A Little Revolution Now And Again Wouldn't Hurt
The election is over and what has changed? What will change. I doubt much. There was so much violence (violence of the mouth and mind is still violence.) It's no wonder attack has become the primary political strategy whether one is running for dog catcher or president. America is a joke. Worse, America is a lie.
Once awakened, we realize that The Great American Dream is really a nightmare, a siren song entrancing us, luring us onto the coast where our vessel is crushed between tide and rock. Once visited, we discover that The City on The Hill is a rat-infested slum that provides penthouses for a few and bitter lies to the rest who wear the lies proudly, believing that someday, they, too, or their children will be given access to the upper levels. Where once we imagined living among giants, we strip off the distorting glasses to see a mass of little, hunched-over people with sour faces, drooling and swearing, shoving and pushing, stealing and hording simply because they can.
Walk the talk. Give me a break. Christian super-ministers and born-again members of Congress fondle little boys. Liberal do-gooders restrain themselves from acting in the public interest if it could mean one more seat in Congress on Tuesday. Hungry children? Sorry, we simply have to win the 6th in Indiana.
We don't have sides, we have slogans. It's easier to remember slogans, and, if someone challenges you, you simply repeat the slogan louder and louder until the little pest goes away. We don't have ideas, we have ideologies which, when stripped of their very expensive veneer, are revealed to be religions masquerading as policy.
And they expect us to vote after we jump headfirst into the cesspool of modern politics and emerge cleansed of all ideals.
It's so easy to attack. It requires no great intellectual prowess, it demands little of our critical faculties, and it feels good even though, if we were honest with ourselves, we'd recognize that the attacks on our opponents resonate only with those who already agree with us.
We create caricatures of our political adversaries regardless of accuracy, and we show our most venal, angry, petulant sides attacking those whom we presume think differently than we do. And different must carry some malevolent characteristics that, by themselves, stand as reason enough to call down the wrath of the almighty. How pitiable we've become.
When do we stop and ask what we're doing to our country, our values, our role in the world, and, especially, ourselves? When do we show the slightest bit of humility and acknowledge that we don't have all the answers -- we may have one of the answers -- but we're willing to sit down with anyone, anywhere, and just talk? Just offer our ideas and listen to what others have to say -- listen so hard it melts our brains?
I'm tired to making fun of conservatives -- it's like shooting apples in a barrel with a 12-gauge shotgun. And it's just as easy for conservatives to shoot at us apple-headed liberals.
But I'm not a liberal, conservative, libertarian, radical, or any other species of political animal that's been bred to provide sustenance for all the others. I have no allegiance that couldn't be turned by honesty, integrity, compassion, intelligence, openness... but would I even recognize it or, worse, would it be just another sophisticated shell game?
We are so frightened as a nation that we hide behind the comic book characters who'll promise us the illusion of protection. I don't think Bush, Cheney, and Rummy are bad people -- but they're the wrong people for the job. If challenged to present Democratic alternatives, I mutter and shuffle my feet and claim a prior engagement at the proctologist's. We set such absurd standards that good people would have to be crazy to run for public office, which is why when election day rolls around, we're up to our elbows in cow manure, desperately seeking someone who might smell a little less bad than anyone else.
Something has happened to America; I don't understand what it is. The rest of the world has always been a mess, but we have always told ourselves that we were different, special. The truth is that we are not. It's almost impossible to apply the disciplines of history, sociology, or psychology to the time in which one lives, so we thrash about, desperate for some coherent structure that provides us a direction, a sense of purpose, a meaning... all the while knowing deep in our hearts that we're grasping at absurdities.
If it's broken, fix it.
America is broken. We are not who we want to be, we don't act in harmony with our beliefs and values, and we treat all with suspicion and resent that others are suspicious of us.
A little revolution purges the soul, but I don't believe in violence. A successful revolution is not worth the death of one human being, but I long for a revolution that rends the fabric of our society until we're all in rags with no choice but to rebuild. To rebuild having understood the reason for the failures of the past. No one need die, but no one can avoid the pain of a revolution. Does pain with a purpose have value? Or is it just another in a long series of sleight-of-hand tricks played upon us by ourselves?
For we are to blame. We are the little, hunched-over people swearing and drooling. We trust no one and demand to be trusted. We seek out the cesspool. It cleanses us in some Stygian way.
Come Tuesday, will you vote? Will you believe that your vote matters? That option A is far superior to option B? Is not voting a revolutionary statement or simply an act of boredom or frustration?
What should break your heart is that, if you truly came to understand the majority of people around you, you'd find deep commonality and purpose, a desire for justice and fairness. But we live on the surface where tactical issues are the ammunition we feed into our weapons of human destruction.
Who will join me in revolution? And who will explain to me how we are to bring one about?Who will join me in revolution? And who will explain to me how we are to bring one about?
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"Who will join me in revolution? And who will explain to me how we are to bring one about?"
I had an idea on this in 2004. How did the Sex Pistols get the Rolling Stones attention? By doing what the Rolling Stones should have been doing all along and just enough public imagination to make it fly - short & bitter/sweet songs. If the Rolling Stones can make a change for the better then surely our grated nation can.
I made the decision to run for president of the United States. It's absurd, yes. But how else can you get people's attention and show them that there is an alternative to current paradigms?
I'll join your revolution if you'll join mine. Besides, I could use a great speech writer!
-~wolf
Posted by: Timbre' Wolf | December 07, 2006 at 04:06 PM