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This guy walks into a bar and says... - Jul 24, 2004 - Printable Version
- Some of My Friends are Confused
by Ken Shade
Some of my friends are confused. I realize that some readers might suppose that a person must necessarily be confused in order to be my friend, but that's another issue.
When I say that some of my friends are confused, I mean that they have come to the conclusion, or begun with the presumption, that it makes no difference who wins this election.
This is nothing new. Most of my confused friends feel this way about all elections. It's a handy way of absolving themselves of the responsibility of caring. It frees their time up so they can go to movies, visit art galleries, attend NASCAR, read more novels and/or feel superior to hyperventilating pasiónistas, like me.
I want all of you to understand that I do not consider NASCAR, literature, art and film to be unworthy activities. Don't write any nasty emails saying: "How dare you put down NASCAR! You are not fit to wear Matt Kenseth's flame retardant jockstrap!"
To my many of my confused friends, those of us who care, sweat, man phone banks and go around begging people to let us put a sign in their yards are pathetic and misguided. The notion that politics do not matter, when they first latched onto it, allowed them to sit back and shake their heads at the effort we are wasting. After a few years of being cool, hip, ironic and detached, they have come to really believe that it makes no difference who wins any election.
I think this is because they aren't paying attention.
I would like, if I may (YOU MAY NOT!), to tell you about some of these friends. I'm not doing this to put anybody down. (Hey, hey, I'm a Monkee!) I'm telling you about them because you may have friends like them, or you may be a friend like them. Maybe one or two people will see a reason that this is not the election year one should spend on the couch.
I have a friend who doesn't care because she loves the theatre. She teaches drama at the high school level and, when she isn't teaching, she goes to every play she can find. She thinks politics are not as important as theatre because theatre speaks to the inner man. "The arts are forever, everything else is transient," she says. She has felt above it all for so long that she doesn't seem to know that many of the arts that speak to the inner man, much of what she considers eternal, much of what she will drive a hundred miles to see, was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. She apparently doesn't understand that one of the major parties is in the hands of people who want to eliminate the NEA or, at the very least, make sure it only funds Lee "God Bless The USA" Greenwood CD's. She seems unaware that the judges being appointed by George W. Bush are inclined to rule that many of the plays she dearly loves are obscene. Her eyes are closed to the fact that the educational policies of the current administration will, if followed long enough, probably have the effect of forcing districts to eliminate drama from their schools.
One of the major parties has declared war on everything she values, and she thinks it doesn't matter who wins.
I have another friend who is a lesbian. No, excuse me. She is a LESBIAN. That is how she defines herself. You can't talk to her for more than a few minutes without hearing the words: "As a lesbian, I...." Everything she does is defined by her struggle to find a place in society. She makes being a lesbian the biggest part of her life, she says, because she is fighting for a time when it won't have to be an issue at all. She says it doesn't matter who wins the election because neither party has nominated a lesbian for president. Nominating any woman would be nice, she feels, but it really ought to be a lesbian.
She says this in apparent ignorance of the fact that one of the major parties operates on the premise that all homosexuals are Hell-bound, perverted scum. These people will do everything they can to be sure that nothing she cares about is recognized as a legitimate concern. They don't want any gay or lesbian person to ever feel at home is our country because they think that will encourage more people to become gay. Then, if they become gay, they will go to Hell. Ergo: by making gay people miserable, you are saving souls.
I'm not making this up. When conservatives think nobody is watching, these are the things they say to each other. Many of them have said it to me because I am often found among conservatives, and they assume my presence indicates agreement.
These are the people who will be appointing Supreme Court justices, if we allow it.
Mary will probably say: "As a lesbian, neither major party has anything to offer my cause."
As a lesbian, she will be making her life a little bit harder.
I have a friend who is a mother of six. She says she has no time for staying informed because being a mother of six is so extremely time consuming, not to mention energy consuming. I understand what she means. I have three children, and they make everything I do take longer than it should. When whatever-it-is is done, all I want to do is sleep, but they won't allow it. She has twice as many adored adversaries as I have, so I have to empathize.
Still, she takes the luxury of not knowing, or caring, at her own peril. The party that claims that it is for "family values" is the one that thinks it's perfectly acceptable that her six children have to live without health insurance. It's the same party that hacks away at education while claiming to leave no child behind. It's the party who would consider the death of her son to be an acceptable sacrifice in order to enrich the people George W. Bush's immediate circle of friends.
She may not think there is a connection between caring for her children and caring about politics, but there is.
