THE YEAR OF DAMNED FOOLS AND DAMN-FOOL NOTIONS

By: Paul S. Marchand

It’s been nearly 30 years since I watched Linda Hunt, Sigourney Weaver, and Mel Gibson play off each other in Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously, which takes place against the backdrop of the overthrow of Indonesia’s then-President Sukarno.

A generation and a half later, as America swings into another presidential election year, I can’t help but think of 2011 as the Year of Damn-Fool Notions, or maybe just of damned fools.  Unfortunately, it’s pretty clear that 2012 will be the year of Damn-Fool Notions redux, as we listen to the policy proposals of a bench of GOP presidential hopefuls unparalleled in its thinness since the Democratic presidential pool of 1988.

It’s hard to say which Republican candidate is more appalling.

Has it been Newt Gingrich, with his apparent nostalgia for a dispensation that used to send children into factories at six?  To say that there is something disturbing about the idea of undoing more than a century of legislation designed to keep children in school and out of unsafe working conditions is to understate the case by order of magnitude.

Has it been Willard M. Romney, who was for what he was against before he was for what he was against, or is it the other way around?  The dizzying speed with which Mr. Romney takes up and discards positions has been one of the most extraordinary and unedifying political spectacles of our time.

Has it been Ron Paul, the political munchkin whose antebellum, nay, antediluvian views on race and society seem to be biting him on the posterior of late?  It certainly seems under his libertarian façade, Dr. Paul is nothing more than old-fashioned neo-confederate racist with a generous, adulterating dose of bad Ayn Rand thrown in.

Has it been Rick Perry, who cannot seem to open his mouth without committing another faux pas, detracting as he does so from the sum total of human knowledge?  Listening to Rick Perry demonstrate the limitations of his understanding leaves one wondering whether he possesses even a basal skull set for public office.

Has it been the other Rick, whose last name, when Googled, defines a postcoital byproduct, and whose apparent obsession with what gay men do in the privacy of our bedrooms has led to more than just the occasional raised eyebrow?  To say that he comes across as a political charlatan of the extremest order is also to understate the case.

Has it been the incredible Michelle Bachmann, who would, no doubt, love to come across as an American Margaret Thatcher for our time, but who instead comes across as the crazy pro. per. lady ahead of you on the appearance calendar in court --- the one who insists on explaining in excruciating detail whatever conspiracy theory is uppermost in her mind?

At all events, none of the GOP seekers after the Presidency seem to have recalled Mark Twain’s advice that it is better to remain silent and be a thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

Time was that the Republican Party could put up highly competent, highly intelligent, highly articulate candidates for public office.  Indeed, by comparison with the current crop, even Richard Nixon would be preferable.

For I was not in jest when I suggested that the current bench of GOP presidential hopefuls shows even less to the American electorate than did the Democratic field of 1988 that ultimately gave us Michael Dukakis -- the best, sadly, of that year’s not very inspiring lot.

In the end, the Republicans will probably do what they have historically done; they will fall in line behind a candidate who has the best campaign machine: Mitt Romney.  And they will do so because, as Bill Clinton once famously observed, while Democrats want to fall in love, Republicans want to fall in line.

Given the thinness and the inadequacy of the GOP presidential field, it’s not surprising that comedians of every stripe should have found the endless Republican primary campaign for the presidency to be an endless source of grist for the comic mill.  Such a development should have Republican strategists deeply worried.

When a campaign season degenerates this early into farce, it ought to be a warning to candidates and their staffers that they are not being taken nearly as seriously as they need to be in order to win.  Back in 2008, a friend of mine with experience in both political campaigns and the entertainment industry, watching Tina Fey’s dead-on impression of Sarah Palin, had no hesitation in calling the race right then and there for Barack Obama.

Worse still for our friends in the party opposite has been the fact that this endless, agonizing primary affairs has also had the effect of giving the President enormous quantities of ammunition to use against whoever crawls out, broken and bleeding, from the GOP scrum to emerge as the nominee.  Another friend of mine, a longtime GOP stalwart, expressed it this way: “the Republicans have learned the Democratic trick of forming a circular firing squad aiming inward.”

So, as we enter into the final days before the much-overrated Iowa caucuses, we see a series of presidential wannabes who have not only managed to make us laugh at them but also to give us sticks to beat them with.  The President, who at the beginning of the fall had seemed to be a dead man walking, increasingly appears to be not only the only adult in the room, but also the only person with the intellect, the understanding, and the stature for the job.

