Smallness Of Vision
By T. Patrick Donovan
06 November, 2004
Countercurrents.org
"They sentenced me to 20 years of boredom,
for tryin' to change the system from within"
(Poet and songwriter, Leonard Cohen).In the wake of Elections 2000 and 2004, the post-9/11 fear-mongering, and the slaughter that is Iraq, could anything be more banal than "setting our sights on 2008"?
The framework of electoral politics -- indeed, the whole structure of representative American democracy -- has become a charnal house filled with the dead souls of justice seekers.
American-style democracy was never intended, and has never included, anything beyond capital's "democratic" exploitation and commodification of the world. Bush cheerleads this fact; Kerry would've attempted to camoflague it. There are no current politicians in America who are not cut from this fundamental cloth.
And those much vaunted other freedoms? Every one came at the price of protest and bloodshed.
Now "morals" will rationalize the further rightward shift of the Democratic National Committee and inflate the Republican "mandate."
Fear trumped morals in this election; it does everytime. Throughout post-World War 2 American political history, the climate of fear has caused people to default to their morals as a form of psychological security.
Remember the Soviet Menace?
What did commie-pinko Beatnik intellectuals, fornicating hippies, and bra-burning women have to do with the Soviet Union during the Cold War?
What does gay marriage, gun ownership, and God have to do with terrorism?
When the shadow of fear stalks the land, every conceivable symbol is used as fuel to cover the truth and stir up even more fear, in a self-perpetuating hamster wheel of greater and greater insecurity and irrational decisions.
Yeats' poem "The Second Coming" intermingles with Louis Armstrong's "It's A Wonderful World" in my head. As the words swirl around each other it becomes clear that so much of this world is now at stake due to that slouching, rough beast.
Election 2008 will not stop the decimation of Fallujah, nor will it end the occupation of Iraq. Election 2008 will not heal this environment or slow global warming. Election 2008 will not free us from our fear.
Election 2008 is but a straightjacket, a step toward continued self-confinement that, in the face of the worldwide perspective and action required, is paucity in extremis.
This is neither "stiff upper lip" time nor is it time to wring our hands. Our human predicament is more complex than that. We must band together in new configurations that hold the world's people and the world environment as both our allies and our starting point.
We must step back and recall the world as it looks from outer space; what demands, actions, and demonstrations serve our common human future? War, pollution, and injustice are non-negotiable organizing touchstones in our new vision.
The so-called political experts caution not to get too far out ahead of the people. What is too far ahead when the future of the planet is at stake? What is too far when the blood running in the streets of Fallujah is condoned by the deafening slilences across America? What is too far when injustice is the organizing principle for millions of lives across the globe?
It is long overdue to find out.
T. Patrick Donovan is a doctoral student in Depth Psychology