I have a friend who is disabled and depressed. He thinks that everything in irreparably broken. He sees no emotional payoff in putting any effort into improving anything. I understand his feelings, too. I have MS, just like he does. I know that my body will probably never get any better. Still, I know which party is battling against the stem sell research that could make our cure possible. I know that the Republicans don't want their friends in the pharmaceutical industry to do without even a dollar of my money. They say they want to put our money back in our pockets with tax cuts, then force us to have to give it all back to their friends who sell Avonex and gasoline.
One of my African-American friends says it doesn't matter who wins because both of the nominees are white, and they can't identify with her. While I agree that it is impossible for any white American to fully comprehend the experience of African-Americans, I think she's forgetting a lot of history.
She is forgetting that the racists that infected the Democratic Party before the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act fled to the Republican Party, and made it strong. The Republican Party saw a chance to become relevant again, and welcomed the racists. In so doing, it lost its soul. These people, and their ideological offspring, are still in the GOP. In fact, many of them are controlling it. They have fought against every proposed extension of fairness and decency since 1965. They market themselves by appealing to the deepest ugliness in the human soul. They use racism to get elected. (The Willie Horton ad and Bush's South Carolina push-polling in 2000 are only two well-known examples.) They have opposed extensions of the Voting Rights Act. They wage guerilla warfare against all elected black public officials. They have not changed, all of their assertions to the contrary notwithstanding.
It's easy to tell by watching that these people think all brown folks are stupid. They scour the fetid crannies of our society for African-Americans who agree with them, and they use these people as window dressing. They think that the appearance of Condi "Millionaire with an Exxon oil tanker named after her" Rice on TV will blind African-Americans to what they are really up to. They take the portfolio of the National Security Advisor away from her and give it to Dick Cheney. They place Colin Powell in high office, emasculate him by handing the traditional powers of the Secretary of State to Rumsfeld, and wonder why black people resent them. They stand amazed that almost 90% of African-Americans vote against their candidates.
"But," Rush says,"Democratic Senator Robert Byrd used to be a member of the KKK!"
This is true. It is also true that Rush thinks black people are morons.
African-Americans can see who walks the walk. They know that the man was a member of the Klan. They also know that he has changed, and that he has devoted his life to the betterment of all since that change. What he is speaks louder than what he used to be.
But then again, maybe the black faces in the administration are only there to make a few uncomfortable white members feel better about the party they belong to.
I have another friend who may be the only person I know who can reasonably make the claim that it doesn't matter who wins. He believes in the "One World Government" conspiracy. He looks at these two "Skull and Bones" nominees, and sees the same man in two incarnations, with different accents. With that belief, it might make sense for him to not care. But, guess what? He cares a lot. I don't agree with all of the things he fights for, or against, but I admire the fact that he believes in something, and hasn't retreated into lethargy. He's a good citizen, and he hasn't allowed his terrible disability, the fact that he looks exactly like Phil Donahue, to keep him silent.
The last friend I am going to mention doesn't think it matters because, he says, all politicians are "party whores." The first time he said that, I did a quick mental search for the names of politicians who do not fall into the category of "party whore." I'm still trying to come up with a name that will impress him. I can't think of a single pol who has not, at some time or another, compromised personal conviction on the altar of party loyalty.
Does this mean that they're all alike, and that it doesn't matter? No, it doesn't. If you think all politicians are party whores, then find out about the parties, and select the person who whores for the party that represents you by its actions, not just its words. Work hard for that person because, in so doing, you are working hard for yourself.
I believe that, unless you are fabulously wealthy in one of Bush's pet industries, like oil or pharmaceuticals, or unless you're descended from Sam Walton, you will come to the conclusion that you and your values are better served by a Kerry victory in November. As Bush, himself, said to the millionaires gathered at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner in October of 2000: "This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base."
Some will say that he was joking. I say: "IN UMOR VERITAS"
No matter what your excuse for apathy, there is another reason that every single one of us needs John Kerry to win.
Until July of 2000, we were living in a country that operated on the social contract between the government and the governed. If people in the government did not live up to their side of the bargain, we had the right to change who those people were, and replace them with others from among us. Since the day the governors of Florida and Texas, both named Bush, conspired to illegally purge the voter rolls in Florida in 2000, thus fixing the upcoming election in Florida, we have been living outside the contract on which our constitution was based.
We, all of us, need to get back under that contract. Without it, we wander into the thick and lonely forest of tyranny. If Bush is not the tyrant, then somebody even worse will be on the horizon. THAT is the person I fear.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The Second Coming
W. B. Yeats
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