This is not the narrative any GOP strategist wants to see emerging.  It might have been different, had the candidacies of Jon Huntsman, Buddy Roemer, or Gary Johnson ever developed any meaningful throw weight, but all three of them were too smart, too pragmatic, and too potentially appealing to crossover voters, to be able to survive the hard line right wing slugfest the Republican primary processes have become.

For Democrats, the 1988 presidential debacle proved to be a fortuitous turning point.  The lessons learned from that election enabled us to select in Bill Clinton a candidate with sufficient appeal to capture the White House in 1992.  This current election may very well prove to be a similar turning point for the GOP, though I'm not holding my breath.

For while I am not calling the 2012 election for President Obama just yet, I have no hesitation suggesting that the election is his to lose; the auguries suggest that he will in fact be reelected.  If the GOP is serious about fielding a presidential candidate with meaningful hopes of winning in 2016, it’s going to have to tack back toward the center, much as the Democratic Party had to do between 1988 and 1992.  For if it does not, 2016 may prove to be a very unpleasant year indeed for the Grand Old Party.

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PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City.  The views expressed herein are his own.

FOR UNTO US CHILD IS BORN

By: Paul S. Marchand

An unwed mother. 

Situationally homeless. 

Pregnant. 

Traveling with a partner who is not the father of her unborn child.

Not the sort of thing we would expect from “respectable” people.

Indeed, many, hearing such a word-picture, might well be inspired to angry, fulminating discourse on the ills of our 21st-century American society.

Of course, the word-picture in question actually comes from the narrative set forth in Luke’s Gospel of the birth of our Savior in a manger in Bethlehem more than 2000 years ago.

Across generations and centuries, the Lucan infancy narrative, encapsulating both the paradoxical power of powerlessness and the human compunction we feel in the presence of the smallest and weakest among us, has been at the heart of the Christmas story.

For at its core, the Christmas story is about more than giftgiving or liturgies or Christmas trees or official proclamations or Christmas cards (with or without First Dog, pace Sarah Palin).  It is about proclaiming a radical view of human and social justice over against a dispensation that still, after 20 centuries, organizes the world very much without reference to the teachings the infant in Bethlehem sought to impart to us, a dispensation that still reflexively takes the side of Dives over Lazarus --the one percent over the 99 percent.

Some years ago, an Episcopal priest of my acquaintance inveighed against the common cliché of “putting the Christ back in Christmas.”  Instead, he suggested we should perhaps seek to put the Mass back in Christmas.  By sharing the gifts of human companionship, human compunction, and human charity, and by breaking bread together --- both at home and in the context of the Eucharist --- this priest suggested we could do more to share the spirit of Christmas than if we had had all the tangible things in the world wrapped in paper under the tree.

For as much as the birth of a child focuses the thoughts of that child’s family toward what must be done to create a better future, so too does the infancy narrative which lies at the heart of our Christmas story call us to examine our consciences and our conduct, and to focus our thoughts on building a better future for our communities, for our country, and for the world.  The greatest gift of Christmas, therefore, may not be what lies under the Christmas tree.  The greatest gift of Christmas may be the opportunity it gives to us to renew a commitment to the kind of social justice the Infant in the manger came into this world to proclaim:

    “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn.” Isa. 61:1-2

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, Who shall be called the Prince of Peace.

Merry Christmas.

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PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California.  He is a member of the Riverside County Workforce Investment Board.  The views expressed herein are his own.

THE LONG GOODBYE TO THOSE WHO SAVED THE WORLD

By: Paul S. Marchand

Patsy’s Bar, the Bronx.

That’s where my dad remembers being on the afternoon of December 7, 1941. Eight years old, munching on pizza, and sipping an illegal beer.

Seventy years have passed since the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor. An anniversary that falls on some multiple of ten years always seems to call forth more discussion and reminiscence than an "off year" anniversary. So it is now, in 2011, when 70 years have passed to the day since my dad and the others at Patsy’s Bar heard the news.

The number of those who remember that day --- to say nothing of those who were of military age at the time --- ineluctably grows smaller with each passing year and each passing decade. Seven years ago, writing on the 60th anniversary of D-Day, I noted that the "Greatest Generation" which had stormed ashore on the continent of Europe on June 6, 1944, was passing rapidly into eternity, and as their numbers diminished, World War II was also passing out of living memory; the long goodbye continues.

Seven years later, the number of World War II veterans has diminished even further; those for whom Pearl Harbor is still living memory are most likely to have experienced December 7, 1941 as children, like my eight year old dad in Patsy’s Bar.

