World Views: Broken Windows and Manifested Destiny

One of the stealth-racist attacks on Barack Obama before he became President of the United States, was that he didn't have an "American world view". I'm not sure where I first heard it, but it cycled around on Fox "News" for a long, long time. Like a wildebeest's leg at a lion's dinner table. I don't think I EVER heard another presidential candidate be attacked in quite that way before. I mean, no one ever said that Michael Dukakis had an alien POV. They might not have liked him or his views, or maybe they did. Point is there is plenty to debate in a presidential contest. But "world view"? That's some sublime shit. Real untouchable hate-mongering. Sure, there were overtly racist attacks against Obama, but those were easily dismissed as such. Having the wrong "world view" has been used lately to describe a host of the Right's enemies: evolutionary scientists, Muslim extremists, gay people, in fact ANYone that they don't agree with or deem anti-American, undesirable or godless. How can an American gay person, born in America, be anti-American by the fact of their "gayness", unless they are working for as a Russian spy? Obama's "world view" is code for his otherness, his blackness. It has nothing to do with his ACTUAL feelings, philosophy, cultural influences. It's straight up saying, "Here's a man with a funny name and a dark complexion- he MUST be an alien inside, too!" During the settling of the North American continent by European decent Americans in the nineteenth century the native people were categorized as backward and having a view of the world that was alien and "savage". This concept of the western world, and specifically America, as at odds with the savage, heathens, whatever they call "those other people", has it's roots in why America exists at all. We have to discount these third world, and fourth world (indigenous) peoples. Otherwise our own claim to legitimacy is so much more flimsy.

If someone has a disagreement with how the President has run the country, or not, in the last three and a half years- and I'm one of those people-let them not attack Obama's "Americaness". His administration has been nothing but. I'll give you an example of an American world view at odds with another that has echoes with the past I just mentioned. Lately you may have heard that Obama vetoed plans to connect a pipeline from the Gulf of Mexico to Canadian oil refineries. What you didn't hear, probably, that the administration has APPROVED parts of the pipeline, called the Keystone, through much of Oklahoma and other heartland states, rerouting the pipeline through sparsely populated areas. Funny thing is that these areas are largely "Indian Country" and home to many scared sites, grave sites, spiritual centers of the disenfranchised Oklahoma Indian population that lost most of their land when the "sooner state" became, well, a state. The pipeline will also go through the Dakotas, and threaten the traditional land and sites of the Lakota and other tribes on its way to Canada. This is a clash of world views, plan and simple. Obama is a typical American here, people! Not some tribal citizen from Kenya, or Indonesian school lad. "A few angry Indians... whatever!" That's an American attitude!  What's notable here, is that the Administration has acted with disregard for the Native community, alienating perhaps as much as much as 30% of the people in some of these counties. This is especially foolish in an election year as Arizona, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico and Oklahoma all have large Native populations and last time I checked they could vote.

I still support Obama, just not with the zeal I once did. Take this from the descendant of some cowboys, bootleggers, and yes, a few Indians as well. Not all of them would have got along had they been in the same room, I can tell you! I've had to be able to navigate a world where people are coming from some other frame of reference. It's who I am. If American's look around they are like that too, most seem not to notice their twist-tied roots. Me and the President, we have a lot in common, we just don't always share the same world view, but maybe in the new America, we all shouldn't. I have to take the good with the... well, American. We can't let Romney be the next face of unrestricted bank fraud, war and an even more aggressive "drill, baby, drill" policy. Obama has screwed up a lot. He's not Left enough for a lot of us. Never mind what the Right thinks of him, we just covered that. He stopped the war in Iraq. Probably saved the economy. Did a lot of good, quiet stuff under the cover of his first term. Let's hope he's just waiting to get really radical in his second. He might just change my world view if he does.

It's About Dignity-NOT "Class"

What the Hell do we mean by "Class" anyway?! You hear "middle class" here in America a lot. EVERYONE is "middle class". Okay, some are "working class". NOBODY, but NOBODY is "poor" or "lower class" in the USA, Even my family, my mother grew up without plumbing, without paved streets in front of her house.-but she's not "poor". No, she's not from a 3rd world country-just the deep south-maybe that IS the 3rd world! She always SAYS she's "poor" which interests me, because she's about the only person I know who regularly uses that word NOT describing some distant population that the speaker has no affinity with. But is she "poor", or even WAS she? After her early years, she moved into a suburban neighborhood in Oklahoma City with her mother and brother, when to a religious high school, when to college (first in her immediate family to do so, I believe) and the disappeared into the 1960's in an adventurous blur until I was born. She was on welfare when I was little but soon got a job and worked for 30+ years for the University of California. She's now retired and has bought a little house and has a pension. Is she "poor"? "Middle class?" "Rich?" I think we'd all agree, if she lived in Somalia she'd be rich. If she was in Haiti or Nicaragua we could say the same. Not calling my mother a lair, not at all, but we should look around before we start using labels like, "rich" "poor" even "middle class."

