Little Bang Theory

Because I need your help.

I’ve engaged a small troop of guys who see things very differently from you and me, and I think it’s because they’re operating in a different paradigm. They know, or at least believe, something different from what you and I know and believe.

And to some degree, I think they’re lacking information. Because you know, they seemed like decent people, deeply concerned about the future of their families and our Country.

So I’m digging deeply to find informative, progressive, non-inflammatory sources of The Truth ( as I see it) which I can share with these guys, to maybe help them see things more nearly as I do, as you do, as we believe it to be.

So who can you point us to, sources of progressive thinking, hyperbole free, insult free, without snark, without condescension, something an other-minded individual can read and digest without choking on it?

Because these guys are patriots, Americans, and our neighbors. And they’re trying to do right by their families, their neighbors, them selves.

Can we help them to see what we understand?

Link me to any Truth you can think of which doesn’t disrespect these people’s reality, so I’ll have something more to share with them this Saturday than my own biased understanding of How It Is.

I know it won’t be easy; I’ve eliminated most of my favorite links because, I’m sorry to say, they fail the “neutrality test.” My blog-o-hood is pretty fired up, and not necessarily receptive or kind to differing viewpoints.

Do we need to rethink this approach in order to reach others who aren’t yet seeing it our way?

I know, it’s complicated and difficult. That’s why I can’t do it alone.

So link me to your best Velvet Shots and wish me luck. I’m SO not a natural born diplomat, being most commonly a snarling little prick, but this seems important enough to warrant trying to get beyond that.

I’m hereby officially calling all my blog-friends to make an effort on behalf of this project:

Last weekend as I sped through the heart of our local Teeming Megalopolis® of Greenfield, I paused at the light in the Heart of the Theater District (well, ok, there’s only one movie theater there, so let’s go with “center of town” instead) to give a “thumbs-up” and a thank-you to the weekly anti-war protest on the common (Saturdays, 11am ’till noon,) and noticed a counter-protest across the street - a few gentlemen with large and, to my cardboard-and-crayon mind, impressive signs with somewhat inflammatory messages like, “Want to piss off a Liberal? Try defending your country!”

Well, not being one to shy away from conflict, and having spent altogether too much time in the last year commiserating with like-minded individuals about our disdain for King George The Lesser and our disgust for the direction his idiotic ideologies have taken Our Country in the last seven-plus years, I decided I’d go back this weekend and see if they’d be there again.

You know, for a little friendly get-acquainted chat.

Well as 11 o’clock rolled around, the Peace-niks began to assemble on the town common, many meandering out of the weekly Organic Farmers’ Market where I’d just purchased some heirloom tomato plants and a few other goodies for my (soon-to-be) garden. I’m sure you’re familiar with the scene- Birkenstocks, pony-tails, braided armpits (j/k) and Sunflower Sparkle-Pony serenading the crowd with a guitar and a lilting trill, something about peace and love and shit.

I’m actually not a big fan of folk music, but hippy chicks give me wood, and I can put up with quite a bit of Sonic Pablum in deference to my Little Man.

Anyway, at The Appointed Hour the anti-war protesters came…

…and came…

…and came…

…and in fact, the number grew considerably as time passed, though this was the last picture I took of them.

Meanwhile, and more to the point of my foray, the anti-Anti-War-Protesters protesters had set up their counter-demonstration across the street:

On this particular occasion, it appeared at first glance that four guys and six five-gallon pails of sand were deeply disturbed by the Un-American Activities going on over on the town common.

But first impressions can be deceiving, and besides, four guys had given the middle of their sunny Saturday over to expressing their views, indeed, defending their viewpoint, and I thought they deserved a fair hearing. So after a lively round of how-ya-doin’s with the Peace Folks, several of whom I know and love, I headed over to the other side of the street to get to know the Anti-Anti’s.

