MindSpinner

“I am so mad,” said my son in the car the other day, on the way home from school. “Everything is so fucked up.”

“What’s wrong? Did you have a really bad day?”

“No, I mean the country. I’m mad that my country is so fucked up.” At seventeen, he knows something precious has been stolen - his pride and even his ethical comfort in being an American, along with something of his future. He doesn’t say this lightly, and he doesn’t rely on soundbytes. He reads extensively for a kid his age, actually - The Atlantic, The Economist, the BBC News on the Web.

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She has outlived the currency of her principles and her beliefs, my 76-year-old mother lamented to me on the phone yesterday. They are simply disappearing from the world. She comes from the Appalachian mountains where a spirit of independence instills many people with the idea that less government is better and people ought to do more for themselves. We’ve debated politics before. She was president of her college debate team, and she actually relishes debates I find painful, but there’s no debating going on now. She’s been betrayed, too. She sees the government and both major parties as hopelessly corrupt. There’s nobody to champion now. “I’d vote for a Libertarian or Green Party candidate,” she concludes, “if I thought they’d have a chance of winning, but they don’t.”

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A friend who has become dear to me reveres the ideas that founded this country, a country he has chosen to serve with his considerable talents for many years - but with eyes always open. He speaks eloquently at American Conscience of the perils and possibility America confronts today. He sees much. To see, these days, is to find reason for deepest concern, so it is no surprise that sometimes when he calls, he’s discouraged.

He wondered aloud the other day whether our conversations had changed the way I blog - had he turned my attention toward political matters and taken it away from other affirmations of what is timeless and important in life, from what serves to sustain? The answer, of course, is no. I write about what occurs to me, what asks to be written on a given day.

It’s simply that we can’t afford to be fooled by those who try to construct reality as if reality were nothing more substantial than a movie set and we the extras paid a pittance to bleat prescribed lines on cue, in unison.

We are all alike betrayed by the direction the elected leadership of this country is steering, not only for us, but for the world. This is not the voyage we signed up for, not the purpose for which this ship of state was lovingly crafted, not the flag we want to fly. There’s no nailing us down in the hold of the ship to shut us up in the dark. We’ll stand on each other’s shoulders and break through the deck board by board.

In a time like this, silence convicts us as passive accomplices. So I can’t be silent, though I’ll never run for office and need more time than I have in order to stay as informed as I ought to be.

I can’t vote for one candidate who might be expected to tow a party line when that party line leads to perdition. I am responsible for finding and supporting candidates who stand for what I believe in.

When I peruse the American political landscape in hopes of finding integrity and a constructive vision, it’s Barack Obama’s keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that I remember. A recent profile in The American Prospect fuels my interest; Obama speaks of exactly what I care about - effecting a sustainable future that attends to the welfare and the freedoms of all:

Where I probably can make a unique contribution is in helping to bring people together and bridging what I call the ‘empathy deficit,’ helping to explain the disparate factions in this country and to show them how we’re joined together, helping bridge divides between black and white, rich and poor, even conservative and liberal…. The story that I’m interested in telling is how we can restore that sense of commitment to each other in a way that doesn’t inhibit our individual freedoms, doesn’t diminish individual responsibility, but does promote collective responsibility.

Apparently, given his 72% approval rating in Illinois, the senator has a certain gift for reaching people. He describes his values as

…deeply rooted in the progressive tradition, the values of equal opportunity, civil rights, fighting for working families, a foreign policy that is mindful of human rights, a strong belief in civil liberties, wanting to be a good steward for the environment, a sense that the government has an important role to play, that opportunity is open to all people and that the powerful don’t trample on the less powerful.…

That’s my list. That’s what I want this country to be about.

Obama understands what’s happened to the American electorate, too - why we aren’t acting, collectively, like the informed, engaged citizens true democracy depends upon in order not to be reduced to a puppet show manipulated by power and greed. Interviewed in a New Yorker article of 2004, Obama identifies part of the problem:

Americans aren’t simply too tired to think about politics, he said; they’re being deliberately turned off. “If you make political discourse sufficiently negative, more people will become cynical and stop paying attention. That leaves more space for special interests to pursue their agendas, and that’s how we end up with drug companies making drug policy, energy companies making energy policy, and multinationals making trade policy.”

Of course, the exhausting pace of our culture and off-putting negativity in politics are not the only toxins that dull our senses. There are weapons of mass distraction, outright lies, religion co-opted, and the strategic silencing of voices of truth. Awareness is the antidote for these opiates, and we must quaff it now, whatever its bitter taste. We have the weapons we’ve always wielded - our voices in a free society, our votes.

I’m not feeling young these days, and another birthday is just around the corner. Barack Obama is four months younger than I am, to the day. Young to be a president, but old enough to be wise, if wisdom is in your nature. If wisdom isn’t in your nature, aging can only accomplish so much. George W. didn’t sober up until he was just four years younger than I am now. He’d driven cars into trash cans and companies into ruinous debt. So, too, now the nation.

Currently Barack Obama demurs most graciously at talk of his running for president anytime soon. He doesn’t like to get ahead of himself. He says instead, “I find that I perform best when I’m focused on being useful as opposed to becoming something.” Actually I’m beginning to focus on his being as useful as he can be in a time when this country needs to find its path forward into a future that gradually restores hopes now threatened and national integrity now compromised. That will require a president with a vision, unsullied integrity, a deep intelligence, the broadest possible vision, and a way of bringing people to see what we have in common and what we need to effect in the world together.