Saturday, January 1, 2011

Happy New Year to all those real-time kind of wise cynics … all opinion with no solutions.

 

The same war

continues.
We have breathed the grits of it in, all our lives,
our lungs are pocked with it,
the mucous membrane of our dreams
coated with it, the imagination
filmed over with the gray filth of it:

Often in my self-defined weariness of civic activism, I tend to buy into what most of those with whom I have shared concerns, passions and activities now are want to say:

“All politicians and their parties are the same, all taking money from lobbyists possessing financial resources far beyond what any collection of citizens can raise. We the little people have no power.”

Then we can continue our own slippery slide into acceptance as if the five stages of grief have become culturally, mentally and intellectually engraved in our hearts … becoming now no more than mere excuse to stop trying.

Do your slogans and my slogans merely hide our civic laziness, or worse, our civic cowardice.

Reference Michael True, US at War Since 1950: A New Year's Meditation at Truthout.org

Is our grandest action donning a too-large coat of pessimism, calling it our pragmatic view of reality and retreating further into mindless consumerism and addiction to broadcast entertainment … our current drug of choice?

I hope not. I also agree with Andrew Bacevich who observes that in so doing we “ become complicit in the destruction of what most Americans profess to hold dear."

But I fear that we will continue chasing our tails into national disaster so long as we hide behind our apathy, not to mention our commonly non-sensed stupidity.

“Ironically, the deficit-reduction commission appointed by President Obama intimates that social security, rather than a trillion-dollar war on Iraq and uncapped military spending in Afghanistan, is to blame for the deficit. And Congress has succeeded in extending Bush's tax cuts for the super-rich, which will increase the deficit.” – Michael True

Collectively we seem to care little that that silliest among us can screech the loudest and force themselves into positions of responsibility they are not qualified to handle. Collectively we seem to tired to do other than let the noisiest, most obnoxious and poorly-informed sloganeers defined our future for the rest of us …

Do what you want guys, just don’t turn off our games and circuses

We need fewer humans of courage stepping up to the plate against alien invaders who want to destroy our way off life and more stepping forward to push for schemes even more scarier than death rays, destroyer space ships and human eating ghouls.'

How about finding heroes for Michael True’s terrifying plan to save the human race for us here and now and our defenseless prosperity who need more than gadgets and games:

So what must be done to alter this discouraging scenario and help the US regain the confidence of its own people and the world community?

1. Cut the US military budget in half for 2011.
2. Increase taxes on the filthy rich, the 1 percent of the population that owns at least 23 percent of America's wealth.
3. Rebuild roads, bridges and other infrastructure that remains in a state of disrepair.
4. Encourage policies that put people to work addressing the dangers of global warming.
5. Strengthen our education system at every level, providing skills for meaningful work for all citizens.

Or just keep pretending to every one you meet that you are some real kind of wise cynic … all opinion with no solution … we won’t appreciate you any less than we do now.

If you’re not too busy figuring out the next gew gaw to purchase from your junkies at the big box tent, the next TV rerun or football game to watch, pause for five minutes and read the following slowly enough to think about who you are. It was not written recently … but things have not changed … only gotten worse.

POEM
Life at War

BY DENISE LEVERTOV

The disasters numb within us
caught in the chest, rolling
in the brain like pebbles. The feeling
resembles lumps of raw dough

weighing down a child’s stomach on baking day.
Or Rilke said it, ‘My heart. . .
Could I say of it, it overflows
with bitterness . . . but no, as though

its contents were simply balled into
formless lumps, thus
do I carry it about.’
The same war

continues.
We have breathed the grits of it in, all our lives,
our lungs are pocked with it,
the mucous membrane of our dreams
coated with it, the imagination
filmed over with the gray filth of it:

the knowledge that humankind,

delicate Man, whose flesh
responds to a caress, whose eyes
are flowers that perceive the stars,

whose music excels the music of birds,
whose laughter matches the laughter of dogs,
whose understanding manifests designs
fairer than the spider’s most intricate web,

still turns without surprise, with mere regret
to the scheduled breaking open of breasts whose milk
runs out over the entrails of still-alive babies,
transformation of witnessing eyes to pulp-fragments,
implosion of skinned penises into carcass-gulleys.

We are the humans, men who can make;
whose language imagines mercy,
lovingkindness we have believed one another
mirrored forms of a God we felt as good—

who do these acts, who convince ourselves
it is necessary; these acts are done
to our own flesh; burned human flesh
is smelling in Vietnam as I write.

Yes, this is the knowledge that jostles for space
in our bodies along with all we
go on knowing of joy, of love;

our nerve filaments twitch with its presence
day and night,
nothing we say has not the husky phlegm of it in the saying,
nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness,
the deep intelligence living at peace would have.

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