by Don Hynes
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| Vantage Point | Culture and Politics by Don Hynes |
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"No man is prejudiced in favor of a thing, knowing it to be wrong.
He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and when he sees it is not so,
the prejudice will be gone." - Tom Paine
December 22, 2003 The Gift of Our Presence There is a dance we do in this world, especially in this season, along the razor's edge of sentiment and witness, maintaining a vigil for the truth and justice while positing a vision that allows for the connectivity of feeling. As we traverse the deception and failed promise that pass for leadership in our nation, the importance of witness can devalue into dull repetition rather than the vibrant awareness of what is spoiling life within the context of the deeper creation always at hand. One of my dearest friends was quoted in the recent Portland Magazine "My ambition and vow and struggle and work.. is to stay aware, stay present, stay open, keep listening to my heart, stay in touch with my best and deepest self.. stay in touch with the possible." It's not just candy and treacle that is moving us beneath the surface of this solstice season, but an order of commitment, a wave of renewal that doesn't flinch from the ambiguities and atrocities of our time, rather shines the light of illumination on the darkened corners of our often misguided ambition while encouraging us to take heart and know the gift of life through our presence. Kathleen Dean Moore writes the questioning voice of our grandchildren years from now: "How could you not have known? What more evidence did you need that your lives, your comfortable lives, would do so much damage to ours? Did you think you could wage war against nations without waging war against people and the land? Didn't you wonder what we would drink, once you had poisoned the aquifers.. the air? Did you think it all belonged to you - this beautiful earth?" Rather than ask these important questions, the media seems poised for the coming interview with Sadam Hussein although it's doubtful if what he knows will ever make it into the jaundiced arena of public opinion. Do we need to be further convinced about the deliberately false arguments that fostered the war against Iraq? Will we understand Sadam's sordid history that indelibly links his atrocities to the support and intrigue of our government and the men in power who sound off self righteously about this demonic character. Is there any virtue to be found in the nonsensical scapegoating of the President, so eager to smirk in condemnation of another's evil while tens of thousands of Iraqis are dead by his command, hundreds of thousands of families embedded in grief and revenge, and over a thousand American soldiers dead or severely wounded believing in whatever version of mission the Administration serves up like the recent plastic turkey or faded flight deck propaganda. There is a common denominator of desire that seeks to serve something higher and nobler than the economy of consumption. It is this desire that is the hook for all the verbiage about sacrifice and freedom's cause that pours out of Washington and a variety of other capitals, encouraging people to believe that it is their cause that is just, to find the demon across the sea or barbed wire and be increasingly willing to kill in the name of whatever ephemeral sound byte passes for truth today. But that same desire is what binds us as human beings, that signals a compassion and connection that is deeper than nation and stronger than the motivation of current events. It is the connectivity of that deeper emotion that continues to rise irregardless of the misguided clothing and calls us to renew the vision of world community in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in those we seek to love and with those we may never know. The alienation of the 1984 double speak, the corruption of language and virtuous intent, are the challenges of the day, just as they have been for God knows how long. The soldiers and citizens that die today in the militarized violence of Iraq, the mid-east, and around the globe, aren't to be evaluated by the patriotic hubris of the economic and political engine that drove them into harm's way nor by arguments to the contrary, but by the world that we create and the vision we carry into tomorrow. We honor the dead by refusing the corruption of bigotry, the small mindedness of us against them, and by choosing inclusion, with its grace of hope, of peace and of love. Friendly Coalition Folks In the growing illogic of our Iraq policy Bechtel receives hundreds of millions for miserably shoddy work as the President decides to limit re-construction contracts to "friendly coalition folks" as he sends off Jim Baker to beg the "unfriendly folks" for debt reduction while Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld authorizes a policy of assassination within an already delusional rubric of false freedom. Despite the made-for-campaign-funding pronouncements of occupation consul Bremer and Administration demands that the Iraq Ministry of Health stop counting civilian dead the number of Iraqi citizens killed grows each day, and the ever increasing military violence on the people, despite the terrorist-baathistdeadenders-badguyseachandeveryone label, is determining a course of vengeance among the Iraqis that is clearly resembling failed counter insurgency efforts of the past. The White House shroud of secrecy was partially dismantled this week as a Circuit Judge described in open court the police violence he personally witnessed in the recent Miami FTTA demonstrations. This attack on U.S. citizens is being mirrored by military assaults on the emergence of democracy in Iraq where the voice of the occupation is "any threat against the government or coalition forces will be fired upon." In the disgraceful story of the week U.S. soldiers seriously wounded in Iraq may be denied compensatory benefits by being discharged from the military without opportunity or assistance in the steep economic transition from wounded G.I. to disabled civilian. I doubt we'll hear that policy announced from the Rose Garden. Michael