Today's Email To A Despondent Friend Pondering Politics While Sitting In His Cubicle At A Job He Hates

The text of a private email this morning, editied a bit for continuity, anonymity, and because sometimes I change my mind and hence my rhetoric:

Chin up there, Pal.

All around the country the cries are coming from people who went to vote but could not. I am girding my emotions for a major theft. It sucks to be right and I hope to god I'm wrong. But then, I realized long ago that I have to make my own bliss in this world and not rely on justice to come just because it ought to and I care deeply about it.

A dream deferred explodes, the poem seems to indicate. Life in this country is hard enough with the ruthless corporatocracy robbing us all blind while we line up to buy their trinkets and cut their taxes; add the million and one petty indignities of the last 26 years of political rightward trending and it comes to the point where someone somewhere is going to spontaneously snap out of it and realize it ain't beef in the beef stew, if you get my drift.

When large cultural movements actually begin it becomes very hard to stop them. The only way becomes Tianmen-square-style repression and I do believe this country lacks the hegemony to achieve the fact of gunning down its citizens on worldwide television.

For now.

Much to the Reicht Wing's consternation.

As psychohistory tells us, and we are witnessing now, group psychosis ends with blood, and then psychic release. So even if the bloodletting were to increase, it would ultimately result in a mass improvement of consciousness and reality-perception. Ultimately, the trance ends and the warmongers are revealed in their paranoid bloodlust.

And in lieu of the draft, the military ones dying in the blood sacrifice signed up for it; they wanted to kill, and they got what they wanted. This may sound harsh, but they all pledged allegiance to kill on the command of a politician, or be killed by someone else who would really rather not die that day. One ought to know better. Lay down with dogs, wake up with fleas. Live by the M-16, die by the IED. This is a musing; I'm well aware that the reasons for joining the military are varied, and include the hope of escape from economic apartheid at home. Nevertheless, those guns don't shoot vitamins and nobody ever thought they did.

If you think this is treasonous or mean-spirited, look at the budget cuts to the Veterans’ Administration the Republicans are passing. I’m all talk; their actions are truly anti-veteran. I hope the veterans get treated well but they never do, do they?

When they start drafting kids again the Right will shrivel up and die. And I mean dead. Boom - Down.

So anyway, there is definitely a cultural swing away from the Right happening; they may be able to keep the corpse alive Terry Schaivo-style for a few more cycles by artificial means, but their policies and behavior generate continual bad consequences, bad suffering, and bad press, bereft as they are of any genuine ability to govern effectively, and will continue to do so until they have no one left but the Right-wing base of pedophiles, crack-smoking evangelical gay whoremongers, and their dupes (of course).

So I am at peace politically; I let my rage out a little bit here and there and love my friends and family that much more strongly. Besides, I take care of a dozen needy mentally ill people at a time all day, week, month, and year and they are not abstractions; I feel my own usefulness as much as I feel my own powerlessness. So I guess what I'm saying is I'm trying to think positively.

I am not offering advice since you seem not to want any. Also, what's a ni**a to say? If I were in your position I would pretend layoffs were around the corner and try hard to find a new job, blocking all defeatist ideas from my consciousness as a ferocious act of will. It's clear that place is not healthy for you. It's what I had to do when unemployment ran dry and congress did not authorize their customary 3-month extension. It scared me pantless and led me, out of desperation to feed my kids and keep my house, to working with adults for the first time ever, and that eventually led me here. Where I go from here is anybody's guess, but it will be up if I have any say in the matter.

Don't be afraid of change, is my only wisdom here. Or as William Shatner says, "live life like you're gonna die. Because you are."

Write back, and hello to whomever is surveiling me. Love to you and your family. I hear northern Virginia is lovely this time of year.