, I asked.
The question brought a heartfelt reply, and the heartfelt reply whirled me away :
Time comes when, for me, a mood spins down unexpected as a twister whirling - and I write then, as spirit sweeps in and takes me away.
I know that feeling.
It comes up from deep in my heart as a shaking like a sobbing, like laughter but not laughter, not sobbing. Both, and also more....
That mood and spirit whirls in and takes me and - because such numinousity that might inhabit for a time us must also in the end surrender us to time, I come to rest, And when I finally come to rest what I see is strange, new, at times beautiful and at times terrible.
Not mine, not really.
These moods spin down, eyes wide open, and am compelled. Why ? Questions, questions......
These moods spin down, eyes wide open, and am compelled. Why ? Questions, questions......
And the things I write - the strange, the beautiful, the prophetic, the terrible. Of the terrible, I will not speak. Of the beautiful...oh well, that is a thing of fancy, of taste.
Lately, I write of the struggles of humanity, of the realm we chose to call politics although that word suits our time less and less with each passing day.
Struggle, friends, struggle.....
Everywhere struggle.
Struggles in the Polis. Politics. And, politics presumes a Polis which - in our age and day - now fractures in a widening incomensurability.
Hence, my song tonight. I would sing if I could : so imagine - I am singing :
The Battle Hymn of Republican Apostacy, a hymn both terrible, of beauty, and rooted in a grim courage that will not relent.
Yes tonight, friends, I write for Republican Apostacy - adrift on a terrible dilemna and rustling a power yet to unclaimed, the power of truth.
Their power.
Remember first - my words are just words, but that which sweeps in around us, and around the Republican apostate.....
That thing is very, very real.
Hence my song.
Thank you for telling me that. There is power in truth, and in your truth. You can claim that power.
What you wrote there, that is your saga, your home, your strength. It is the narrative - of your recent political evolution - which becomes the starting point of your jourrney.
What do I mean ? Why do I speak this way ?
I do this because i am here to tell you : it is your time to fight, that you no longer have a choice, that battle is upon you and, further.....
That this is neither good or bad but our shared fates - mine, yours, ours. Things are afoot, the tide is upon us.
Make this your battle cry, your mantra, your song : your song of experience of innocence....
Lost...
Lost in the birth that became your struggle - shared with many others now - in the conviction you've grown into as you grew away from timidity and towards courage.
What you've written, what you've told me is honest and bedrock solid. Build on it : it is what you are.
Yes, I know many people who - after decades of allegiance to the GOP in some cases - refused to vote for George W. Bush in 2004.
Those people, those are your people, your tribe - the lost ones wandering for a home, finding none. And perhaps I am your tribe too, but that is for you and not me to decide. Know them first - your people, apostates left behind to stand alongside and hold fast to their convictions and values, those with the clarity to be unmoved by hypnotic seductions of power.
: Your group, scattered on the wind, to the four corners.
Now is a good time for you to find your voice, and to gather up all those who feel as you do, to shepherd them and bring them together.
: So they may grow outspoken, with empowered and strengthened voices, to learn to project those voices in an intensity and volume that cannot be denied....
My friend, this is not pleasant. Nor is this a thing of enjoyment for me - it is a compelling duty. I truly feel no choice.
Fate has brought me to this place,
And fate, for better or worse, has dealt you this day, and your hand such that you - for your loss of a political home - can knock on the door of those on the Right who are now a little more confused and troubled, for not understanding the source of their distress and for not seeing clearly the demonic spirit which has come to possess their party....you can reach these, bring them the hard truth that will - in the end - give them renewed peace as clarity, dismay, anger, and later the same conviction to fight that you have come to inhabit....
History has dealt you this, your lot - that you, above all, must find the courage and the strength, somehow, to cut through the din and rattle to warn America that control of the GOP - that political party of Eisenhower, Nixon, and even the party of Reagan - has been consumed from within, overpowered by a dark movement, an amoral mystery cult that worships power and claims to speak for God and so - in doing so - seeks to make its regents and soldiers as God, with Godlike powers of life and death over others.
Do you doubt me on this ?
I can point the way to where you may find the truth on those things, and I will warn : it is not a pleasant truth.
If you seek out that truth, you may find despair, and fear too perhaps.
But eventually you will wake up and realize that you must fight. Humans will do this, and against impossible, inconceivable odds. Humans will do this especially when they find that they have no choice, that battle is upon them and will sweep them away lest they resist.
I claim this : that battle is upon you now, whether you see it yet or not. it is upon you nonetheless.
Sooner or later, you will see this, and sooner or later you will fight.
And how will you fight against such forces armed only with flesh, with fingernails, with pebbles, twigs and sand ?
No, you will fight with the tools of man, with your voice, your mind, your moral conscience, your conviction, your faith. These will be your weapons, not money. Money ? You need friends, allies, fellows to join with, organize, and together with learn the ways of Lao Tsu, the labyrinth and riddle of power.
You can wend that labyrinth and solve that riddle - do not tell me you cannot, for you can. You are human, and that - for better or worse, that is your birthright.
