Hello loyal readers! You four may be small in number but you are mighty in spirit!
The pro-American comments a few posts back inspired me to a) scour the internet for my favorite Ginsberg poem and b) figure out how to actually make it show up on this site. Neither was a small feat, let me assure you.
America
I've actually been a bit conflicted about the ol' U S of A lately. On one hand, I'm a good card-carrying liberal. I think our country (and economy)'s being run by a bunch of assholes, I hate that we think we think more stuff = more happiness, I protested against the war (and wonder where all these latecomers were 4 years ago when it might have mattered) and to be perfectly honest, I don't even really support our troops, I just feel bad for them. So, go fuck yourself with your atom bomb, America, right?
On the other hand, it's Wednesday and I'm wearing a shirt that my friend silk-screened on Monday 1200 miles away so I'm pretty psyched about the U S Postal Service right now. As a bonus, I've never been gang-raped for dishonoring my family or forced to walk more than, say, 15 feet to find potable water, let alone 15 miles.
I know we've got big problems (or I wouldn't be doing the work I do) and more importantly, we've -caused- big problems. But at the end of the day, after I'm done being pissed off at the people in charge, and after I've exhausted myself trying to right just a fraction of the wrongs that mostly go unchecked, after all that I allow myself to tap into my tiny reserve of gratitude. And it's kind of nice.
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18 comments:
There's a lot here, methinks. First of all, that's my favorite Ginsberg poem. Ever.
Secondly, I think most people in the social change movement are conflicted about America. There's the reality, and then the potential reality. But, to me, isn't that what love is all about? I know it's a lame-ass Pretenders song, but there really is a thin line between love and hate, and you're generally hurt most by those you love most, and vice versea.
When it comes to America, I say 'stick with it'. She's a cantankerous beast, but cute when you get her alone, and surprisingly tender.
Think about the light in late afternoon in northern CA, or the Atlantic splashing up against rocky, craggy beaches in New England.
Face it, America is HOT! And you just know that you (or I, or our friends/colleagues) would take such good care of her, and love her true. Unfortunately, like many women Dirt has known, a lot of the best girls end up with the worst nimrods. Those guys who wear their white baseball caps backwards unfortunately have gotten our dear America's affections for quite some time.
But never fear, the weird freaky ass hipster artist types always come out ahead.
You should read 'V for Vendetta' if you get the chance. But not the movie. Whatshername can burn in hell.
Best,
Dirt
right, so
writ history tallies rebel wins and rebels crushed.
you've got a better eye for nuance than that.
I have to agree with Dirt. Ginsberg at his finest here. Nails it.
Here's how I look at it:
When we were kids, we were told about this place. This place had a whole set of ideals. Among them were freedom, equality, justice, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And then they had the nerve to tell us we lived in this place already.
Then we grew up and thought, "What the fuck?"
We looked around and we saw freedom being strangled by an ever-decreasing number of corporations. Equality had never actually existed. Justice was a buzzword. Life meant different things to different people. Liberty was an excuse to kill people who happened to find themselves outside our borders. And the pursuit of happiness? Who knows what that even means?
So what is this thing? Is America just a naive idea that should have been abandoned before it was begun? Or did we go wrong somewhere? Our generation has just as hard a time believing that we had it right at some idyllic period in the past as we do believing that these ideals hold any meaningful motivation for our leaders today.
It's enough to make someone cynical. To give up. But where does that leave us? At least here we have some good ideas. Looking back, even the ideas were kinda fucked up.
So then you have to ask yourself, "How did I get here?" (And yes, that's a Davide Byrne reference.) And then you have to realize how ridiculously lucky you are to have ended up here. This place. America. Where we're on the knife edge of decency. Where some people thought that a better world was just as likely as the same old bullshit.
Our legacy is one of bloodshed. We took this land by the point of a gun. We've never, not even for 24 short hours strung together, lived up to the ideas we espoused. The fall was quick and immediate.
So here we are. 2007. We're in the social change movement. We want to change things. It's a pretty ballsy notion that we, first among all those who came before us, can actually realize the ideals our country was founded upon. And not even that, but realize the ideals that we find so self-evident, so obvious.
Doesn't it keep you up nights? Thinking about how it could have eluded so many for so long? About how it still eludes so many?
Why are we blessed and cursed with altruism? Why now? What makes us special?
