Last night I watched a documentary called The War at Home about resistance among American youth during the Vietnam era.
I am the child of young parents who were among that generation, born in the late sixties, and I cannot help but compare that era to ours.
What is striking to me is how the kids of that generation put themselves on the line for the country and their beliefs: the kids that protested on the campuses, the kids that got sent to war, even the kids that declared war on the establishment. In the end, everyone was fighting for the same thing - to make America a more just and Democratic society.
I don't condone or idealize the violence from any side. I don't underestimate what was at stake and I don't think it was fun or cool. I don't have nostalgia for an era where a lot of people died and suffered.
But I do have admiration for a generation that put itself on the line to create changes it believed in. A generation that believed equality, freedom and justice were worth putting it all on the line for. And I despair for the silence of each generation since, including mine.
Today, I read about budget cuts that hit the poor and the middle class hardest, state after state after state.
I see budget cuts to public education and services while tax cuts for the rich stay in place. Sometimes legislated by Democrats.
I see the left dragged to the middle by screaming, lying conservatives who care nothing about the vast majority of people in the country, only that they don't have to pay more taxes or for services for the less fortunate.
I see right wing media mouthpieces stir up violence, racism, and class war among the greedy, the scared and the innocent. I see their lies and talking points mimicked by the mainstream press, with no factual analysis.
I see bankers bailed out while working and middle class people lose their jobs and their homes.
I see conservatives rewriting history books. I see conservatives rewriting legal precedent to give more political influence to corporations.
I see religious principles of humility and love and charity replaced by prejudice and greed.
I read about resistance belonging to the Tea Party every day while progressive protests, larger in number, are ignored on front pages.
I read about large Democratic majorities in Congress and a democratic President who cannot and will not accomplish the changes that the country needs. Acting helpless while the special interests control the agenda and the legislation. I see Democratic majorities at the state level do the same.
I read with boiling rage the mantra from the right about cut, cut, cut - services for the middle and working classes, and taxes for the rich. And watch them succeed.
And I feel like the vast majority of Americans are still asleep, lethargic, ill-informed or overwhelmed or distracted or just trying to survive. Passively waiting or pleading for things to magically get better. Hoping that they are ok, that they aren't next in line for a pink slip or a bankruptcy or a health care tragedy.
I can sign more online petitions. I can add more comments to web pages. I can call and email my representatives some more. But I know it is not proportional to what is at stake and what is going on. And I don't think any of it will matter for now.
I am not passing judgment here. I have a family - and luckily, a job and a mortgage - and they require my utmost attention and priority. Many of the people on this site are working their hearts out for reform. But I can't help but feel things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. And they have been getting bad for a while.
The health care battle is a very ominous sign. With a public mandate and no public option, it applies exactly more of the same, managing to further people's dependency on for-profit health care with no where else to go. Ditto for financial reform. And climate change. And education.
I think our president is the best we could have hoped for but I don't think hope will change what is irreparably broken - the country is still going in the wrong direction and the forces that are allied against him are more powerful that the forces at his back. He is doing less harm than the alternative. But the suffering is still spreading and the long term solutions to complex problems are not being applied, let alone being discussed honestly. The vast majority of elected officials in both parties are still consumed with political survival and party warfare. And while they dither and pontificate and lie there is pain coming everyone's way. America is in trouble.
Obama is neither the problem nor the answer. A huge number of us are going to have to organize and put ourselves on the line, out on the street. It started with a small number of activists in the sixties and took a decade to force change. Confrontation is going to have to happen again before change does and it won't be fun or pretty and it won't happen on the web. Our history shows that real change happens only when real struggle happens. We are what has made this country great and we are responsible for not allowing it to fail.
Without that level of urgency, responsibility, and willingness to sacrifice, there is no hope when the fates of runaway corporate capitalism decide it is my turn to get run over, with no safety net. Or my kids. Or yours. So I'm in and ready when we are.