I finally fell in. I couldn't help it. I watched a series of speeches and coldn't believe how good they were, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Al Gore, and then Barach Obama. (To hell with Hilary) I am so desperate for anything passing for something good, I finally got down, crying because it all sounded so great and I knew it was all bullshit.
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It is so over due, so long past due, I don't believe it myself. Could it finally happen, could we be delivered from this nightmare world? I am tired of the struggle. For me, it's been forty years, forty years is a very long time. If you don't think so, live it as I have and see.
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I don't know what it's like to spend forty years hoping for a more humane and intelligent politics but your post reads like a debriefing on the damage done.
In years to come, I might reach this point; I might watch a speech delivered by one of the usual suspects (or their ideological children) and feel such a desperate need to see progress that I grab whatever crumbs seem nutritious, or at least, less intensely poisonous.
But for now, whenever I take the time to watch and listen to these glittering presentations, I don't think of politics at all: I think of advertising.
It's a marvelous and curious thing -- and one of the chief benefits of the Buddhist concept of 'mindfulness', even if, like me, you don't claim to be a Buddhist -- to actively watch your reaction to a particularly well-done advert. I don't actually want a 7 Series BMW, or a wife who always wears a little black dress and stilettos, or an F. Lloyd Wright-ish house perched atop a snow capped mountain...at least, I don't consistently want those things.
But sometimes, I do want those things while watching a television spot. Why? Because, I think, what I really want when I want those things -- what the various fetish objects are standing in for -- is a certain unflappable coolness of demeanor, an efficient and technologically sophisticated culture and to be surrounded by natural and human crafted beauty.
The commercial contains a minuscule vision of an alternate reality in which everything works. It reaches me because the subtext is targeted at some of my deepest wishes.
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And so back to the speeches.
Those beautifully crafted speeches (and careful monroe readers will note that I've always complimented Sen. Obama's style of self-presentation, even as I describe his politics as typical) should be seen as the adverts they are; their attractions examined, their false promise rejected.
Well, you did all of that but the apparent sense of hopelessness is what concerns. I see this from many of the 60's veterans I know. They're astounded and disheartened that, forty plus years on, many of the same people and same ideas they railed against in their youth are still entrenched, still in command.
At the risk of sounding unsympathetic (because really, I'm not) I have to ask: why is this surprising? Our adversaries are very powerful. Again and again, it appears, people underestimate or misunderstand the depth of their power. I don't say this to cause further despair but to note that before you can craft an effective strategy, you must accurately acknowledge how completely you're beaten.
"Accurately acknowledge" means, for example, not assuming that everyone in the US is an extreme evangelical; but it also means not laughing away the actual extent of that segment's influence.
I get the impression -- and maybe I'm off base -- that a group of you, round about 1968, truly believed that the whole thing was about to come crashing down. That you'd witness the scrapping of aircraft carriers, the closing of bases, a torrent of apologies issued to the world from Washington. And when that failed to happen, something set in, a sadness, a rage, a bit of twenty-something anger trapped in amber which you've carried around for years and years.
Rumor has it this is why H.S.T killed himself...too much of the same thing for too long.
.d.