My Friend M

While talking on the phone last night with my friend in New York, let’s call him “M,” he was expressing his despair about the election. See, he had gone to Ohio to work on the Kerry campaign and was so optimistic about John’s chances. When he lost the election, M was not a happy camper because he was totally involved with W’s defeat. He sold T-shirts on the streets of New York for the Democratic Party. He did all the things that the sixties generation did in past elections, however as we all know, to no avail.

M is truly depressed. I think he feels like there’s no direction except down the tubes. He, like many others in post election Bush country, are fearful, sadden, desperate, and angry. But using my usual backwater analysis of the situation, I came up with the following.

The democrats have nothing to engage the public except to be defensive about the many republican initiatives and proposals. Republicans set the agenda and the debate. They use America’s arsenal of corporate, media, and military tools to sway opinion and to get down and dirty when ever necessary. Democrats are left like a ship without a rudder, a voice without sound because they have no message except from a defensive posture parroting cognitive logical functions. They just can’t find their piece of dirt to stand aground. So how does this relate to “M?” First let me say that I’ve known M for over thirty years. He is my friend and my brother. He is white, Jewish and as we now know, a democrat.

I’ve often suggested to M that there are basically two types of people in American politics. What I’d call the cognitive logical and the cognitive emotional. The cognitive logical, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, are predominately members of the Republican Party. The cognitive emotional are mostly democrats. The Republican Party is strictly a party formulated for power through control, and achieves those goals through cognitive logical functions. The democrats are a party that tries to engage the masses thereby embracing eclectic ideas of how to share power and control, however minimally. Their functions are cognitive emotional. When one lives in a culture that thrives and exalts materialism, the Republican Party will always dictate policy for they are single minded and rooted in the cognitive logical. For example, how more "logical" can one be but to support God and Country?

Cognitive emotional people often lose focus on using resources for strict power and control purposes. Although it doesn’t seem “logical,” I believe the democrats should play to their strength and set the agenda by framing policy around the cognitive emotional and stay that course. There is no way the Democrats can subvert the Republican's "logical hold" on God or Country. But Democrats feel they must respond to the agenda of the Republican Party or they are out of the mainstream which is mostly materialistic rhetoric whether, logical or illogical.

Again, that’s a ploy of the cognitive logical and the cognitive emotional can never win that battle. After all it makes logical sense and contributes to a sense of power to be and remain the number one Country in the world, with the number one God, who knows the only and best way to live. How can the cognitive emotional opposed such an agenda? How can they justify this cognitive emotional sentiment to a country built on self indulgence and greed? How can they convice the populance that giving to some remote “rip off” social program, some undeserving gay socialist, or fund an abortion clinic which may support this abstract idea of human rights, the "logical thing to do?

Eventually M will accept that the cognitive emotional are really in the majority, no matter how the cognitive logical paint the picture. He should understand that if what we thought was sanity is to return, we must speak in terms of our cognitive emotional being. Never mind that the cognitive logical are busy honing their logical skills for the manipulation of phenomena, simple put, democrats must allow policy to be balanced between the soul and the head.

I hope M understands this and perhaps he won’t be so depressed because his feelings are from his soul which in this day and time makes him seem out of touch. In fact, I believe all democrats need to connect to their soul, their cognitive emotional. Perhaps that would remind them that real truth comes from the soul, which allows us to feel something is right. Conversely, when we formulate truth within our minds, especially when resources are involved, policy becomes corrupt and we by extension become corrupt. The cognitive emotional should use their soul to speak truth, then, manipulation through unbalanced cognitive logical means, must take a back seat to human reality.

Manipulation understands well we are still, above all else, part and parcel of this planet. This is why the Republicans use so much negative energy to stay in control, to garner power. They have no emotional truth. They are masterful at manipulating mindful things with their cognitive logical rhetoric and behavior. But it should be clear to the democrats, they can’t manipulate the cognitive emotional unless they ALLOW themselves to be manipulated. Truth is the foundation of our human being-ness. M and the Democratic Party should understand this simple fact and appeal to our humanness. Then his depression will melt away.