Keillor’s “Homegrown Democrat” takes on Bush administration

by Polly Mann

If you, like me, believe that the greatest threat this country and the world today faces is the reelection of George W. Bush, I would urge you to run, not walk, to the nearest bookstore and buy a bunch—that’s right, a bunch—of copies of Garrison Keillor’s book “Homegrown Democrat.”

What lies ahead of us, with Bush, is not only continued warfare, including the militarization of space but also the degradation of the environment to the point of destruction. If we’re concerned about leaving a world for our children, we have to take action. Send a copy to friends who agree with you and friends who don’t. This book can help defeat Bush. I’m even sending a copy to my teenage grandsons. While they can’t vote, the sentiments expressed in the book will help them develop into the men their parents and I want them to be. But Garrison says it far better than I. Ergo: “The Union is what needs defending this year.”

Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. Not even close. This gang of Pithecanthropus Republicanii has humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from town and clear-cut the forest and gut the IRS and promote the corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them. Their crusade against government has given patriotism a bad name. And their victory has been accompanied by such hubris as would choke a goat. One Republican columnist wrote that Democrats should give up opposing tax breaks for the rich because working people don’t vote their self-interest, they vote their aspirations and are happy to give big gifts to rich people because they hope to become rich too.

“Democrats have changed America in simple, basic ways in the last fifty years that have benefited everyone … Equal opportunity in education, employment, housing. There is general agreement on the right to a dignified old age, guaranteed by the state. Democrats led the way in bringing these things about. It’s one thing to get into power and do favors for your friends; it’s quite another to touch the conscience of a nation. The last Republican to do that was Teddy Roosevelt.”

All this is interspersed with vignettes from Garrison’s boyhood, years at the University of Minnesota up until today. The writing is brilliant, reminding me of painters whose style is so simple that the unappreciative might say, sniffing, “Reminds me of my 6-year-old daughter’s coloring book.” But those of us who have tried to achieve his informal conversational style know how difficult it is to attain. In some ways the book is evocative of filmmaker Michael Moore’s productions, but how can you compare a videotape with a book, even an easily-read slim one of 266 pages?

It is a book to be shared. Laid up in the hospital with a worn-out kneecap I forced my visitors to listen to me read aloud at least a page or so. The book might well be entitled “Biography of a Grateful Appreciative Homegrown American.” If among your friends are school teachers (K through PhD) who don’t share your political views, send them this book, suggesting that they begin with the section on page 189 entitled “Democrats are diehard teachers,” which contains the following: “Offer college courses to prison inmates and you will raise morale and reduce violence in ways that lockdowns cannot. Sit the drug addicts down in a circle and get them to educate each other. Even violent young adolescent males can be rescued by the right sort of teacher. Education is an expensive proposition but there’s no choice: nobody is born smart and we need good schools. Every child needs a beloved teacher in the early grades to instill a love of school, that enchanted world of books and paper and pencils and multiplication tables and maps and pictures, a love that will see the child through stretches of tedium and moments of panic. When you wage war on the public schools, you’re attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You’re not a conservative, you’re a vandal.”

“Homegrown Democrat” reveals Garrison’s idealism and his respect for the old-fashioned virtues of humility, generosity and compassion. This is such a mercenary society. In past decades people tended to hide their greed. But today, love of money is considered by many to be a laudable patriotic characteristic, establishing you as a “real American,” and it’s admitted with no apologies. In a recent Star Tribune article about the commercial development of a pristine area in the Rocky Mountains, which would add thousands to the population, Red McCombs, owner of the Vikings, said he envisioned a town with residents recreating with so much money it was pouring from their pockets. Not a word about the accompanying environmental degradation. Take that you protestors—you bleeding-heart liberals.

“Homegrown Democrat” (after I’ve lent it again and again) will reside among the permanent and beloved books in my library, including “The Seeds of Contemplation” by Thomas Merton; “The Art of Loving” by Erich Fromm; “The Greek Passion” by Nikos Kazantzakis; the essays of Arundhati Roy; “The Last of the Just” by Andre Schwarz-Bart; and a book unknown to everybody to whom I’ve recommended it, “Promoting Polyarchy” by William L. Robinson.