November 29, 2006 by lonbud
Taking A Different Tack
I could have titled this post “Not Staying The Course,” but I like to feel I’m more positive than such a heading would indicate.
It occurs to me, in any event, that this blog has been a multi-year exercise in ripping George W. Bush to shreds, to the exclusion of just about any other aspect of the many realms we might attempt to engage. The results of this month’s midterm elections — however coincident to the shift in my perspective they may be — have given me pause to consider the day when, like Tricky Dick before him, I no longer have Mr. Bush’s diminutiveness to kick around.
Not that I fear Peak w. The man who once called Iraq “the central front in the War on Terrorism” still has absolutely no clue in the afterglow of the statue topplings, his Mission Accomplished moment, the spider-hole jackpot, and the Zarqawi bulls-eye. Iraq is now so out-of-control, the actual MSM is referring to what’s going on there as civil war.
Is that a mere oxymoron or some kind of Orwellian doublespeak?
The danger now is that people may recognize Mr. Bush’s failings with such a sense of shame and sadness, he could evade the lifetime behind bars which is his deserved fate.
But there’s clearly more grist for the mill beyond the fallow fields of Bush Bashing.
Come January, the newly ensconced Democratic majorities in the House and Senate will have the kleig lights turned on them as they put shoulder to the impossible task of imagining our extrication from the cauldron of radical Islamist insanity that looks to prevail in the Middle East for quite a while yet. There’s bound to be much to say about the manner in which we seek to retain our self-proclaimed status as the world’s lone superpower, while admitting we had no idea how to engage a billion pissed-off Muslims.
Aside from promising to hold the Democrats’ feet to the fire, however — and Nancy Pelosi is already looking like a ship in need of a rudder — I’d like to proclaim an intention to express my sense of humor and my joy for life here, and to back off from the stance of the naysaying malcontent that could easily be said to characterize this blog’s personality up to now.
To that end, I’ve created a What I’m Reading Now page that I hope to be able to update regularly, and I aim to put more music on the blog as well.
These past few years have been not-so-fun for me — and for many others I know — but I do feel a change in the weather, and I’ll certainly endeavor to reflect that change with the things I Just Have To Say.
Jeseppi Trade Wildfeather - November 29, 2006 @ 7:43 am
Here, here! It’s all in a day’s work, bloak! And a sturdy one at that.
Megan - November 29, 2006 @ 8:01 am
I was happy to be able to read here the things I felt but couldn’t say half as well as you have. Thanks for keeping me current and here’s to better times for all.
Mike - November 29, 2006 @ 8:11 am
Lonnie,
Have you heard my latest song, “Same Ol’ Story”? I’ll quote the chorus,
“Its the same old story, its the same old song, you heard it all before. The say they got a brand new cause for marching off to war. I don’t know it seems the same this time, as all the times before. It sthe same old story, it the same old song, you heard iit all before.”
I always liked that Talking Heads refrain, “Same as it ever was”. The struggle will continue and there will always be windmills to tilt at. We are human, not pefect and more so for our “leaders”.
I still like Nobody for President.
Mike Fleming
(415) 643-2253
Melanie - November 29, 2006 @ 8:11 am
Great idea to share reading and music in addition to politics. Appropo time of year to remind ourselves to balance all that is positive and joyful despite how difficult that can often be in our current world.
peace & love to you LD.
Butler Crittenden - November 29, 2006 @ 8:54 am
Your dream of a “grand, yet cozy library, filled floor to ceiling with books” in your “dotage” pretty well describes my house, but hopefully not yet my status. At least I can still tell you where any of the 7,000 books in my library are, as all are safely listed in an Access database.
We all are exhausted and nearly driven crazy by six years of the “attack of the 10,000 long knives,” as I’ve called it since before it even started. Let us hope that all George W. really proves is how much pain the populace can take and survive. Max Weber, the German scholar of the 1920s, was once asked: “Why are you a sociologist?” His reply: “To see how much pain I can take.” Perhaps we are all sociologists now.
Alas and alack, Lonnie, you’ve got one detail wrong: now is the time to “gut it up” and proceed full-force to pound on Nancy and the Dems, and make every effort to purge the nation of the criminals who are now somewhat disgraced but still in power. They need to go to prison for violating laws. My mother, age 88 and a Texan, turned against George, but her resolve must be strengthened. Some 100 million Americans still need to have their noses rubbed in the stench and horror of W’s and his administration’s actions .
I’ve said for decades, “come the revolution and victory,” we must be realistic about what to do with the defeated foes. And just letting them return to their bank vaults and plot more murders and schemes will not suffice. Those who committed crimes must be put away, and laws must be passed, which if violated (and surely they would be) result in more of the rich, famous, and powerful in the slammer.
Nina Jo Smith - November 29, 2006 @ 1:21 pm
Hear, hear!
….and as the cold season comes upon us, may i offer the following lyric:
You can’t throw a bomb
With your arms around someone,
Make love not war!
Yeah, it’s my song, Make Love Not War…. do you mind if i quote myself (& co-writer Scott Eckersley…)?
😉
Here’s to better days ahead,
See y’all in the music,
Nina Jo
lonbud - November 29, 2006 @ 4:50 pm
I love my music peeps chirping up with lyrical delights!
One of my favorite artists,who is constantly on my playlist these days, is local boy Michael Franti, whose latest album Yell Fire is my choice for album of the year. Get it and rock on to the beats n grooves; his lyrical messages are profound and uplifting as well.