Moore relates some of the letters he has received from soldiers on active duty in TruthOut, but more importantly lists a host of ways to help those who are suffering from the war. Assault on the Earth The approved language of higher consciousness did for corporate America what the assembly line did for Ford. Greenwash is the Madison Avenue soap that the corporate polluters of the globalized world and their partners in government are using to polish up the engine of destruction and communicate as sincerely as possible that up is truly down. Promises of renewal momentarily dominate center stage, like this hope that the war in Iraq would actually help the wetlands devastated by the Baathist government, while in the backroom the same Congressional voices who claim virtue for the war cut all funding for wetland restoration. The road to ruin is the British Guardian's description of the environmental climate in America, yet the road we are paving is not ours alone according to a current study by the German government that demonstrates the onslaught of global warming and resultant melting of the polar ice demand four times the efforts that the U.S. refused Kyoto protocols would presently require. Europe is experiencing the effects of global warming first hand as drought and fire ravaged the continent this summer only to be followed by catastrophic floods. EPA attorneys testify that the regressive Bush policy of reducing enforcement standards will cause them to drop many pollution cases, a change mandated by VP Cheney's energy taskforce composed of utility and extraction industry executives and lobbyists, among the most generous Bush campaign donors. Cheney recently declared his charge from the President was to "defeat evil" unless of course there's a dividend to be acquired, as outlined in this Center for American Progress report on the link between oil and Libya's decision to abandon WMD. We're reaching the bottom of oil barrel, and as noted author Richard Heinberg writes, the party's over. Rather than causing us to reconsider, even in the face of scientific reports that the earth has grown 20% darker in recent years due to air pollution, the Bush administration continues to cut sweetheart deals on smoke stack mercury pollution and factory farm waste. Global warming is having a disastrous affect on China's food supply and because China's huge population and industrial agriculture depend on oil while China holds the largest share of U.S. debt, this combination of factors could have a precipitous affect on the U.S. and world oil economy. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., environmental attorney and activist, wrote this brilliant and disturbing essay, Crimes Against Nature for the Natural Resources Defense Council documenting the horrific environmental record of the Bush Administration despite its latest sugar coater Mike Leavit. Our relationship to nature is a sacred one, filled with mythic impact as in this fable like story Coda from Orion OnLine. Defending it requires presence in nature as much as in the halls of political process, and despite the overwhelming odds, the forces of David get off the occasional smooth stone and bring Goliath to its corporate knees, as in the recent high noon victory of a small and practically un-funded group of environmental advocates over the corporate powered nuclear waste storage business in the desert communities of Utah. My favorite environmental story though is the celebration in Cameroon following the end of a two month strike by 6,000 women against the destruction of croplands by cattle which included a refusal to have sex with their husbands and a traditional cleansing ceremony by the women and their "secret society." I love this story not only because of the colonial language "men in the village who include the paramount chief have fully resumed their matrimonial obligations after being deprived of sex" but because I believe the assault on the environment is really an attack on the feminine. Not only women, although they are often on the punished end of globalization and industrial "progress" as Arunhati Roy writes about so passionately in The Greater Common Good, but the body of our earth herself, the life giver, the origin and nurture for ourselves and our children's children. Ways to Help The politics of power-over vent their force on the humblest of voices as in the continuing oppression of Tibet and Buddhist religious by the Chinese. Here in the Homeland three Roman Catholic sisters have been imprisoned for their protest against nuclear weapons and the shadow of death our homegrown WMD cast over life on earth. A card or letter of support can provide the equivalent of visiting the imprisoned, so add your signature here to protest the imprisonment of the Tibetan nuns and add these Catholic sisters to your Christmas card list: Jackie Hudson c/o Sue Ablao 3495 Dyes Inlet NW Bremerton WA 98312 Ardeth Platte c/o Jonah House 1301 Moreland Avenue Baltimore MD 212216 Carol Gilbert c/o Jonah House 1310 Moreland Avenue Baltimore MD 21216 Uncontrollable Beauty On the summer solstice in Obi, which is December 21, the inhabitants gather on the beach just before sunset. If the horizon is clear - sometimes for years it is not - the sun sets between two ancient palms and its rays fragment in their fronds bouncing off sprinkles of water that dance above the waves. This phenomenon is evidently pleasing to the eye. There is only a small patch of yellow beach from which this is visible. Each year the people of the island come with beautifully woven blankets and wait in anticipation. If the ominous cigar-like clouds that are common at that time of year are present in the sky, it only increases their anticipation and their potential for joy or sadness. At the last moment, the clouds might block the sun in the midst of a beautiful sunset. But if the clouds hang just above the horizon, the sun will drop below them, between the fronds, and the sky will radiate for a moment with golden crystalline mist before the sun disappears altogether. They have a two syllable word for the anticipation of this event. Translated, the word means, roughly, "Prepare for beauty!" - from Heron Dance. Peace. *** |
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