While it will probably be at least another couple of decades before the last living American World War II veteran dies, (our last living World War I veteran passed away only recently) the days when there were World War II veterans in every neighborhood and on every block are long gone. A few days ago, the Desert Sun reported that the local chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors organization was folding; there were no longer enough living Pearl Harbor survivors in the Coachella Valley to be able to sustain their organization. By 2015, the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, the number of living veterans of that conflict will be close to the vanishing point.

As our collective living memory essentially ceases to be that of the men and women who served and fought during World War II, it shifts to be that of those who were children during what Winston Churchill called those "stern days." I think of my eight year old dad in Patsy’s Bar at the beginning, and I think of my six year old mom, living in El Paso and witnessing the bright flash of the first atomic test up near Alamogordo just three and a half years later in the summer of 1945.

My own generation, the Baby Boomers, was the first to have no direct recall of the Second World War, but we did grow up in communities in which the presence of World War II veterans was still the rule, not the exception. Growing up at the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s in the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles was to grow up in a place full of veterans --- some still in their vigorous late 40s and early 50s --- who had served in the armed forces not only of the United States and our allies, but even of the Axis as well.

The millennial generation --- those born in the 90s and just coming-of-age now --- and those born in this century, are even further removed from World War II than were we Boomers. For them, the memory of the Second World War can be as distant and sepia-toned as that of the Civil War. The world my millennial cousins inhabit is one in which the barriers and dispensations my generation took for granted simply do not exist.

How does one explain the postwar partition of Germany to someone who was a toddler, or not even living, when the Berlin Wall fell and Germany once again became one?

How does one explain to a young cousin jetting off to Bratislava that not too long ago the Czech Republic and Slovakia were once part of the unified country called Czechoslovakia?

How does one explain that the country known for quality automobiles, consumer electronics, Pokémon, manga, and animé was once feared and hated on account of the "sneak attack" against Pearl Harbor?

How does one explain that the totalitarian communist state which was, in turn, our World War II ally and our Cold War adversary has since turned into a capitalistic, kleptocratic, frenemy?

Seventy years on, how does one explain the sense of disquiet that comes over so many of us on this 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor that perhaps we took more for granted than we should have done those World War II veterans in our midst ---the ones who saved the world--- even if many of them would have been embarrassed to be so lauded?

For, in the end, that is exactly what they did.

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PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City. His dad was in Patsy’s Bar on Pearl Harbor Day, and his grandfather served in World War II. The views expressed herein are his own.

FOR THE OCCUPIERS, FOR THE NINETY-NINE PERCENT, FOR THOSE WHO HAVE FOUND THEIR VOICES AND CRY FOR JUSTICE, GIVE THANKS.

By: Paul S. Marchand

Every Thanksgiving, we find ourselves called upon to think about what we are thankful for.

This year, I find myself thankful for the Occupy Wall Street Movement and for the increasing social and political awareness of the Ninety-nine Percenters who have, perhaps without even knowing it, found themselves living a kind of reality first prefigured in the late Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay for the 1976 movie Network.

In one of the most famous scenes in that film, the protagonist, the angry newscaster Howard Beale, loses it, famously exhorting his viewers to “get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

In our own time, we have seen life imitate art, as countless middle and working-class Americans, tired of being ripped off in the interests of the wealthiest one percent among us, have dared to say “we’re as mad as hell, and we’re not going to take this anymore!”

I’m thankful that, after eight bitter winters of George W. Bush, when middle and working-class Americans felt there was no one to listen to their cries and lamentations against their spoliation on behalf of the “haves and the have-mores” --- the richest one percent in the land, my brothers and sisters of the Ninety-nine Percent have finally found their voice, and have dared to speak truth to those who have unjustly enriched themselves upon the blood, toil, tears, and sweat of those who seek nothing more than basic fairness for themselves and for their posterity.

I’m thankful that, paradoxically, we have an administration in office which we, the people, believe will listen when we say that it is not right that the playing field should be tilted so powerfully against the Ninety-nine Percent of Americans upon whom the prosperity of this country, and in large measure, the world, depends.  That we are frustrated with its slowness to act on our behalf is a sign that we believe it capable of better things than its predecessor.  Now it is incumbent on that administration to listen, and listen well, to our voices. 

I’m thankful that a critical mass is taking shape which dares to say that it is not right that America in the 21st century should resemble France in the 18th; a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that we are all created equal deserves better than to be governed in the interests of a narrow class which bears a distinct and unsavory resemblance to the worst of the French nobility of the ancien régime.

