December 20, 2006
For the past 18 months I have wandered in a wasteland of on-line U.S. politics, its cultoid demands for lockstep conformity befouling whatever fresh air it might formerly have offered, its once-presumably fertile realm now a toxically anti-intellectual barren, its most apt description the oft-quoted William Butler Yeats line -- the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity -- a condition that seems at least as dreadfully true of humanity today as it was in the era of Nazi ascension Yeats so accurately described.
But my odyssey actually began not with the advent of my long silence 18 months ago but three years beforehand in 2001. A writer as much by inclination as by trade, I was looking for an on-line home, a virtual family. Instead, on both Right and Left, I found superficial acceptance that -- once the unorthodoxies of my views became clear -- was invariably followed by venomous personal attacks, deliberately hurtful rejection and, in two instances (both on the Left), the virtual execution of electronic banishment. Thus my quest has taught me that in today’s United States, my very independence of mind makes me an ideological pariah and dooms me to political homelessness -- a condition I may as well embrace, solitude and all -- because it is now obvious it will accompany me to death‘s door if not beyond.
Nevertheless, as I better absorb the lesson I learned, I will tell more about my travels -- particularly why my own former (leftist) values had by 1988 deteriorated into a (rightist) politics of retaliation (for that is precisely what happened), but then, beginning in 2004, evolved into reconciliation with those original (leftist) wellsprings. The result is a new and abiding clarity based on the historical truth of class struggle: the OccamÂ’s Razor of political analysis -- the genuine missing link in U.S. politics -- the principle that among other things explains precisely why my life was destroyed by the Washington state welfare bureaucracy 19 years ago: the victimization for which, from 1988 through 2004, I voted Republican in revenge.
Alas, though my experience is an extreme example of the contradictions woven into the devilÂ’s bargains served up by our political system -- we are allowed only the narrowest of choices, either Democrats who falsely promise they will provide us with a desperately needed socioeconomic safety net even as they forcibly deny us the right and means of self-defense, or Republicans who make no secret of their intent to reduce us to slavery but claim to preserve our right to defend ourselves against crime and apocalypse -- the same impossible dilemma ultimately confronts all of us who must sell our labor to survive. While I foresee no escape from the dilemma itself, perhaps my own struggles toward political understanding will at least help others grappling with the same crazy-making reality.
Meanwhile, to illustrate a much larger dimension of what is at stake, here is an infinitely sad and endlessly saddening report of an especially gentle species of dolphin now harried to extinction.
Dolphins are as intelligent as we are -- there are many true stories of dolphins saving sailors' lives, and there is even some suggestion the ancient Minoans regarded dolphins as uniquely symbolic of the co-mingled elements -- earth, water, fire and air -- characteristic of all earthly life. Because intelligence is also capacity for emotion, it is at least arguable that dolphins possess the same range of feeling as humans. Thus if we have ever known (as I surely have) the pangs of genuine isolation and absolute loneliness, we might be able to empathize, just a bit, with that last surviving Baiji, who no doubt spent endless hours desperately searching for kindred before finally dying in the ultimate despair of loss and abandonment.
Such is the genocide implicit not only in capitalism but in what H. sapiens sapiens attempts to rationalize as "civilization" -- an escalating atrocity for which I do not believe our planet will ever forgive us. Therefore as an Act of Contrition -- and as a small prayerful foreword to what will be another of my recurring themes -- I offer this fragment of a Cheyenne Ghost Dance chant:
The white manÂ’s god has forsaken him
Let us go and look for our Mother...
Posted by: Loren at
04:22 AM
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Posted by: Kid Of the Black Hole at December 20, 2006 07:10 PM (Jw8sm)
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Posted by: Loren Bliss at December 27, 2006 02:32 AM (FmjVG)
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