memoir, RN, Nixon wrote, “I won a majority of every key population
group identified by Gallup except the blacks and the Democrats.  Four of those groups—manual workers,
Catholics, members of labor union families and people with only grade school
educations—had never before been in the Republican camp in all the years since
Gallup had begun keeping these records.” 
[Why the Right Went Wrong, p.74.]
“Now,” Nixon wrote, “I
planned to give expression to the more conservative values and beliefs of the
New Majority throughout the country….I intended to revitalize the Republican
Party along New Majority lines.”  [ibid.]
The migration of white
Southern Democrats to the GOP had been going on since LBJ’s hay-day as
president.  But it was Ronald Reagan’s failed
1976 campaign, whereby he “rais[ed] a banner of no pale pastels but bold colors
which make it unmistakenly clear where we stand” that launched the “Reagan
Revolution” toward which the Party stills displays undying fealty.  It was a banner that Gerald Ford hastened to
pick up, as has every GOP president since, though George H. W. Bush dropped it
more than once.
His son, George W. Bush,
who liked to call himself a “compassionate conservative”, further frustrated
those who considered themselves to be “true conservatives”.  His bumbling engagement in two costly wars in
southern Asia and the Middle East further alienated his conservative base and
the Great Recession which closed out his term in office left many of them in a
sad way economically.
In Dionne’s view, this,
combined with the ascension of a black man to the Presidency, is what led to
the level of vitriol we now see on the faces of the men and women who comprise
a typical Donald Trump mob today.  They
are the new base of the GOP.  They come
from “red states” as well as “blue states”. 
(Thus my title for this piece, Purple
Rage.
)  They see change not as
something they can believe in but as something to fear.  It is not stalemate in Washington that they
lament but an arc of history that for them is bending toward the Left.  For almost 50 years, they have witnessed one
frustration after another coming out of Washington.  The only bright light for them is Ronald
Reagan.  He made this country, in their
eyes, “great”. 
Now, along comes The
Donald, promising to make America great again. 
He is unlike any politician they have ever known—brash, tough, taking no
crap.  He is rich, he is powerful and
he’s bold.  Perhaps they haven’t noticed
that his posture on stage, his swagger, suggests no one–as someone on the Bill
Maher Show last Friday pointed out—so much as “Il Duce” himself, Benito
Mussolini.  I like to think of him as
“Donito Trumponi”.
I don’t know how similar
the situation in the United States today is to that of Eastern and Southern
Europe in the days following World War I and the Great Depression.  But I do believe that the kind of change the
world has undergone over the past 60 years can produce a great deal of fear—and
the concomitant anger—in those whose core values appear to be steadily eroding.  I have seen their faces in the crowds
surrounding Mr. Trump and it frightens me. 
I am frightened even though I have made the attempt to understand from
where they are coming.  But when I think
of what lies in store for America and the rest of the world should Mr. Trump
become the most powerful man in that world, my knees start to rattle.  It is not too late to interrupt this
eventuality.  I still believe that there
are more Americans who welcome progress toward a better life for all than
resent it.  But those of us of that mind
must follow through on what we know is the only peaceful means available to
interrupt that darker vision and that is to vote for the side that still
believes that justice for all and animosity for none is the better way.
P.S.  
Here’s a quote that I just ran across. 
The source is unknown:
“When you’re
accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
© 7 Mar 2016  
About
the Author
 
I came to the
beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the
state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the
Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly
realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as
our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger.
Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my
path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I
retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13
blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to
fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE
Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

Finding Your Voice, by Louis Brown

I find my voice most clearly at the Monday afternoon sessions of “Telling your Story”. In fact, in an ideal world, we would have generous sponsors who would give us a radio station so that, when we come in, each one of us sits in front of a microphone. Once we have told our stories, Phillip will take calls from the radio audience.
One caller calls and asks what our mission is exactly. Phillip says he has his opinion, and Tell your Story’s corporate papers have a mission statement, but Phillip says he would like us participants to answer that question, that is those of us who are so inclined. After an hour or so of discussing our mission, the general consensus emerges that our mission is to liberate gay and Lesbian people from oppression by developing a new mass media that different gay communities can use to communicate with one another. Another important goal is to record how gay and Lesbian people perceive the society in which they are obliged to live. Thirdly, we must develop a political liberation strategy that includes keeping close tabs on the activities of our opponents, i.e. Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council and more recently Mike Pence who, according to Donald Trump, wants to hang all gay and Lesbian people. Jokes like these we can do without.
After a month or two on the air, we get a grant to set up a political newspaper for gay people who live in the Denver area. Maybe such a newspaper already exists. This new publication should promote our gay civic groups and print gay liberation type literature of all kinds.
Other groups also perceive irrational hostility directed toward them. For instance, in the last election, when we had a choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, we did not really have an authentic liberal alternative. Was the public really satisfied with these candidates? Hillary Clinton admires the memory of Barry Goldwater and still admires Henry Kissinger. That makes her clearly a right-winger despite her dubious claim to being a progressive. Barry Goldwater, Henry Kissinger and more recently Donald Rumsfeld all became discredited warmongers. As Gilbert & Sullivan would say, “You can put them on the list, you can put them on the list, and they’ll none of them be missed, they’ll none of them be missed.
 Politicians who accept their legitimacy should be discarded by the public. The peaceniks of the 1960’s and their numerous followers in today’s culture need to develop an alternative mass media outlet to counter the current blackout on real political information.
Our gay magazine or newspaper of the future should hook up with one these newspaper enterprises. Perhaps Rolling Stone, something of that ilk. Rolling Stone started up as a new independent alternate culture media tool.
And then, of course, the Socialists. Bernie Sanders says he is a democratic socialist but who, according to the current media, did not convince a significant number of black people that he was their candidate. I will admit I was waiting for Bernie Sanders to tell black people in a loud public way that, in addition to promoting perpetual war, capitalism promotes racism because it is very profitable. In the early nineteenth century, slavery in Dixieland was very, very profitable. Also, pitting one ethnic group against another is an easy way to break up labor unions. These are basic socialist tenets. Bernie never really developed this in his speeches.
And Bernie Sanders never really expanded on the relationship between capitalism and perpetual war. War is very profitable, and the resulting profits are more important to the war profiteers than the lives of a few million people. Of course, the war profiteers eagerly purchase senators and U. S. representatives and Supreme Court Justices. To a large number of people, this is all obvious and a truism, but many Americans do not seem to be aware of these purchases of public representatives.
Did you notice the large number of protesters in Hamburg, Germany, during the G-20 Summit? This indicates a large number of people recognize they are locked out of the current status quo, and they need another media outlet to promote their point of view.
Also, huge protests occurred when the U. S. started the unjustifiable war in Iraq. The mainstream media made sure they were not covered. Another reason for developing a new independent media.
Thus we see the necessity for developing a new more independent alternative media. In my fantasy, I am one of the   CEO’s of this alternative media. I will have found my voice. Wish me a Happy Birthday.
© 23 Oct 2017  
About the Author  
I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.