Who are you? Where did my friend go?

[mqbush]

Jekyll and Hyde.

Relaxed and open postures and gestures, the body language of people at ease with each other, projected the friendly spirit of the conversation. Until somebody said something or other that triggered the transformation. Then it was…

“Oh, that’s more of that liberal bull****!’

Liberal bull****? How many times, the branded one asked, has a job been taken from you and sent overseas?

“You know that. Three times already. Why?”

And unemployment insurance helped you get by, right?

“Yeah, why?”

Whether it was Democrat Bill Clinton’s NAFTA or Bush’s relentless encouragement of business to consider only its bottom line, the ruthlessness of business has been rather inexcusably cold, no? And hasn’t the liberal-spirited protection of unemployment insurance been a godsend?

“Oh, that’s more of that liberal bull****!”

…Facial expressions, tone of voice,-these were not the same people as before. The same bodies, but not the same spirits.

What survey after survey keeps showing is that strong majorities of Americans want health care for all, Social Security kept safe, vigor in preserving the environment, the advancement of solar and wind power, a social contract between business and the people,-yet all we ever hear on the outrageously mislabeled “liberal media” is anger directed at “socialists and communists,” “welfare for lazy bums.” We don’t hear our own voices as reflected in these surveys. If liberal values are favored by such overwhelming percentages in so many carefully representative surveys, that has to mean that some of the people who turn from Jekyll to Hyde upon hearing certain trigger words don’t encounter those triggers while answering survey questionnaires, and express their real feelings, while expressing the opposite in public discussion after being triggered. The unnaturally vehement and seemingly knee-jerk hatred of liberalism is not at all what would appear if people made a considered decision that liberal principals failed in some way to make sense. The reaction we see is too histrionic, too caricaturish, too one-dimensional to be authentic. No, it is a conditioned response, such as Pavlov’s dogs exhibited. It’s really pretty creepy.

But hope springs eternal. Some three-fourths of South Americans have found their way out of the thrall of economic global hegemony, and have rejected forever such extremist doctrine in favor of principles of human-friendly economic structures. It wasn’t easy. It took daring to thwart US sponsored coup attempts. It took a strong show of public determination. Here at home we have a harder time remembering how to resist. The Seattle protesters in 1999 were vilified as destructive anarchists. What wasn’t said in the media at the time was that while the left may break things like windows to protect people, the power structure breaks people to protect things, mere property. “Empire holds the edge in institutional power, but Earth Community holds the winning edge in the moral power of an authentic living culture.” (David Korten) It will take a while, but the brutality of empire will one day be replaced by the civil justice of community.