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When I was a child, I spake as a child,
I understood as a child, I thought as a child:
but when I became a man, I put away
childish things. For now we see through a
glass, darkly; but then face to face: now
I know in part; but then shall I know even
as also I am known.
A few years ago I wrote a post on my home blog with the same title, that was about the FISA “debate,” and didn’t really know the full quote from 1 Corinthians 13 verse 11 (went to Catholic schools where we didn’t have to memorize bible passages). After further reflection, this quote is even more relevant to what I’ve come to feel, namely that I did look at our national political leadership in a simplistic, and probably childish way. I thought our political leadership had our best interests at heart, when, now, it’s become crystal clear, that that couldn’t be further from the actual getting-down-to-brass-tacks-truth.
The two issues that prompted me to write this post are the Senate voting for the undebatable (thanks to Harry Reid) renewal of the three expiring sections of the Patriot Act and the House voting for Forever War
Really? Congress? Really?
War and the constitution. I don’t know what anyone else feels, but those two issues are probably the two top issues that got me so involved over the last eight years – yea, really – eight years! – an eternity in internet time. The economy; the Wall Street bailouts at the expense of the regular average American; lack of meaningful healthcare; and the myriad other issues are incredibly important, but these two, were – the – ones.
I admit, I’m not emotionless right now. Today is the day they probably forever lost me. I will never ever look at them the same. I’m looking at them with narrowed eyes. I see them through a glass darkly.
John F. Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage to highlight the internal fortitude of great men of the past. Sadly if he wrote an update to that same book today, it would be full of blank pages.
It doesn’t matter what party you, or I, self identify with -all – of the political leadership in this country are all nothing but neoliberal-neocolonial-sociopathic-narcissists who’ll sell us out the first, and every, chance they get. It doesn’t matter that they take an oath, all that is to them, is just words, a means to an end. I don’t ever want to see another national politician telling me they stand for something when they’re just using their grandstanding as leverage for something they want and need on a personal level.
I don’t know if things can be fixed on a national level – I really don’t – not when you have people like Harry Reid making secret deals to render the little debate he allows, to be pretty much an act of futility and meaningless stagecraft. Reid’s secrecy is some kind of multidimensional cosmic joke, because the pretension of the Senate is, that they’re “The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.” Hah! Somewhere George Carlin is giving a concert based on these imbeciles.
I can’t even list all of the issues I’ve been involved with in those eight years, but just in the past week, two groups I’m affiliated with, have run, sponsored, and/or promoted three separate events (two book signings and a concert); that’s just another way of saying, I have been involved, and think you can make a difference in effecting small changes, but changes nonetheless, even if they’re mostly local.
I think you have to separate the two. Local vs. national. I don’t know how you can’t, without going Jack Nicholson in The Shining, laughing out loud crazy, without keeping them separate.
There is hope; I ran across an old story again while going through my blog, called The Mirror. Even though I’ve given up on everyone in DC I think there is till hope on a statewide and local level. Here’s the story
For more than a thousand years, the Mirror of Souls waited for the return of magic that would awaken it and allow it to finish its work.
It waited in a closed-off room on the side of a hill in a long-forgotten city, its existence forgotten on a continent where men had been replaced by the monsters spawned of a hellish war. It slept, oblivious to the passage of time, oblivious to the change that went on all around it, oblivious to the destruction of an old order and to the chaos that followed, and to the new world that rose on the ashes of the old. For more than a thousand years, the Mirror had waited in vain.
Now, though, it glowed softly, as the faint currents of distant magic began to wash against it, and within the shimmering depths of its central well, shadows stirred. That far-off spellcasting—still too weak to rouse the lost Artifact to wakefulness—sufficed to permit it to dream.
Within the reborn stream of magical energy, the Mirror began to dream of the past that remained its present. It dreamed of the ghosts of the great men and women held within its memory. It dreamed of a world lost and forgotten, of wonders no longer imaginable, of secrets buried in the rubble of a world that no longer existed. It dreamed of the task that it had left undone for a thousand years.
Undone. But not forgotten.
The Mirror yearned to waken, and to complete the task for which it had been created.
~ Author Unknown
Now, back to “the leaders” in Washington. Screw you Democrats. And Screw you Republicans.
