I live and breathe politics far more than is healthy to do. I don’t do this because I love politics. I do this because I am profoundly concerned that the wonderful idea that was our representative democracy at its inception is in peril. Peril. Real, no b.s., train is bearing down on you, and you are tied to the tracks, type danger. Civic responsibility goes hand in hand with democratic rights.
The paucity of compassion for others, the lack of respect for the real Constitution of the United States and its first 10 amendments, also known as the Bill of Rights, the disregard of facts, I find all these things nauseating. Politics has sunk to its lowest level and it is not all on the “right” but I find that the “left” cannot tell lies with a straight face for the most part, and that the right does so with impunity.
I’ve done my share of propagandizing in the last 10 years, but I don’t tell lies. I’ve written pieces that tried to nudge readers toward a certain viewpoint. I’ve used tactics that are less than admirable in my writing over the years. I am not writing from any pristine pedestal. But I am writing from my heart, with my head, and not promoting any deceit. Truth will out. At least that is what I once thought.
Religion has no place in politics in America. Yet the separation of church and state is being attacked. There can be no liberty, religious or otherwise, when the two are mixed.
The extremist right-wing, Koch- backed, boosted, and birthed “Tea Party” sullies the good name of an anti-corporate protest against the original East India Tea Company that was seminal in conveying the message of why the U.S. had to declare its independence from the classist, oligarchical, corporatist British Empire. Check out the REAL story of the Boston Tea Party. I just left a voice message on Thom Hartmann’s comment line asking him to digitize the copy of the first hand account of the real Boston Tea Party, Retrospect of the Boston Tea Party with a Memoir of George R.T. Hewes, a Survivor of the Little Band of Patriots Who Drowned the Tea in Boston Harbor in 1773. You could do the same!
But people living in cities in Michigan have had their right to vote tossed out the window by the Governor who disbands duly elected municipal governing bodies and appointing autocratics who act like corporate raiders to sell off the public resources of the municipality, often to their cronies, for short-term financial gain that only hurts the people of the city and does nothing to solve long-term financial problems.
Florida was purging voter rolls according to lists of supposedly non-citizens and they will not say who created those lists, that included natural-born American citizens such as WWII veterans who had been awarded the Bronze Star for actions in the Battle of the Bulge; the Federal Justice Department has demanded an immediate end to the purges.
Rights that women won decades ago to have control over their own bodies and health are being attacked and dismantled systematically on a state by state basis in what is obviously a nationally orchestrated campaign.
The one person, one vote basis of our democratic system has been thrown out the window by politically motivated judicial malfeasance at the highest levels of the land in its Citizens United ruling that allow elections to be swamped by the influence and biased advertisements of a plutocracy of an extremely small number of über-wealthy, corporatist individuals.
A presidential hopeful is an outright liar that seem to not give a damn about anyone or anything and certainly not the truth.
There are so many stories behind these bits of info I’ve splatted onto your screen; stay with me for the month and I will tell you about them in more detail as I participate in another * Blog Every F***ing Day * challenge also known as BlogHer’s NaBloPoMo “Jump”-themed June Challenge.
If you feel strongly about any of the things I mention here, let me know, LEAVE A COMMENT, and I might just expand upon and expound on the particulars you want to know from this list of things we all need to know and about which we disseminate information far and wide.
Happy June, Happy Friday. Go do something this weekend to save our representative democracy.
Note: You may copy and use the featured image, the Vote image at the top of this post, freely for Progressive purposes. My image is a derivative image of one you may find here.
Snotty Noses and Political Boogers
The first title for this post was, “Turning Politically Pissed Off Energy into Something Positive.” That was the intellectual side of my brain talking. This is really about cleaning up a gross, crusty, makes-you-grimace sort of situation.
It all started when I went to a political fundraiser last week here in Tucson at which the FLOTUS with the mostus, Michelle Obama, spoke and Calexico played. Positions evolve, or at least that is what one of the three sanctioned sound bytes about “the Presidency” from the week since then tells me.