Most Americans come from peasant stock. Some may trace their ancestry to some Austrian bastard of aristocratic blood, or an "indian princess" but most are peasants. Indentured servants, slaves, folks that were either kicked out of their homeland, ran from war or famine or were dragged here in chains. Our distain for the current wave of immigrants has more to do fear of loosing "what we go" then how "un-american" these folks are. Almost all are Christians, for Christ's sake! This is supposedly a "Christian nation", founded by them anyway. Just listen to that moron on Fox News-God he's an idiot-his ancestors probably came over, half-starved, on a rat-infested steam ship. Now deep down he's afraid mexicans will take what he's "got" in the middle of the night. They're so "un-american" that without their labor states that have just passed draconian immigration laws are seeing farmers harvests rotting on trees because "real" americans don't get dirt on their hands anymore.

What is this all about? I think it's about dignity. We don't want to be associated with poor people because our own modest roots are so recent. Our grandparents worked hard, died better off than their parents-who died without health insurance, pensions or shit, just about ANY modern safety net. Our Boomer parents are better off than they were.... but BEFORE that we were all like these folks from Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvator that are cleaning our yards, picking our strawberries. Deep down we know we're just like them and don't want to be reminded of that, so we tell ourselves we're "middle class" even after we loose our job, the car's repoed and the house foreclosed. It was all a lie, the American Dream, and now we're back in the same state as our immigrant forebears and we're scared and our kids are scared. We tell them it'll be alright, that if we just make it through this rough patch, we'll make it.

We should look over to "poor" folks with a new respect, to the immigrant with understanding, after all we now see the world as they do, but NO. We don't see hopeful faces, people like us, just looking to LIVE IN DIGNITY. We see dirty hands, hands reaching out for OUR meager share, our kids spot in college, OUR job.

The hands that are rubbing together with satisfaction, the well-manicured hands that call their assistant to warm up the jet for a little jaunt down to St. Kitts for weekend getaway, those hands belong to the folks whose net worth has tripled in the last 30 years. But do they have more dignity? Is there dignity in the high walls covered with glass I saw in Central America years ago. No. There is fear. They're afraid, too. But they aren't afraid just of hungry immigrants who don't speak english.... they're afraid of YOU. People like us have been burning down castles filled with people like them for thousands of years, and they fear some old fashioned, medieval "wealth redistribution" is on the horizon. These people AREN'T just well off. They are KING wealthy. THAT is the 1% we are all chanting about.

Anyway, this is NOT about class warfare, as American maybe DOES become a Third World country, one like my mother was born into in the backwoods. But this one is of our own making, we LET THIS HAPPEN on OUR WATCH. We blame Congress, the President, the Tea Party or the Occupy Movement. It doesn't matter. The more we try to hold on to what we "have"-which we took, maybe not knowing or remembering- the more it slips- the more we all loose what we are really looking for-DIGNITY. Maybe it's not a right, after all, maybe it's not guaranteed by a piece of paper. But we all sure damn well want it.

V for Validation

Graduated from college: Check. Recession making it impossible to find work in my field: Check. Difference between 2011 and 19 years ago is there is a LOT more people in this situation, and their disillusionment has reached critical mass. Washington and people in power still think that it's business as usual and the "experts" on TV haven't got a damn clue. Still, there is something refreshing about so many people being truly fed up. It's about time. Where this goes from here is anyone's guess. Does Obama get it? It's hard to tell, as he seems to being playing politics with the whole thing as the FOX candidates call the protesters "mobs". I think that's what Iran's president call protesters in HIS country. Funny how THESE people are a "mob" and the "Tea Party" are "Americans". The bottom line is that the Tea Party was the establishment pissed off that Obama had been elected (right now I’ll refrain from calling them ALL greedy racists) and these are REAL people who are in REAL trouble, not some fabricated "movement".

I guess what I'm saying is: I feel for these protestors. Do they sometimes sound idiotic? Sure. Do they seem not to have a "clearly defined message"? Sure. But if you've been out of work for a year, or two (I have recently), you might not have a clearly defined message either. It's the politician's JOB, congress’ JOB to come up with policy. That’s what they are PAID and ELECTED to do. They've failed. The President, god love 'em, has failed too. He inherited an absolutely fucked situation. That's just fine with Right and the Banks and the 1%. He goes down and we go back to waging war on the world, bankrupting the country and leaving the poor, the young, the old out in the cold. What about the future? That was the arrogance of the Bushies: they never thought they'd get old and die.  The dictators around the Middle East thought the same. Look at Rumsfeld and Cheney. They STILL don't get it: they destroyed this country and we're standing around blaming each other.

-Unquiet

Random Acts of FutureNow

As we sit here, wondering how the next chapter of Middle East violence will erupt, or what our real options are with China or our other "friends" who continue to jail an silence their native critics, we have to ask ourselves: is America what the world needs? Are we going to be like the British in a year or two: that cute little used-to-be empire that talks funny and everyone can't quite take seriously? My answer is probably. Yes. And why not? THAT sure would take the pressure off. No one would expect us to run around and "stabilize" things. We could turn inward and contemplate our navel, like the English, and sing songs about the old days.

Thought I'd just start things off with a lighter note. Things are about to get heavy.