I’m thankful for a movement that looks like America, a movement composed of all sorts and conditions of human beings; of young and old; of tall and small; of rich and poor; of professionals, the fully employed, the underemployed, and the unemployed; of straight and queer; of PhD’s and high school dropouts, of veterans, vagabonds, and vegans; of people of every faith and no faith at all.

I’m thankful for a movement that is not afraid of civil disobedience; I am grateful for a movement that is not afraid to sit peaceably amid clouds of pepper spray; I am grateful for movement that dares to say “these are our streets; we will occupy them. These are our parks; we will occupy them.  This our tundra; we will occupy it.  This is our country; we will occupy it.”

I’m thankful that we are reclaiming our noble revolutionary heritage, that we are having once again a conversation about liberty, about fairness, and about fundamental decency.

If we are to be able to speak in good faith of America as a land of opportunity, we dare not allow ourselves the feckless luxury of an unsustainable social order in which those who have “arrived” are able to pull up behind them the ladder of social mobility and success upon which others rely to better themselves and their children. 

I think it is safe to say that we of the Ninety-nine Percent do not resent the success of those who have made it, what we resent is the efforts of far too many in America’s one percent to prevent anyone else from making it, too.

So, on this Thanksgiving day, I give thanks to God Who in every generation calls forth prophets and witnesses.  I also give thanks for those prophets and witnesses who in our own time are those voices crying in the wilderness on behalf of all who have been voiceless, abused, and ground down.

A single voice, crying in the wilderness, can change the world.  By God’s good grace, we may dare to hope that many voices crying in cities and towns and villages all over this land, may yet change our world in our time for the better, for ourselves and for all who will come after us.  Amen.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California.  The views expressed herein are his own.

NOW FOR THE MERITS.... A BATTLE LOST, A WAR TO WIN

By:  Paul S. Marchand

The California Supreme Court has unanimously held that the proponents of Proposition 8 have standing to defend if the State declines to do so.  Initial reactions notwithstanding, we should welcome the opinion.

While disappointing to many, the ruling is based on upon sound application of the principle of stare decisis, which holds that similar cases should be similarly decided.  As much as it may irritate many of us in the LGBT community that our civil rights should still be accounted lesser things than those of our straight neighbors, today’s advisory ruling, intended for the education of the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, may well open the way to a substantive adjudication in favor of marriage equality.

It’s important to keep our eyes on that larger goal.  As I’ve blogged before, denial of the right of GLBT people to enter the civil contract of marriage in effect reduces us to the status of slaves.  Whether Ruth marries Naomi, Jonathan marries David, or Adam marries Eve, should not matter in a state in which people of every faith and none at all should be able to exercise equal civil rights without having those rights sacrificed to assuage the religious discomforts of this or that sect, denomination, or cult.

Thus, in keeping our eyes on the prize, we should not allow ourselves to be distracted by the temptation to vent anger at what is, to all intents and purposes, a nonsubstantive decision turning on issues of law, not of policy. 

The Court’s opinion particularly Justice Kennard’s concurrence, offer guidance as to the Court’s rationale for its decision:
 "When the voters, through the exercise of their constitutionally guaranteed initiative power, have enacted a new statute or have amended the state Constitution, and the validity of that initiative is challenged in a judicial proceeding, who may appear in court to defend the initiative?
    "California‘s state trial and appellate courts have routinely permitted initiative proponents to defend an initiative‘s validity, and to appeal from a judgment holding an initiative invalid, particularly when state officials have declined to do so." (Concurrence of Kennard, J., slip opn. at 4-5, See also Majority slip opn., at 28-31. emphases added.)

The Court’s majority opinion also goes on to make it clear in no uncertain terms that “the state law issue that has been submitted to this court is totally unrelated to the substantive question of the constitutional validity of Proposition 8.”  Maj. slip opn. at 2. (emphasis added.)

In short, while anti-equality forces may try to spin today’s ruling as a victory, they should perhaps remember the old adage about being careful what one asks for, because one might get it.  If the State had been compelled to step in and defend Proposition 8, any of a number of outcomes could have been foreseen.  There might have been large-scale resignations from the Attorney General’s office by lawyers choosing to resign on principle rather than defend an odious law.  Conversely, the A.G.’s office might have, for the sheer sake of preserving its professional integrity, appointed the best and brightest lawyers it could secure.

