Turning Over An Old Leaf

You really should have known me before I became politicized. No kidding!

You would have found me to be a much nicer person. Not NICE, mind you, but nicer. However, starting January 1, 2008, you too will have the opportunity to experience the kinder, gentler "me what used to be." The situation, you see, is about to change.....

Here's what led to me gaining my current, unsustainable level of political consciousness: some weeks after 9/11, I was driving to the bank while listening to NPR radio. A man with an unidentifiable voice was being interviewed, and the subject was the Global War On Terror. A question was posed to him, something like, "How can America end worldwide terror?"

Reasonable enough.

The man said, "The only way America can hope to end international terrorism is to stop participating in it."

Huh?

Now, up to that point, I was pretty uninformed politically speaking. I was proud of being a nonvoter, but my reasons were shapeless and squiggly - something to do with what P.J. O'Rourke called "The Parliament of Whores," in reference to congress. "They're all crooked, so what's the point?" was about the beginning and end of my smug justification for being superior and uninvolved. Hey, I was above it all.

So what was this guy on the radio talking about? America was the VICTIM of terrorism, I thought, not a participant and sure as hell not a perpetrator. OK, OK, I had lived through that ugly Viet Nam thing. But surely that was an aberration. Then I recalled some icky, uh, developments going on in the 80's down in Central America. I even recalled the names and players in some of those "separate little countries down there," and I had participated in rallies and educational fora back then. Oh, yeah, Iran/Contra, too... But now? I mean, those evildoers had blown up some serious real estate Back East.

Well, the guy talking on the radio was Noam Chomsky, and it has all been different since that day when I decided to do my banking from my car in the drive-through line so as not to miss what he had to say. My "take-away" from that little interlude was this: in the post-WWII era, the USA is the number one terrorist nation in the world ACCORDING TO ITS OWN GOVERNMENT'S DEFINITION OF TERRORISM. This fact, as Chomsky would say, is noncontroversial.

Since then, I have made it my business to read, watch, and/or listen to most everything I could get my hands on by Mr. Chomsky and others of similar stripes. I watched Democracy NOW! I became a progressive after I learned what that meant. I patrolled the website called Truthout! I wrote to the editor - any editor. I subscribed to the Portland Alliance, a local muckraking monthly I later disavowed because they are such poor spellers. (I made this radical move ONLY after volunteering three different times to proofread their stuff for them, to no avail.) In short, I got interested, conscious, aware, informed, active, involved, up-to-speed, knowledgeable, passionate, cynical, hypervigilant, and politically hip. I learned that the Florida Fix was in for the 2000 election before the Supremes ever stepped up to the microphone.

What I did NOT get was wise. I said stupid things to people for which I later felt compelled to apologize (not that there is anything wrong with that). I became embroiled in futile political discussions from which I had about as much chance to extricate myself as those hapless kids who left the trail of bread crumbs to lead them back home. And those were my good days.

I had made the political, personal. Some famous person once said that the mark of a diplomat is to be able to disagree without being disagreeable. That is not me. I know that now.

Plus, quite frankly, my political consciousness of these last few years has stressed me out. It has NOT been to my benefit. It all comes down to one word: discrepancy. My dad was king of the living discrepancy, the gap between saying and doing. Drives me nuts. Gives me a giant headache. And that pretty well describes the difference between USA: THE PRINCIPALS and USA: THE PRACTICES. From the beginning and seemingly for all time, the principals and ideals upon which this great nation was founded and the actual things it has done are separated by a gap which dwarfs The Grand (or any) Canyon. I can't take it any more. The more I learn, the more I hate it. Hatred implies impotence, and it pinches around the toes.

So, beginning January 1, 2008, my New Year's Resolution is one of reversion to a state of political ignorance approximately equal to that of the average American Idol viewer. I cannot UNLEARN what I know, but I CAN shun news broadcasts, section A of any newspaper, any publication or program with the word "news" in it, new books and magazines with political content, etc., etc. (Already my new approach is costing me......I had just renewed my rather pricey subscription to Z Magazine, and have taken pains to switch it over to my political compatriot David K.)

So come New Year's Day and from that point forward, I don't know nuttin'. I don't get involved in political discussions, because I am not up on things. I don't know what country we are victimizing this week, or what society's hope for a better life we are eliminating in favor of our business interests. I don't know where we are destroying democracy, what ancient culture we are cutting off at the knees, what vicious dictator we are installing or propping up, or what new generation's mind we are forever poisoning against us, or whose blood we are spilling for oil (which, as intrepid BBC Reporter Greg Palast points out, most Americans think is a bargain).

I don't know what land our BRAVE YOUNG SOLDIERS are volunteering to destroy by murdering, raping, burning, gassing, mutilating, torturing, radiating, eviscerating, threatening, electrocuting, sodomizing, and scarring its women, children, men and animals for the sake of Hummers, 31 Flavors, Happy Meals, Whoppers, The Mall, Jerry Springer, three dollar gasoline, and their college tuition......while all the while claiming the High Ground Of Noble Purpose.

I reserve the right to keep and read my current books and other writings and to reminisce about democracy.

I just can't take it any more. Too many discrepancies for one small mind.

I'll see you on the other side.