They were at first understandably suspicious, having no doubt just watched me hugging other men, fer Gawd’s sake, but I began the interaction by thanking them sincerely for taking the time to represent their views in this decidedly “blue” venue, asking them if any of them were veterans, and thanking the one who was for his service. And in the interest of full disclosure, I told them that I disagreed with pretty much all of the viewpoints espoused by their signs.

But before they got to taking that too personally, I also shared the reason for my being there: my belief that what we have in common far outweighs what separates us.

What followed was a half-hour conversation between them and me, during which they expressed their frustration and anger at being misquoted, misrepresented and made to look like idiots by the local press (this I believe, as the local print media are indeed self-righteously liberal to a degree which far outpaces their national counterparts) and got to summarize their primary beefs with their counterparts across the street, those being that 1) protesting the war is unsupportive of our troops in Iraq at a time when they need our unequivocal backing, and 2) Us Lefties® are socialists, and socialists are bad, antithetical to The American Way.

And while I disagreed with them on both of these points, I bit my tongue and listened. And that earned me the right to ask them some pertinent questions.

Like, How come the rest of the First World Nations can provide Universal Health Care to ALL of their people for way less money than Americans spend on health insurance which doesn’t even cover all of our children?

Like, how can we defend prosecuting a war of aggression against a country which never attacked or even threatened us?

Like, why are we believing that high gas prices are The Arabs’ fault while Exxon-Mobil logs all-time World Record Profits quarter after quarter after quarter?

Like, where have all the patents for 100mpg carburators gone?

Like, why are American CEOs making hundreds of millions of dollars a year while their employees are losing their jobs in cost-cutting maneuvers?

And many others. It’s presently late, and I’m losing steam here, so I’ll cut to the quick:

We need to talk to each other. Not just to people who see things as we do, but most especially to people who see things differently. Because these people are Americans too, and they truly care about their country, our country, just as you and I do. And it serves no purpose to assume they’re idiots because we think they’re ill-informed. They VOTE based on what they believe, on what they think they know, and if they’re wrong, their children, our children, will have to live with the consequences.

I hope to make it back to the Other Side of The Street next Saturday, and the Saturday after that, and the Saturday after that, for as long as we can talk to each other, listen to each other, get to know each other as Real People who want to make the world a better place for our kids.

We have an awfully long way to go; perhaps we ought to get started.

Pope Benedict’s current visit to the United States has been punctuated by huge masses attending Huge Masses.

Or something.

And an interesting and perplexing problem came to light:

In our Right Now Culture, how can we serve Holy Communion to 46,000 communicants in fifteen minutes?

Hey, Busy Day, Busy People, right?

And with the rise of Protestant Mega-Churches, and now that we’ve put that pesky pedophilia thing to bed, um, behind us, er… just let’s say we’re gonna have to figure out how to move those Communicants along.

Here’s one scenario which I believe might be explored:

(disembodied voice from speaker: )

Welcome to McEucharist’s®, may I take your order?

(Driver: )

Yes, we’ll have four Hosts, please.

Will those be Classics or Cheez-Hosts®?

Classics, thank you.

(muted whining from back seat.)

Make that two Classics and two Cheez-Hosts®.

That’s two Classics and two Cheez-Hosts®. Anything to drink with that?

Yes, we’ll have, um, two wines and two medium holy waters.

I’m sorry, the wines are only for our commune-in customers. State law.

(quick conference in car)

Make that three holy waters and a Papal Shake®.

That’s two Classic hosts, two Cheez-Hosts®, three medium holy waters and a Papal Shake®. Anything else today?

No, that’s it.

Your tithing will be ten percent of your weekly gross income, please pull forward to the first collection basket, and thank you for visiting McEucharist’s.

(pause)

But… we tithed here yesterday, that would be twenty percent of our weekly gross income!

I’m sorry, but for your privacy, we don’t keep those records, except for the Fed… I mean, we don’t keep those records.

(muttered expletive deleted)

You know what, cancel the drive-through order, we’re coming in. If I’m gonna tithe another ten percent, I’m gonna have that God Damned glass of wine!

(tires squeal, fade to black.)

