Strangest Dream

 President Dwight Eisenhower speculated: “I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it.”
        
The following is an excerpt from a New Year’s parable entitled, “Dorothy and Toto's Amazing Inauguration Day,” by Irving Westley Hall, who describes it as a “New Year's story that is optimistic yet politically sophisticated—indeed revolutionary.” 

“Then Ronnie Gilbert, the once blacklisted folksinger, enchanted the crowd with a song that John Denver had sung on the same steps in 1971.

Last night I had the strangest dream I'd ever dreamed before

I dreamed the world had all agreed To put an end to war

I dreamed I saw a mighty room Filled with women and men

And the paper they were signing said They'd never fight again

And when the paper was all signed And a million copies made

They all joined hands and bowed their heads And grateful pray'rs were prayed

And the people in the streets below Were dancing 'round and 'round

While swords and guns and uniforms Were scattered on the ground

Last night I had the strangest dream I'd never dreamed before

I dreamed the world had all agreed To put an end to war.”

Irving Westly Hall taught at SUNY Delhi. He’s a writer and lifelong political activist, who debated Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970. Hall authored of the novel “The Einstein Sisters Bag the Flying Monkeys” another political fable in which secular Jewish and Christian fundamentalist teenagers unite to prevent Bush and Cheney's theft of the 2000 election. 

Today, his message is: “The present reality is that people are hurting and angry at the betrayals by all of our so-called leaders in both parties.  We, the American people, are receiving a crash course in class consciousness from the most arrogant and shameless ruling class in more than a hundred years.  If we're not willing to take informed and audacious action, Obama will fail miserably and open the floodgates to American fascism.”