The people of Massachusetts have apparently had it with Change. Change didn't work fast enough for them, so it's time to go back to the pre-Change days. You know...those glory days of 2007? Things were so much simpler then. Everything was going to shit, but no one was bothering to try to fix anything, so there was nothing to complain about. Then the new guy shows up and ruins everything by trying to clean up the shitstorm with his hoity-toity ideas and reforms and regulations and whatnot. Couldn't he have just left well enough alone? And by "well enough," I mean "pretty fucking crappy."
One year ago today, Barack Obama was inaugurated President of the United States. It was, to any remotely honest observer, a moment of hope. Not Hope: The Campaign Slogan, but the simple, optimistic yearning for better days that has long gone by that name. Things had, quite simply, gotten very bad. There was no debate about that. Remember? None whatsoever. Something - many things - had gone horribly, horribly wrong. We were exhausted. We desperately needed to move on.
And so we did. We set our eyes upon something new, something different, something that made us feel, deep down in the cockles, that maybe all was not lost.
One year ago today, the Tea Party movement began. A small group of disenfranchised cranks suddenly awoke from their eight year slumber to realize that...hark, something was not right in America. Something had to be done now, goddamnit! Politics be damned. This was bigger than politics. This was about restoring America to some vague notion of what the founding fathers may or may not have originally intended, so long as that vision meant no taxes! And DEFINITELY no health care reform!
And thus began the great uprising against the Change that had only just begun. The Republican party set out, in collaboration with the teabaggers, to extinguish the tender, young flames of hope before they could spread. Never mind that this president was actually incredibly moderate and pragmatic, making absurdly reasonable proposals with built-in capitulations. Victory at the polls was the more important, long-term goal than the peace and prosperity of their country.
If the people of Massachusetts can be talked into sacrificing the seat held by Ted and John F. Kennedy to a teabagger who represents the Republicans' opportunity to obstruct health care reform, the lifelong passion of the man they elected nine times, there is very little to hope for. If the people of Massachusetts are growing impatient, after only one year, with the man they elected 62-36%, there is very little to hope for. If this is an indicator of things to come...you can call me hopeless.
"And so we did. We set our eyes upon something new, something different, something that made us feel, deep down in the cockles, that maybe all was not lost."
Meanwhile, those of us who were never a part of the culture war in the first place, and who only saw in Bush's presidency an extension of all of the wrong that came before him, as opposed to just waking up politically in 2001 and suddenly finding their house on fire, and who knew damned well that there wasn't a rusty old nickel's difference between this president and at leadt the several that came before, desperately tried to snap all of the acolytes out of their drunk, messiah-worshipping chill-up-my-leg mania.
One year later, those who refuse to listen to this and simply stick their fingers in their ear ("HOPE AND CHANGE! HOPE AND CHANGE! LALALALA!") are suddenly finding themselves outnumbered by the number of people who are recognizing that a minor adjustment to one or two policy areas, however much endless spotlight is put upon it, while leaving countless others essentially the same (or making them worse) does not, exactly, change make.
Furthermore, they are discovering that a majority which pretends to represent the people and then insults them every time they have a complaint is not, perhaps, the one that they should be investing further confidence in. Yes, in fact, many people do want lower taxes (you do notice that we're all fucking broke right now, yes?). Yes, a majority of the public DON'T WANT THIS HEALTH CARE PACKAGE. Remember the public? The people who are supposed to be in charge? The people who are supposed to be Obama's boss, not the other way around?
Well no, you don't. Not you specifically: I don't know you. But the collective "you" that spat upon the Tea Party protests did. These events were the definitive example of the democratic process in action. They were, in the words of the first amendment, a redress of grievances. The way these events came about were *exactly* how they should come about in a representative governmental system. These were the common folk standing up for themselves (isn't that what so many of you have wanted all along?).