I believe strongly in funding public education so that every child starts out with an equal informational and critical reasoning footing when their basic education is completed. Politics has no place in the classroom. I believe that every person has a right to live with dignity and have their basic physical needs met. America is too great a county to abandon widows and orphans to malnutrition and starvation, to sleeping on the streets in filth, and harboring infectious easily preventable diseases. Those who have come before, whether we are we are talking about my great-grandfather, the EUB preacher, or my father, the small farmer who lobbied for non-corporate, family farmers rights’ with the Farmer’s Union, worked too hard for maintaining and expanding basic human rights in this country in a just and fair manner for me to allow their efforts and ethics to fall by the way side. That is what came from me listening to Michelle Obama in the Leo Rich Auditorium at the Tucson Convention Center last week. Breathe. Focus. Act. Repeat.
The world is so damn complex and I am so tired. But I have to suck it up and get busy again. I don’t want to, I just want to write my book, blog a couple of times a week, and get to know my husband again after 22 years of parenting. I still parent but from 15oo miles away; and it is a very a different experience than what came before. But I have to be political again. We have to become political again. It is sort of like when as a mother you see a runny, crusty nose, and you just have to get a tissue and wipe the said snotty nose as you hold down the offending vessel so as not to allow escape. Snotty noses are the province of mothers not because mothers love snot, but because we care about the kid. Politics must be the province of mothers, not because we like politicians, but because we love democracy.
This is the framework I will be using to be able to do the things I feel I have to do as just a basic part of my civic duty over the course of the next 6 months. I don’t this is much of a stretch as far as reframing goes. It is more like activating the Mom framework that I previously adopted and then applying it to the political season within which we will be living through November 2012.
So who is with me?
MSNBC Is Political, Fox Is Political, News Is Not Political
My husband and I, both televised political and news coverage junkies, disagree about how much coverage to allow into our home, but the one area in which we are in agreement is that MSNBC is the only mainstream news entity that routinely covers progressive analysis of topics.
Allow me to re-emphasize that last point, if you will. It is analysis and not individual topics themselves that have political leanings. People and editorial entities have political stances; news that is fact based, as news is supposed to be, cannot have a political viewpoint.
I, personally, am best described in current political jargon as a “Progressive.” The thing that is totally weird is that, even though my perspective is best described by the word progressive, I do not believe in the concept of progress. I believe that change happens all the time, but progress is a dangerous concept. Few people define what progress is or would be and how it would be measured. To over-simplify to the extreme Democrats currently view the past as flawed and the future as wide open. Similarly, to over-simplify to the extreme, Republicans view the past as perfect and the future as a dangerous or even horrific if we continue moving in the direction we are moving. Neither perspective is acceptable in and of itself. The past has passed on, and we rarely know what really happened and almost never know why it happened. This type of uncertainty is not something most people like to think about or can even tolerate in our lives. I am a rarity in that dealing with uncertainty, while it is scary to plan for, is the only reality in which I can exist. To believe in anything else would constitute my being negligent to the point of endangering my family, my life, and my world. To me that is the bottom line.
This view is antithetical to the oversimplified pabulum we are fed at every turn by entities whose best interest is to have the vast majority of the people not pay attention to big pictures. In my interpretation of the world, progressives are not wide-eyed liberals who just want us all to get along, in my world progressives are actually pessimists because they acknowledge the crap that has come before, still exists, and believe we can make it all better. In my interpretation of the world, conservatives are the optimists who think there was some glory point in the past where things were much better and by adopting elements of what worked before we can make the future a better place.
I cannot make peace with either of these perspectives, and to let you know why I cannot, please allow me to digress for a moment and bring religion into the mix. And while I am at it, I might as well get the other taboo topic, of which “nice women” are not supposed speak, out in the open, too. Religion, politics and sex, the things that nice women are not supposed to talk about. Bull Shit!
My mitochondrial DNA comes from long line of Amish people, although for the last few generations we have been more likely to define ourselves religiously as some other Protestant denomination. I cannot say much about my father’s lineage because, even though I know about Dad’s list of ancestors via public documents, marriage records, baptismal records, and family Bible records back into the 1700s, as anthropologists say, “Paternity is always problematic.” The “Pennsylvania Dutch” from whom I am descended are called Dutch, in my humble opinion, not because they are Dutch, the Amish are of Swiss decent, but because they passed through the Netherlands as refugees and because they spoke what my father always referred to as Low German as their mother tongue even after becoming Americans. At the time they became a cohesive group they believed in putting their tightly controlled community first, over any other allegiance, and that belief is still alive and well in my family even though the religion that went with it in its original state has not been observed since, at least, my great, great grandmother’s generation. The history of being political refugees is one that had enough meaning for my ancestors, both long past and recent, from the Amish ancestry as well as from the strong Anabaptist traditions of my father’s family that dates well back into the 1700s. Genetically and socially I was taught to be very suspicious of, and teach my children to be suspicious of corporate control. Corporate control beyond the purely business definition can be any outside group that attempts to control another group. This corporate body could be primarily a religious, political, or financial entity, or in the case of the Holy Roman Church that persecuted the first Amish, all three. Most families no longer have this strong of an oral tradition. The cyclic nature of history was taught to me as a part of my family history and family history was strongly influenced by both religious and political concerns.
