To all of you, my heroes of the parks, this is my equivalent of chicken soup. To the vegans, carrot ginger later.
I have looked all over E-Bay and Amazon and can’t seem to find anyone with a time machine. A dog named Peabody had one but it was used and I simply do not trust a used time machine.
You see, I need to go back to a time in my life when I believed that politicians and political systems actually worked. This time in the past may not be real, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I believed that they worked and that was enough to keep me going. I stayed within the lines after I left college and all the Vietnam protests, all the crosses planted on lawns, all the pot and signs, all the rebellious recklessness. I had enough. I needed braces. I went to work and the gears meshed. That was that.
I voted Democratic, did my requisite work for McGovern then an array of losers and then Carter and Clinton, each time investing a little more with each passing candidate in the words of possibility and the reality of limited (if any) progress. And then with Barack I was all in. Money, time, phone banks, starry eyes, open hands, the envy of the very young and their endless, endless energy. And it worked. At least part of it did. We elected a black guy. Well, half a black guy. And a Congress. And a Senate. We had finally done exactly what had been requested of us for twenty years. It was a sweep. Certainly now, of all times now would be the time when change, real substantive change would be a reality. We wouldn’t have to settle for the evil of two lessers anymore. We had the Ring! Any minute I expected the sky to open. I still look up, every now and then.
I read something the other day and I really don’t know why I was shocked. It was really just so recent yet so blocked in my memory. Do you remember all the guns at political rallies and all the signs advocating everything from the open lynching of the President to the gutting of the EPA and incarceration of anyone brown or black or Muslim or even worse…Liberal? Do remember all that? Was it a nightmare or something because it couldn’t have been real because now, from Seattle to NYC, all around the country, people are being arrested for camping, not for waving a gun or threatening people or the government (which is us, by the way), but for camping. For being a nuisance. For having a sleeping bag. For the political equivalent of driving while black. So my takeaway is that if you threaten with a gun the violent overthrow of the United States you are a patriot, but if you advocate equal justice for all, tax fairness, an equitable sharing of the wealth of this country and a future where the air isn’t poisonous and the water is drinkable, that you are a threat to society, a threat to the status quo, and deserve a nightstick to the head with a pepper spray chaser.
Somebody slap me. I’m on acid or something. Surely, surely it isn’t that bad. After all, we did what was asked of us. We elected Democrats to take control of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, right? We did good, right? So now that hell is in a handbasket and the fan is covered in shite, we’re supposed to do it all over again? Trust me, it’ll be different this time?
I’m a firm believer in reality. I know better than to invest in a distant paradigm and that working with what you have in a government is a very grown up thing to do, but I have to tell you, I’ve seen this movie. If you walk out on a New York street and there’s a table with some walnut halves and a pea and you put a dollar down, you think that ‘Surely I can figure this one out!’ And suddenly, you’re short a dollar. Here’s why: What you didn’t suspect (and what they are counting on) is for you not to discover that there is no pea. There never was! You will lose because the game is rigged. It always has been. And many think, it always will be.
Enter Occupy Wall Street. At 211 degrees the water looks expectant, ready. At 212 degrees, even the frogs have left the pot if they can. What started in Tunisia and then spread to Egypt and then, in full flower was met with snipers in Libya, has reached our shores, the most important export from the Middle East since that other stuff. Freedom fever, they call it. And it scares the hell out of those who hedged against our spirits throwing off the yoke of the comfortable for the exuberance of the possible.
Those children who are sleeping under the lights in parks, who are sacrificing their time and safety to send this country a message with their presence, they are the patriots, they are my heroes. I saw a photo of a young woman whose every possession was stolen by NYPD forces at Zuchotti. She was holding a sign which asked for help to return to Texas. No money. Time run out. There are millions like her now in America, except that they have no home to go to, no job to commit to, no health care to sustain them, no nothing except debt for a dream that was stolen and buckets of blood from the wars they were conned into supporting. That smoking gun, that mushroom cloud, that splintered femur, that shrapnelled brain.
There are four places to be in a parade: You can lead, out front, with the banners and the face full of tomatoes or triumph. You can walk in solidarity in the pack with the horses and fire trucks and hope that you get some of the glory and only a little of the grief. You can stand on the sidewalk and take critical notes on how to improve the parade and make a handbook or a newspaper article or worse, a law about parades. Or you can follow the entire enterprise with a shovel.
Democrats, you need to figure out right now, this minute, where you want to be in this parade of real change. You need to figure out where you stand. Is it with the middle class in this country, all those folks who played by the rules, dug the holes and then got the shaft? Or is it with those 1% who own 40% of all the wealth of this country, those folks that have the best government money can buy? That young woman with the sign has more balls than the entire American Soccer Association. She sleeps on the ground for her beliefs. She eats Ramen noodles from a can. Her hair is wet and her clothes make her teeth chatter, and she will never be this happy again.
I still remember the rush of doing something important, of driving white crosses in the grassy lawn of the fancy university of my youth, full moonlight, full hope, trying hard to make a difference for good. Democrats, you need to pick a side and stop congratulating yourself for the 40 hour work week and step into the current century. You need to get a time machine and set the needle to FUTURE and pull the lever. You need to sweep up the poor, the disillusioned, and the flat out busted of this country to your rescuing chest and say with all your heart ‘We’re in this together, you and me. It’s going to get better. Count on me.’
If you do this, Democrats, if you can shed the Guccis’ you’ve gotten used to, roll up your sleeves and get dirty, maybe, just maybe, I can believe again. And no bullet from the hand of man can kill belief.
Rearnheart
Silver City
(My thanks to Rocky and Bullwinkle for the time machine of my youth and Kyle Johnson for his bumper sticker, the Evil of Two Lessers.)