When the whole George Bush/BushCo thing happened, I was pretty much banned, among friends and family, from discussion of events in the years 2000-2004.
After 2004, the Iraq war cracked the perception of even busy busy people that things weren't, um, going right. Not to mention the freaky weather and crazy gas prices. It must be that Bush is stupid. That's it, they thought. It's simple.. No. That's not it. Bush is not stupid or compassionate or interested in the United States of America. And this is far from simple.
It's one thing to get people seeing and even agreeing with you that the president for whom they voted is making a boatload of bad decisions. It's totally another thing to suggest to these busy people that fascism has emerged in America. Because, and by the way, about that you are definitely NOT right. You, my friend, are a radical. And all your blah blah blah::: oncoming depression, water wars, peak oil, pandemics, broken government, broken bill of rights... becomes more threatening than any eventual occurrence of these things.
No. You are not only NOT right, but you are simply a downer. The bearer of bad news nobody wants to hear. And you know why? Because you don't offer a credible way out.
It's what we lefty bloggers do. Bring bad news. A major part of the Antarctic ice shelf just collapsed. The economy is not far behind. And America? Freedoms lost, government broken, and landscape plundered. Our schools are in shambles and our army decimated by bad decisions, bad strategy, and the wrong war.
And when it finally gets personal, like people we know losing their jobs and fearful of losing their homes, it doesn't seem to help make the point that ::: we are in trouble.
As a matter of fact, i've found that those more mainstream than i actually get angry. They insist that climate change is cyclic. And wars are just human nature. And that everything evens out in the wash.
It gets really heated when i say::: NO. Climate change doesn't just happen. Such things are cyclic, sure. But cyclic due to some catastrophic event, like an asteroid hitting the planet or greenhouse gases emitted in such quantity that weather and winds change. They don't want to hear that humans and their activities are the latest catastrophe to hit planet earth.
They don't want to hear that we have a choice about how we act out our human nature. and that Iraq or Vietnam or WWII did not have to happen. They want our actions to be part of some unseen, unstoppable nature for which they they are not really responsible. It's human nature: We are excused. Exempt. It's not really our fault.
I'm sure people around me think these things, because they believe, with their whole heart, that somehow things will just work out. That there is some balance in our favor that will make it all right. You know, like God will step in and punish the wicked and free the righteous. Or something like that. People and groups like George Bush and BushCo know exactly how to exploit that willingness in humans to cede power and responsibility to monolithic institutions that promise to make everything alright.
And that's how BushCo types get away with it. They give us specific kinds of bad news (like "others" will come to your country and try to kill you). The power play, the genius, is that they have the solutions to all of our problems. The first being: these problems are NOT OUR FAULT. That's a biggie, not being responsible for your lifestyle choices. Those being bombarded by reality only have to give up power to BushCo and God (and make sure they continue shopping) and things will be taken care of.
God is an essential component in this sales pitch. God, working side-by-side with BushCo, Ralph Reed, and the dead Jerry Falwell, will provide relief in the next life. Even if you endure nothing but crap in this one. Yes, because brothers and sisters, if you follow BushCo et al, the keys to Heaven are yours. And far more valuable then the keys to the home upon which Bank of America has just foreclosed.
See, what we lefty bloggers do is give a much scarier message: no one can solve the problems we write/talk about except us. IMO, we bloggers still haven't formulated much in the way of effective responses to these wide-ranging and overwhelming problems. I mean, what can one person do in the face of devastating ice cap collapse? Except deny it. Or economic collapse? Except deny it.
What options do we have? Who's in charge? Who's got the list? How do individuals come together to fight back? What are we willing to lose? What are we willing to believe?
And what if the busy busy people are right? That this will all work out in the wash? And there really is GOD?
I'll say it again. We need a new cadence in our words. We need to find a backdoor into our psyches to pitch our premise... that we are capable of fighting the monolithic powers. We are capable of defining the terms of engagement. We CAN understand global corporate weakness. We can find net- and grass-root candidates to send to Congress who will stand on the steps of the Capitol and call for justice and repair of our Constitution.
Can we walk away from the old infrastructures of our lives and build new ones? Hell yes... of course we can. We've been doing just that for 1000s of years.
Will the emerging global climate threats be met with a surge in creative thinking and innovation? Will the emerging establishment of global corporate dominance be met by a new age of enlightenment and revolution? Will we emerge from the ashes more confident and connected to the natural world? Hell yes. We've been doing just that for 1000s of years.
These are the opportunities we have in front of us. We have much more than bad news. We are agitating for a more equitable, sustainable, and habitable life.
We're the harbingers alright. Not of bad news... but of the seismic shifts coming our way. Our message? We have the chance of a lifetime::: to define what going forward will look like. Now all we have to do is come up with a concise, convincing credo on how to do it.
Yeah.