I’m a devoted listener to Public Radio, which seems to necessarily (and beneficially) include a lot of feeds from NPR, National Public Radio.

But in the last year or two, the NPR contribution to this totality has become, how should I say it, somewhat, um, vapid.

I’ll quote here the example of last week’s coverage of The Election Saga as it unfolds in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania: our Fearless Reporter queried folks in several areas of the state about their political leanings with respect to their upcoming Democratic Presidential Primary.

But apparently the possibility of World Changing Political Transformation wasn’t deemed of sufficient interest to hold the attention of the flighty NPR audience, because the whole week’s explorations were dished up within the paradigm of the regional cuisine, beginning with an excruciating deconstruction of the famed Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich, which was revealed to be a combination of red meat, white bread and Cheez Whiz®.

Yeah, that’s Cheez Whiz®. I Googled it.

People. Not everything that tastes good is food or pussy. Learn to say “no.”

And NPR, there’s a Food Channel for this kind of escapist bullshit. I listen to you because I expect a modicum of insight and analysis, not because I can’t figure out how to combine red meat, white bread and Cheez Whiz® into a swallowable glob.

You’re dismissed.

I grew up in a household where guns were considered “tools.” My Dad, Raoul, ran a sporting goods business out of our country home, and I clearly remember as a wee child helping him and my Uncle Trefle smelt lead, cast bullets, press used priming caps out of casings and so forth, tasks which, while closely monitored by adults, nonetheless astonish me in retrospect.

But they shouldn’t. For many generations of Americans, hunting and the associated supporting skills were survival skills, essential ingredients in a successful agrarian life. Guns were tools back then, as they still are for millions of us who even today live that rural existence.

My attitude toward guns began its metamorphosis in the late sixties and seventies, when I spent a decade and then some living on the edge of a Post-Industrial New England city, an entropic wasteland of brown-skinned people standing in welfare lines which stretched around the block, of daylight drug deals, of able-bodied men sitting on their stoops at 11am, drinking out of brown paper bags. The crime was horrific - we lost a city block a week, one year, to arson. My brother was robbed at gunpoint.

One evening as my father stood up from his recliner to go to bed, we heard his bedroom window shatter, and were stunned and outraged to find a bullet lodged in my parents’ bedroom wall. Had Dad turned off the television fifteen seconds earlier, he might well have been killed that night.

This completed, in my mind, the transformation of guns from tools, from hunting machines, from a healthy and necessary part of life, into weapons. I found myself no longer able to justify their existence in a civilized society, and began to advocate for severe limitations to gun ownership, particularly handguns.

That perception of guns, as inherently at odds with the existence of a peaceful society, strengthened when I became a father of two daughters. The protective instinct, coupled with a seemingly endless barrage of news reports detailing every violent crime in this hemisphere, further informed my aversion to firearms.

It’s a perspective which has felt true, targeted, and inarguable for the last two decades, bolstered by media scream-fests about drive-by shootings (remember those?) and school massacres and reinforced by the similar conclusions drawn by the progressive minds with which I choose to associate.

Until now.

Yesterday the Supreme Court heard an important case regarding the total ban on private ownership of handguns in Washington, D.C. And as the arguments differentiating the exigencies of “well-regulated militias” from the rights of private individuals were vetted in the media, I realized with amazement that my position had come full circle, had returned to the position I held in my youth:

Private firearm ownership is essential to the preservation of this great Constitutional Experiment which we call America.

I expect many of you to disagree. Lord knows I too would have disagreed four years ago.

And you have your valid points - gun violence, if we are to believe media reports and government statistics, is out of control. And no level of school shootings is tolerable to me. But in Canada, which has a substantially higher per-capita ownership of guns, the statistics turn out quite differently, don’t they?

So even accepting the statistics and the crime reports and the Dire Warnings of Impending Doom, I’m not inclined to blame the problem on the existence of guns in public possession. And a long-winded excoriation of our Culture of Violence, of the driving demons of poverty and despair, of the soul-corroding hopelessness which is endemic in Low Income America, might have you wagging your heads in agreement, but it would be missing the point.

