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This is the time of year when corporate media “journalists” present their year-in-review programs, which enable them to look back on all the events they distorted, the narratives they concocted, the propaganda they catapulted, the whistleblowers they smeared, and the 4,758 “interviews” they conducted with Leslie Graham and John McCain. They love doing those programs, because they can finish off any barely breathing facts that managed to survive until December somehow, and reassure the Lie Creators who sign their paychecks that they can be counted on to do it all over again next year.
I could try to counter all of that distorting and concocting and catapulting by providing a summary of what really happened this past year, but I think it would be more productive if we all simply heed the advice of Satchel Paige . . .
Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.
There are tidal waves of trouble gaining on us . . .
If this is the moral arc of the universe bending towards justice, I’d hate to see what bending away from it looks like.
Well. No one said it would be easy. And it’s not.
Contacting the politicians in their Beltway offices certainly isn’t . . .
Hello?
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone home?
Sometimes they reply. It goes like this . . .
Come on, now,
I hear you’re feeling down.
Well I can ease your pain,
And get you on your feet again.
Relax. I need some information first.
Just the basic facts,
Can you show me where it hurts?
Yeah. We can show you where it hurts. We’ve been showing you where it hurts for fifty years. So Dr. Nixon gave us a prescription, Dr. Ford gave us a prescription, Dr. Carter and Dr. Reagan and Dr. Bush gave us a prescription, Dr. Clinton and that other Dr. Bush and Dr. Obama gave us a prescription, but all those prescriptions did was make us sicker.
What good does it do to analyze politics here? Politics can’t cure this sick country because politics has become nothing but a painkiller. It has no effect on the causes of the sickness, all it does is deaden the pain. For awhile. And then the pain returns with a vengeance.
Can’t we just throw the pills away, Firedoglake writers? There are already too many Netroots website pill gulpers addicted to them. If you’re bound and determined to keep gulping pills, you can go to Daily Addictions, or Talking Addictions Memo, or Huffington Addictions, or any of the thousands of smaller pill pushing pharmacies available to you. Take your pick, it doesn’t matter, they’re all receding from reality like distant ship smoke on the horizon . . .
Politics isn’t the cure for all that’s wrong with this country, it’s the cause of most of it. When are we finally going to understand that? When the polar ice caps are gone? When superstorms hit us once a week? When resource wars ignite and escalate and the horrific death toll makes World War II look like a minor disagreement?
All of that is coming our way unless we start redeeming ourselves and our world through the sanctity of civil disobedience. Moral courage and solidarity will cure us, addiction will destroy us.
Don’t write about painkillers, write about cures.
20 Comments
Moral courage and solidarity.
Isaiah, The sad truth is that Amerikans bury anyone who tries to take away their Pills, figuratively or literally.
“All of that is coming our way unless we start redeeming ourselves and our world through the sanctity of civil disobedience. Moral courage and solidarity will cure us, addiction will destroy us.”
True. Just as it was at the end of the last “gilded age”.
People were desperate then. They formed labor unions.
Nobody is that desperate yet. Forming a labor union then was a good way to get your head broken. We’re well on our way back to that place. The PTB just haven’t quite got all their tools in place; the FBI is ready to inforce anything, but there are still some human beings at NSA and in the armed services. That problem is being corrected as rapidly as possible.
Isaiah, thank you. There is an excellent video over at commondreams.org that I watched yesterday. I heartily recommend it to all FDL’ers – I can’t link to it but you can easily find it by going to the above frontpage and clicking on ‘videos’ at the extreme upper right side – it will format the ones available, and the one I recommend is the one on Greece, just a couple down. It is from Aljazeera originally, is a good length but really great food for thought in it, more about the arc of the ecological universe, I would say, and so beautiful.
Highly recommended. Thank you.
A most excellent post, isaiah88. I’ve managed to get off the pills. Which is good. But, I’ve transferred the addiction over to Current Events and I’m snorting it way too much, every day!
Thank you for the post and video.
Actually, the retreat of Americans, and people like you, from politics over the past five decades — coupled with the increase in political activity of the corporate-financed right wing — is the cause of our problems.
When people stop caring or don’t have the time or energy to care, much less to get themselves educated about who is screwing them and why, the system is controlled by those who show up.
Look at Michigan for an example of what happens when most folks are too tired, apathetic, distracted or plain beaten down to care:
With all due respect, I strongly disagree. There’s a huge difference between looking at a larger view of politics and our compulsive need for Political tribes to align oneself with and being [I assume you're name-calling] a sorry idjit with a sucks sentiment.
That is the sad truth. But there’s a greater truth. Gandhi knew what it is, Dr. King knew what it is, and it guided them. Nonviolent civil disobedience is the only way out of this, if we don’t engage in it we’ll all be buried under those tidal waves coming our way.
There’s quiet desperation, just under the surface. Americans are still walking away from confrontation with the One Percent who control everything, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be an epic confrontation down that road before too long. Sometimes you meet your destiny on the road you took to escape it.
Thank you, juliania. I’ll go to commondreams and watch that video. I hope everyone here does.
Thank you, OmAli.
Last year there was Occupy Wall Street, which continues BTW.
This year, there is #idlenomore, which is not just First Nations and indigenous people but aims to force sustainability.
There are folks down in Texas occupying the work sites of the Tar Sands pipelines.
Writers at Firedoglake report on their and others’ civil disobedience frequently.
If you’re hankering to throw away your pills, get out on the line. S’no time for continued posturing. No one gives a shit about postures anyway. There’re a dime a dozen on the internet.
But there are political conversations that it would be valuable to have instead of the monotononous Dem and Obama beating (not that it’s not deserved); the same words over and over don’t contribute to a solution. Nor to the same trite promotion of third parties. But some reports from the ground on what you are doing and how you are succeeding in getting third parties going in your locality would be helpful discussion.
And there’s a reality of the greater political engagement that you must face honestly. Gandhi was murdered because he wasn’t a bigot. Martin Luther King was murdered because he started to touch economic issues and foreign policy (or maybe just PO’d some local merchants who didn’t want to pay their sanitation workers a living wage). It’s a matter of choosing where you want to die.
I’m a former addict myself, openhope. But I’m not sure that closely following current events is an addiction, it’s bearing witness, it’s seeing where we’ve been and where we are so we’ll know where we need to go from now on.
It’s the politicians who stopped caring. Why keep rewarding them for it?
I agree with most of what you’re saying, TarheelDem. I just think there’s been far too much focus and attention on politics and not enough on activism. Regarding Obama and the Democrats, they deserve all the criticism that’s been directed at them. Telling the truth is monotonous only for people who don’t want to hear it.
Thank you, MyFDL editor, I appreciate the promotion.
Oh, come on. Most of it is not “telling the truth”. It’s gotten to the point of just repetition of cheap shots. And some of the items are far from the truth. Others are just wild speculation about the future.
I don’t think we need to keep arguing about that. Thank you for reading my diary and commenting, TarheelDem.