the People’s Democratic Republic of Vermont and the The Second Vermont Republic
Sayseth Bernie Sanders: The truth is that Bush and Karl Rove do not like Vermont for a lot of reasons. They don’t like the fact that Jim Jeffords gave the Senate over to the Democrats. They don’t like Howard Dean. They don’t like Leahy. They don’t like me.
But let’s face it. This is a Bernie Sanders sales pitch, waving his hand for campaign funds from “the people”, as he attempts to become “The People’s Champion” in the Upper Chamber of America’s legislative branch. Being that he is, however nominally, a socialist, he’s not funding his campaign with corporate finances. Thus, according to Bernie Sanders, it is Vermont versus the World, or Vermont versus the Monolith United States Republican Government.
But since when are Jim Jeffords, Howard Dean, Bernie Sanders, and especially Patrick Leahy, Vermont? Heck, the state has a Republican Governor, you know. The Soul of Vermont politics lies elsewhere.
The group’s seriousness of purpose is evident in its literate monthly, Vermont Commons, which includes contributions from the likes of Wendell Berry, Bill McKibben, and Kirkpatrick Sale on such topics as family and organic farming, community-supported agriculture, land trusts, and local currencies—constituting in sum, a humane and practicable alternative to the Empire of Wal-Mart and Warfare. The tincture is green, but conservative, too, and although Naylor refuses to kiss up to his state’s hack politicians—he calls Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy “a world-class prostitute”—the Republican lieutenant governor has praised the SVR for “their energy and their passion.”
I now ask the question… where is this profession of “radical puppeteers”?
The Rev. Ben T. Matchstick, a radical puppeteer, called the assembly to irreverent order with a benediction invoking “the flounder, the sunfish, and the holy mackerel.”
The Comics Journal had a feature on the “Radical Puppeter’s” of the Bread and Puppet Theater pamphlets… a worthy issue, even if the lead editorial is a cop-out. Radical Puppeteers of the World, unite… in… getting Vermont to secede from the Union? As praised by Pat Buchanan’s magazine?
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McClaughry is a cussed original whose work I have long admired, but unless the defining characteristics of “anti-American leftism” are a loathing of Wal-Mart, the Iraq War, and Big Government and a fondness for organic farming, town meeting, and a Vermont First ethic, the SVR seems to me a wholesomely shaggy band of ur-Americans, not anti-Americans.
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Maybe I’ll travel to the Republic of Vermont. A nice place to visit, but my soul rests in the nation I live in… The Republic of Cascadia…
(Goddamned it, I hope in the land of Cascadia, I can sign the flag every which way I want — the same as the President!