Hurricane Season
Rubin Carter told me a story years ago, that I was thinking about today.. A tribe of isolated hunters and gatherers, completely hidden from the modern world, came upon an airplane near their settlement. They found the seats very comfortable, never questioning where they came from. Eventually, a young adult figured out how to drive it along the ground, and they were amazed by this automobile. But they never learned the plane could fly.
This story, of course, relates to people both as individuals and as groups. I haven't been a hunter-gatherer since my early childhood. My gardening connects me with the agricultural phase of human history, and tending to the kittens, fowl, and fish imitates the pastoral phase -- especially when I feed the birds and fish bread. Still, there are many times I like to sit in a comfortable chair to make snarly comments on the internet that only I think are funny. And there are still times that I'm driven to take furthr actions, including contacting politicians to express me opinion. This includes those politicians I support, and those I oppose.
Yet, when I consider the synergy of negative forces currently gathering as a storm on our country's horizen, I recognize that chairs and automobiles alone are not up to the task of protecting civilization. I don't need a weatherman to know which way the winds are going to blow, so to speak. I'm convinced that my 1975 bumper-sticker was correct: "There's Only One Innocent Hurricane."
This unacceptable Texas "law" restricting abortion should serve as evidence of the negative forces combining to threaten society. It has united two groups that are opposed to a sane society that provides for justice for all. I hesitate to make fun of anyone's sincere religious or spriritual beliefs, I really do. Being Irish, I make an effort to only do so in private when possible. But when a minority of rigid right-wing christians want to impose their childish superstitions upon others, when they want to inflict their misinterpretations of Santa God and Stained Glass Jesus on people who do not share their superstitions, we need to take that threat seriously. And abort it, before it grows.
The rabid remnants of what was once known as the republican party has been seeking to join forces with christian right, and the Texas situation provides fertile ground. It's a cultural petri dish growing a toxic infection. It's not that the alt-white people really want an increase in poor and non-white citizens, of course. No more than the protestants in the region called Northern Ireland favor the increasing Catholic population. No, they like this for other reasons.
I think that this $10,000 bounty is the christan right's appeal to the greed of fanatics that would otherwise feel encouraged to murder abortion providers. Such killings hardly reflect well on the "right to life" crowd in the media. The alt-right is counting on a conflict between the federal government and "states' rights," to be carried out in specific regions where they believe they have the upper hand. This may have sounded far-fetched before January 6. But people my age recognize the birth of the mutant offspring of the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and '60s. We have heard members of Congress talking about "bloodshed" in opposition to Human Rights in days of old.
We need to unite to create a front to oppose the sum-total of groups that require unhealthy beliefs and actions from their membership. Because they are forming -- indeed, they have already formed -- a front against us. We've seen the red sky in the morning. Our front needs to stop the often petty divisions that lead directly to loses in elections, and focus on our real opposition. They are our real enemy in this growing conflict.
There are all types of people in the Democratic Party. But we are all Democrats, and we are confronted to what is at least as much of a threat to this country's future as the Civil War or the Cuban Missile Crisis. That Civil War was terribly violent, although the good side won. The leaders of two nations that were considered to be enemies resolved the missile crisis with only one death. They did this, despite both men being opposed by those who favored a victory in a war with atomic bombs on both sides.
We need to fly. In my way of thinking, President Kennedy flew to new heights in the missile crisis. Dr. King flew to new heights, when he advocated for Human Rights for all of humanity's family. Both require civilian control of the police and military. I'll speculate that none of us here want the current republican party to have that control. To do that, our united front needs to determine how and where we contest our opposition. Let's go for the JFK option of going with the resolution that requires the least violence. Let's go with King's strategy of flanking the opposition on a level they can't compete on.
It is an option that is available to each of us as individuals and as a group. I think it is the best option available right now.
Thank you for reading an old man's rant.
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