"We need to save democracy from capitalism, and save capitalism from itself." —Kevin J. Delaney, “American Workers Deserve to Live With Dignity,” The New York Times, July 5, 2020
Let us pretend this leopard can
Change its spots, let us dream
The impossible dream once more.
Not this old boy, who's not ready
For one more plunge into an
Unfulfillable dream to overturn
The one created by our Indian-
Killing, slave-owning heroes by
Our greed-consumed wheelers
And dealers and salesmen from
The Frontier to Silicon Valley, a
Dream without roots in democracy
But in the cult of Mammon and Mars,
Talking the big lie, the bigger promise,
But walking in the bloody footsteps of
Absurdities and atrocities committed
Against the humanism no magician or
Leader can inject into the heart of our
Homegrown capitalism.
We can "save" democracy in America
By making it our way of life, democracy
With its own culture grown from the
Essential democratic truths about the
Values of human life, beginning with the
Long march of democracy, sustained by
The new American Dream, through the
"Unprecedented waves and storms" our
Poet of democracy predicted and, with
Grit, patience and luck reach that "city
Upon a hill" as it morphs from myth into
A place of democratic life.
George Salamon, inspired by Whitman, in St. Louis, MO.