Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Change We Can Fantasize About

I finally got my Obama shirt in the mail yesterday.

I feel for Bonnie. I spent this whole evening haranguing her (and 99 percent of our culture) for our crimes against humanity. Every once in awhile, something snaps in me. I reach some maximum density of a sense-of-atrocity, and I enter into a meltdown. I did that tonight.

No. I guess it's been creeping up for a while. These things do. For instance, I have had my ear firmly placed against the cold (or often hot) train tracks for years now, and I recognized the face of this dollar/oil crisis months ago when it first started to gain public recognition as a new player on the stage. I knew it because its face has been described in detail for a long time if you knew where to look. This daemon is not the newcomer many in our culture imagine it to be.

In fact, our personal bogeyman, Osama Bin Laden, helped portend (and encouraged the hastening on the scene of) this monster. And yes, it will unquestionably be our downfall.

America's greatness was our Constitution and its recognition that all men are created equal. Note that 2/3-type people were not considered men, and certainly, neither were women. We had a partial solution to world peace and prosperity, but we forgot to include half the population along the lines of sex, and another 4/5ths along the lines of race. Our great promise to the world was never meant for more than one in ten.

And that, and the greed of those who saw ripe pickings in our depravity, has spelled our downfall.

We will never be great again.

Mr. Obama has my vote. I truly believe in his honesty and forthrightness. And I honestly accept that his visions, coupled with an active public, are what our country needs. But I don't believe for a moment, I am devastated to realize, that it will be nearly enough to return us to the place of moral authority, and of championing of the downtrodden, that we once held. The world has come to fear and despise us (not necessarily in that order), and they do so rightly.

Germany and Japan regained the world's trust after the second World War, by their nations' public contrition; by a national sense of shame and need for redemption. Germany occasionally makes our modern world nervous when neo-nazism starts to raise its ugly head. We remember too well how that country became evil personified.

Russia has failed to find any similar recompense in the world's eyes. Putin is a product of that country's lack of craving for atonement, not the cause of it.

I cannot see any societal yearning for redemption or sense of shame shaping America. I see pockets of it. I see strong pockets. But I don't see anything even approaching a public mood along those lines. I think Americans have lost the ability to even know that that is in order. We have forgotten our roots. We have forgotten the face of our fathers. Those who wish us to be gone from the earth are well within their rights.

4 comments:

eaprez said...

Well stated and I am in 100% agreement with you. I do think we have one shot at reclaiming the America that was......AND why I am for $8 a gallon gasoline....I think that is the one thing that has American's tuned in right now. The war couldn't do it, the fact that soldier's are continuing to die doesn't do it, the Senate report that shows Bush lied us into war didn't do it, the Plame leak didn't do it ---- but I think gasoline prices WILL do it. Anything that gets in the way of American's consuming to excess, well by God, that's the tipping point.

Yar said...

Beth, it takes some real cajones to accept the truth and yet believe America still has a chance at redemption. I think gas prices will simply turn us finally into the souless creatures the neocons have been craving as our heritage. I only hope the new freedom fighters (whomever they may be) may yet learn to fight for humanity and not just for a chosen few.

eaprez said...

come back from the dark place :)
I'm like you, thinking too much has changed....Congress is just as bad as the administration for allowing this to happen/continue....they have no guts and need to be replaced as well. Hopefully Obama will put his foot up the ass of those members of his own party like he did w/Joe Leiberman!

Anonymous said...

Dr Taylor teaches us how to attain deep inner peace - easily, simply, without drugs, anytime we want it. Forgive me for doing everything I can to be sure everyone reads this book and sees this video, but I think all of us benefit and in the larger sense, if everyone reads this, our world will benefit in a very large way.