Early Musings and Memorandum: 2011

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

We’ve arrived safely in a new year, most of us, and — at least politically — we will now repeat 2010. I’m not kidding. That’s the Republican plan. San Francisco social observer and favored word smith, Mark Morford, labeled 2010” …one of the wonkiest, wobbliest, most sputteringly interesting years in ages, full of sound and fury and shrill, insufferable conservatism signifying nothing.”

So true: top-heavy with Beck and Bachmann, Palin and Baggers, not to mention the stunted consciousness of small minds and hate groups undermining the good attempting to assert itself. After months of confusion and instability,  the American people, miffed at politicians everywhere and voting with a voice echoing heavily with southern twang, cried, “Well, hot damn, let’s have us some more of that!”

Thanks to those voters, Republicans are now back in leadership of the House, the governing body that sets the legislative agenda by introducing bills and public discussion, so prepare yourself: everything that got passed in the last two years must now be repealed, all efforts at bipartisanship will now be scrapped in order to return to the halcyon days of Dubya’s minions under the heavy hand of fallen-Speaker and fascistic bully, Tom DeLay, and the march rightward can continue unabated because we’re really a conservative nation. Not.

Wait! More than that, my heart insists — we are NOT NOT NOT a conservative nation and growing less so by the moment! But the last person you could convince of that is a conservative, who thinks that if you treat them politely, they have a mandate to be insufferable. Oh, yeah — and the press. Don’t forget about them because they are highly paid enablers of such nonsense; you can’t help but wonder why it’s always the conservatives who benefit from media’s apparent inability to swat back a lie when they hear it. That would take courage, of course, something I don’t see a whole lot of these days. In this economy, standing up to the boss (or the editor, the network or the lobby that gave you all those perks) puts the paycheck in jeopardy, and how does one keep the Starbucks flowing, the kids in private school or the new set of veneers financed?

Understandable that we self-protect in such a manner, but not admirable. Nothing contributes more to what Morford calls the “holes [that] have eaten through the pillowcase of our threadbare value system” than this kind of CYA behavior. Perhaps that’s why we can’t seem to sort out what’s true from what isn’t, what’s important from what’s boorish, what’s valuable from what’s mundane. Those to whom we turn for explanation haven’t one. This nation’s credibility depends on its constitutional clarity and free press; the Constitution is a topic for another day, but when all opinion becomes equal, there is no free press. When we refuse to hold FOX News accountable, for instance, we break faith with our democratic tradition. If we don’t stand for something, so goes the truism, we’ll fall for anything, and if we have no ethical center, we have no center at all.

There are people like young Army Private Bradley Manning who have stood in their own power, obeying the dictates of their conscience, and they’re paying a heavy price for it. We shouldn’t let them suffer the consequences alone, but we too often do. Julian Assange is an interesting character in this WikiLeaks moral drama, but not the heart of it, in my opinion. Assange may be poster boy for the third rail and free speech as a publishing agent, but those who are less insulated, those on the firing line of truth telling — you and me, Brad Manning — we’re at the heart of such a passion play. We must learn to have each other’s backs.

Happily, the UN is investigating Manning’s treatment by authorities, and the progressive community is protesting his physical decline in solitary confinement. It is not too much to expect that we handle prisoners with some bit of dignity and compassion, especially those accused of terrorism of any kind. But the sad story of this decade is that we have come to accept such treatment with little but a whimper. We have come to believe that we can’t fight city hall, we can’t buck the system, and we have no power to change outcomes.

This is where we’re broken. The fracture lines all over our sociopolitical map — economic, judicial, scientific, educational — are just little seismic faults compared to this self-defeating chasm in our confidence under a compromised Constitution. We’ve drifted too far into terrorism-consciousness during this last decade; we’ve tolerated too many color alerts, we’ve let ignorance dictate things like freedom fries and swift boating, and allowed arrogance to define things like “war of our choosing” and torture. We’ve allowed too many lighters and bottles of shampoo to be confiscated, looked away as too many of our Muslim neighbors were bad-mouthed. We’ve ignored too many wandings and gropings in the name of safety to have any self-respect left.

What might we expect from a public that, to its shame, accepts the use of tasers to inflict crippling pain on all ages of its citizenry for any kind of authoritarian non-compliance, with little expectation of consequences? Even a growing number of deaths from their use has not hindered us from thinking their effects amusing, like an old Three Stooges skit or bit from Jack Ass, or finding their acceptance tolerable in the hands of a growingly unstable police presence. We anticipate pain. We expect punishment. We tolerate victimization. If our spirits are broken to such a degree, what can we expect from the nation?

As we face another year that will certainly push all MY buttons, and probably yours, renewing memories of the Bush years with their hideous double-speak and hypocrisy, let’s not allow ourselves to get caught in partisan bullshittery. We have serious issues. We come closer to a police state every day, closer to a banana republic and a failed social contract. The business class is still intent on wringing every bit of blood it can from an already anemic public. Thanks to big business, there are millions more living on the streets, more children crowded into inadequate schools without food in their bellies. We face austerity measures that are stridently unfair given the corporate welfare we are forced to bestow. Meanwhile, the Christocrats wage an End Times war for the souls of the compliant, willing to use any trickery required, politicize any issue, to get their power structure adopted. And the press whose job it is to alert us to these dangers and inequities? Bought and paid for.

This is the legacy of the Bush years. Two more years of such nonsense will simply delay the government’s ability to right itself after a slow descent into unyielding plutocracy. There are things we know to do as activists, as truth-tellers, and we must not fail to do them. We must restore our own conviction that we have the ability to change things. I propose that it’s both arrogant and egocentric to allow ourselves to become cynical and jaded; to consider ourselves insignificant to the process. Such an indulgence is cop-out extraordinaire.

Until we become aware of pain, on every level, we are part of what keeps it in place. Our inability to empathize with one another keeps us polarized and victimized. Much of the pain we feel in this intense period has been brought to us by political maneuvering, sustained by political ignorance, and buoyed by political arrogance. It’s time to become scrupulous about our intent with every decision. In our home, our work, our community, we must ask ourselves what we contribute, and do so consciously. We can no longer afford passivity. WE are the agents of change, and this is our moment to affirm our own ethical core so that we can take responsibility for our little piece of the national puzzle.

The rising tide can only lift us as fast as each of us is able to add our own authentic signature to the shift. Surely you’re not surprised that “Yes, we can,” will take more than two years? It’s the work of a lifetime and the heartbeat of a nation struggling to inhabit a finer vision, a new century and the shift of an age.