THE POINT is that, while the threat of violent anarchy at the hands of Gangs of Brown Animals from South of The Border is being used to terrify Good Americans into “shelving” their Constitutional Rights until some (unspecified) future time when Our Government has “saved” us from All Evil, a Greater Evil has been assembled by our own government, a private army of mercenaries, armed to the teeth with the best weapons Our Money can buy, trained to kill without thought or hesitation, and steeped in the Ideology of Armageddon espoused by their fundamentalist God of Destruction.

THE POINT is that, while administration mouthpieces bleat endlessly on about the dangers of Al Qaida and the need to monitor our domestic communications to keep us safe, our government has admitted with unprecedented arrogance that they reserve the right to SPY ON US without warrants, without oversight, without accountability, to detain us without charges, to employ extraordinary rendition to slip us out of the country, to use torture on individuals it believes must know something.

THE POINT is that, while most of us were deeply engrossed in watching American Idol, the Bush/Cheney administration quietly put into place the Presidential Directive which gives these bastards the right to declare martial law and usurp the entire function of our government at their discretion, for whatever reason, if they can claim our “national security” is in jeopardy.

As would be the case should we find ourselves suddenly involved in a catastrophic conflict with Iran.

And with last week’s “resignation” of Admiral William Fallon, the top US Commander in the Middle East, the last impediment to such a conflict was unceremoniously removed from the picture.

We now stand on the brink of a great precipice. Beyond the crumbling edge under our feet lies the gaping maw of Totalitarianism and Dictatorship envisioned by our Founding Fathers. What will we do when the order is given, when all of our Nation’s television screens simultaneously light up with the grim visage of Our Great Leader telling us that we are under attack, telling us what must be done to “protect” us?

Those of us with voices will scream loudly, and perhaps mobilize to march millions strong on Washington, to demand our Country back. But we won’t get there; the roads will be closed.

And then they’ll come for us. Because, yes, they DO know who we are. First they’ll nab the Big Fish, the voices with thousands of followers, then, soon enough, the rest of us.

I’ve already been warned. My brother, perhaps the political polar opposite of me, a one-issue Second Amendment voter who believes that the Democrats exist for the sole purpose of destroying the Constitution, has tried to warn me.

“Be careful what you say on that blog, [TCR.] There are people reading your words who don’t like your attitude, and they know where you live.”

I told him that all I had were my words, and that I was obligated to use them, even though I believed they would come for me when the order was given.

Yes, he assured me, they would come. But he planned to get here first.

And then I’d be mighty damned glad that he took the Second Amendment seriously.

I love you, Big Brother.

But if you love your country as much as you love me, you’ll take those guns to Washington, and bring every True Patriot you can gather along the way.

Because this poor Country is going to need that Well Regulated Militia.

These last seven years have been long ones.

It’s been hard to watch our nation’s prosperity chug and sputter to a stop, and then begin the inevitable slide backward which had to result from the incessant upward funneling of money, resources and real wealth. As a working-class guy with potential to do better, I had hoped the Clinton Years might herald a new direction for my life, an opportunity to get ahead a bit, to provide something better for my daughters, and yes, for myself. That opportunity now seems like a distant dream.

It’s been equally hard to watch my Country go down the road toward totalitarianism, to see the checks and balances of our brilliantly crafted Constitutional Experiment ignored, sneered at, dismissed out-of-hand, to see the peaceful protests of millions of Americans, and indeed tens of millions of people around the globe, be scoffed at as the ignorant braying of the ill-informed masses, to see the centuries-old tradition of public gatherings and freedom of expression replaced by “free speech zones,” as if that concept had an iota of validity, to watch as my tax dollars are spent to finance a Mercenary Army with an unprecedented dearth of accountability, to see them do unspeakably things in the name of America, to know that their crimes will never be prosecuted, to watch as my Congressional leaders whine and wring their hands helplessly when we beg them to make it stop.

