The Choice We Are Making, Politically

Human beings are scatter-brained;
that is to say, do not think alike.
We are all over the place.

At the same time, we need each other.
We need each other for procreation,
for protection, to gather food,
to build our shelters, keep the wolves away,
and to trade skill for skill.

We don't drop our children to the ground,
and cannot drive down the road without rules.
If you are drunk, you cannot drive.
You need a license to practice medicine,
to drive a car, perform marriages, to fish,
or open a restaurant and sell food to people.

We hate having to conform,
but we don't want to die alone.
We are a compromise.

Libertarians are the lone wolves.
They, like Marlene Dietrich, "vant to be alone".
They begrudge and minimize requirements.
Their question is how little they have to conform.
They run in the pack only to breed,
or if it is necessary to run down food.
Else, they prowl the forest alone.

Others come together to form a village
and to share in feeding, protecting, and educating
their children, in building houses, trading food,
building bridges, and providing health care.

To hate govbernment is to hate cooperation
even when cooperation is necessary, like it or not.
It is the belief that we are best, unfettered.

Government haters have gathered as Republicans;
as Libertarians, Tea Partiers, Trickle-down economists,
low tax, smallest government, minimal regulation,
unlimited wealth advocates: Alpha Dogs.

The rest of us want to buld a bridge.
We are willing to share in the cost.
We think kids need protection, and that
everybody deserves health care and enough food.

You choose!
Quit it with the slogans!
Which way will help us all most?

We built the Grand Coulee Dam together.

Comments

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer. We do have an answer. We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...

SmokeSound

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