The Ice Flow

VagabondGuru.com is a website about ideas.

The Ice Flow is the place on the site where Political discussion takes place.

Guru established the site as a forum for views borne of education and life experience that are identified solidly with the much derided American 'center'. Guru comes from a place that has been all but forgotten by an America that scarcely knows who she is in 2009 - a place that formed the BASE of FDR's support in the '30s and '40s, but was shunted aside in the post war ebullience and saw its voice move from the mainstream to the off-beat. A place co-opted by mainstream media and political operatives and mis-categorized over the past thirty years, but which still contains, broadly, the generic belief of America.

This form of Working Class Progressivism once fueled the American Labor movement - no more.

It was once THE voice of the American Left - no more.

It was found in the words of Jack Newfield, Jimmy Breslin, Mario Cuomo, Barney Frank, and still can be found, just not as readily as it once was...before the Religious Right hijacked the debate and used semantics and phraseology to marginalize this constituency, which it rightly blamed for the FDR progressivism that had marginalized the Religious Right! They called these people 'Reagan Democrats', even though, the overwhelming majority of them would no more vote for Reagan and his anti-labor ideas than they'd cut their legs off with rusty saws. The idea being, associate the demographic with its antithesis and it will wither.

It Worked.

Beautifully.

As a result, many working Americans feel disconnected from the Left they once represented, they feel estranged from an ideology that comes from those who have never known toil and regard their efforts and their pride as displaced, a form of 'Wage Slavery' (Chomsky). This thinking, an academic elitism speaks to the working person from 'on high', offering condescension and emancipation fantasies with no grounding in real-life experience.

Guru's view of the American Electorate, 2009, holds that the country is split (effectively) between Democrats and Republicans, Left and Right and that this split exists upon a continuum.

On the Right, the GOP is dominated by Religious Right, Feudalist and Jingoist elements, comprising some 60% of the Party, or, roughly 30% of Americans - something like 90 Million people.

On the Left, the Democrats are less ideologically polarized, but not by much. The party is split about 50/50 between Leftists who want fundamental changes to American economic, social and cultural approaches (75 Million people) and those who believe America already has the system in place, as designed by the founders and developed in 233 years of this experiment, to handle all that ails it, as long as it avoids the hubris and criminality of the Feudal right.

The Mainstream media has concentrated, in the post Internet age on defining Party politics by these polarized extremes, the coverage and the bulk of public debate rage on between Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, Rick Warren and their various cohorts on the Right and MSNBC, Moveon.org, Howard Dean and their acolytes on the Left.

These elements comprise approximately 165 Million Americans. They have no in-house voice in The Ice Flow. But their voices cannot be drowned out, so ubiquitous is their braying...they need no forum here to be heard yet they cannot be AVOIDED in American discourse, a forum must be provided.

Accordingly, Guru will file The Ice Flow on Weds, Thurs and Friday of each wee, speaking from his working class progressive viewpoint and will bring in voices 'From the Right' every Monday and 'From the Left' every Tuesday to discuss a defined topic that will be presented in Friday's column. ANYONE who reads the site and believes their views to come from either camp is invited to address the topic in column form and submit their writing to the editor - each week, the strongest voice from each group will have a forum. It is my hope that this will provide an honest exchange of ideas without detaching from our charter, which is to serve an underserved center of American Political thought that comprises some 135 Million Americans.