And then there is the corruption of the oily bastards at the top, funneling our payroll taxes to KBR, our retirement accounts to day-traders, our mortgages to predatory lenders, feeding our Prince of Peace to the Me-First Bigots up on the stages of Mega-Churches, the kind The Prince would have torn down with his bare hands.

And the Hypocrisy. The Self-Righteous Homo-Haters caught paying cops to let them suck their Big Cop Dicks, caught tap-dancing for sex in airport bathrooms, resigning then un-resigning, embracing the Mantra of Unaccountability, wallowing in the creeping crud which has so freely flowed from our Highest Offices for neigh unto two full terms, the belief that one is above the law, that morals are nothing more than campaign-trail rhetoric, a sop to the malleable masses.

So it was with more than a little anguish that I listened to the unfolding news that Elliot Spitzer, Governor of New York, The Sheriff of Wall Street, a progressive voice on a mission to end corruption in his State government, to enforce accountability in high places, a man with the potential to be a beacon of hope for We The People, had snuffed out the light of his ascendancy by buying sex, very expensive sex, from the kind of big-money operation he had so recently vilified, railed against, prosecuted to the Fullest Extent of The Law.

Very expensive sex, indeed. It cost him more than just the $80,000. It cost him his future. It cost him, if not his marriage, then at least the trust of his wife and the respect of his children.

And it cost me another piece of my heart. It drove another nail into the coffin where my Hope lies waiting, threw another shovel full of dirt in the hole, scratched another name off the list of Those Who Might Be The One. If anything can be harder than watching the War Machine dismember Kucinich or the Corporocracy consume Edwards, it is this: watching a good man fall prey to the demons of power, succumb to the temptations of the flesh, betray the trust of his wife, dash the hopes of those of us who so dearly, desperately need a leader, and hurl himself to Earth, a modern-day Icarus on a suicide mission, taking our dreams with him to Hell.

Yet from the smoldering ruins of this good life gone wrong, something rises toward the light, glowing faintly, nearly missed amidst the camera flashes of the media feeding frenzy, a phoenix, a tonic, a balm.

It is accountability, contritely expressed, humbly embraced, final, complete.

And that’s a lesson George Bush and his hoards would do well to learn.

During a spirited discussion last night among the visitors at Blue Gal’s Monday Night Salon, I finally made up my mind, again, to vote for sanity today, to vote for integrity today, to vote for responsibility today, TO VOTE IN MY BEST INTEREST TODAY.

Today, in the hills of Western Massachusetts, I’m going to the polls to cast my Primary vote for Dennis Kucinich.

Because he and I opposed this fucking war from Day One.

Because he and I want corporate money OUT of our fucking electoral system.

Because he and I want all Americans to have HEALTH CARE, not just to be forced to buy health insurance from giant for-profit corporations.

I actually sat down and cried at one point yesterday. And as I sat there with my head in my hands, it became clear to me that I was mourning the death of my Country, the death of my Democracy, the premature burial of my children’s futures.

I WILL NOT CAST MY VOTE FOR A CANDIDATE WHO IS PREORDAINED BY THE CORPORATE MEDIA.

I want change, but not just a change in skin color or genitalia. I want a change of allegiance. I want a President who puts the people of America first. I want a President who respects the rule of law. I want a President who honors International Treaties.

And today, I’m going to vote for that man. He won’t take Massachusetts, but the next time I look at my kids, I’ll be standing straight and tall (well, you know what I mean,) knowing that I tried.

I know, I’ll get Obama, or maybe Clinton. And then, in the General Election, I’ll vote for them over the Republican’t choice of War Monger. (BTW, that was a typo, but I left it in despite my aversion to name calling; it was just too cosmic. )

So people, if you’re still “undecided” or just luke-warm about the choice being made for you, look at your ballot. Your first choice is still there.

DO IT, PEOPLE.

YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO.

This may well be your last chance to vote for the person who represents you.

Don’t throw that away.

