Stick-to-it-iveness: An issue of political viscosity

Sometimes it feels like progressive activism is the same as having a huge, pot luck dinner party where every dish goes untasted and everyone leaves hungry and disappointed because they forgot they all brought food.

Ah, the salad days of 2008! How I miss them. The progressive jelly was so thick and rich on the good old American marble rye that we could not even taste the goobers scattered like pinheads across the pock-marked, doughy landscape.

The times, though, have changed. The American political appetite has become a quest for the perfect blend of dense, nutty paste and the wistful promise of sweet, fruity spread. Cowering in opposite corners with independently constructed sandwiches - sticky jelly for us and smooth goober butter, for, well, them - leaves a majority of voters hungering for the tasty integrity achieved through condiment cooperation.

It is not that neither side, on its own, offers a tasty sandwich. Indeed, those munching peanut butter will continue to cluck their tongues, and those slurping jelly from the sides of their bread will keep smacking their lips. The real issue is viscosity - busy little molecules of political will, interacting to keep their respective gooey stuff together, lest it squish out from the bread under consumer pressure.

But in that battle, it seems, the goobers have an advantage; it takes a awful lot of pressure to get them to gush from their cushy Wonder® bread slices. Our sweet malleability means the slightest pressure on the whole grain goodness we call America gets too many of us to abandon our positions and ooze toward the exits.

The nuts stay and we just stain, hoping the voters won't forget the promise of our pectin.

We need more gumption to be a flavor for major consumption. Instead, we wait for the people to tire of the stale flavor of goober heads so they have no choice but to see what a sample of smart jelly has to offer. But they don't stick around, because we neglect to create the energy to keep them next to us.

We each have a duty to be extra sticky for the liberal causes of progressive politics. What will you do to get your glue on?

-PBG

A Generational Moment

Al Gore's Global Energy Initiative

"We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that has to change."

"Today I am challenging our nation to commit to producing 100% of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon free sources within ten years."

"People are ready for a new, different and bold approach to genuinely solve our problems."

"This is a generational moment."

-Vice President Al Gore, July 17, 2008

How can a ten year goal proposed by someone with no high office, with principled, progressive stands on politics, expect to succeed in a divided nation? CBS News called it "an audacious dare" and said he "laid down the green gauntlet," not quite the level of inspiration associated with JFK's moon landing challenge.

Those were headier times, the early 1960s. We were still a nation glowing from the victorious pride of World War II, thrusting our chests out at our ability to match the Soviet Union in the nascent "space race." President Kennedy set a goal with his challenge, one that "the greatest generation" had no doubt we could achieve.

Even in language, Kennedy said in his May, 1961 speech, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth." He too spoke of commitment, but in the sense of achievement and national pride, not in the face adversity.

What made the moon landing embraceable is that we relied on the commitment of a few intensely passionate scientists and bureaucrats to carry us through. Beyond the financial commitment, our role was to cheer them on, and we did, crowing along with Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley.

But Mr. Gore's challenge means we all must contribute, in our own way. The group We Can Solve It ( a project of Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection) says on its website, "This, really, is a political and cultural challenge. We can do this quickly if all Americans -- every single one of us -- embrace this and insist on it. Every scientist, every teacher, every investor, every family -- there is a role for each of us."

The reason for that statement is self evident. That is, our individual commitment requires a very, very important adjustment to our consumer culture. If in the face of expanding renewable, carbon free energy development, the oil industry chooses to lower the price of oil to lure us back, will we hold to this commitment or will we say, "Oh good. Cheap gas. It's easier to fill my tank with this than to wait for technology, "?

This is why Mr. Gore's goal is our challenge: we will be committing to give up the fossil fuels we know and love, to do something for the future of our country and the planet, rather than capitulating to the "I want it now" mentality that ad men and politicians will continue to throw at us like a somatic aphrodisiac.

The cure for this unhealthy desire is commitment. Say "I commit" and join with the million-and-a-half people that have signed up in support of the "bold approach to solve our problems."

Every time you grab your car keys, every time you sit down in your driver's seat, say to yourself, "I am committed to a fossil fuel free future." Write it on your keyring. Put it on a Post-it note in your car. Remember that you are helping to restore a healthy planet.

-PBG

Something New Comes Along

Just when I think there is nothing left to be old, something new comes along.

I wonder what creates a memory. When I wake in the morning, and there is nothing left to hold, nothing new to see, to comprehend, to learn, when there is nothing left to remember about time, will I really be awake or will I actually be dead? Is that the final samadhi I see before me, or just another aimless hallway lined with the disposable images of a past I watched while in repose in front of my television?

I spent the past week in the DC area, and went to the National Portrait Gallery one day. There we saw portraits of presidents, Civil War personalities and other American icons, like Jimi Hendrix and Gore Vidal, Jackie O. and Josephine Baker, Angela Davis and Katherine Hepburn. I remember a lot of the individuals, captured in paint pigment and photo emulsion, from my own lifetime. Here they are with the legends of a young nation, captured in time as if they too were cornerstones of proud nationalism and not temporary soda pop bubbles rendered into Styrofoam pylons supporting an age of plastic time. How Warholian!


So this is how history is written now. As 2007 slips into 2008, I guess we all need to pay better attention. The dimly lit Chinese restaurant on the neighborhood street corner, or the half-moon hanging over the leafless-tree that grows from the broken concrete stoop of a run down tenement, are all images I carry with me that - in some future context - could hold historical value, and those are only a couple of the ones my mind captured in the last 48 hours!

That anything from our living past can become grist for the historical mill is both ridiculous and overwhelming. For example, one could say it is ridiculous that 2007 could be remembered as a the year when a well run football team's glory will overshadow the glaring mismanagement of a poorly run nation. Likewise, it is overwhelming that tragic events, from Darfur to Pakistan, can crack the shell of our otherwise oblivious Humpty Dumpty lives, so that by the time we muster our horses and men, we will have fallen off the wall, leaving the hungry inconsolably weak, the weak uncontrollably desperate, and the desperate unalterably dangerous.

I'm sorry. It's hard not to be cynical. There's a lot of possibility for 2008, though. I don't know if hope alone is enough, or experience, or justice, but I do believe that we can move to heal the inconsolable, the uncontrollable, the unalterable, if we first resolve to heal ourselves.

Revolution only succeeds through resolution. The only way to create a new story is to commit to being a force for changing the current story.

Look at a recent picture of your family. Is there anything you could do to change the current story of your relationship to them?

Look at your bank statement. Is there anything you can commit to, to change the story of your relationship to money?

Look at your front lawn. Is there anything you can choose to do that will change your relationship to landscaping?

If you resolve to create change in your life in those or any small, personal area, then you can choose to play bigger in your next commitment. The new revolves when the old resolves. Rather than revering the past for its own sake, maybe we should venerate it only as the source for what we have become, are becoming, can become.

As we approach the fortieth anniversary of a notable year of joy and horror, it is appropriate to quote Bobby K. (also in the National Gallery) in his famous call to action, as a way to help us add context to history, "There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were and ask why not."

Happy New Year! Why not make it a historical one?

-PBG