Choice C
Buzzflash is running an editorial today
There is No Choice "C"
in the Battle to Restore Democracy to America
"On Saturday, we wrote in our e-mail alert that we believed that liberals who smugly disdain outrage and think that if they are "polite and civil" democracy will be restored, that these people are cowards and deserters from the battle for democracy.
This was written in reaction to e-mail subscribers who have left our BuzzFlash alerts because they think that we are too "shrill" and "angry."
(snip)
"The truth is that in life you don't always get the choices you want, particularly in politics and government. In this case, we are currently confronted with Choices "A" and "B": a dictatorship disguised as a democracy or the restoration of the democracy and Constitutional rights that were granted to this nation in 1776.
There is no Choice "C."
In my view, the folks at "The Flash" are very good
at reporting our condition.
And they deserve our support.
But there is a Choice C.
It is based on the radical realization that the world we have known,
has passed.
Maybe you didn't get the e mail or perhaps you didn't see it
on the Evening News.
But it happened.
On Feb 11, almost beyond belief, two independent stories
spoke of the arrival and reality of uncontrolled climate change,
and the beginning of the end of our depletable oil resources.
Democracy, as we have known it, is now buried under
a mountain of Corporate donations.
It has slipped behind a black hole of unaccountability,
where votes are no longer counted but tabulated,
by computers now controlled by criminals and cronies.
Our Institututions are corrupted.
Our leaders are in la la land.
Except for a few heros,
Our press is asleep at the quill.
We cannot restore democracy to America.
America has passed.
What is before us is a World
beyond nations.
beyond competition.
beyond right and wrong.
beyond god.
beyond our limited views
of ourselves
and our abilities to perceive.
What is before us is a World,
of cooperation over competition,
of union over division,
of understanding over fear,
of life over death.
We are all sailors on this spaceship called earth.
So, say goodbye to America.
And Hello to your mothership.
With the advent of advanced global communication, new forms of social contract can be created which transcend the geographic state. These new cybercoops or cyberstates will bring humankind to higher levels of cooperation and understanding.
The Flashers and their like may someday choose
to help lead us in this new world.
Until then,
We should be grateful
For the good work they do now.
For we are all of this earth,
and the Moon knows no strangers.
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photo courtesy of Susan S.
posted by oZ @ 10:10 AM
3 Comments:
(Caveat: Please keep in mind that my motivation to be here is dialogue. Many things here go unexplained so that the quiet dialogue we have with ourselves after reading the daily posts, are altogether unanswered.)
The night before last, me and mine arrived home. I opened a bottle of wine and Sue went to bed. This combination of events usually foments writing as it is really my only alone time.
I sat down to the keys and nothing came.
I opened my inbox and there was some forward from my Mom, a clip from "Footloose" attached, and some glib comment about not forgetting to dance.
I have not seen "Footloose" in ages, but I clearly remember a couple of scenes, especially after seeing the attached clip. The wheels started turning.
Now, I hate to equivocate policy with a kitsch 80's movie, but it serves, so I am serving it up. No holes in my [pop] cultural bucket.
The context: Kevin Bacon's character, a high school kid recently relocated to middle America from Chicago, has tried to organize a school dance only to get a backlash from local officials. One of said officials is the local preacher, played by John Lithgow, who also happens to be the Father of Bacon's love interest in the movie. Bacon's character through the entire ordeal is unjustly dragged through the mud simply because he is an outsider, simply because he sees the world from a more liberal perspective (fleshed out through subtext and a scene when Bacon defends _Slaughterhouse 5_). As a side note, Bacon's love interest is a bit of a rebel-yell on a carousel, and the tension it causes with her preacher father, Lithgow, raises the ante of the push-pull the entire community is feeling, and really fleshes out the generation gap in thinking between the city leaders and the "rowdy" youth.
The scene: Bacon's character petitions the city council to bring the high school dance proposition to a vote. He is allowed to speak and when doing so, Bacon quotes scripture in defense of his proposition. Inevitably, the city council votes against the dance, but there is a loop hole, and the preacher, a week after enduring the embarassment of having his own rhetoric thrown in his face to bolster something he clearly opposes and after a falling-out with his daughter, suggests a dance be held outside the city limits in a grain silo, only for everyone congregated in the church to realize that there is really no "us vs. them." And Lithgow's suggestion is also a confession in that he realizes he is a Father first, and a Father of the community second, confesses that the value of diversity is in the breadth of human action, and that diversity should be celebrated as opposed to inhibited.
There are many concepts at play that correspond, herein. We each have our motivations, we each have our agendas, we each have our multiple roles and functions in multiple systems.
We are human first. And each of us, through are varying motivations and experiences develop our repsective roles, views, agendas, relationships, second. Policy change will nor come through alienating sides or scare tactics. Policy change will come when you can harness the one consilient line that hold us in common, one to another.
The challenge in front of us is not a matter of "us vs. them." This is not a partisan challenge; and placating to partisan considerations will only set us awhirl in a moebius loop indefinitely, not unlike the movie. Rather than attacking what one thinks as an opposing ideaological force (a total act of futility,) why not understand them as humans? Wrap your mind around their motivations, only to master their canon, and use the rhetoric to promulgate innovation and positive change.
One may have the intellctual/intuitive guns, but the power of one is a weak position when pitted against numbers. Just ask Kevin Bacon.
Innovate or you can forget the dance.
"Our press is asleep at the quill" - very clever
We have never wanted to look at the hard choices and now the time is here.
C is certainly a more uncertain path to follow and there aren't many guideposts.
You are a grand help in seeing what is before us.
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