Change...big word ...can be foreboding, can be exciting, but mostly means anything you want it to mean. For example, take the little punker kids who say "If it stays still too long it’s EVIL, man..." Sure, the whole thing means a lot to them, but if you point out that they are wearing the same official "punk" uniform you saw kids wear when you went to London in NINETEEN-EFFIN-SEVENTY-SEVEN, they get a little perturbed...
So...we are seeing change in action – from the worst administration ever to the best Republican president since Clinton. The only part of the equation left to change is ourselves, so what will we do with our country? It’s ours to remake, and whether it becomes Idiocracy, The Handmaid’s Tale, Mad Max or a Hallmark special is all up to us.
Change is about risk, not complaint, so in order for us to create the world we want, we have to take some stark realizations at face value. I don’t like to say this, mostly because I still REALLY hate the guy, but NADER WAS RIGHT – there is no difference between both parties. If anything, one party will be sincere in saying "I’m really sorry about this..." while they are reaming you with a white-hot poker. Moneyed interests in one party are the same drivers of political agenda in the other, and we have to realize that we are currently nowhere on the radar.
So what do we do with this brutal truth? Do we wait for our pat on the head and wag our tails for our master’s attention? Or do we start acting from the reality that we really, absolutely have nothing to lose?
Sometimes, it is a good tactic to make the oppressor work hard to oppress you – after all, we do have sheer numbers on our side. Think about it – if on the first week of January, millions of people were to perform the simple action of changing their Federal Tax Withholding Allowance to "Exempt", what kind of message would that send to the powers that be? Hopefully, how it would be taken is that you can screw us over as much as you can and commit our young people to as many wars as you need – all you’ve got to do is FUND IT YOURSELVES.
How about the millions of people who can make change in this country by moving their assets out of banks and into credit unions all in the same week? Would that shake up the banksters a bit?
There is a cost involved in taking bold actions – we need to be ok with the fact that some sacrifices will have to be made. Maybe that trip you were planning to take with your kids this summer will need to turn into a voter drive for a candidate that you really believe in, or you might need to give political donations past your financial comfort point to someone that you know is not bought and sold. You might even have to put yourself on the line, as Mario Savio so elequently said on the steps of Sproul Hall on Dec. 2nd, 1964:
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
...you might have to make the point to the powers that be that what they are doing is an illegal act, and if you were to stand by and let the machine keep on running, you would be consenting to this injustice. You might have to sacrifice your freedom with the freedom of hundreds, or thousands, to make the odiousness of the machine clear to everyone.
Now, the big question is, do we have the will to act? If not, go ahead and send your own sternly-worded-letters to your elected officials and pretend it actually makes a difference in the final act of the wholly-scripted passion play. This reality has been all too clear to me for a long time, and it has been a big factor in my disengaging from this site for a few years now. But I feel that the reality of our political circus has to be totally clear to everyone here by now – whether we choose to acknowledge the Big Top in front of our eyes or not.
Our choice...our chance to make real change in all our lives. Are we ready?