Everybody has got a story. And it pertains to their place in politics. I'll share mine because, what the Hell, I'm going to sign my John Hancock properly because I'm old enough to know that if you don't, you may never; at least not before what your name signifies changes.
A late weeknight seems like a better time than some to pretend this really is a "blog." So, for those few interested, join me for a story similar to the ones politicians tell of why they were drawn to politics, but in this case is the opposite.
My father is or was an activist; we're in touch but I suppose he has retired from most things. He and my mother broke up when I was one. He wasn't a "deadbeat dad," but I was poor, dirt poor, while he pursued other things. While he helped migrant farmworkers and the environment and struggled as an artist. I was on welfare with my mother and younger brother in my childhood, and by the beginning of my teens was doing farm work myself, landscaping, feed trucking...
Once I asked my father why he hadn't done more for me; he said he was trying to help all the little boys like me. I didn't really like that answer at the time, and the kicker is, that as something of an activist lately and a father, I still don't. I won't say that to my son. I won't have to. I simply won't put his welfare in any way shape or form on the line, and that means keeping myself available, out of trouble, and with enough energy for him.
(Which means politics recedes.)
If my son ever finds fault with me it will be no fault of mine, but I won't pass the buck either, to GWB and the like. The fact is that in the years of the Bush Presidency, I've gone from a struggling young married student, living with the in-laws during his inauguration, to an urban professional with some money and a lot of the even finer things that money cannot buy. There is always want in the world, and war which always has at least one wrong side and often two. There is a part of me that feels it is my duty to address the broad needs of the world with my every fiber, but there is something else that says otherwise: Not a part of me, per se, but my child.
I went to YearlyKos to see whether I ought to continue blogging and, privately, putting great faith in the Democratic Party. That very faith was a recent enough bloom even if, rather briefly, it had shown itself way back in 1992. This is not a goodbye diary, those are pointless and depressing. But it is quite possibly pointless and depressing. Because it is a farewell to much.
In a way, Bill Clinton had stolen my youth and idealism. I was complacent in the nineties, not content that the White House was looking after my ideals, but convinced no viable left existed, and that moderate was the best we could do realistically, and that I ought to try to get my piece of "Morning in America" belatedly. There has never been any glimmer of what I'd call true activism in my opposition to the rightwing of the 21st Century and its rightward tug over all. It has all been seen through the eyes of a person with family priorities; a stone in the river. Sometimes stirred, but never adrift.
I simply am not an activist; so much not that I don't even celebrate them. But I'll tell you what I mean by an activist: Kathy Boylan. Never met her, but one of her sons was a projectionist at a theatre I worked at back in the 90s. A true Right-To-Lifer for all of those wondering whether there is such a thing. So many of us have so little idea what political struggle is. I have so little idea; it's all just stories to me.
Me? I'm just a dirt poor boy from sketchy circumstances who is still here 30+ years later. I can't even lay an honest claim to a bootstraps story because Dad, whom I mentioned, came from a decent enough background. My grandad worked for GWB's grandad. I know who at least some of my ancestors were back before this country was the US, and back before the old country was the UK. And many of them were doing great things back then. But not me. Everybody's got origins and aims. But mine, on balance, are decidedly humble. The twin inputs of common hardships and a few uncommon advantages have, each, done harm and good alike.
Fastforward to the present. A vacation in the foothills of the Catskills, Sullivan County. A place where seemingly ever Hassid in existence was also spending the summer; the men in long black wool overcoats even while playing ball. A place where vacationing TV news producers have never heard of DailyKos. Where the Arab family running the only store in town might look far more comfortable if Lebanon and Israel were not at that moment having at it. A place where I can show my son how to shoot hoops and he can roam pretty freely in the great big grass as I once did every day of my life. An uber-liberal place where security is just a physical and emotional fact, and not a bristly buzzword. A place where I can afford to insist on paying housekeepers twice what they would ever ask for, because, Hell, my Mom was a housekeeper when I was a little boy, and she still is. (Hi Mom.)
Okay now take a daytrip to the County Fair, with monster trucks, firefighter contests, and more teenage moms in a crowd of 80,000 than anyone wants to count. Just over the (Northern) border of Pennsylvania you can buy any of hundreds of Confederate flag T-Shirts. You can find the only black people in attendance, are attendants in the rest rooms with "Please tip: This is our only pay" signs. As vegetarian I found I could enjoy the vast and spectacular livestock exhibits without too much chagrin at knowing that letting a prize rabbit run free would probably be prosecuted as eco-terrorism, no make that just plain terrorism, in this dark age.
We are all the descendants and benefactors of kings and their common ilk. That world, always one of ideas and fantasy more than reality, persists. It is useful to remember that once upon a time the whole world was one big County Fair, after a fashion. Useful to remember that we are all not so far from any other county fairgoer, or snooty summerperson, or black restroom attendant. The answer to our national woes is in our lack of feelings of kinship. Failing to inspire such feelings, our present leader blames us...
There once was a king named Hywel Dda. Hywel the Good, that is. Not, it is important to note, Hywel the Great. Apparently he came from pre-Roman brythonic origins to rule what he unified into Wales. He is famous for a code of laws, quite liberal, if not by modern standards, that he left behind. In his time, terrorists were called Vikings. Hywel managed the threat, responded to it, shored up defenses. He never confused his own people with Vikings; he only increased their legal rights. He didn't launch some ill-fated crusade to transform the kingless expanses of Scandinavia either, from which the Northmen descended across the sea. He acted as a realist in the interest of most of the people, and against none of his own. In short he did the best he could and it was good, while not burning through goodness in pursuit of being "great."
That is what I want from government. Goodness. But I don't aspire to greatness. All I can do is be good myself to those in my own sphere. And hope that if enough of us do that we can have an effect, grow in number, and be the country, ultimately. That is more important than kings or invaders.