You people make me sick
The song is Falling Away From Me by Korn, and it’s about breaking away from your abusive parents
7 Comments
I see the House passed the Unpatriotic Act within 30 minutes
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/05/26/the-patriot-act-vote-one-quarter-of-the-way-to-a-fourth-amendment/
Poignant and potent, john. The aristocrats certainly had a good run against the democrats this week, yet still the aristocrat-led Parties play their diverting, irrelevant games to popular acclaim, including here at FDL.
You certainly called it right yesterday, as it turns out – which I made sure to note in a late comment in Kevin’s PATRIOT thread – but, of course, that doesn’t make it any easier. There seem to be an inordinate number of warped characters, polished at practicing deceit, who harbor in the shadows of our Congress – in the deep, dark shadows that the Parties cast, which Rand Paul’s bright flashlight briefly, but memorably, illuminated for us this week as he struggled to be heard.
Thank you for successfully putting into words some of the profound disgust and dismay that you (we) feel about the heedless, selfish, thoughtlessly counterproductive behavior of a Legislature whose members no longer even pretend to try to act in our names.
Powerful and recommended.
Great read John, thanks for the heartfelt outpouring, you say it for me too.
Not to detract, but all I could think about was this From The Stones.
There was at that time in the late 60′s a sense of impending doom despite the revolution at hand I was living thru in my mid to late teens.
The SF Bay Area was in a cultural revolution, a political one, a spiritual one, a sexual one and it was full bore at hand.
But the Stones had dark side of things we loved to listen to but failed to heed . . . from Gimme Shelter to Have You Seen Yer Mother, Baby . . . the dark was well represented.
Sadly, their echoes of evil, empire, and societal failure resound loudly to this day.
You capture that above.
I’ve been there, for a long time, post Clinton (n now I can’t count THAT as any watershed for humanity).
I don’t think we CAN change this stuff from within, I’m not even sure we can change anything other than our selves with our activism.
But damn John, I think you hit on it solid and hope you will rejoice and thrive . . . we do what we can.
A march, a protest, a community garden, some help at the local soup kitchens or shelters . . . it’s all local, personal.
It has to be if we want to care anymore.
We just go and help others when and how we can, n the rest will be as it will.
And in this, we find our center, our self, n begin to enjoy being fucking alive again.
Bless ya hoss . . . dawg bless ya, yer one of those who mean something to many of us for your simple place on this planet.
I’d love to buy you a cup of coffee or tea or we do whiskey n beer down by the river some day . . . maybe Mary Mac comes along, too, n we just talk. I could learn some stuff from you two . . .
As Gringo says above, powerful n rcc’d John, thanks again.
My wife and I spent years doing everything possible to push for real health care reform in this country. We wrote letters, made calls, went to rallies, went door to door with petitions….
In the end, no single payer; no public option! Little did we know the fix was in and we were just being played by the Democrats while they serviced the interest of their corporate masters. What we got in the end was Obama’s health Insurance bail out program that will drain the public coffers for a few years and allow both Democrats and Republicans to declare that we are broke and we must cut back entitlements. You see the game is rigged! It is and has always been a Win, Win for them. Thanks for allowing me to wallow in the macabre.
Anyway, great post;
I do love that wonderful Mirror of Souls. Gentle and true and indestructible. At a local town meeting last night, in a town which is even barely a town, something of the filaments of galaxies, heat without matter, stirred. That’s where it is at.
I am listening to Bernie Sanders on Thom Hartmann respond to a caller’s question of why Sanders did not filibuster against the renewal of the Patriot act.
In a nut shell his response was that his office can only respond to the most important issues before the Congress, and furthermore, that the Patriot Act does protect Americans (honest, he actually juxtaposed the loss of Constitutional rights with the tired old saw about terrorist threats to the US).
Or, verbal pleasantries aside: I am weary of this impotent, mealy mouthered, wussy ‘Progressive’ Bozo glibly talking out of both sides of his mouth, and when all is said and done, he is completely helpless to advance any change against the tsunami of fascisim sweeping across the land.
A great pox on Mr. Sanders and his ilk.
One can only conclude that guaranteeing the American people the rights and freedoms they are explicitly given in the Constitution and Bill of Rights was not high enough on his to-do list to give it any special effort.
If this guy is all we got, we are truly f**ked!