Tuesday, July 26, 2005

AN ANARCHIST WHO BELIEVES IN INCREMENTAL CHANGE:

That's my answer to those I can trust when I'm asked what I am politically. It is of course more complex than that but this is my quick 'flippant' answer.
But since you can't get there from here, for the time being I'm a Social Democrat. And since there is no currently effective political party in this country that represents this tendency I end up voting Democratic for the most part. When the Dem candidate in a particular race doesn't need my vote I have voted Socialist or Green. I voted for Kucinich in the '04 primary and Kerry in the general election.
I never get to vote for who I really want in major elections. There either isn't anyone, or it's a wasted vote or it's a vote for the 'other' side.
That's way backward. The US needs proportional representation in the legislative body and 'instant' runoffs for the executive. Most of the 'Western democracies' have some version of this.
Gore Vidal's quip, "There's only one political party in this country: The Money Party. It has a reactionary wing called Republican and a conservative wing called Democratic" resonates with me.
The people who really run this country are the four or five hundred 'households' that have annual incomes of two hundred million dollars or more.
As long as these people exist the US is a failed experiment. As big a failure as the state socialism of the USSR.
Che Guevara's writings on the 'new' man, socialist man, resonate with me. I think progress socially really does require a different way of thinking. A new consciousness. The good news is this way of thinking has existed since the beginning of humankind on earth. It's found among the primal peoples of the world.
'Western civilizations 'gift' to the world has been it's fall from an original eden of individual liberty and collective plenty.
Our genetic inheritance equips us to live in such a world. Our social existence thwarts us at every turn.
Somethings gotta give,I know that for sure.
Like everyone who gives it any thought I've learned to live with contradictions and 'making do' with things as they are now.
Before anything can be done it has to be imagined first. One of the great casualties of the way we live now is imagination. The constant litany of conformist consumerism has done a pretty good job of killing it off in many people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democrat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Kucinich
http://www.primitivism.com/
http://www.primitivism.com/nature-madness.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1965/03/man-socialism.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism
*

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home