A while back, he penned one of the best anti-war lines ever:
“You can bomb the world to pieces, but you can’t bomb it into peace.”
Butler: I agree wholeheartedly! Everyone who loves this country, true patriots everywhere, should be writing their representatives in Washington, even organizing to descend upon the place en masse, to demand that the players in the outgoing junta be made to pay for their crimes against the Republic.
My sense, however, is that — while the attack of the 10,000 long knives appears to be waning — the forces of status quo and business-as-usual are too entrenched for us to be realistic in our hopes that the officers and directors of BushCo may one day join their Enron brethren behind bars.
Paul Burke - November 30, 2006 @ 6:47 am
Seems to be a book missing from your reading list Lonnie. I’ll continue to watch day in and day out until one day it appears magically on the left coast, and a chorus of hallelujahs rings out from the land and like Spicoli you proclaim “I know that dude”
Paulness
lonbud - November 30, 2006 @ 6:39 pm
I hang my head in shame. And yet, there remain 24 shopping days ’till Christmas!
Tam O’Tellico - December 1, 2006 @ 12:03 pm
Lon, since your reading list includes a book based on Greek religio-philosophic tradition, I offer this:
*The Golden Age*
/”. . . before the Cretan king, Dictaean Jove, held sway and an impious age of men began to feast on slaughtered oxen, this life was led on earth by golden Saturn, when none had ever heard the trumpet blown or heard the sword‚Äëblade clanking on the anvil.”/ [Virgil, The Georgics 2.534]
Genesis is not the only story that tells of an idyllic Garden of Eden. The ancient Greeks offered their own legend of a time of perfection in the affairs of men. They called it The Golden Age.
In the time before time, men lived like gods without fear or pain or sorrow or toil. They did not grow old, and death came as if they were overcome with sleep. It is said that the earth – unforced – bore them fruit abundantly and yielded all needful things for spring was everlasting, streams of milk and nectar flowed, and honey was distilled from the oak. In this Golden Age, all men kept faith and did right without compulsion. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands; there was no need of law, and therefore, no fear of punishment. There were no cities, no swords or helmets, no foreign nations were attacked in war, nor did anyone sail over the seas. During this time, to mark the land with private bounds would have been wrong since men worked for the common store. (Note: this description is borrowed from Carlos Parada, author of the Genealogical Guide to Greek Mythology /.)
There was another such time and place of a Golden Age – the New World as Columbus found it. For example, among the people who greeted Columbus, cultivation was not practiced. Why should they? The sea offered a bountiful harvest of fish, and the land bore fruit and other foods in abundance. Thus, it was all but impossible to convince these people to become tillers of the soil.
In this Eden, private property was unknown, and there was no hierarchy as we understand that term. Leaders led by virtue of their strength and demonstrated wisdom, but their word was followed only so long as it made sense to those they led. Absent approval of the people, leaders were ignored and cast aside. Thus it was all but impossible to make these people servants of “better” men.
Though it may seem hard to believe these days, this is how Columbus described these people in his diary and correspondence:
“These people are very gentle, without weapons and without laws” (Nov. 4, 1492)
“They, are credulous; they know that there is a God in the heavens, and remain convinced that is where we have come from.” (Nov. 12, 1492)
“They are the best people in the world and the most peaceable” (Dec. 16, 1492)
“I do not believe that in all the world there are better men any more than there are better lands” (Dec. 25, 1492)
But Columbus was about to change all that. His need for gold and other material benefits to justify his journey caused him to try and force these people to till the soil and mine the minerals. To most of the native peoples, this was a violation of their humanity and a desecration of the sacred Earth Mother.
Rather than bow to the wishes of Columbus and those who followed him, native peoples chose slaughter or suicide. They jumped – chains and all – from Spanish ships, threw themselves from cliffs and drowned their babies at birth rather than have them grow up in such a cruel world. So despairing were these inhabitants of this former Eden that they succumbed by the millions to the ravages of the diseases the Spanish brought with them.
In time, the Spain and other European nations – and eventually the fledging nation call the United States – would solve this “shortage of workers unwilling to do these kind of jobs” by importing millions of Africans to work the sugar cane, cotton and rice plantations of the West Indies and the South.
Despite advertisers who continue to tout the Caribbean as Paradise, its Golden Age is now gone. Anyone who has visited the islands knows that the descendants of the native peoples and the blacks imported to the West Indies live in some of the worst conditions imaginable.
But this is only one sad chapter in the long, sad saga that is the White Man’s Burden. This corruption of “savages” continues today – sweatshops in the Marianna Islands manufacture products labeled Made in USA, illegal aliens pour across our borders to toil at jobs for low wages in unsafe conditions, and the little land left to Native American tribes – land that was once thought to be useless – continues to be robbed of its minerals and contemplated as sites for nuclear waste dumps.
Those who long for a return to The Golden Age – and those who dream of Heaven – should perhaps consider these things before they lament the “decline of moral values” that is too easily blamed on violent movies, same sex marriage and other such easy targets. And before we lash out in blind rage at those whose ways and religion are foreign to us, perhaps we should consider just who has taken the sounds of the “trumpet blown or the sword‑blade clanking on the anvil” to whom in the guise of bending them to our view of the way things ought to be.
It just may be that they way we think things ought to be will not lead to a return of The Golden Age – or to Heaven.
©2006 Tom Cordle
Tellico Plains, TN