Hello from Little Rock 11/17/04. This evening, they are opening the festivities for the Clinton Library.

But even as they do, I wonder if it isn't, by the second, becoming increasingly irrelevant.

You have touched a nerve with me, and I suspect with a lot of people, as we see these reports about the third parties trying to put together the money to recount the election.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are all in Little Rock, flipping us all the bird, bragging on themselves and their Clinton Library.

Well, I'm a lifelong AR resident. I would have appreciated all this a lot more if they'd timed it a little differently. It is a colossal case of bad timing.

I'm not a Vietnam veteran--or a veteran of any kind. I'm poor, and I struggle to believe the Democratic Party is about me. I'm a male WASP from the South. I have so many back and forth feelings about the Democratic Party anyway. No matter how poor you are, or even if you are homeless, the Democrtats often seem totally indifferent if you're a white male, especially from the South.

Clinton touched that nerve, with me. He was poor, he wasn't a veteran, he too was expected to wait in line behind a whole roomful of people (i.e., military veterans) for any job he got.

I think it maybe was a group of fellows from my group, who made a statement with his candidacy. These last two fellows the Democrats have run--I'm sorry, they just insulted the hell out of me, anyway. "Vietnam veteran" Gore's ads kept increasingly saying in the last three weeks of the 2000 campaign. "I felt strongly enough about this country's security to put my life on the line" said Kerry, making reference to Cheney's student deferment.

My group of guys are out here. We're not veterans. We can't stand those kinds of statements. And, we vote.

It so happens, I was forgiving enough, and contemptuous of Bush enough, to take this guff and vote Democrat anyway.

But hey, let's flash back just a little further:

Lloyd Bentsen. Good ol' Lloyd. Remember him? "Senator, you're no John F. Kennedy." Yet, on that election night, 1988, well before the polls had closed in New Mexico, Oregon, Washington and--most of all--Western Texas--Lloyd Bentsen went before the cameras and CONCEDED. It's just faintly possible that he didn't give a care whether Quayle was a JFK or not--because he was a buddy of LBJ, who some people think had JFK killed.

So, for all the tough talk, all the concern, all the insults at me that I took, in the end, that's all he was about. He wasn't about "protecting democracy."

If he was so concerned about it that the "put his life on the line," as his ads put it, where is he now, in one of democracy's darkest hours in its struggle with internal US fascism?

Again the tough guy, except when it comes to the real battle. He'd defend bogus democracy in S. Vietnam, but not real democracy in America. What gives?

Sorry, a veteran probably wouldn't sympathize much with what I've said. I know some of them have "put their lives on the line" but the lion's share of them haven't even been in as much danger as I've been a hundred times in my life due to having to drive old beat up cars with bad brakes around because I can't land a good paying job because of standing in line behind veterans.

So, how much are they "protecting" me, in the real world? How much do I really owe them?

I wish I could feel worse about this defeat. I am, in fact, concerned about Kerry losing this election. But I'm not DEPRESSED, I'm PARANOID. The Bush machinery is taking over the democratic processes, the three branches, and most people are just so damned ignorant--even people in the news media. THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE.

I can't believe how indifferent the mainstream media has appeared over the past couple of weeks, to this phenomenon of the GOP controlling ALL THREE branches of the gov't. It's never happend before and now it's been going on for four years.and seems destined to go on for at least two more.

Two pivotal and successful Democratic Senate candidates have died under suspicious circumstances in the last two election cycles. Now, all this about voter stifling and exit poll variance and computer glitches giving Bush thousands of votes.

And the Democrats are in Little Rock, reminiscing about the good old days tonight and waiting for W. Bush and his father to get here tomorrow and slap Clinton and his wife on their respective backs.

Shucks and darn.

I hope the "rumor" you hear is right that the Kerry people are fixing to jump back into the election again. But right now, it's looking like the only people really concerned about US democracy are a handful of ragtag Libertarians.

And Ralph Nader, who I really believe is responsible for this problem to begin with, by being such a prick last time and costing Gore Florida--and the election of 2000, which set off this whole fascist takeover thing.

Even further back--Mondale always seemed so bored, so disinterested. He told several people he never wanted to be President. His wife apparently didn't really want him to be President. WHY DID THEY INSIST ON RUNNING HIM THEN?

Similarly, I wasn't around in the 1950s, but from what I've learned about Stevenson, he didn't really want to be President either. Anyway, right now the stakes are awfully high for the two-party system. Too high for personality guessing games and infighting among Democrats, progessives and Libertarians. I keep flashing back to the Weimar Republic in Germany--and, before that, to the French Revolution. The progressive and leftist could never do anything but destroy each other. They could never lay a glove on the Nazis.

Similarly, with the Persians on the plain of Thermopylae, the Greeks were busy hurling insults at each other.

For what it's worth, I don't know if there's much Kerry can do, anyway. I think we may have blown this democracy.

Best wishes, Max Standridge
Blue collar Democrat (with a hard-earned MA degree)
Author of _Tim, George Bush and Me: The Undercurrents in All Our Lives_.
_The Great Old Record of the Grand Old Party: Cheating?_
and the pending _The Diplomats, Dad and Me_.
(none of which any publisher will touch because they include memoir and I'm not a veteran)