I am pretty sure that’s a line from the lyrics of a song from the ’60’s or ’70’s.
Hang on a sec … let me check Google. Oh … lots of results from people seeking to find out the same thing I was wondering.
From Answers.com:
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People Get Ready. The Chambers Brothers sang it a long time ago. Rod Stewart covered it. But it was originally an old spiritual about a train to heaven. It has meaning for me in that it is about life itself being a spiritual journey in preparation for one’s eventual death …
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The reason I used those lyrics for the title of this blog post ?
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The new politics of class war point to a frightening future
RICHARD FLORIDATwo years ago almost to the day, I sat at a coffee shop in Washington, D.C., talking about the upcoming U.S. election with a good friend who was an editor at a major political monthly. Though never a fan of George W. Bush, I suggested that the President might be a transitional figure, his administration essentially holding back a tectonic populist, rightward shift in American politics. I told my friend I was fearful of what could come next.
He looked me squarely in the eye and said simply: “That’s not what frightens me. What has me terrified is the right-wing backlash that will come when a more liberal, left-leaning administration takes office in January, 2009.”
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I couldn’t get past the first paragraph without getting pissed. I absolutely can not take anyone seriously who says
Never in the history of the US, not even in the McCarthy era has there been an administration that caters to the extreme right wing. I suppose it’s possible that he meant that has so disgraced the right that in and of itself has caused a swing to the left, and if so he would be sort of correct (although I can’t derive that from his article).
What Obama has done is complete what Dean started in 2000, energizing the left. While there certainly are disillusioned conservatives who, “having seen the light”, are turning more progressive, I doubt those numbers are huge enough to justify the premise that Bush’s disgraceful administration has stopped a rush to the right. What Obama has done is lit the fire to get involved and do something in people who were already progressive by nature.
He’s wrong no matter how you interpret that statement.
er…. that should be “that caters so much to the extreme right wing”
I think you’re right, Doug. Florida annoys me most of the time, and basically I think he is a sign of our times … what Erich Fromm calls “marketing man”.
I’m not paying attention so much to what he says but rather treating this (the quotation from his friend about the possibility of strife) as just another of many not-so-weak signals.
I’m indulging my hobby of (attempts at) pattern recognition.