Catching Up

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
-- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

It's been a while since I made an entry. All the focus is on the primaries, and I'd like to move ahead to the general election and take on the Republicans. It looks like my candidate Obama is in a strong position, so much of the recent happenings seem like noise that must be endured, lots of sound and fury signifying nothing. We'll know more after Tuesday.

I'm thinking about how to take on the arguments of McCain. My own stance is probably more pointedly opposite him than even Obama's arguments may be when this debate starts heating up. I'm happy that with Obama as the candidate, there's much less chance for the Iraq discussion to deteriorate into how the "war" was simply mismanaged. Senator Obama will forcefully argue that there should never have been a war in the first place. There are a great many reasons why we shouldn't have gone into Iraq, and Obama correctly stated many of those back in 2002. Beyond the obvious misdirection of the battle against Al Qaeda to a country that had no role in 9/11, Obama knew that such a war would further damage relations, both within and outside the Muslim world, that it would require occupation resources and heavy cost, and that such endeavors are really doomed from the start. Obama's judgment on this issue is so inarguably correct, or at least it should be by now, that it's just a question of whether Americans are really ready to hear it.

Throughout history, occupying forces have never been able to fully conquer any nation. The pitiful excuse for a government now in Baghdad will never be truly accepted by the Iraqis. Democracy probably has a lot less chance of taking root in Iraq than it would have if we hadn't been meddling in that country since the 1950's, but until we get out of there, it has no chance at all. Will Obama talk much about the truth of why we're there? Will he discuss the heavy pressure being brought to bear by multinational energy firms such as ExxonMobil for control of Iraq's oil wealth under the guise of Iraq's oil "revenue sharing" plans? Will he mention the international leverage we want to possess by having our hands on the spigot of such an important resource right in the middle of the world's biggest region for it? There are many reasons why he might not. The forces that want to exercise that sort of control in the region will still be around after the election, and they'll continue to make an impact on how we behave. It's going to be up to us to make sure the whole argument gets laid out, because I don't think any President is going to be able to stand up to all this alone. It's still going to be up to us to drive the argument forward, and force America to face the truth about its own imperialistic pursuits. These problems extend beyond whatever administration is in power, and they don't go away simply by electing a relatively progressive Democrat. It's not that simple, folks. We have work to do.

If we simply accept that the world is a nasty place, and we have to be nasty if we want to be a part of it, I think we're failing to examine that position in sufficient depth. For myself, I can't lay claim to being an international expert, but I've known and worked with people from an enormous range of countries, and I think I've developed a pretty good sense of people overall. There are certainly some very violent pockets in the world, and there are some attitudes in the world that defy belief. Even in some countries we think of as being developed, there are nakedly racist attitudes toward other peoples that are beyond shocking to our American sensibilities. I wouldn't try to tell you for a moment that there isn't a whole lot to worry about with respect to our security. A lot of this planet is just plain crazy, make no mistake. Still, so much of the worst part of the craziness stems from patterns we can follow by studying history and related areas. When you look at what's happened, and after the shock has worn off a little, there's nothing very surprising that we haven't known all along about human nature. We know that too much power corrupts, that greed is too prevalent, and that we've become sort of a power-hungry, greedy nation. So what did you expect? I expect that we can improve things, perhaps beyond anything we could currently imagine, if we stay involved enough to examine the motives for our actions, and actually exercise the best judgment instead of opting for the most material gain. There's a lot we wouldn't solve by such a change, but we might start cutting some of our problems down to size.

Noam Chomsky resurfaced to give a talk about Iraq in Massachusetts the other day, and an article for The Nation called The Most-Wanted List that examines the terror of recently assassinated Hezbollah commander Imad Moughniyeh in the light of other violent activities in that part of the world. These are invaluable perspectives if we really want to understand the events of today's world as a caring human being, and not as an ideologue or unquestioning supporter of U.S. administration policies. I need to remind you now that I'm looking at all this in somewhat of an attitude of retrospective, as someone who's grown older and is no longer in the prime of health. I need you to understand how clearly the things that really matter stand out within that context, and the clarity doesn't represent a shift, such that some things should have mattered before, but other things matter now; what's clear is that these are always the things that really mattered, the things that provide a broad and deep sense of meaning and value throughout all phases of our lives without regard to age or life situation.

If you've read some of these entries, you know I've been studying the world situation very closely, and I've seen that our policies have done at least as much harm as good, and that's putting it mildly. I know that many of you just haven't had the time to pull back the curtain and see the sham for what it is, and I feel that many of you would be prepared to take very strong action if you really knew the truth. There are still too many, though, who would still try to ignore what's going on, who would hope that someone else could fix things, or afraid to try to fix things for fear of upsetting the status quo. What I have to tell you is that you absolutely must stop these things from happening because we're at multiple tipping points, for democracy, the climate, and the world. As long as we let George do it, he or Cheney most certainly will, and the world will suffer.

I've never said this won't be a long struggle. We can't just elect a progressive candidate and take a snooze. We not only have to wake up, we're going to have some long nights ahead, and we're going to have to upset some applecarts along the way. I'm the last person that will ever advocate any sort of violence. Don't look for that sort of thing here, because any attempt to solve problems with violence immediately destroys the solutions. What we do have to be is strong, and steadfast, and confident that we'll know what has to be done when the time comes as long as we listen equally to our heart and our head when we're asked to decide.

An election is a good time to shake things up, but we need to shake things up every day from now on. I don't want anarchy. I don't want everyone to give away all their belongings and renounce materialism. I don't want to open the door for every crazy who shows up. I just want you to start making your decisions with a thought to the things that are really important. I want you to imagine how you'll feel about things when it's nearly over, and how you'll feel then about some of the choices you made. Will you rationalize about that compromise that helped to exploit a few hundred workers in some obscure part of the world, or will you look for some way to ask for some kind of forgiveness for having come up short when you didn't really need to? I don't think we always need to think in big, revolutionary terms, even to achieve something big and revolutionary. Sometimes we just need to start taking care of the little things, and the big things will start to fall into place.