Thinking of you and me, Barack

While fixing coffee, feeding Chloe, wiping away a small trail of mouse poops, and laying out the morning doses of various medications, I listened to, though didn’t really watch, the morning ‘news.’ According to the latest reports: the reason that the Pentagon, or whoever makes these decisions, didn’t send the improved and more heavily armored personnel carriers to Iraq was because someone made a cost/benefit analysis and determined that they cost too much. The well-greased finger of fate gets shoved up our asses once again: Money rules. As a result, of course, there have been dozens of unnecessary deaths (not that any death there on either side has been ‘necessary’) as well as hundreds if not thousands of unnecessary injuries and maimings. I guess the Pentagon is still suffering from Rummy-itis and trying to operate the military as though it is a kind of Wal-Mart, or maybe it really doesn’t want to be fighting over there either, but only because it costs too much. That concern hasn’t seemed to bother Dubbya much. He continues to cheerfully lead, well not lead actually, a Congress and much of the nation off the cliff of morality and into a bog of national insolvency. Meanwhile my local chattering heads on TV laugh together at dopey jokes and chirp on about family stabbings, steroid use by fat ball players, and the rise in the number of home foreclosures. All of it is delivered with a smile and sense of self-satisfaction that says nothing is really wrong at the core, there are just these minor, and occasionally interesting, unpleasant aberrations in an otherwise OK way of life here in the USofA. Cut to commercial, to commercial, to commercial, to commercial, to commercial, to comm........There is no way I can scream loudly enough! Where O where is V???

So without V, I, and hundreds of thousands of similarly disaffected souls in this nation are left to fend for ourselves. We are left to howl in less and less wilderness and more and more suburban sprawl, to scream from the center of median strips and strip malls, to scrawl on the sides of walls and subway cars, and to rant into the ethersphere on the internet. Just like this!

A brief opinionated digression: in some ways the internet has hindered the physical expression of outrage that accompanied opposition to the Vietnam War. It has allowed for widespread vocalization and superior organizing of opinion, but somehow, in an odd and ironic way it has dissipated physical expression; it has not encouraged tangible, in-the-streets, in-your-face confrontation. It is also true that the business of business has dominated more and more of our nation’s social as well as moral life since the 60's and 70's. Business as usual has gotten truly huge and reaching its ever hungry fingers into our pockets and under our shorts with greater skill and tenacity than ever before. That fact coupled with these facts: [1] the major media are controlled and owned by a small cabal of plutocrats (there is no other word to describe them) and [2] the superior tactical capacities of the policing forces in the country, have worked to hold down the appearance as well as the actuality of physical confrontation. Back to my message in a serendipitous way.

Some of us sense that some new smell is in the air. Maybe it’s just the onset of Spring, but maybe not. In many ways it feels as though we have been colluding as a populace in creating an onerous system, a system that is not, in fact, too different from that of the nation of Hungary under the Soviet Union. That huge crowds that have turned out for Barack Obama seems to have surprised, and baffled most media commentators. It has certainly blown the pins out from under Hillary and toppled her from her throne of inevitability.

So why are we all getting high on Barack? I think it is the combination of Obama’s undeniable charisma and the inchoate longing of the majority of the people of the nation that has ignited this phenomenon. Just because fewer and fewer Americans have bothered to vote in the last several Presidential elections isn’t a measure of lack of caring. Perhaps on the contrary, it is the expression of a nation’s outrage, disappointment, and disaffection. In many ways the nation is still one filled with dreamers and idealists --- whether those dreams are realistic or not is beside the point. Right now it is the feeling that is firing the movement. On some level, the people of the nation, despite the cynicism of the media and the constant barrage of bullshit and crap they spew at us, see that the country has failed to live up to its own professed ideals. They seem willing to take a leap of faith and slough off the entrenched hypocrisy that has dominated politics for the past 20 years or more. They look at the packaged and prim, cynical and self-serving Clintons and ask themselves: “Do we really want them back running things?” People who vote for Hillary are voting primarily, I believe, out of fear. It’s also the same thing that keeps them from questioning the system as a whole.

Obama brings hope, not a promise. And right now maybe that’s enough. He talks about change without clearly defining that change. Though that’s a somewhat duplicitous strategy, it is a wise one. The real difficulties are going to come when we, not only on a personal level but on a national level as well, face up to the realities that many of the dreams, particularly on the lifestyle, physical level are going to have to change. This will un-nerve and piss off a great many people. BUT this is precisely when and where a President’s political skills are going to have to be brought to a hot but gentle focus. FDR managed things reasonably well, and we’re going to need that kind of deft touch and resolute toughness again. Handling the changes as we evolve toward a new reality is going to have to come from a political leader as well as from us, the political followers. Obama keeps reminding us that change starts from the bottom up, not from the top down. Yes and no. IT takes two to tango and it will be a neat dance if we can pull it off. What remains to be seen is if we can not only swallow but ultimately embrace the inevitable changes, the changes that will arrive with or without the participation of a new President or a nervous population.

I hope we haven’t forgotten how to be revolutionaries as we have grown fat and subservient. We not only hope things could be different, we know they’re going to be different, whether we like it or not. We will eventually be living a lot less high on the hog. Only if we can get our fat doughy asses off the cushy couches of convenience and entitlement can we actively help shape the changes and fit them into a new and happier reality. Otherwise we’ll have to take whatever “Corporate” decides to shove down out throats. Somebody has to issue the call to action, and it sure looks like Barack is doing just that. And so for now, even though I'm an old curmudgeon, I'll hold on to my hope, thank you.