In my family it was always okay to talk politics and religion whenever family was gathered together and my father was present. It was always okay to be political in public too. My dad lobbied in D.C., representing the local Farmer’s Union, and he also met a President which is rather uncommon in today’s world. He was given a tour of the Truman Library, in Independence, Missouri, by President Truman, as the President apparently was wont to do in the 1950s, when he was in a small group of farmer’s at a conference in Kansas City who opted to participate in an optional tour of the library. Dad also was a poll worker for his political party at election time.
I take politics seriously, religion seriously, and equality of the sexes seriously. I know why I believe in the way that I do. I want facts. I want history. And I want people to understand the difference between blind allegiance and informed support. I believe the responsibility of every American is to engage in critical thinking as best as she or he can so as to be an informed citizen . Our nation was founded to support individual economic autonomy and religious tolerance. These essential ingredients in our founding mix that is reflected in documents like the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are in danger of being lost if our recipe is changed. The essential ingredient in the original recipe that created our Great Nation that seems to be missing more and more often in contemporary political discussion is having an educated government and citizenry who know the difference between opinion and fact.
How much time do we spend on getting the facts about things that concern us, what kind of analysis or interpretation of the data do we take in and give weight or take at face value, and where are we getting our facts and how do we know we are facts? In my view it seems that more and more people in the U.S. have somehow missed the training that teaches them to think for themselves. How did this happen? How can we counteract it?
Do not blindly agree with me. Think about it. Research it. Read. Turn the damned T.V. over to something that teaches you how to think or gives you information and does not deal in opinion, or better yet, shut the T.V. off, put on some music and pick up a print source and read something that is not fiction.
I watch MSNBC partially because Rachel Maddow and Melissa Harris Perry are anchors there and these two women both include lots of facts that cannot be reasonably disputed in their coverage of issues. There are other great anchors out there but today is “M” day in the “April A to Z Challenge” in which I am participating and MSNBC, Melissa, and Maddow all start with the letter “M.”
Recently I have been thinking a lot about people not understanding the different between news and political commentary. Rachel Maddow’s recent book, Drift, is filled with facts and I encourage everyone to pick up a copy and READ it. ( I think I linked to the kindle version of the book because it is the cheapest version, but do remember that public libraries still exist and you can read books there at no cost!) Why should you read it? Well, first, it is about the way our government has allowed the military to drift and transform into something that the Founding Fathers (and their very literate wives, mothers, sisters and daughters – our Founding Mothers) would not recognize. And, secondly, we will all have to have done our taxes within the next couple of days and… the majority of the taxes we pay supports the military. Don’t you want to know what you are paying for? I personally think you should.
This morning on the Melissa Harris Parry show the topic that grabbed my attention and shook me by the shoulders was child sexual trafficking. This show has become my new MUST watch television program because it covers major issues that impact women and families that no one else seems to care about enough to cover. I watch it every Saturday and Sunday morning because the panels are balanced, the facts are spot on, and it provides me with information I do not already have.
So back to the topic of the day…. The Letter M…
MSNBC is a network devoted to political commentary for the most part. Fox is a network devoted to political commentary for the most part. News, let’s see, a news channel would be… uh, well, um, er, I cannot think of a mainstream network or cable program that is dedicated to news. I often watch local news and BBC International news to see what is happening in the world that is not one of the three sound bytes that the commentators are flapping their jaws about. I read lots of stuff on news sites from lots of different sources. It is not easy to find unbiased accounts of what is happening outside of our doors and windows. The effort to inform yourself is well worth the time it takes. You and your family are worth it.
I’m getting down off the soap box because my stiletto heel is caught in a knot hole up here and I might lose my balance at any second.
