Think It’s Time for a Change

I started doing this blog shortly after Obama was elected in 2008. I saw better times coming and wanted to talk about where I believed we should go after all the years of Reaganism. It hasn’t turned out that way. First there was the much-deeper-than-I-foresaw racist reaction to having a black male as president. And then there’s been Obama’s inclination toward Reagan-like policies. (Yes, things could be worse—like, say, a McCain or a Romney presidency. But we are still heading toward hell, just at a slower pace.)

Lately, things have gotten so crazy that I find myself constantly conjuring up comebacks to all the negativity in the form of posts that I end up not writing because I’m tired of writing about this stuff. It’s my intention to stop reading and thinking about the violent and greedy egomaniacs in our midst and to start talking about where I believe we should go, or, at the very least, where I want to go. There are solutions to what ails us, and it’s not too late. I don’t think many people recognize what those solutions are, though. We’ve become too frivolous and distracted. But this is where I am going to put my energy now.

Changing My Political Affiliation

Last week when I read in the New York Times that Obama was going to submit a budget that proposed cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits, I decided that if he really did this, I was going to leave the Democratic Party. For what it’s worth, I wrote the White House saying so. (No response and no quaking in boots.) Well, he has done so, and I’m changing my registration today. Some people are saying that what he’s done is merely a tactic to try to make the Republicans look bad or something. I don’t care. I want someone who stands up and openly does what’s good and what’s right. I’m sick of the political games. I’m sick of compromising with evil. I don’t know exactly what happens next, but I’m not staying on this track anymore. The Republicans managed to pull the country into hell by being uncompromising. Maybe we have to be uncompromising to make our way into the heavenly realm.

In more pleasant news, I just found out that my book, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, has gone into an 11th printing as a paperback. (It did four printings in hardback.) Next February, the book will have been in print for ten years, a happy milestone.

Voting in Republicans

I’m fed up with voting for Democrats and getting Republicans. I read that the Obama administration has been having meetings to decide what to do about the states of Washington and Colorado and their legalization of marijuana. I haven’t smoked any pot in around fifteen years, but I think it’s a fine, fine plant. I’ve had some good insights while high that, decades later, I still draw upon. It may seem like a small thing, but I’m at a kind of personal tipping point here. Given that they could choose to simply leave it alone, if they do anything at all, any kind of federal enforcement, then I’m going down to city hall and changing my voter registration away from “Democrat.” Not a big thing, I know, but what else can I do? How much of this bullshit do we have to take?

Why Obama: An Addendum

In the documentary film Freedom Riders, which I watched yesterday, there are frequent interviews with John Patterson who was the governor of Alabama at the time of the Freedom Rides. He was a segregationist, and his refusal to provide protection for the Freedom Riders allowed them to be beaten severely by white mobs. The interviews are curious. He comes off as intelligent and he speaks frankly and unapologetically about the time. He is never put on the spot by the interviewer. One comes away from the film curious about his current views. (He was in his late 80s when the film was made.) I looked him up and it turns out that he renounced his segregationist views a long time ago. (I wonder why he wasn’t given the opportunity to say so.) He insists, and of course he’s right, that in those days being in favor of integration in a place like Alabama was political suicide. Even more interesting, in 2008 he endorsed Obama for president. The Freedom Riders were not supported initially by the Civil Rights establishment—including Martin Luther King. It was thought they were pushing things too far, too fast. In the end they won. I think their pacifist stand had a lot to do with it. They were young, and many people thought them hopelessly naive. But they had courage, good hearts, a good sense of humor, and smart tactics. When Mississippi tried to intimidate the Freedom Riders by locking them up in the notoriously severe Parchman Prison rather than in a relatively easy city jail, the Freedom Riders said, “Okay, let’s fill the prison with so many of us that putting us in prison becomes a huge hassle for the state of Mississippi.” And they did it. They sent hundreds of volunteers—black, white, men, and women—down to  break the segregation laws, and Mississippi was overwhelmed by it all. The Freedom Riders are true heroes, not the fakes who get passed off as heroes nowadays.

Why Obama

I recently received an email from someone in Canada who wanted to know why I had supported Obama’s reelection. He is angry with Obama and cited, specifically, Obama’s use of drones and his caving in to the Wall Street bankers. My answer to him was, yes, well…better him than the horror that was Romney. After watching a documentary on the Freedom Riders of the early 1960s, I’m reminded of another reason, a reason that I was well aware of in 2008, but less so this time around. Namely: It is so good for this country to have as president someone who is not lily-white—and who was re-elected to boot. That’s a fundamental and forever change, I think. And that’s good enough for me.

So, Back to Work.

Like a lot of people, I think, I feel more relieved than celebratory after the election. Basically, we’re back at square one, except that the Republicans are pretty much in a situation where they have to abandon their tactics of confrontation and obstruction. They failed in their bid to destroy Obama, to make him a one-term president. I don’t think most people want another four years of their intransigence. The one aspect of the election that cheers me is the very real possibility that the Republican strategy of depending on the angry white male voter has finally reached a dead end. This is a common theme in all the commentary I’ve been reading. It all began back in 1968 with Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” a transparently, if not openly, racist approach. They’ve been tweaking it ever since. But it may finally be dead, dead, dead. Thank God! (Demographically speaking, I am a white male, a taxpaying, home-owning WASP. But I’m not angry.)

