I even collected a bunch of quotes from it, just now. Thank you all for your thoughts! We have a sort of collective consciousness emerging here--involving the blow of 11/2, followed by trauma after trauma, and hope after hope, ups and downs, but a pretty clear vision of what's wrong, and a strong determination to set it right.
I have felt since 11/2 that history tapped us on the shoulder that night with no less a task than saving American democracy, and passing it along to future generations, as it was passed by others to us.
I see that others, too, feel that way--that 11/2 was like a big earthquake. Our democracy came tumbling down all around us, and now we have to figure out how to reconstruct it from the broken pieces.
We had an illusion of democracy, and we were going along with that, thinking things would be put right by an election. Then, poof, gone!
It was a thrilling thing to see the great democracy movement that arose to throw Bush and his cabal out. I've never seen anything like it in my life time, and I go way back (first political activity, for JFK in 1960, when I was 16).
All the more devastating was the robbery of this election, with such a young and beautiful movement just being born. The Dark Lords hacked it to pieces. But it is recovering, slowly, and it will win in the end. Because why? Because truth and justice and democracy and world peace are such fabulous ideas, that have been in development for so very long--for millenia. They are what everybody wants, what the whole world wants. And Bush's retrograde cabal and its PNAC are minor aberrations and very short-lived by comparison.
History is very much on the side of progress, more consciousness, inclusiveness, fairness and higher development of our sensitivity to the environment and to the universe.
But we, who were born to relative privilege and wealth (compared to the rest of the world)--we who were GIVEN democracy, rather than earning it-- must now struggle for what we believe in, just as so many before us struggled, first for democracy, then for inclusiveness and fairness.
It is a tremendous responsibility, and this is truly one of those turning points in history, the question now being whether American democracy, which has inspired so many around the world, can put itself right.
It has always done so in the past--through many terrible events--slavery, the Civil War, the massacres of Native Americans, the violent repression of labor unions, the Depression, the defeat of Nazism, the horror of the Vietnam war--with an ever expanding definition of human and civil rights, and constant improvement in the mechanisms of world peace.
The day that Martin Luther King spoke out against the Vietnam War, and talked about the racism of it--both of the killing of "gooks" (the Vietnamese) and of the drafting of so many poor blacks to do it--was a tremendously important moment. It was his death knell, I believe--and mealy-mouthed, "centrist" Democrats criticized him for connecting the war with racism. I remember that well. But he was so right! And it was a huge and vitally important insight, and one that is essential to world peace.
The BushCons are trying to drag us backward--back to the 1910s and 20s and the era of the Robber Barons. In fact, they've done so. That's where we are now--with the Oil Cartel and the Arms manufacturers in complete control of foreign policy, and the rich blatantly stealing from the poor. The result then was catastrophe--worldwide economic depression and a senseless slaughter such as the world had never seen, in WWI.
And they are also dragging us back to racism. Now we're killing the "ragheads" and stealing their oil. And guess who gets recruited to do that? Once again, often it's young poor blacks with no other options. Then these new fascists turn right around and blatantly suppress black voters, with tactics as racist and illegal as the Jim Crow laws.
Now, it's all going backward. The wealth we have accumulated--from the creativity and productivity of American workers--is being blatantly stolen. The social welfare that we have arranged for the elderly, the sick and the poor--blatantly destroyed and stolen, and fed into the maw of the Military-Industrial monster in our midst. And blatant official racism--in voting, of all things!--goes unpunished.
Backward, backward, backward--that's where they're pushing us. But, you know what? I don't think Americans want to go backward. The majority has been brutally propagandized and made to feel like we are the minority. But if you were to ask almost any American on the street, Do you think blacks should have the right to vote?, or Do you think Social Security should be preserved as the one financially sound government program, and one of the few government programs that actually helps people?, or Should we be working for peace in the world and not killing people in Iraq?--they would answer, "YES!"
There IS a consensus in America, and it is distinctively progressive. That's why they have to use so much propaganda to suppress it. That's why they have to steal our votes. Because if we had honest elections, these retros wouldn't be in office.
It's scary. It's disorienting. But I think it's the truth.
Can we right this ship?
Yes. But...
1. We have to keep our eyes open--and not miss a thing. Not like in the 1960s when, once the Vietnam War was over and the Draft was over, we pretty much forgot about the "military industrial complex" (that Pres. Eisenhower had warned us against!), and left this machinery of war in place--an overwhelming temptation to fascists; and we have to open our eyes to corporate domination and globalization. We have to see it all--what all America has become--and not just muddle along, in "centrist" Democratic Party fashion, constantly compromising away our rights, and our sense of what is right. And...
2. We have to work collectively. Between 1963 and 1968, we lost three progressive leaders in the space of five years, to assassination (JFK, RFK and MLK). More recently, we lost Paul Wellstone, probably to assassination. These events are seared into my soul, and I take the lesson to be: We cannot depend on a great leader arising and surviving to get us out of this mess. We have to do it with REAL democracy--each of us doing our own part. We clearly cannot depend on any of our current leaders. We must lead THEM. Some of them have come through for us in a limited way. But on the whole, they are too compromised, too corrupt, too fearful, too pampered, and too much a part of the problem to be much help.
I hope everyone here at DU takes this latter point to heart--that we have to work collectively. If you've found DU, you're probably a "born leader," and you may have fought other progressive battles. And you may be prey to the syndrome that "it's all up to you"--taking this immense burden of saving our democracy, saving the world, and saving the planet on YOURSELF.
Of all the great things said in this post's comments, I think maybe the wisest was lala_rawraw's (except for the sedatives and antibiotics--good Lord!): Take a 72 hour vacation from everything serious, whenever you find yourself mind-boggled by the 2+2=5 Syndrome. What a great name for it!
Our country is whackadoo right now. We are INSIDE of Alice's "Wonderland" where everything is upside down and backward, and supposedly sentient beings are speaking jabberwockey.
When it gets too intense, take 72 hours off. Be human again. Mess around with hobbies. Talk to people about nothing. Exercise. Get a massage! (Avoid antibiotics and sedatives!)
Others will pick up the slack. What's happening is a great COLLECTIVE effort. The result is going to be REAL REFORM, and a real righting of our ship of state, in ways that it has needed to be righted for many decades.
You are not alone. And it is not all up to you.
----
And if you get down in the dumps, go look at the photos of Titan, Saturn's moon with the early Earth-like atmosphere, taken on the ground on Titan by the European Space Agency's probe Huygens, 6 BILLION miles away from us. I like photo #5 the best: a beach on Titan.
http://www.wired.com/news/space/0,2697,66299,00.html?tw=wn_story_top5Then go read Kurt Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan" (what a hoot!).
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