I do encourage you to make the effort to open those doors and windows and take stock of what is happening outside. Do not take the word of anyone else at face value without running your own fact checker on the info. Critical thinking takes time. Critical thinking is more important than the Kardashians. Give some of your time to figuring out if what you are being told is true, and while you are at it, think about the difference between fact and commentary.
Fallopitarians, Universalists, and Revisionist American Religious History
I think my husband stumbled across a new term that I like. Fallopitarian. It comes from one of SlowPoke’s editorial cartoons. Seems that surreal absurdist argument is the only thing that comes close to describing the mental state of a small rather extreme group of patriarchal folks who really believe that they are better, more deserving, and closer to God than the rest of us, especially those of us who look different from them – any white, Godly, male who has been “chosen” to have wealth in this life to them is obviously better, purer, and far more deserving than others.
Reminds me of power hungry men throughout history both recent and ancient.
Militaristic men usurped the movement that was a small revolutionary sect of Jews who followed the teaching of a man who assaulted the money changers and was tortured to death a short time later who met in widowed women’s homes, and lived to teach an egalitarian message of love. Constantine brought Christianity to Roman Empire and the Council of Nicea expunged all texts that did not support the views that would solidify their positions of power. Political and religious rule came down through the ranks of men to the lowly peasants who if they were good would get a chance at a life without suffering, illness and hunger in another life. The feudal system arose and co-existed within the Holy Roman Empire and continued past the Reformation until royals in Europe bumped heads, occasionally losing theirs, with the Industrial Revolution that expanded the Guild structure of Middle Ages that was the beginning of the European Middle Class.
That in a nutshell was what I was taught by my father who as far as I can tell learned it from his Grandfather who was a Universalist and a minister in an Anabaptist-leaning Christian denomination. My personal belief structure is just as valid as any one else’s belief structure. While the “haves” in the current socio-political structure would like to think of the Agrarian population of the 1800s were bumpkins, and uneducated rednecks. But this is far from the reality of the valued placed on education and what served as a basic education in the primarily agrarian America of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Take a look at any of the reader series that were used as texts up until the early 20th Century and see what a minimally educated person was expected to know and be capable of doing.
Beliefs about the existence and nature of the soul and when it enters the body varies from culture to culture. This is not at all set in stone around the world. I have my belief and that is that the unique energy that each of us possesses becomes associated with our physical bodies at different times for different individuals. I also think that it leaves us at different times.
Why is this religious belief being given political clout? Our democratic republic is supposed to allow belief to stay belief and not taint our legislative processes.
I Have a Say and I Participated
I posted a short personal video as part of ProChoice America’s I HAVE A SAY campaign to send videos about what birth control means to individual women to anti-choice legislators.
You can participate too. Just make a video on your computer. Upload it to You Tube and include the words, “I have a say” as well as your name (I just used my first name) and city (or state) in the title. Then go to the Coalition to Protect Women’s Health and fill out the form to include the video as part of “Share Your Story: I Have A Say.”
Shove This Trans-Vaginal Ultrasound Wand Up Your…
I don’t want to be angry. I don’t want to be preoccupied with politics. I don’t want to feel like I have to write something. I enjoy writing. There is sheer unadulterated joy in putting words on a page or a blank screen.
I don’t want to have to write articles about anything other than the wonder that is whatever new discovery I am involved with at the moment. So instead of actually writing the articles that are peppering my thoughts with sneeze-worthy brain spasms about disturbances in the force, inequality, freedom of religion, various state’s sponsored rape of American women, and what the hell happened to the America I loved? I’m just going to write the titles of these less than pleasurable articles I feel I should write and then go on to some real writing that I want to do.
Titles of articles I OUGHT to write:
Shove This Trans-Vaginal Ultrasound Wand Up Your Ass Mr. Against Big Government Intrusion
What part of “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” don’t you understand?
Where Is Your Community’s Public Square Where You May Peaceably Assemble At Any Time Of The Day Or Night?
Christian Sharia Law: Women Must Marry Their Rapists (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)
Keep Your 3000 Year Old North African Patriarchal Tribal Segmentary Lineage Laws Away From My 21st Century Daughters and Grand Daughters
What Ever Happened To Love And Compassion As The Heart Of Our Civilization?
Recent Female Kansas Lawmaker Believes Women Should Not Vote! (Kay O’Connor – retired 2005.
These are just some of the thoughts roiling around in my head. Here is to hoping that giving them a home on this page will tame them.