In the last two or three weeks I’ve been distracted by the election. Now I can get back to work in earnest. I haven’t done any final-draft level writing in ten years. It feels good to be back in the saddle. I’m satisfied with how it’s going.

An addendum a few hours after posting: No one knows really knows which way the wind will blow, but the Republicans are actually talking intransigence. For them it’s apparently got to be either victory or self-immolation.

This Creepy Election

I haven’t been writing about the election. I find the level of debate extraordinarily discouraging, which reflects, I think, a certain naïveté on my part. For years, I’ve been watching the intelligence of the American people go downhill. What’s there to be shocked about? When you have this kind of worship of celebrity and wealth—classic decadent empire—it’s to be expected.  Self-government requires intelligence and engagement. We’re facing some extremely serious issues, none of which are being addressed. One example is human-caused climate change, which most scientists seem to agree does exist. Not to discuss it is crazy and dangerous. But neither candidate dares to touch it. Another example is the economy. It’s discussed, but not the real underlying problem. The truth is that we’re seeing the end of a fantasy belief, that of constant economic growth for generation after generation. It was always a logical fallacy, an utter impossibility. Neither candidate can save the economy—at least not the old-style economy that we’re used to. We’re entering a new era and we need to start looking at it realistically. Does Obama need to lose so that Romney can demonstrate that the Republicans’ ideas won’t work either? I have little doubt that if either candidate told the truth about what’s really going on, the people—who claim to want their politicians to tell them the truth—would turn on him. So democracy—self-government—is failing in America. If it were working it wouldn’t matter how much money any particular candidate raised. People would have seriously studied the issues and would judge a candidate on the clarity and truth of his or her ideas, not on their ad campaigns. Money would be irrelevant. I blame much of our current state on computers and the Internet. We have not gotten any smarter since their introduction. To the contrary. (I’ll be writing more about this in the future.)

In any case, I’ve already voted, and I voted for Obama. I have to wonder if the worst happens and Romney does win, will the Republicans, given the last four years, be so hypocritical as to demand national unity? I’m sure they will. All the old insanity, all the old lines like “why do you hate America?,” and talk of non-Republicans being treasonous will once again tiresomely fill the air. Our only solution is to step back and take a non-ideological, objective-as-possible look at who we are and what we believe. What we believe must correspond to what is true, not what we’d like to be true. We can still do it. It may take another economic crash and a few more monster storms, but we can still do it. It’s not too late.

The Coming Election

In 2008 I voted for Barack Obama with enthusiasm. This time I’ll be voting for him as the lesser of two evils. One thing I pray that I’ve learned once and for all is that under the current setup there’s no chance of a truly good man or woman getting into the White House and doing good things. I don’t know what Obama’s original intentions were, but it seems to me that as soon as he got into office he was taken aside and told how things really work. He could either go along or be destroyed. I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. That’s how empires do business, and this is an empire. Eventually, like all empires, it will come apart. Actually, I think that’s already begun to happen.

I would sooner live in Greece than under another Republican president. That’s not hyperbole. I’ve been to Greece and I liked it. I think Greece will soon be out of the global economy, which would make the idea even more attractive to me. (It’s also possible that it will, in effect, lose its sovereignty and become nothing more than a playground for the rich.) But moving to another country is extremely difficult. So even if the nightmare of a Romney presidency were to come about, I see it as highly doubtful that I’d be able to pull it off. I can’t dismiss the idea entirely, though. Romney keeps making bigger and bigger deals with the devil. (This is the first time, by the way, I’ve ever had the wish that I could leave the country. It’s not something I do every election year.)

What a strange, strange time we live in. I’ve seen strange times that are good, but this ain’t one of ‘em. It’s not that I don’t believe there’s any hope. I do. (I know people who believe that having any hope at all is “hopelessly naive.”) But the hope I see is extremely difficult—probably impossible—to make understandable at this point in time.

Last Night I Had A Dream

Obama had made some announcement or proclamation that wasn’t all that extreme or radical, but the Tea Party types (older white people) went ballistic, declaring it the last straw. Fighting broke out all across the land—fist fights, not guns. I remember witnessing a brawl among customers in a fast food place—some chain. While passing through a school cafeteria, I saw a cook, an older white woman, weeping and packing up her pots and pans. She could no longer do her job under this president. A little later I was in a big gymnasium-type building and there were fights happening all across the floor. High up on the walls near the roof was a long row of windows with heavy maroon curtains. A man I recognized as the leader of a national taxpayers association (a dream character, not someone identifiable in reality) was throwing flaming objects up at the curtains, trying to ignite them. I was outraged because he was always trying to pass himself off in the media as a responsible man, an adult among children, a true patriot, and so on. I thought, “What a fraud!” I became so angry that I knocked him to the ground and started pummeling his face, trying to shatter his cheekbones (completely out of character; I’ve never been in a fight in my life). As I beat him I kept shouting “You’re a fraud and a phony!” He laughed and laughed, exulting, “Yes! But I’m having such a fun time!”

Protest Sign

Sign at an anti Tea Party March