Compassion For Cretins

If you are looking for a concrete example of what I have been calling the crisis of American democracy you need look no further than the Montana house of representatives. In most small towns in Montana, if you are known as the guy who stands up at all and any public meetings and goes off on a twenty minute rant about the United Nations and the Federal Reserve you WILL eventually be elected to office. If you are the guy who sends in letters-to-the -editor of the Winifred Gazette weekly about prayer in schools and the Gay agenda you will soon be writing and voting on laws, giving lectures on theHouse Floor about the Constitution, and truly representing the people of your district because they are virtually all as white and proudly ignorant as you. And Republican.

Balancing this provincial tendency are the representatives,almost all Democrats, from the urban areas, Billings ,Butte, Helena and especially Missoula. All House votes thus far have been strict party line, with the "patriot" from the Constitution Party voting with Repubs and giving them a 51-49 edge every time. The only original bill thus far has been the one outlawing the United Nations flag and disavowing Montanas allegiance to One World Government, the rest is the usual banal hodgepodge of pro-Ten Commandments Intelligent Design anti-sodomy and grizzly bear stuff. Any fourth grader can recite the issues and positions, they are so mind-numbingly scripted and cliched, in fact, the debates and their outcomes are so predictable it is a total waste of time and money to carry on the charade.

So if I think "the people" are so ignorant, how can I have any hope for change? Because I believe ignorance is a form of oppression, one to be struggled against and eventually emancipated from. It is not a passive condition but an elaborate construct and strategy employed by the forces of exploitation and as such combated not through antagonism but through patient organizing and compassion.Thats not to say they won't piss you off sometimes, well, OK, all the time (see title to this post). The same confusion over cause and effect exists in relation to the overall alienation of the "masses", the veritable enervation of praxis that is so prevelant not just among the youth but certainy concentrated there. People in general cannot understand what has happened since WWII, (the Good War), they don't understand monopoly capitalism or the new technologies or global struggles for wealth and power, the art or the music, and what they don't understand , they fear.Of course the young people seem committed to violence, cynicism, vacuous spectacle! It terrifies their parents! The parents who aren't themselves medicated un-conscious to fight the lonliness, the aloneness. Whether it's the latest video game or faith in God and Guns, people need some meaning that school, work and sports isn't providing but a radical social movement can. Check out Che Bobs recent posts on some of this cultural angst and weltschmartz. (world-hurt)