Yes indeed, it surely does float!

Fox News just announced that Carl “The Boy Wonder” Rove, aka “Turd-Blossom,” will be joining the network in it’s quest to present The Fair and Balanced Truth. Or, You Decide. Whatever.

Starting, of course, On Super-Duper Tuesday.

Shit. And me without a TV.

There was a time when the words “We The People” filled me with pride, a sense of empowerment, a wet-eyed wonder at the possibilities.

Ah, the Innocence of Youth.

I guess I should have known better. I guess I should have seen this coming.

I remember the day in fifth grade when we were suddenly ushered back to “home room” to hear The News, through the trembling lips of my favorite teacher, that Camelot had burned to the ground, that the vision of an America where We The People were empowered not just to Buy and to Own and to Possess, but to Do, to Dream, to make a difference, was obscured by the dark clouds of Hope turning to ashes.

I remember less distinctly the day in 1968 when Martin died, perhaps because of my unexamined whiteness, perhaps because of the sense that we had come so far with him, accomplished so much with his guidance, and would continue to walk in his presence for as long as we were willing to walk.

Of the days and years between then and now, I remember most proudly the High Point, when We The People seized the power of popular opinion and ended an unjust war. It was a singular victory for the Common Man, fueled by images of The Truth, by an unprecedented real-time accounting of the costs, by frank dinner-time discussions from dissenting voices, by a rude awakening from the American Dream. It was the Age of Television, a time of images.

But it was also a time of awakening for the Dogs of War, the captains of industry who supplied the Pentagon with its engines of destruction, the beneficiaries of this ultimate form of planned obsolescence. Build it, sell it, blow it up, build some more. They had seen the Ultimate Cash Cow, the corporate juggernaut of Eisenhower’s nightmares, derailed by We The People.

That would be the last time that the Military-Industrial Monster would be bitten by Hamilton’s Beast.

Today the Captains of Corporate Hegemony control the miracle medium of television, and with it, the message. They tell us what to buy, what to wear, what to drive.

They tell us what to think.

And We The People are buying it. Across America, in a torporific tidal wave of diminishing expectations, of curiosity being systematically replaced by complacency, we’re buying it. We’re breakfasting on bullshit, lunching on lies, supping on sound-bites designed to make us think we’re thinking,

Where are the voices of sanity in this time of turmoil, of caring and compassion in the face of callousness and corruption?

Silenced.

Where are the voices who speak for you and me, informed by facts, grounded in good will, demanding the fabled Justice For All?

Silenced.

Ask Dennis Kucinich, who dared to suggest that we demand health care instead of settling for health insurance.

Ask John Edwards, who had the audacity to suggest that we take our government back from the Corporations who control it today.

Sorry, Gentlemen, but you’re Dismissed, your ideological pair of aces Trumped by a full house of corporate kings. Voted off the island by a tribe which never really got to hear your message, who knew only that your haircut cost $400 or that you’d seen a UFO. There will be no more Dancing with the Stars for you two, just a sullen trip back to your day jobs among the American idle, you and the likes of Ross Perrot, who had the wacky idea that NAFTA would cost us hundreds of thousands of good jobs, that Globalization would lead to the out-sourcing of our tech sector, that our supply-sided economic system was broken and needed fixing.

Control the Media, Control the Message, Control our Destiny. The Opiate of the Masses, the Electric Lobotomy, Soma made Simple. Plug it in, turn it on, let the talking heads do the thinking for you. It’s the New American Way. Oh, and don’t forget to vote!

Because they will let us “vote,” alright - for a Corporacrat in magic underwear, or maybe for a Corporacrat in a skirt. And half of us will be slapping each other on the back, and half of us will be kicking stones down the road and grumbling about “next time,” and ALL of us will be getting screwed.

John Edwards asked exactly the right question: What will it take for the American People to wake up to the realization that we’ve lost our Democracy to Corporate Power?

Apparently, more than we’ve taken thus far.

Nothing a trip to the mall wouldn’t fix up just fine!