I watch "Cold Case" in the wee hours because I can't sleep anyway and It is usually about some issue dear to the heart of this 60s child.  I know everyone thinks I am a right wing fascist (partly true) but last night I got to remember where my passion for politics came from.  The show was abot some lame 50s housewives selling Tupperware against racism (I kid you not--this is one worth looking up) but what got me was the few seconds of films they shot of black people in Mississipi being sprayed with hoses by the southern cops--I remember those pictures from when I was 6 years old. I remember they were the very first things in my life that made me aware of racism and oppression, and they were the reason I wrote my very first  political missive--  a very angry letter to then president Kennedy asking how he could allow such things to happen. I knew nothing about anything at that point-- it was a comletely emotional and intuitive response to great injustice, and the fact that people watched it on tv--well that just seemed barbaric. Awful. Hideous.  It caught me by surprise, how powerful those images still are-- I just started crying and crying.  And now I know why I got to see those films again. Because that's where my politics began and that's where they will always live-- in my heart.  It isn't a matter of left or right, it's a matter of how human are you going to be? Are you going to immerse yourself in statistics and "pragmatic" solutions?  Will you ever be able to use words like "justice" without blushing?  Are the questions you debate about human beings, or statistics? 

Want to know the political state of this nation?  Walk down the damn street and look into the eyes of the beggars and the homeless.