Probably nothing. What we're attempting, has been attempted before. It will be attempted again.
So is there any real progress? If we graphed the extent of justice, peace, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on the globe since the dawn of humanity, would there be even a slight upward trend?
I guess what it comes down to is this: All the problems, all the atrocities, all the racist, homophobic, sexist notions that have governed human societies since time immemorial have been erected by people. People like you and I. And if enough of us who are fed up with that take enough power, we can build something different.
There's no reason to think we can't.
So yes, America is a much different place than we were lead to believe. But here we are. And at the end of the day, we don't know how to do anything else. Change is in our blood. Our souls are designed to throw monkey wrenches. I, for one, am glad to be here.
You know, Wes, you have your _own_ blog.
JK roffle mao
Dirt nailed it on America - she's like that superhot corn-fed midwestern girl in college that everyone had a crush on but no one had the balls to talk to except that one douchelicker in Fiji, and she was so scared and lonely and hothothot, and then they ended up going out for like two and half years.
But we, us, you and I and people we know and love, we're working up the nerve to talk to her. We're thinking about how we're gonna cook her really awesome food, and buy her wicked awesome records at flea markets, and bring her to her favorite thrift stores so she can buy cute skirts that she'll turn into even cuter skirts somehow. We're thinking about how we're gonna let all her people have a decent meal, and have decent health care, and have a nice forest next to their houses, and not worry about their house getting swallowed up by the rising sea, and have a choice when it comes to what energy they use.
We're thinking about this and we're getting half a stalk, more or less. And we're gonna do all those things, and that gets us through those sleepless nights worrying and thinking too much.
Wow guys, I'm really impressed. Can we be friends? But seriously, thanks for putting this all out there.
damn, way to pick a subject that gets the people riled.
i say next, post on religion, then on death, then on art.
Crystal, I think you need a drunk filter on here so I'm not allowed to post long, drunken, pretentious comments on your blog.
The only thing I did right in there was the 1-2 word non-sentences punctuated by periods in order to create gravitas. Like this. Gravitas.
See how that works? I'm a fuckin' genius.
Your excitement about the US Postal Service worries me...yes, it is remarkable that you can be wearing a shirt that was created 2 days ago in a place 1200 miles away from you. I think this is more of a testament to the power of airplanes, our network of roads, truckers, etc., than to the beauty of government monopolies.
If I may quote Milton Friedman...
"there is no way to justify our present public monopoly of the post office. It may be argued that the carrying of mail is a technical monopoly and that a government monopoly is the least of evils. Along these lines, one could perhaps justify a government post office, but not the present law, which makes it illegal for anybody else to carry the mail. If the delivery of mail is a technical monopoly, no one else will be able to succeed in competition with the government. If it is not, there is no reason why the government should be engaged in it. The only way to find out is to leave other people free to enter."
There is beauty in free markets. When competition exists, prices of goods/services usually fall over time. Why does the price of stamps keep rising? If the USPS had to compete, perhaps they would look into cutting costs rather than raising prices.
Yes, there's inflation, but look at other industries. Has the cost of making a phone call risen with inflation over the past few decades?
We must be careful. Big corporations have evil tendencies, sure, but what makes big government any better?
Jackson, you're right, and I should have thought about my words more carefully I guess. You're right, big government monopolies are not always (or usually?) the best, though for the record market forces on their own don't always create the best systems either.
My point remains though, that it's a tricky business balancing all these conflicting (I like conflict, Emily prefers nuance) feelings about this country of ours.
j. informed me that my post might have been cryptic. not meant to be.
the point being: trying to fit america and the characters that form it into categories will always result in a mess. it's fun to imagine there are two sides - but there are plenty more than two.
i'm guessing your conflict about the country lies in trying to align thrillingly nuanced, non-geometric beliefs with a group of people (beyond dems/reps ... pick your alphabet soup) who are all trying to do the same thing.
hold onto your ego, hold onto your head, and my guess is the worst that could happen to an individual's mind is she forgets how to listen.
em
Seriously? A postal conspiracy? Whatevz.
The USPS p0wnz.
Wes,
Did I mention conspiracy? Government should only engage in technical monopolies. Mail delivery is not a technical monopoly. FedEx, UPS... they're doing just fine and provide much better service, in fact.
I'd like to hear some better justification of this coercive and inefficient system... other than "whatevz" and "USPS p0wnz."