Begin in yourself, with your voice and your pen, with knowledge and painful clarity and grim conviction born of knowledge.
Raise your voice.
raise your voice, make it loud, make it strong, make it clear, penetrating, inescapable.
Do not stop, and do not stop there :
There are times, and I am telling you, friend, that now is such a time - when a clear solitary voice that finds the proper note can resonate a million voices in sympathetic harmony, in an astonishing power and - what's more - that those many voices, coupled with a courage that fears nothing, can move mountains and the world.
That is a deadly edged thing, that power. Few can wield it without corruption. Very few. Maybe you can wield it, maybe you can resist it.
You should try. I trust your honesty, the purity of your intent.
Ah, the power of voices. What is your voice ? It is what is best, deepest, most authentic in you, that which would remain somehow should you given up everything...
Your are torn to shreds, bereft, adrift, friendless and alone...
What remains is your voice.
Your voice, and yours alone : your strength of being : the power of your heartfelt message issuing from your values, your moral core. That which tells you that, even as there are things to love in life, there are things to resist and things to fight. And things to fight for. That is never a pleasant precipice upon which to stand. Yet, there are times when that become necessary and inescapable.
My friend : Fight. Struggle. Stand up.
Do this, and more : are you not your own man, your own self ? Why do you have need to call yourself this or that thing, a Democrat or Republican ? Wear the political cloak of your experience - it will serve you well.
Speak, friend :
Speak about why you used to vote or the Repubican Party, about the best values you felt the GOP once represented, and about your rift and your growing dismay as you watched it mutate into something you feel you need to fight.
Speak : issue your clarion call, back to an earlier touchstone, to reclaim the party you once believed in.
You are not powerless. Far from it. know this. It is true.
You may not feel as if you have power - and singly, individuals do not have much of that - so you will band together with others who have been left behind as the GOP lurched towards whatever amoralist monstrousity it has become, band together with them and simply talk at first, as your time allows, and little by little you will find more and more and more who will swell the ranks of your group.....
Then you will have power.
Persist, above all :
Do this, and sooner or later you will have power, and sooner or later you will find yourself to be leader different from who you once were, in the middle of a new movement.
That's how those things start - one person here, another there. Shared experiences, grievances, concerns. A belief that one - in joining with others of like mind - has the power to make a change for the better.
Are you disempowered ?
How dismempowered are you ? As disempowered as the Jews battling the SS in the Warsaw Ghetto ? Or the men and women battling Soviet tanks in Budapest in Hungary, 1956, or to one man - Nelson Mandela - sitting alone in a prison cell ? To an ascetic Hindu lawyer in a loincloth who fought by refusing to fight ?
Power:
Power comes from unlikely places, and though money can buy the simulacrum or appearance of power, real power comes from conviction, from vision, from clarity. And I would add also - this, one place from which those who now claim power in America do not draw strength - that there is power in honesty, in truth.
There is power, further, in selfless love, in passionate and altruistic concern for the wellbeing of the nation, the World, humanity, all of life.
Those are things which can buoy us up against all odds, and impell us towards creating change.
But first, one must not be alone - you must not be alone.
So : The GOP you once voted for has shattered into a thousand bits, and the thing that stands in its place as some sort of graven image or idol of money, power, trickery, and a theology of hatred twisted and masquerading, in a frenzied St Vitus' Dance emblazoned with a neon corporate logo that reads "Love"......
..this thing can only be banished if you and others who feel as you do gather together and share your experiences to ask : what has happened here ?
That thing can only be destroyed if you and those others share experiences amongst each other and with the world and - in strength of numbers - fight. You and those who feel as you do do not need to call yourself anything at all, only apostates from what once was - and could again be - the party of Lincoln. Call yourself the real Republicans - for you will be. Reclaim the core, the very moral center, of what you think Republican values once stood for.
Make a stand, make yourself heard, and shout your message : "No, that is no longer my party - my party believed in this...." . Point towards the party of Bush and call them for what they have become - everything they profess to despise and hate. Call down on their heads the wrath of Eisenhower and the wrath of God. Chase them, drive them before you like cattle with the light of the truth.
Sometimes it does come to this :
Sometimes we come to realization in life that we no longer have a choice, in our meted fate, save to fight....or to run and hide in fear.
You will choose the former. Some ages and times demand no less.
This may be one of those times, and - though you may not yet feel that - you do sense this, that the spiralling course of events - towards hatred, World polarization, towards wider war, towards violent extremism - this course of events will not be stopped except by an equally powerful counterforce : by the opposition of millions who oppose the trickery, greed, treachery, lies, and naked worship of power that the American GOP has come to embody.
So if you will not fight now, when ?
How long will you wait to claim your power to influence and shape the World you inhabit ?
And when - at long last - you come to the realization that you must fight, that you have no choice, will you find strength then or will you find despair at time wasted and opportunities squandered....time when you could have instead chosen to fight with the courage of your convictions, time since past and covered with the dust and moss of an earlier day ?
No. You will not make that mistake. You will fight, and you will fight sooner.
I hear it in your voice.