Participatory Democracy Meets Manifest Destiny

[Sinti]

I'd like to add my (possibly quite different) point of view to a couple of topics floating around here lately. I hope you find my POV uplifting, or at least an entertaining shift in your perception for a moment. Participatory democracy is alive, manifest destiny is dying, and the scary nuts may need your protection this Halloween ;)

I Participatory Democracy

It's a beautiful thing. It's not what our words say in many threads around here, but it's what we're talking about. President Obama hasn't done this, he hasn't done that - he's got the power now, why doesn't he just... He is not a king. He's acting like a president is supposed to. On health care he let his preferences be known, and asked the Congress to give him a bill to sign that serves the American people best. He did not have something drawn up by his professional advisors to be rubber stamped (or changed only slightly) by Congress then passed.

This is how it's supposed to work. The bare minimum you do in a democracy is vote. It's been so long since many of us have participated in our democracy fully it seems like a foreign concept. Presidents have gathered more and more power to themselves and the office since WWII, maybe even before that. This is the first one I've seen actually give up some of his power. He's far from where I think he should be, in terms of presidential power over the ship of state, but at least he's stepped back - it's promising. We are supposed to steer the ship. We shouted at Bush who wasn't listening, we should at least converse with President Obama, he may be listening.

We need to make our preferences known in a strong and civil manner, without equivocation. If you won't demand it, you don't really want it. If you don't get it the first time, don't be disheartened. Keep demanding. They work FOR you - D and R alike. If you are not the clearest and loudest voice (together) you won't be heard over the chaos being created by monied interests.

We have a long way to go. I, too, am painfully aware of how wrong things are. We need to be clear what kind of nation we want to live in, what our common interests really are, what our priorities are, and to communicate that in a respectful and clear manner. Write your congresspersons, senators, letters to the editors, the president himself. You can begin do that here and here if you like. Winning an election is winning the opportunity to guide the country in the direction of your choosing. We are a country born of two opposing ideas - our idea is in the lead for now.

We have to really prioritize - so very much is broken in the world, that we need to do some triage. We can do everything, but we can't do everything at once. Time and attention are limited resources, let alone the other limitations we face. Stay positive, focus on what you DO want, rather than what you don't. It's easier to communicate what you want and get it than it is to simply state what you don't want and hope you get something acceptable. If you don't want war, what do you want instead?

You can't only look to those who agree completely with you to create consensus. We are smart people with a lot of different ideas. If you don't get to the common themes to find solid ground it's hard to build anything lasting or worthwhile. If you have a complaint, offer an alternative, it will make people listen more openly. Voicing problems without offering solutions only adds to the chaos. The chaos serves entrenched interests, that's why they create it. They divide us, to keep us in check.

II Manifest Destiny

This may be the sound of Manifest Destiny dying. It sounds like liberation. Our nation was born with two parents, as I referenced earlier. One believed that all men are created equal, the other believed in something called manifest destiny - that a certain group was/is preordained by god to be more equal than the rest of the world.

Listening to the aspirations and ideas of other nations and world leaders is an outcropping of the "equality" parent. "With us or against us" is an outcropping of the destiny one.

Personally, being a child that favors the equality parent (and holistically rejects the destiny one), I am quite happy with our new tone regarding the international community. I believe that ALL people are equal and deserve to live in a world where their unique value is recognized. I think it improves the quality of life for all human beings.

This is what I personally see the Nobel Peace Prize award as recognizing in President Obama. Equality of this kind brings peace - everyone has value to us as a Living being, and war is murder and theft. It steals the most precious thing we have from all of us - it steals life itself. KO stated it well, IMO, in regard to health insurance companies. It's a different symptom of the same world view - that some are more equal than others.

This is for me, OTOH, the primary reason why we need to create peace in the world - not just stop war for a minute until the next bad guy comes along. Even people who live under bad and potentially dangerous regimes are still people, and equal to ourselves. They deserve to live without others deciding to bomb them and shoot at them until their leaders behave.

GWB, et al, attacked Iraq and committed the crime (my opinion) of shock and awe on Baghdad - those bombs were killing unarmed civilians without question - I saw a little of the video on CNN. Those people didn't deserve it. If someone in turn had attacked us, because they felt GWB was dangerous (and had proven he was at least to some), we would not have deserved it.

So, I believe that we should behave as peacemakers/peacekeepers, rather than escalating the current situation in Afghanistan. If we use soldiers, use them like police against the Taliban. Use the Army Corps of Engineers to help them rebuild - fix what we've broken. Train them, help them, give them consultants not on how to make better war, but on how to build a sustainable economy, on providing peace offers to their people, bring them into the family of nations. Expect the best of their leaders, and pressure them also to behave as civilized persons do - in the interest of those they govern.

