Done Gone

I think I can say with a relative amount of certainty that I have successfully gotten politics out of my system for the time being. I wake up happy and content and the presence of demonic spirits has finally left me.

Politics, you see, is a study in utility maximizing, at least to my mind. I hold to the thought that doing politics is, in reality a dirty business that we must endure to get from day to day. Some see it as a noble pursuit, but I guess I see it more as necessary evil.

Sure, I played with the idea of running for President in 2008, and even broached the topic with possible cabinet appointees. But, unfortunately, I cannot consider and will not accept the nomination of my party. Sorry Pig. Sorry Spoke. Keep trying if you will, but I doubt that I can successfully lead this hodge-podge of contradiction.

The Deomocratic example ends with doom. Look at ancient Greece. The epitome of participatory democracy and when someone like Socrates comes along, he gets the Hemlock straight, no chaser.

The Republican form stands up no better. Rome's senators had no regard for their heroes or even their friends. get a little power thing going and, adios Julius. Stabbed by your own friends and left bleeding in the hallway. Maybe that's how Congressman Foley feels.

I find myself going back again and again to the notion of utility maximizing. How can I get up in the morning with the least amount of damage? Do I have to get up at all? How does a Libertarian wake up in the morning?

The Season of What Now?

Photo by Leo

Politics are still on my mind. I can’t help it. Like the junkie that I am, dumping politics is an impossibility. It may be the worst jones there is. I eternally hope for the best but have yet to see it. My 50 years have proven less than positive in the political realm.

But maybe now…

Now, maybe we will see some repartee between parties. Maybe we will hear some new solutions. Maybe the democrats will mix it up a little bit. I hope for it.

I voted for it too. I want with my whole life for it to get better and the insanity of the past to finally be expunged.

I want to be optimistic, but I'm not sure yet. We Americans are a fickle lot. In less than a generation we have gone from Nixon to Carter to Reagan to Clinton to Bush, ad-nausea.

The majority of the population looks for instant change. The old-timers know it takes effort and time to make a difference. Some of us are downright pessimistic because of past burns.

We saw JFK die on TV. We saw MLK shot. We saw Bobby die. We saw a Pope hit and even Reagan shot, a victim of his own acceptance of the gun. We see violence in the streets every day. We long for newness and peace but get nothing but more violence and social stagnation and segregation that never seems to end.

Whether the newly empowered Democrats will sound or act any differently than the entrenched Republicans remains to be seen at this juncture. The last 40 years of American politics have been, alas, 40 years of re-elections more than 40 years of progress. Time has shown that once elected, the candidate (now encumbent) struggles to keep the job. Maintain the status quo. Keep your job.

No new thing under the sun. Yet I still hope for a change.

My son sits in the other room struggling over chord changes, sounding horribly like John when he wrote "Hide Your Love Away". Maybe his changes will prove to be more lasting. I can only hope so.

Post Season Review.

Well folks, another election season has come and gone. In the end, all you can say about the winners for certain is that many millions of people did not vote for them.

Politics is a funny thing. There are those whose lives revolve around the process, those who opine from an easy chair but never leave the chair to do anything about it, and the rest of us.

I generalize here, but by "the rest of us" I mean those that sit politics out like I sit out football season. That is, until January and February. Die-hard fans are joined then by people like me that are only interested in play-offs and championships.

Politics, like football or a Rock and Roll concert, is a Dionysian event. It's an orgiastic ritual, with everyone coming together for the same result, the same release. Everyone crowding, working together for that emotional, well, you get the idea.

It's mythical in content too. Heroes like Vince Lombardi, Buddy Holly, Bobby Kennedy are gods, the icons of the American Dream. They ruled the day and their weaknesses are ignored, for the most part, because their strengths and personalities are so huge.

Villains exist in this mythical world too. Remember Ohio coach Woody Hayes slapping players around and bullying. Remember Nixon? How about Colonel Tom Parker?

Then there's the religious element. Every good belief has a ritual, a coming together of the tribes if you will. Here you find the Superbowl, the Stones playing to a million people in Rio, Elections. The faithful make their statement of belief.

Once it's all over, there's nothing left but the commentary. Who played the best, was this the best show of the tour, how could the polls and pundits have been so wrong...

Do they change the way we are? Sometimes not as much as we wish they would. We search for meaning in sensational, emotional events, but do they really change us? Football is just a game. Rock and roll is only more howling at the moon. Politics is, well, I don't really know. Maybe a little bit of both.

Tomorrow we wake up and still have to eat and work and laugh and cry.

...Out of the Blue

"Blues were my favourite colour until I looked 'round and found another song that I felt like singing". Ian Anderson-1970

It's easy to fall into the trap, the pit of despair that too often accompanies this thing we like to call life. The bitterness and struggle to just get along seems to be the rule of the day and the incessant drone of day to day walking. A simplistic answer would be to "Get Religion", but even then the ever-presence of the blues is obvious. Face it, the prophets were some real downers and the likes of Jeremiah even wished he'd never left his mother's womb. Never left his mother's womb. If it were only that easy.

Others say look for that happy place, Nirvana, and spend your life looking or waiting. Or, live a bunch of lives until you get it right. Tao leads us to nothing, maybe the only real human answer but, none the less, a pretty sad answer.

I don't believe God created us to be constantly happy. Eternally, yes, but not just now. He created us to live, to love, to be happy, to be sad, to be all things that are human and, yes, God-like. Here's where we lose it though, at least for me.

It's this thing called death. Not just the physical death, but the emotional and spiritual deaths as well. It's that thing which separated us from what God intended for us. Physical death is the obvious one and, somehow, the easiest to understand even if it hurts like hell. Beginning/end. Keep walking. Someday we all do it.

But emotional and spiritual death are a different story, as they aren't so obvious.

Hate and prejudice, selfishness, disregard and disrespect, gluttony (not just food and drink) are all things that make for emotional death. It separates us from each other but, since we continue to physically live, we don't really recognize the death.

Spiritual death, that death that separates us from God, can come as a result of emotional death, but not always. Jeremiah was on that verge, as was Job, as was (yes) Jesus, when they all asked that same question "Why have you forsaken me?" But they didn't fall into it. They saw the separation and lamented it, as do we all sometimes. I guess that puts us in pretty good company.

But that's where the blues come in.

Willie Brown, friend of blues icon Robert Johnson, is credited with defining the blues this way, "Blues ain't nuttin' but a good man feelin' bad."

I guess where I'm going with this is that emotional and spiritual death don't have to be the end. Only physical death brings it all home. There is resurrection from emotional and spiritual death while we live, if we choose it and, I believe anyways, that the final resurrection comes as a result of those two getting set right now.