I'm an old radical who raised her kids on the following meme (long ago, when the drug war began), "If you want to see people give away freedom, make them scared. Make them feel threatened."
We're about to get a helluva scare. Are you doing your bit to minimize it? Or are you just waiting for the government to deal with it? Because if you're waiting, you can probably flush the Constitution.
There's an elephant in the room, and we're busy picking at its toes.
I missed a particular diary yesterday, but found it rescued this morning. For a panic attack, it was pretty gentle and pretty alarming. But then I'm having my own panic attack on the subject so maybe, since the diary got so little attention, I should just nose-dive right into it.
Maybe I'm breaking the rule here by referring to another diary and adding my two cents. Everyone should read mwmwm's diary Just another panic attack, in which she talks about the small signs of the mess which is growing all around us. Those small signs are every bit as important as the big ones we hear about like the vanishing polar ice cap.
But why should I waste your time dragging this out for another review? Because we've all been so busy arguing about FISA that we're not paying attention to the very things that may make our principles moot within a decade.
Am I an alarmist? Hell yeah. I got on Kos this morning and found myself sinking into a major funk. More moves toward trouble with Iran, more arguments about FISA... when a major threat to our liberty is rising right before our eyes.
No, I'm not trivializing your concerns. Far from it. But if you consider what 9/11 caused us to do to the Constitution, consider what an even bigger threat might do. We're not talking about mussels here, although we need to, we're talking about major human migrations, millions of people pushing through political borders to escape starvation and climate catastrophe. We're talking about food shortages on a scale larger than any we've ever seen. We're talking about losing our coastlines, and in some cases, people losing their entire islands. We're talking about the inevitable unrest and rising violence as people fight for their lives.
And if you think that won't be a great tool for governments to become more totalitarian, then you don't understand history, or even the last decade.
Well, feeling depressed this morning, I thought, "God, what can I possibly do? This is so big and I am so small. Wouldn't it be easier to just argue about the things I can maybe fix? Like FISA, the imperial presidency, the idiots in Congress? Or torture? (God, I hate that that word has even become one for discussion in our country!)"
Then I caught myself. Get depressed into my corner and throw up my hands? I'm not that type.
So while we're arguing about FISA and equally important matters, I want to add my little story and ask you to start acting at the same time.
As I was sinking this morning, I remembered something. Last year I made a commitment to lowering my carbon footprint. By most standards, the available calculators said I was already doing pretty good, with a carbon footprint for my household below average. When I saw that, I wondered what else I could do. Well, I made a commitment to find ways.
I changed all my lights to CFCs. I figured out which appliances I could turn off or unplug (in the case of those with clocks or standby features). I started watching my thermostat and changing it throughout the day, and finally got programmable thermostats so I never forget. I kept at it, a little here, a little there...doing without, cutting back.
A funny thing happened on the way to my electric bill this June. I cut my usage steadily over the course of year until it was less than half of what I'd been using. My quality of life didn't suffer. Only my awareness got a workout.
Enough so that when my bill ballooned in June I called the electric company in a panic and the woman who looked over my usage said, "Oh, your bill was impossibly low in May, so maybe they hadn't read your meter."
My response: "No, that's not it, because if you look at the past year you'll see a steady decrease. I've been conserving and it's been working."
They wanted to do an energy audit but I knew I didn't need one. Hell, I'd been working on that for a year. So the light went on and I called my A/C guys out. What else could waste so much energy?
Turned out I had a pinhole leak in my compressor coil and was down four pounds of Freon, which meant the unit was working overtime trying to keep up even with the thermostat at 85 degrees. (Forgive me, St. Al of Gore, four pounds of Freon into the atmosphere... I cringe. I seriously cringe.)
A year ago, my June bill would have looked normal for summer in Florida. But over the course of year of trying to be a good global citizen and save my planet for future generations, I had learned how little energy I really needed to use, and could be floored when I got a "last year's" bill. The electric company thought it was a normal summer bill. Not me.
Point? You can do it too. And if you really want to preserve the Constitution and our liberties, you need to start doing it now. Combine auto trips, skip the impulse to go out and get that ice cream and wait for the next regular shopping trip. (You'll also save money by avoiding the grocery store ;) ), buy those too-expensive CFCs for every fixture (they now have dimmable ones --unfortunately some of those strobe when you dim too far) and candalabra bases... and I've gotten used to the funky look of them around the vanity in my bathrooms. Close closet doors because except in extraordinary circumstances you don't need to heat/cool them too. I could go on, but there are websites that do it better.
The health of our climate is intricately interwoven with our freedoms. Not the freedom to buy what we choose (which is what too many TV ads suggest) but the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution. Because once things get really roiled up, we're all going to roll over, preferring "safety" to freedom.