Thoughts on MLK Day

Racism is never leaving us. But that doesn't mean our attempts to rid it from the public consciousness has no meaning. There will be incremental changes, at best. Like a black President. We celebrate the idea that America elected a minority to the highest office in the land, as well we should, but it is a mark against us that it only took 200+ years to see it happen. I remember well following the President's election that pundits and journalists alike were throwing around the idea that our nation had entered a "post racial" era. Being an idealist has its moments, it can enrich your principles and give you a basis from which you can fight for issues important to you, but there are moments when idealism makes a group of people sound like dreamy fools living in willful denial of reality.

We talk about ending racism. We talk about ending poverty. Winning the war on drugs. The harsh and unbreakable truth is that there is no end to class warfare and poverty, there is no final victory against mind-altering substances, and we cannot erase racism from the human consciousness. Let us jettison the idea of sweeping victories. The nobility in our struggles for self-improvement as a species isn't found in grand visions of ultimate victory, but in the rewarding, bloody, tear-stained struggle to leave this world better than we found it.

I'm not offering anyone any Kool-Aid. I believe that so long as three people are left living on American soil, two of the three will find a reason to exclude the third. My children will not be raised in that manner; they will be inclusive and, as a result, my grandchildren and so on. They will touch others lives with their tolerance and this will be what I give to my nation and my world. However, they will navigate through a nation populated by the intolerant, the arrogant, the murderous and larcenous, qualities not exclusive to one political party. If there is a sliver of hope in this darkness, it is the hope that we can teach our children to rise above the meat-market of American life and mold them into something finer than the shrieking mess we have allowed ourselves to become.

Peace to you all. It's in short supply.

Wikileaks

There needs to be a fundamental change in the way we govern our society. There is no concession from the corridors of power that the revelation of this material does, indeed, compromise their own self-interest, demonstrates the extent of modern government's failure to justly govern and advocate for its people, and the omission of this fact shows the extent of their moral and intellectual bankruptcy. The incessant games of brinkmanship that statesmen and legislators alike play with our security and personal freedoms benefits no one. It enriches those in power and creates a culture of court intrigue that serves no one. We must demand more of our leaders and depose, without violence, those who fail to do the bidding of the people. If this can never happen, then perhaps it is time for our best thinkers and average man alike to concede that we are neither truly free, truly informed, or well and truly served. We are cattle enslaved by a social structure lacking honesty and humanity.

Why is no one in power decrying the information revealed here AND talking about the potential dangers such revelations create? The administration has clearly failed the American people in the area of foreign policy. This is not a partisan judgment - it is a judgment formed from my understanding of our long-held American ideals. Perhaps they now exist as little more than chest-thumping propaganda, a Hollywood-spiked opiate for a gullible electorate. This whole embarrassing affair should spur a national discussion about the methods and ideology that truly underpin modern American foreign policy. It won't.

Late Night Musings

Growing older has brought me unexpected blessings. Despite our inevitable end, aging doesn't have to be an experience filled with fear and desperation.

One of the things I have learned is that when it comes to politics, religion, and so on, I am likely fated to have an assortment of views that fails to conform with any one "side". When I turn on the news, I don't see some political party striving for loftier goals and fighting the proverbial good fight against The Forces of Darkness. What I see and hear is cultural and racial intolerance, rage, and arrogance on both sides, manifested in different forms. Both sides belittle each other, pull dirty tricks on each other, manipulate the public en masse, and fleece the existing social structure while trumpeting themselves as agents of change restoring hope to the nation. I will choose my own side in these endless conflicts and work on a personal level to improve my connections with the world. The personal is political and when we work at qualities like tolerance, acceptance, and forgiveness, our efforts influence others and when we leave this life, we perhaps accomplish much more than a single vote, tallied among millions, leaves upon the body politic.

If someone says to you that they've got the right answers to the important issues of the day, beware that person. I fear those who, by the power of their convictions alone, believe that insight and intellect have ordained them as being justified to bend the will of men and nations to their direction. I have my personal beliefs and I will stand for them, but I certainly do not assume that those beliefs and opinions provide an infallible blueprint for life and justice.

I believe that every man and woman, regardless of circumstance, deserve the same opportunities at personal happiness and professional success to do with as they see fit. I believe that every man and woman are entitled to pursue any belief system that they wish provided that they do not attempt to impose their beliefs on my life. I believe in the right of opposition, the struggle against the darker elements of human experience. However, I will never give myself over to a struggle which, in its singular arrogance, is every bit as rigid and dogmatic as the oppression it seeks to derail. If someone says to you that they know what's right for all of us, run away. Fast.

I am a liberal who values tradition while scorning the prejudices long institutionalized in our culture. I am a natural skeptic with tremendous, inchoate religious feeling stirring inside of me. I will no longer identify myself with any one political party. I do not believe that poverty can be eradicated from our society and feel that too many confuse unattainable, but noble, goals with benchmarks that humanity can actually reach. There is no Utopia. There is no end to racial, economic and cultural prejudice. So long as there are three people on earth, there will be a pecking order. What matters is the struggle to make our world better, not some sentimental, unreachable idea of a perfect day. I find that struggle immensely rewarding and not at all demoralizing.

I don't want to be part of the same obsessiveness, vehemence and outright rage that burdens every attempt to discuss politics, religion, and other social issues. Our national dialogue is wrecked and we verbally assault each other from opposite sides of vast oceans of misunderstanding. We nurse our ancient pains as fuel for diatribes against institutions that failed us in our childhood. We scream and cry out that the cruel world should change, we elect demagogue father-figures in the hope that they will fix it all, and we refuse to change the most basic of things - our hearts and minds.

I hope mankind, in all its guises, one day rises above the crass.