The Second US Revolution?

Sometimes you have to step back and take a look at the Big Picture. If, like me, you find yourself exhausted keeping up with the continuing criminal antics of Bush & Co, amazed at the ongoing public indifference to this militaristic, big business White House coup, and less than enthused by the tepid outrage of Kerry campaigners, then - like me - you may have wondered what lies beyond November 2nd, 2004. Sure, it's Anybody But Bush till then, but what about afterwards... ? The last four years reveal what a horrible hole the Western world has dug itself into - so how do we get out of it?

Well, Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Howard Dean, may have the answer, or at least part of it. Joe argues that the Dean campaign was "the first shot in America's second revolution."

Far from being a laughable failure, as the mainstream media has retrospectively portrayed it, he says the Dean campaign was "the opening salvo in a revolution, the sound of hundreds of thousands of Americans turning off their televisions and embracing the only form of technology that has allowed them to be involved again, to gain control of a process that alienated them decades ago. In the coming weeks and months and years, these hundreds of thousands will be followed by millions, and this revolution will not be satisfied with overthrowing a corrupt and unresponsive political system. It won't stop at remaking politics. And it won't pay attention to national borders."

Here's a very thought-provoking chapter from Trippi's new book, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, which includes this fly-on-the-wall moment:

"Howard Dean is standing against the wall, his back to me. He's shaking.

'You made this too easy,' he manages to say.

'What?' I ask.

'This. I never thought it would go this far. I was going to raise my profile, raise health care as an issue, shake up the Democratic Party. Help change the country. But I never thought this would happen. Don't you understand?' He turns and faces me. 'I never thought I could actually win. I wanted to . . . but I never really thought it could happen.'"