Goodbye to all that.
Here we are, brothers, here we are at the end of 2004, another year another beer, and what do we have to show for it?
Or let me ask you, man -- what do you have to show for your time on the planet these 365 days? You spent your hours bellyaching world affairs -- Rummy this, Condi that, Dubya screwed this up, Blair screwed that up, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Scalia, Frist, Lott, Rove, Delay, yada yada yada yada -- ENOUGH! I say. What'd you do besides complain?
And don't say you voted. Good for you, you voted. Great. You want a medal? A shiny certificate? An honorary doctorate from Harvard? You're supposed to vote, maroon. Don't claim any prizes for voting. And not for phone-banking or canvassing either. So you left your moist, windowless basement apartment in Brooklyn to spend a week in Miami -- you think that's some kind of civic sacrifice? You think that's on the order of Give me liberty or give me death? No. It's kid stuff. And as we saw on Nov. 2, fat lot of good it did, too. All your blogging and your MeetUps and your ACTing and MovingOn -- heh, that worked out well, didn't it?
Friends, I'm not trying to sound mean-spirited. I understand you meant well. But I think you've got a problem, and I don't think we're going to win unless I intervene. The problem is this: you've gone soft. You claim to be a liberal but I fear that what really thrills you is looking like a liberal, thinking you care about the world's ill, the dying, the disaffected, etc., etc. But go home tonight and set a chair in front of a good, clean mirror and look at yourself deep in the eyes and, if you dare, ask yourself this: If you were asked to make a really hard choice, to sacrifice something of real value in order to better this world, would you do it? If a man asked you to give up your iPod so that a boy in Nepal can eat a good meal this evening, would you squirm? Be honest with yourself. If a man asked you to throw out your TiVo to spare the life of a Chilean Sea Bass, would you politely walk away? How many hours of HBO would you do without in order to get our troops out of Iraq? What if I asked you to boycott Desperate Housewives until the Saudis abdicate their throne? Would you look at me as if I'd keyed your Audi?
Goodbye to you, I say. Goodbye to all you softs. We don't need you in the movement. When Dennis J. Kucinich decided to change the world, I stopped wearing shoes. I stopped eating meat and cheese. I did without. I've done without women, without love, without children. I may even have to give up my cats. I've put up with the slings of our jokeaday society, our angry, angry world. I've given up my dignity, my pride.
And until the rest of you do the same, I say: Goodbye to you, and goodbye to all that.
3 Comments:
Sounds like you had a bad day. The ways of the world are what they are and changes occur slowly. The realization of a new world conciousness seemed so close in the 60's and it appears that we have gone backward. I think its a time for the rest of the world to come to terms with adapting to each other's ways.
We will be forced into self sacrifice soon enough. It seems that progress is never linear, more like the swing of the pendulum. We can see now the setting of The U.S. power in the world, militarily and economically. What will happen next?
Being soft is being in my comfort range. Maybe its the ablity to be flexible. We are both educators trying to teach our respective audience. I can take a stand to being committed to my students even when they fail, how about you?
I applaud your spleen venting.
With all due respect...in fact, more respect that I would be able to give to any other human being alive...do you really think Liberalism is measured simply by how much we sacrifice?
I admit that I do not live up to your moral standards. It shames me, to be honest. I also have to ask myself, so if I did quit my job, sell everything I own, and do nothing but support your candidacy and protest for all of 2003 and 2004...where would I be now? I fear I'd be broke, broken, and right back to square one. Is it fair to ask people to sacrifice everything for something that may or may not be viable?
I think we have to find a way to enable people to do the right thing AND improve their quality of life at the same time. If it is a choice between my family and that family in Indonesia, I'm afraid 99.9% of the population will chose the former. We can't reduce Liberalism or Progressivism to that choice or we'll lose every time.
I don't really claim to have the right answer, but I don't really know if politics alone is enough to convince people. I wrote an essay called An Alternate System, which I think explains this dynamic in evolutionary terms, and then proposes an example of what can be done: http://anotherdreamer.typepad.com/another_dreamer/2004/08/an_alternate_sy.html
When we offer people not just the opportunity for moral purity, but for a better life, the barriers will naturally go down. I'm not talking about a better life in 15 years, but now...like, "Hey, come over to our side, here are the benefits."
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