What you got?
Jackson -
I'm a little confused about a few things in your comments.
First of all, I'm not sure that CB was offering up the Postal Service as a shining example of what makes America great. I think it was more the guilt of having the luxuies that come with being an American, while kvetching about America's problems.
That being said, of all possible things you could worry about in regards to our current government, you're worried about.....the post office? I mean, habeas corpus - yes! prisoner abuse - yes! the oil industry getting away with, well, with everything they want to get away with - yes! These are certainly problems. The post office? Really?
Secondly, there is beauty in free markets? Where? I see beauty in an ice-cold bourbon and ginger ale. I see beauty in a sunset over the rocky mountains, and I see beauty in naked women. I don't however, see beauty in the free market system.
Thirdly, stamp prices rising. Couple things here (and forgive me for being anal).
If you go to the inflation calculator, and enter a dime in, with the start year of 1975, you'll see that what cost a dime in 1975 costs .39 in 2006. Guess how much a stamp was in 1975? Ten cents. Care to guess for 2006? Yep, 39 cents. You can see the history of stamp prices here..
Also, I'm a little shocked you left out email. For the most part, free electronic email has replaced the traditional postal system, leaving the post office responsible for shipping personal packages, and bills. In the package department, as you point out, there's FedEx and UPS - though in my experience, FedEx pales in comparison to the strength of the postal service is getting packages there, on time, cheaply.
Ok, I've talked a bunch, but there's an elephant in the room that must be dealt with. You said, 'Big corporations have evil tendencies, sure, but what makes big government any better?'
That's an excellent question, but is begun on false logic. I don't know that big corporations have 'evil' tendencies, but rather it's that they are driven 100% by a profit-motive, which then justifies evil activities. This mindset allows the entire process to be consumed by evil if there are no safeguards in effect.
Now, big government, as you call it, has many of the same problems. You could argue that much of our foreign policy is dictated by the desire to expand the 'value' of the United States. From NAFTA to the Iraq War, American policy is dictated by the same fiscal interests as corporate America. Which is particularly understandable when you look at who funds our elected officials. Why, it's the corporations.
Here's the difference though. I doubt you, or Crystal, or old Dirt here are going to be invited to the ExxonMobil board meeting any time soon to protest their policies. But, every two years, we're invited to take part in the Democracy that is the foundation of what you call big government. And wait, it can be more than that. You can go visit your Representative or Senator's district office to talk about issues you care about. You can work, capital W work for change. Democrats suck? Well, volunteer with the local Dems, and become the Democratic party. Same with the Republicans. You can write letters to local newspapers, or you can start a political blog. Change can and should happen every day.
The potential for change within the government is almost limitless, but only when people show up and make it happen.
But that's all just my opinion.....Now, Crystal will you please dear god post some funny post about rolling your car into traffic again so we can all just be friends?
don't mean to be a dick, but:
hate nazis? become one!
great plan.
i'd agree there is beauty in free markets, when they're free. prob, is corruption is a given. market success < cash < influence < more SUCCESS! how do you fix this? minimize gov't. otherwise the players who choose to exploit that issue will continue to loom over those that don't, or can't, and fuck them over.
realizing this is only one blimey way to look at it.
this is all quite hilarious. jackson's using the PS as an example, i think, not his banner cause. crystal was just kicking around some notions. dirt finds beauty in sensual things that often find their ways to him via the free market, which he does not find beauty in, though there seems to be rather a short walk from one to the other. and wes, wes likes to say pownz, among other thangs.
let's do it all again sometime.
crystal, new topic.
Hahahaha - well done Emily! There's certainly room in this topic for spirited debate, but I was feeling a little bored today at work, and felt like throwing down the snark card. Sincere apologies to Jackson, who I've heard is a nice guy.
No need to apologize for dickness. I laid the card first, and we all know Wes has the corner on that market anyway.
I do feel the need to point out that while the Democrats may be, by and large, nimrods, I don't know if it's fair to compare them to Nazis. Shriners, sure, that's fine. Nazis not as much.
But yes, Crystal, let's move on to taxes. Or religion, or anything less contentious than America.
While you guys busy "debating" the "merits" of "free" market "capitalism," I was looking at "cats."
http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/poysin-mouses.jpg
i think we've all bonded at the expense of crystal's desire to blog. ever. again.
lolcats!
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