Warren VT, 4 July 2015: Senator Sanders in the Ship of State
I have just
returned from a delightful family vacation in Vermont where, thanks to an
opportunity offered by the new “sharing economy” we were able to establish
ourselves in a beautiful private chalet, with sufficient room for six adults
and three small but energetic kids, near Warren, Vermont. I had taken with me lots of “scholarship” and
numerous brave intentions for “activities”.
What I mainly did, it hardly needs saying, was to hang out with my
grandkids and read novels, though there was a respectable amount outdoorsy
stuff of the genre reported on last week.
There
proved to be an unexpected politico-cultural highpoint to the week—namely the
civic parade mounted by the Town of Warren on the Fourth of July. The small town Fourth of July parade is very
old-fashioned, very New England, and very Norman Rockwell. From my many years teaching at Bread Loaf I
was vaguely aware of the popularity and ambition of such parades, which are the
rough equivalent in the American civil religion of many medieval saints’
festivals. Bristol, not too far up the
road from Middlebury, was reported to have a notable one. Perhaps also Brandon and Salisbury to the
south. Within certain generic
limitations, there is said to be a considerable amount of distinctive local
spirit among these festivities.
Certainly the Warren parade has a delightful character all its own
centered on a rather wacky float competition.
The floats,
intermingled with marching musicians, stray children and domestic animals,
happy patriots and a few free-lance exhibitionists, move along several blocks
of Warren’s Main Street, thickly hemmed in on both sides by enthusiastic
spectators, before coming to rest a couple of hundred yards up a side
road. The atmosphere among both paraders
and spectators was carnivalesque but also deeply patriotic. One word that comes to mind is eclectic. There was to begin with a certain amount of
the usual. There was a solemn-looking
guy driving a stolid-looking tractor.
There was another guy with an antique motor vehicle, which of course
died in the middle of the road and had to be shunted to one side. So far as I could tell the medium was the
message for these motorists, who pursued no identifiable political agenda. Many others did, of course. There was an enthusiastic group of female
dancers, or perhaps cheerleaders, celebrating the recent decision of the
Supreme Court concerning “marriage equality” and advertising their support for
the LBGT community. One of the
subthemes, made explicit on tee-shirts among the crowd, was “Black lives
matter”. (This seemed to be a generally
unexceptional and pious sentiment rather than a pointed local critique, though
I did see three black people among a crowd I would estimate at many thousands.) At least one of the floats was pointedly local. It was a kind of mobile petition to reinstate
“Laurie”—apparently a beloved teacher, school nurse, or librarian who had been
let go under circumstances unknown to me by the local School Board.
It was the
winning float, however, that was most instructive. It was called “Bernie Rocks the Boat”, and it
was the collaborative work of a like-minded group that included several of my
son Richard’s Red Hook neighbors from Brooklyn.
These people have various connections with the Warren region, where several
of them summer. The world knows that
Bernie Sanders, formerly of Brooklyn, is a United States Senator from Vermont,
and that Bernie Sanders, though a political Independent, is a candidate for the
Democratic Party’s nomination for President.
What at least my personal part of the world didn’t know is that a lot of
people in Vermont are very serious about his candidacy.
I must
describe the creators of this float as material artists of rare talent and
absolute geniuses of political theater.
The boat that Bernie was rocking, the USS “Status Quo” berthed in
Washington, was constructed mainly of lathe framing and expertly painted
cardboard. It would be hard to suggest
an allegory more fitting to our current ship of state. The “Status Quo” must
have been a good thirty feet long. Out
of it rose a huge simulacrum of Bernie Sanders, composed of God knows what
materials. Bernie’s enormous glasses,
for example, seemed to have once been an automobile windshield. The Senator 's large mitts invited a certain amount of poetic license. The boat was constructed in such a way that
viewers along the route could not see the people within it who were helping to
propel it and to make it rock dramatically every now and then. It soon became obvious that the Status Quo
being rocked was our Big Money Politics as Usual represented by various disquieted
Republican candidates, but also, and conspicuously, by Bill and Hillary
Clinton. There were many other witty
features that probably would have clinched the prize even had the content not
been so widely approved.
Mal-de-mer among the one percenters
I grant that
the demographics of rural Vermont have changed a bit since the Fourth of July
in 1872, when Calvin Coolidge was born there.
Affluent urbanites with summer properties have replaced Robert Frost’s
hired men. Yet far better than most of
our rural states, today’s Vermont has negotiated without excessive trauma the de facto disappearance of the early
agrarian republic. I noted years ago
that the state is full of the kinds of eccentric human character, energy, and
micro-entrepreneurship that conservatives prize, at least rhetorically. Senator Sanders is usually an enthusiastic
participant in two or three civic parades in the state he represents, but this
year he was off in Iowa among the ethanol addicts where he was doing some
rocking on his own behalf. I was amused
to read an article in Monday’s Times entitled “Sanders' Momentum in Iowa Leaves Clinton Camp on Edge.” It began thus: “The
ample crowds and unexpectedly strong showing garnered by Senator Bernie Sanders
are setting off worry among advisers and allies of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who
believe the Vermont senator could overtake her in Iowa polls by the fall and
even defeat her in the nation’s first nominating contest there.”
Photographs courtesy of Richard A. Fleming, exercising his first amendment rights above, and Joan Fleming
