Human rights in the mist
On the NDAA:
I watch the world’s movements. It turns with the same steady footstep as always, but the humans aboard become frightened, startle at shadows and, collectively doing the best they are able (which is not always particularly good), make decisions tainted by their imagined or promoted fears.
You and I decide to speak, decide to support or protest, as individuals. We take the stage against the backdrop of historical forces. Those forces are greater than any law or political position: with or without a provision in some statute in some book in some library of some Congress, citizens will be hauled away if the power elite feel sufficiently threatened. When times are really bad, it doesn’t take much.
Bankrupt politics, fueling cynical wars and financial skullduggery, dictated where we were heading (even during the factory-created boom times); OWS and the crackdown on citizen’s truth-telling voices shows where we have arrived.
Obama is the hate-able flavor of the month: some for his liberal politics, some for his lack of liberal politics, some for his skill at words, some for the inability of his words to touch a hapless, mulish congress. Some for his skin color. Some because the inexorable power of special interests is greater than any of us, including Congress, the Justice Department, or the President.
It doesn’t matter. Our two political factions are fussing at each other while they stand over an abyss. Their words try to mask the fact that our system is fractured, fracturing, and quite possibly on the brink of some pretty wild change. Neither party is going to right the ship. And it is hard to imagine that virtually all scientists are wrong about environmental or population trends… which means that the petty squabble we see now is going to be drowned out, sooner than later, by tsunami-wind of cataclysmic change.
Here’s what to do: Begin acting sensibly now. Begin CONSUMING LESS, and yes I am talking to you my neighbors. If you take yourself toward something you can sustain even in very bad times (act like a farmer, who never knows when the frost will take the crop), then you will be more flexible, more grounded, and more able to make sound decisions, when sound decisions are most needed.
You can speak with wisdom and awareness, when you see our culture sliding toward the flood plain. You can act with compassion and strength, and at least affect your small community, while together you might nudge the Historical Force in a better direction.
Click here for more art by Peter Farsang. DeviantArt.com