Strengthen the right to self-determination in the people, and they will keep oppressors and aggressors away with their own power. Oppressive regimes step into the power vacuum left when people when they are deprived of that right.

The president is considering his options. I trust he wants the best for all concerned. I'm not going to make the assumption that he wishes people to suffer needlessly. However, I think we have to remind him that War = Murder. Soldiers don't assemble in battlefields far from town anymore. War kills more babies, mothers, and old people than it does the men who have tacitly agreed to kill and die by becoming professional soldiers. That said, our soldiers, in the vast majority, are men and women who simply want to protect us, to make the world safe - or to get some college money, which is okay, too. Give them an opportunity to do just that, to serve our interests by helping fix what we (and the Russians before us) broke.

If you "win" a war, what do you win anyway? The dubious honor of having killed more people than the other guy? I want us to win the peace. We are smart primates, we humans. I'm sure we can find a positive solution to this. You get peace by making peace.

We also have an opportunity here to make the fearful realize that lifting up their fellow man makes them more secure. Beating your fellow man down makes enemies out of friends. It can't happen overnight, but it can happen. I don't trust the advice of people who tell me to be afraid of this one or that one. I always feel as if they're trying to disempower me, if only to join them in their own fears.

We have the opportunity to push President Obama, and those who serve with him, to live up to all the expectations one might have of a Nobel Peace Prize winner. I believe he will if we will. I say push, because if he doesn't understand precisely what you expect, and what's most important, he cannot deliver.

III A Strange View for the Haunting Season

I know we like to pick on, laugh at and occasionally freak out on the hyper-conservative and/or super-religious world view, mostly in good fun. However, now and then I think it helps to stand in their shoes for a minute.

From what I can see they are almost to a man horribly frightened and disempowered human beings. It hurts me, to be honest. Only a terrified man needs to carry a gun to the grocery store, for example. Gun-toters may see themselves differently, but that's what I see. I want them to feel safe.

Most of these ultra-right folks require a strong authority to keep them safe and tell them where they're going. Participatory democracy is a challenge. You have to choose a direction and be brave enough to demand it. It's risky, your choices can fail.

They are the children who favored the manifest destiny parent. Manifest destiny claims that it cannot fail. All of their assumptions about how the world worked are being crushed under the heavy and radical idea of equality. They liked Newton's clockwork world, it made sense - even if it did steal their free will a little.

Mention equality in real, absolute and unflinching terms - they will shriek "Communism!!" and run off to daddy for protection. They been told all their lives that the two (oppressive communism and equality) are inextricably intertwined. They can't really understand a non-authoritarian approach to governance - they don't feel powerful enough to risk that.

Someone used their fearful natures against them and convinced them that they are only "free" if we are not all truly equal. We say equality of opportunity, but we mean a stratified society with pseudo-royal families who help to decide your destiny for you. Father knows best. This quasi-plutocratic state of affairs is not gone, but the underlying notion that allows it to exist looks to be under siege.

They are desperately clinging to the dying notion that they are somehow special. Their hearts are terrified that if they are not special, then this equality won't include them. They will be the new sub-human group. People can only relate to others by what they would do themselves. A thief expects you to steal, a liar expects you to tell falsehoods. The same is true for them, I'm sure.

If they're aggressive, returning that aggression with aggression will only exacerbate the problem. I feel like they need to know that we want a better life for them, too. We want them to be truly secure, safe in their society without the need of armaments. Safe in knowing that they can make a valuable contribution to the world, and be rewarded justly for doing so. They need to realize that we value LIFE - and want to protect it, even theirs. If we don't care for theirs, we don't care for ours - we're a nation, not a bunch of tiny (1500 sq ft or so) fiefdoms.

They are also terrified of their artificial identity dying (IMO). It's as if they think they will expire in a very physical sense if they let go of this superior by-the-boot-heel righteousness they've latched onto. This identity thing is inextricably intertwined with manifest destiny.

The louder and weirder they get, the closer to death this identity is, IMO of course. I realize it's incredibly difficult to be kind and peaceful with people who say they would like to shed your blood, but someone has to show them that everything is really going to be okay - they personally are not being threatened.

How you do that I'm not entirely clear on yet. But, I'm a believer in redemption, even for those who have encouraged this tendency towards violence. I'd strongly prefer they step away from the crazy train and join us as human beings with common aspirations than to beat them down and make more chaos.

The world is full of opportunity and promise today. Yes, the economy is bad, but that gives us the chance to fix the underlying issues in the machinery which caused the problem. Yes, we're at war, but we could really do a service to our fellow humans if we took a different posture - and potentially prove the obvious - that you make peace by making peace. And the cons may be screaming obscenities and ridiculous epithets, but that's just the sound of them losing even more power.

This is just my perspective today. If you made it this far I salute you and would love to hear your perspective.