What if liberal college professors actually stood side-by-side with conservative rural convenience store clerks against the big-money interests stealing our country from us?
What if we changed the words "stupid" or "ignorant" to "underinformed and tired"? What if we used the word "elite" for the real super-rich elites who will never show their faces but who have one hand in our pockets and the other around our throat?
What if we really looked at the way we were dividing ourselves against ourselves and our allies?
What if we let go of oppositional language - identify it when it comes out of our mouths and vow to discontinue the use of those words?
Yes - the entire human race needs to unify - worldwide. That is a joyful, beautiful image. But are we making a big show of caring about the struggling people in the "third world" and at the same time bashing the struggling people living a few blocks away from us? We are ALL being screwed. ONE world. ONE world. People are being poisoned and lied to in India and in western Pennsylvania. ONE world. ALL people.
Here are some articles that I think speak to a way in which we can draw inspiration from our national mythology and identity as frisky, pissed-off Americans to unify with each other, beyond ideological and lifestyle differences, in undermining the soul-stealing, spirit-crushing, murderous agenda of unbridled corporate greed.
Thom Hartmann on the real Tea PartyGlenn Greenwald article on banks
It's time for us to walk the talk of Freedom. We've been spoonfed for centuries the lie that "freedom" is everyone for themselves - the less responsibility the better. That old Individualism thing. Could this shallow interpretation of "freedom" be behind the choice to wear dreadlocks as much as it's behind the choice to turn your employee into an "independent contractor" and deny her benefits? (Nothing against dreadlocks - I'm just saying: is that as deep as your idea of freedom goes - the ability to wear what you like and say what you like?) What if we began to see freedom
as responsibility? Responsibility for what comes out of my mouth, for writing someone off as not worth my time and energy, for the mess I've already created. What if I saw this responsibility not as a burden, but a joy? This is where the other American mythological ideal of Bravery comes in. When we face our fear of the unknown, acknowledge it as scary, and then walk through it anyway, our life becomes an adventure and we feel the actual sensation of being alive. It's like falling in love. Yes, scary. Yes, might get hurt. Yes, full of Joy. Yes.
It's time to take back the land of the free and the home of the brave from the corporate monsters feeding off of the imprisonment (both physical and financial) of people in our hometowns and across the planet, and setting up an ultra-policed "security" state based on fear. This is the
opposite of "free" and "brave", hm?
And this revolution begins in our own minds. As we entertain the idea of actually reaching out to understand the reality of someone we see as "them." And then actually doing the reaching. And then reflecting on the experience. And then doing it again, and again.
There, the soapbox is now open...