And what did they get for their efforts? Derision. Insults. Misrepresentation. Instead of realizing that their complaints had to, by all morality, be taken seriously, since this is their country as much as anyone else's, (collective) you set out to show that somehow or another, they were unimportant. You searched furiously for one or two kooks and tried to paint them as the group's representatives. You tried at every turn to downplay their numbers. You, essentially, tried to tell them that no matter what, they simply didn't count.
When you get ignored politically, you always have one fallback. The people of Massachusetts just took it. You could ignore protests all you wanted. You can't ignore this. And now, after a year of insults, you (and this is specific to you) are now whining "Can't we all just get along?"
To be honest, I want you hopeless. Not because I wish you ill, no matter how much you might wish it to me. Not because of anything mean you may say about anyone. I want you hopeless because your hope is based on a cancerous, corrupted premise: that other people are nothing more than tools to be used to create your utopia. What you hope for, at your core, is to create a world in which people like me are forced, enslaved to your ideals, all naturally under flowery names that don't sound a damn bit like the fucking slavery that they are. No, in fact, not only do I not want any more taxes, but I proudly get around every last one that I can. I do so because I know that they are not the idealistic everyone-pitch-in premise so many people believe they are, but are instead nothing more than a funnel to the demonic pipeline that feeds to the banks that control both parties like puppets, with apocalyptic fears about what will happen if we don't pay as the whips at our backs.
I want you hopeless. I want you to write about a scathing, frothing reply dripping with insult at every turn, while in the back of your mind something in you realizes that nothing you write to me will change the fact that a Republican now holds Ted Kennedy's seat: that you can spit and curse at me all you want, but tomorrow, Brown will still be the senator. I want you to bash your keyboard in because you feel utterly helpless.
Because maybe, just maybe then, some tiny spark in you will perhaps drop its defenses for just long enough to open you up to the possibility that maybe you were hoping for the wrong thing all along. You see, I have hope to spare. I have warehouses of it. I want to drive down the street and give it away like Santa Claus, were it only that easy. The reason I do is that my hope isn't based on which tribe has ascended their leader to king. It isn't based on who has their finger on the bomb this week.
Most importantly, my hope isn't based on forcing you, or any man to be a part of some ideal system that I've concocted and convinced myself simply must be the best for every last person. My hope is not based on thinking that anyone who doesn't want precisely the world I want must be some ignorant religious hick who simply needs to be ruled by us enlightened folk for his own good. My hope is not based on the gun, which is all that the state is in the end.
My hope is based on the belief, well supported by the things I've experienced in my life, that if man stops trying to push each other in our own personal directions, and instead opens up to each other with true humility, true compassion and empathy, true care for the fact that the desires of every last human are equally important, equally sacred, and sees each of us as equally part of the solution, as equally someone to work with instead of against, as equally important to the all and equally worthy of its blessings, that we will see miracles. I have hope that we are on the verge of seeing that we don't have to be forced to do the right thing: that force, itself, more often, is the main compelling factor behind why we do wrong in the first place. I have hope that we'll see that other people not seeing reality the way we do not only doesn't mean that they are "stupid", but rather that reality is working exactly as it should: that maybe, and get ready for a philospohical earthquake here, that they're right and we're wrong! That maybe, we might actually have something to learn from them, as much as they from us!
I have hope that even if you don't personally, that those who currently think like you will start to see that your hope was misplaced all along: that it was never supposed to be put into the hands of any god-kings, but in the 7 billion bipedal Gods living all around you. I have hope that you'll see, as I do, that we humans will have no problem at all going to the stars, and transcending to whatever beautiful future awaits us ... so long as we're simply left the fuck alone to do it. I have hope that, someday, maybe someday soon, you'll do as the wisest before us have done, and let go.
Until then, I hope you stay hopeless. Because your hope is nothing more than a very seductive poison, one that if you don't release it, will eventually kill you. If it doesn't kill us all in the process.
Posted by: FractalChez | January 21, 2010 at 01:23 AM