Hold onto your candles (yeah, and your matches too!)

I had made a resolution, which obviously now turns out to be something rather soft and mushy, that I wouldn’t get dragged into popping off about politics. Making a pledge NOT to talk about politics in the USofA is akin to making a Buddhist-like promise that you’ll never crush another bug. Sometimes events become so irritating and nauseating that they provoke a reactive response.

We all knew it was only a matter of time before GWB emerged from rehab, again. It’s pathetic really, but it is certainly no surprise to see the forces bent on resurrecting his reputation reappearing right after the recent election. These guys just love debasing everything. Would all of this be happening right now if the election tide had been in Obama’s favor? Who knows? But things worked out the way they worked out; the dems were drubbed. SO now we have the distinctly unpleasant salvo of images of the smirking Dubbya being spit out across TV screens around the nation. How is it that he manages to look as though he’s strutting even in still photos? But, there he is, hawking his “autobiography”. With solemn mien, he seems to believe that we will believe in him; that we will revere his words as sagacious and reveal him to a be a stalwart warrior against all of the evils of the world. As Bugs Bunny said once about one of his fellow characters: “What a maroon!”

I am watching all of this unfold on a large screen TV over a bar in a working class neighborhood in Somerville, MA. Mercifully I am on the other side of the room and the sound is muted so I can’t make out all of what is actually being said. Actually, it wouldn’t matter since all of it is pure spectacle anyway and has no more meaning in the larger scheme of things than a Punch and Judy show. Hauntingly, in the split screen CNN images, there is also the hunched and brooding figure of Dick Cheney to the right, and in the center, the dancing image of a rather skeletal Scooter Libby. I thought, hoped fervently actually, that Halloween was over. Oh well, I should have known better, after all we’ve had several days of the orange visage of John Boehner doing his Mr. Pumpkin-head routine for our delight and edification. Maybe this is all just some clever “Day of the Dead” routine. We should be so lucky.

After the brief flurry of light, that lasted no more than a few days immediately after Obama’s election, we are now rushing back to the primeval darkness. BTW:I am not crediting Obama with bringing any real illumination. He’s managed to snuff out just as many tapers as he lit, maybe more. I may be being unduly harsh on him and I am often chided for that by my liberal friends who insist he’s actually done some positive things. My scorn and lack of respect for him emerges from his fundamental failure to live up to even a tiny percentage of his own rhetoric and image. I didn’t expect perfection, but I expected candor, flint and some steel, but we’ve only gotten pandering, waffling, and even outright dissembling. He hasn’t earned our respect. It’s a shame.

So the question must be asked again, as it has been so often in the last couple of decades, and especially after the horror of the Bush administration: How much more of the light can the malignant political dumb show being played out on the national stage manage to suck away? I have the feeling none of our elected zombies and their corporate sponsors will be satisfied until the darkness is complete. Save your matches for a more appropriate time. With luck, either good or bad, we will definitely have need of them, sooner or later.




just as an aside: Having Dubbya out on a book tour reminds me of a comment about the erstwhile fashion plate, Fabio, when his ‘autobiography’ was published: “He ‘writes’, but can he read?”

It's time to stop waiting for change

It’s a near-certainty that repressive, even malignant, backward-looking forces will once again wield dominant political power and control more of the public purse strings than ever before. That makes the necessity for tangible and highly visible progressive projects even more urgent. Though many of the efforts towards progressive change may seem foolish, even simple-minded or ‘primitive’ and smacking of ‘socialism’, that is no reason to turn your back on them. In this era of corporate domination of nearly every aspect of our lives and culture from finances to entertainment to food, it is more important than ever to engage in real resistive actions. Politics as played today is not merely moribund, it is destructive and counter-productive. By all means, vote, but, unless you are absolutely dedicated to disappointment, giving any of your time and energy and money to the current political process is usually worse than pissing in the wind.

There are other, more effective ways to initiate and promote change. If you like and are comfortable with some of the good things about socializing and politicking, then you should consider getting involved in a Transition Initiative. This movement, now an international one with efforts in countries from Europe to the US to the Orient, is one place to find like-minded people who are committed to working towards a more congenial and equitable future. I applaud their endeavors and their spirit. And I whole-heartedly agree with their goals. But there may not be enough time for the Transitioners to accomplish their agenda. Their goal is ambitious and lofty: TO craft a sane, sensible and just living accommodation to a changed world, in which energy and other resources that we currently assume are abundant and take for granted will be greatly diminished. Who wouldn’t sign on for that? But their methodology for getting there may be too cumbersome and wearying for many. Trying to achieve consensus can take too much time and, as we see all the time, may precipitate watered-down and insufficient responses. TO have any substantial clout, Transition has to begin to embrace dis-sensus (a word coined by the Arch-Druid, John Michael Greer) as heartily as it embraces consensus. And ultimately I think they will.

BUT even more importantly, Transition has to get past the stage of talking and talking and talking. They’ve pulled that off in some of the places in Great Britain, where the movement started. Over there they’ve had successful nut tree planting projects and community gardens and other tangible manifestations of Transition’s goals. There hasn’t been so much of that here in the US. Granted TI is still in its formative stages, and awareness/education is a key component to its growth and success, BUT there has to be, and damn soon, an active cadre of people, clearly identified as being involved with Transition, who are actually making and creating tangible, visible projects. This isn’t the time to knit and fiddle. The wolves are circling our straw house culture. The continuing insistence by many Transition advocate leaders to rely primarily on a consensus-based (i.e., politically accepted and acceptable) EDAP – Energy Descent Action Plans -- to kick-start or initiate actual work on the ground and in the streets is unrealistic. Putting together these plans is certainly rewarding and enlightening. But, despite being infinitely more warm and fuzzy, it’s as ponderous and precarious as relying on conventional/traditional political action. The many houses of Transition need to make more room for tangible action-oriented folks as well as those who are more comfortable with process. No one should expect all, maybe not even most, of these on-and-in-the-ground projects to be ‘successful’, let alone enduring, but there needs to be some touchable, viewable, even smellable evidence of action from the folks in Transition. Otherwise the movement risks suffering from the failures that have so far bedeviled Presiident Obama and his administration.

In a spirit of lively dis-sensus and good faith, go out and build something. Start with your place. Create a food garden; better yet, join with your neighbors to make a neighborhood garden. Then start learning how to cook, if you don’t already have those skills, and share your successes and failures with family and friends. These are not empty, windy, wordy gestures; these are concrete, and, ultimately, highly political actions. They’ll even help restore your faith in your own abilities to accomplish something. DO they involve spending and giving of your body and spirit, your time and labor, even, lord forgive us, your $$$? Yep. Got any ideas of a better investment that will give you a more satisfactory, as well as a very pleasureful, return? I’ll bet you don’t. (Well, maybe making your own brew would stand next to it on the awards stand, but this is easier to pull off.) It may be ‘4th and long’ but go for it.