As it is, Proposition 8 will now probably defended by the crew of cranks and crazies that defended it in the first place, along with their lawyers.  If the poor performance of the proponents’ legal team in the District Court and the Ninth Circuit is any predictor of any subsequent performance before the Court of Appeals, we may dare entertain a certain measure of optimism.

Sometimes, the battle one loses helps position oneself for a future win.  I hope -and with justification, I think- that is the case here.

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PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, CA.  Almost 20 years ago, he litigated one of the first marriage-equality cases in California.  The views contained here are his own.

A GOOD NIGHT TO BE A 99 PERCENTER: THE END OF THE BEGINNING

By:  Paul S. Marchand

It was a good night last night to be a Ninety-nine Percenter.
It was good to see mainstream Mainers restore a 38-year practice of election-day voter registration, rebuking the GOP’s consistent efforts to narrow the franchise.

It was good to see voters reject Mississippi’s misogynistic so-called personhood amendment that would have turned women into chattels of the state.

It was good to see the people of Ohio rise in support of public sector workers and their right to collectively bargain, reaffirming what ought to be an unquestionable American truth that our teachers, firefighters, and cops are our neighbors, not our enemies.

After the beating we Ninety-nine Percenters have taken in the last year at the hands of an out-of-control right wing, it was good to see us find our voice and reclaim our power at the polls.

But, as Winston Churchill said after the second battle of El Alamein,  "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

The analogy to El Alamein is a compelling one.  In late October and early November, 1942, Axis forces under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel stood just 50 miles from Alexandria.  If they could break through, the way to the Nile, to Cairo, and beyond that, the Suez Canal, lay open.  The only thing standing in their way was the British 8th Army, under Lt.Gen. Bernard Montgomery.

We may be grateful that Montgomery and the 8th Army were victorious at Alamein; the history of our world might have been a much darker one had the battle gone the other way.  Together with Stalingrad and Midway, El Alamein ranks as one of the most consequential battles of modern times.  As Churchill noted after the war: "before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein, we never had a defeat."

For the last many years, it has seemed as if we Ninety-Nine percenters had never had a victory.  Again and again, we had seen the playing field tilted against us; banks were bailed out at our expense, only to punish us for having rescued them with the pittances of our pockets.  Reward was privatized while risk was socialized.

We of the 99 percent were blamed for our improvidence in wanting to hold onto the American Dream, while the wizards of Wall Street were routinely rewarded for mediocre performance with end-of-year bonuses that exceeded by orders of magnitude the total lifetime earnings of most of their employees. 

When the “too big to fail” haves and have-mores defaulted on their obligations, it was everybody’s problem; when an average middle class family came up against hard times and needed help with the mortgage, it was that family’s “moral hazard.”

For us in the 99 percent, the hits just seemed to keep on coming.  We were routinely blamed for the shortcomings of others; for Wall Street, an economic downturn was a “correction;” the challenge for Wall Street was to ensure that the burdens of such a “correction” were borne by anybody but those whose incompetence and peculation had caused the “correction” in the first place.

For us, an economic downturn was more than a “correction;” it was a nightmare of deferred dreams, foreclosure fears, credit crunches, and the always uncertain footing that is the ineluctable concomitant of a playing field that was tilted ever more against us with each passing year.  Under such circumstances, was it surprising that so many middle and working class Americans should have been close to despair?

Perhaps that is why last night’s victories, in Maine, in Mississippi, and most importantly in Ohio, feel so good.  If nothing else, they have send a message that we can fight back, that we can say “no” to the ongoing effort of the One Percenters and their right-wing allies to grab all the goodies while leaving us to pay for their profligacy.  Against a right-wing mantra of “no, you can’t,” we of the 99 Percent have once again dared say “yes, we can!”  

For last night demonstrated that as much as we of the 99 Percent can Occupy Wall Street, we can also occupy our polling places, that we do have the ability to hold out, that we need no longer passively tolerate our spoliation. 

The muted rumble of approaching events we began to hear with the Wisconsin recalls is growing louder, and its message is clear:  the once-silent, once-close-to-despair 99 Percent has found its voice.  More importantly, we have found new hope.  Last night was our Alamein.

This is our country; we will occupy it. 
These are our cities, towns, and villages; we will occupy them.

And we will use the power of our numbers and our vote to preserve, protect, and defend what is ours.

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PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, CA, a working city full of 99 Percenters, including himself, even if not everybody in Cathedral City realizes it.  The views expressed herein are his own.  All rights reserved.

FEED THE RICH, TAX THE POOR, TILL THERE ARE NO POOR NO MORE

By: PAUL S. MARCHAND

Let’s blame the poor for being poor.

