In the flood of good advice emanating in horrifying 3D waves from the
hologram of leftish politics (there is no “left” any more), about the only
thing I agree with is that we should all get off our butts and contribute what
we can to the collective future. One way or another, there WILL BE a future. If
we would like it to swing our way for a fricking change, we should do something
about it. If you think it is already too late, that there is no chance to push
the pendulum, you should remember that history moves in cycles, and someday
what has recently been wrought will be unwrought. Do you have grandkids?
I thought to look up the Gray Panthers, to see what they
might be up to these latter days. They have a website and a list of issues, and
the local group is located just south of Comic City. Single payer health care
is a decent issue - might be a place to start. But there is no mention of
Armageddon. I think I am Armageddon-motivated.
In that vein, there are lots of groups to support: Black
Lives Matter is as serious as it gets, citizens confronting the Brotherhood of
Institutional Racism. Standing Rock with both its outrageous war on indigenous
rights and its vicious pursuit of profit over people through disastrous
extraction practices needs all the help it can find. And taking over freeways and blocking businesses to protest
political groups that openly wear swastikas and give straight-arm salutes to
the President-elect are certainly worth a few late nights.
But what I see in all of this, as the crowds grow bigger and
the Pinkertons grow increasingly violent and out of control, is that the youth
of America are finally getting it. They are learning what disillusionment
really means as one big lie after another falls amid the cries of “timber!”
and they scramble to get out of the way. Some don’t and are crushed, and
another lie dies as those who watch are further politicized and the crowd
swells yet again. And again, and
again.
The energy and outrage required for effective protest belong
to the young. They can sleep in tents for months, yell at the top of their
voices all night, sleep standing up chained to a fence. I can’t do that any
more.
But what they don’t have yet is the cunning that comes from
experience. Sentimentality and outrage will not win this war, and it is here that we have
a place to contribute. A whole generation of baby boomers watched our efforts
to end the war in SE Asia, which by and large worked, trivialized and forgotten
through the public memes of the even more evil and greed-stoked backlash that
has finally brought us to the election of a mean media cartoon as our Public
Face. Hell and damnation!
Join up and put your old gray head to work. The young have
showed us they have the strength – the least we can do is try to help.
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