You know I used to care, or rather I still do, but in a much more passive way (hence the infrequency of activity here). From age 16-25 I read the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, the Economist, Harper's, etc. on at least a semi-regular basis. Whatever insights I had gained from reading social and poltical theory, however far away I traveled from the narrower circumstances of actual goverments and their practice in my lifetime towards bigger ideas about why government itself should exist, and how, I always returned back to the narrower context of America and its foreign and domestic policies. If the current health care debate, for instance, were taking place in the above time frame, I would at least be able to provide a general summary of the most popular bills and would have an opinion as to which one I would like to see passed. I would have know then, as I know now, that any bill passed would be a compromise, but I believed in "steps in the right direction", in the idea that the positive change, no matter how small, that would result due to new practice under new legislation, would convince the populace to continue moving forward.
Maybe I wasn't quite that naive.
But, when taking myself and my own desires out of consideration (and even with these desires the primary consideration) I still felt that some sort of basic, highly circumscribed universal morality existed. The following are its principles:
1. Children should not be seperated from their limbs on purpose*.
2. Profit should not be made on human suffering.
While I am no libertarian, not even close, and understand just how much is allowed outside of this small moral sphere I have depicted, the above appears axiomatic to me, way outside opinion and ideology. And yet is is unachievable. Of course, perfection is as such by its nature.
At some point, my country got hooked on the metaphorical drugs of its own mythology, of its own spin, to the extent that, like in Borges' map, there is now no actual reality to refer to in contrast to the "fake" one under discussion. Of course, all of this is old news, but that fact that the current administration is, on a fundamental level, just as hooked and addicted as the previous administration, like most Americans really, to what amounts to an irrational conversation considered rational by all participants based on assumptions that are phantoms of the speaker's mind, is fairly dissapointing.
Think of some parody of a stoned conversation in college. The participants are discussing what it would be like to see, say, Tangerine Dream play a gig on Jupiter. Of course, currently, this is impossible (yet somehow it seems more possible than the spectre of socialized medicine haunting the malls of America [even given the advanced age of TD members!]). But, under the influence, it is not difficult for me to imagine the debate becoming impassioned, and the mere impossibility of the act getting lost amid the debates over, say, what type of suits would be necessary, or which synthesizers would hold up best against the hostile atmosphere (my vote is on the OBx or JP-8). Perhaps, given enough marijuana, people would actually feel slighted by the way in which their arguments were contravened by others, would maybe wonder if "John's last comment was meant to be taken personally" or if "Sarah was waiting for the opportunity to say something mean".
This is actually American poltics at this point, the passionate defensiveness (and sometimes agressiveness) of people who have had their feelings hurt (or who want to hurt feelings) debating the impossible variables of impossible occurances.
I, myself, am not addicted to this drug. And now that I look back, to that era when I actively cared, I realize that I was a condependant and an enabler.
I can't do anything for you America. I don't want you to die but it is up to you as to whether it happens or not. I am ready to move on. I forsee a quiet life for myself, a small, dilapidated studio in the old section of a medium-sized city in Eastern Europe (perhaps near the water), a french press, an overfull ashtray, and a small transistor radio playing the BBC World News. I will hear about you often, but the BBC announcer will be dispassionate, and I will be soothed. +
*I don't tend to think children are automatically innocents but while they still have the responsibility to act well in the narrower context that is their life, how they could they possibly be responsible for the larger one that is the province of adults?
+So some of you are going to read this, especially the article linked-to above, and say "yeah man, people know exactly what is going on... the governments... the corporations...". Well, I have heard those arguments, I make them myself sometimes, but I have come to redefine the way in which I tend to think of knowledge. It is something that is acted on. Or it is not possesed.
(Lastly props to BLCKGRD for the commentary and the providing of good links daily. I am from DC Metro too, and I used to be a registered "lessshity" there)
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