After that, we’ll tax the poor.

We’ll tax the poor till they have no more.

And then we’ll blame the poor even more.

It may sound like a bad riff on a Dr. Seuss story, but it’s actually the new political strategy being pushed by the American right.

There’s a kind of curiously unhinged, frothing-at-the-mouth quality to the way in which the American right has taken out after the poor and middle class in this country.  There certainly seems to be a disposition among the American right to want to turn on its head the lyric from Ten Years After’s classic song “I’d Love to Change the World”  “Feed the rich, tax the poor, till there are no poor no more.”

Commies. Fleabaggers. Freeloaders.  Losers. Malcontents.  Mooches. Socialists.  Scum.  Traitors.  Troublemakers.

We shouldn’t be surprised, only disgusted, to see defenders of the One Percent lashing out with such vitriolic words at America’s middle and working class, and particularly at those millions of Americans who are either living in poverty, on the brink of poverty, or in daily insecurity of their own economic position and status.  America’s One Percenters and their water-carriers in the media and in Congress use, and encourage their followers to use, bullying and hateful words most of their parents would not have tolerated from them as children.

If ever we needed proof that the American right is wrong, we have it now.

Perhaps that unhinged, frothing-at-the-mouth anger betokens -- at least among the more perspicacious One Percenters-- a realization that the American middle and working classes have grown tired of being despoiled in the interests of a very few wealthy individuals and corporations.  Perhaps a few of the One Percenters have begun to realize that the days when the Ninety Nine Percent would quietly acquiesce to being treated as an ATM are over.  When a company like General Electric pays no income tax at all, the Ninety Nine Percent’s irritation (to put it mildly) becomes understandable.

Certainly, behind the anger of the American right and their water-carriers should lie a real sense of worry.  Bullies often get worried when their targets begin to hit back.  Like the too-often bullied gay kid in school who one day rounds on his attacker and breaks his nose, a majority of the American public is becoming increasingly disinclined to tolerate the misconduct of the favored few at the expense of the middle and working class many.

Every movement, it seems, has its own series of turning points.  Like the 2011 World Series, whose turning point came in the Cardinals’ miraculous bottom-of-the-ninth rally in Game VI, the Occupy a movement’s turning point may very well have come when Scott Olsen, a twice-deployed Marine veteran, suffered a fractured skull at the hands of the Oakland Police.

For in that moment, millions of Americans who might otherwise have been inclined to dismiss the Occupy Movement as nothing more than a bunch of social undesirables throwing temper tantrums were forcibly confronted with the fact that the Occupy Movement looks a lot more like America than the right wing and too many of the mainstream media would have us believe.  When a decorated Marine veteran becomes the victim of officially-sanctioned violence, Americans sit up and take notice.

Shortly after the injuries to Scott Olsen became national news, a sometime constituent of mine, himself a Marine veteran, observed to me that of all the people the Oakland police could have hit and injured, it had to be a twice-deployed, gainfully employed Marine veteran.  Strike one.  Strike two.  Strike three.  As my former constituent noted to me, the Marines are perhaps most insular and clannish of all our armed services.  “Screw with one Marine,” my former constituent said to me, “and you’ve screwed with the entire Corps, living, dead, or yet to be born.”

What millions of Americans are now confronting is a disturbing reality that at least part of our social structure seems quite prepared to appeal to violence and hatred in order to avert a real conversation about the alarming growth of economic and fiscal inequality in this country.  If we are to avert class warfare, there must be a conversation that does not take as its starting point the idea that the poor are taxed too little and the rich too much.  The conversation also cannot start from Herman Cain’s wrong premise that the poor are to blame for their condition.

Of course, there have been times in our history when blaming the poor was not merely acceptable, but fashionable.  While Herman Cain might have been perfectly happy to live in such a time, he seems to forget that under such a dispensation he himself would have been worse than poor; he would have been a slave.  A society that claims to be Judeo-Christian in its values and outlook nevertheless seems astonishingly forgetful of repeated scriptural admonitions showing God’s preferential option for the poor.

Despite the admonitions of Scripture and even of the better angels of our personal natures, blaming the poor and inciting hatred toward them have become all too common in a society which has managed to go altogether too far toward re-creating and glorifying the inequalities of France’s ancien régime, and which refuses to find any lessons in the collapse thereof .  Like Talleyrand’s Bourbons, the right-wing mockers and abusers of the middle class and the poor seem to have forgotten nothing and learned nothing.  

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PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California.  The views expressed herein are his own.