Let’s Clean the Window

My third wish for a society that examines history fairly and in context.

History. Personally, I’ve always liked it. In fourth grade Pat Walmsly and I used to compete to see who could write the longest, most complete answers to the questions at the end of the chapters. In fifth grade he and I were supposed to debate about Watergate as that history was playing out in real time, but since we were in fifth grade, we couldn’t quite get a handle on exactly what was happening. Every year we were taught the same lesson about Christopher Columbus “discovering” the “new world,” and, though we became weary of covering the same periods in U.S. history, we never questioned it. For years we would memorize historical data up to the U.S. Civil War and then the school year would end. Finally my sophomore year in high school, Mr. Stoner got to start somewhere around reconstruction and continue on through U.S. history. He loved to talk about the dirt and was a very engaging history teacher. He allowed himself to be excited about it. I was fifteen years old and had little perspective to help me understand the importance historical events had and their relevance to my contemporary time line. Mr. Stoner’s perspective was more objective than the others I’d been taught up to that time, and it helped me catch a glimpse of how the stories we read about past events might look different to different people. His was the last formal history class I ever took. But I still liked history.

As I grew older and my world expanded beyond what I learned about my own country from textbooks, the glass in the window through which I viewed history started to change. School had given me a clear glass window with no imperfections other than a few bubbles due to some of Mr. Stoner’s stories of scandals (e.g., Teapot Dome). Observing history being made, however, for example living through Regan’s Iran-Contra years and Bork’s U.S. Supreme Court hearings as they occurred, added ripples of distortions to the glass. I could see that history didn’t transpire in clear-cut, indisputable events. People watched the same historical events and reported them in completely different ways. If people who watched history being made in real time couldn’t agree, what hope is there of uncovering the truth that lies beneath the grimy built-up crust on my window to times gone by?

I don’t think we can ever be sure of the absolute truth about events. History is messy. We have to accept that and keep it in mind whenever we look at history. (Do I need to talk about why we even look at history? It’s how we inform ourselves so that we build a better future.) Accepting it doesn’t mean that we gloss over it—quite the opposite. It means that every time we look at a historical event, whether it happened last century or yesterday, we have to examine it from many angles to see all its facets.

Take that history lesson we all had to learn five years in a row about Christopher Columbus discovering the new world. I accepted that when I was nine. Later I had to accept that from the Native American point of view, Columbus didn’t discover any new world. Europeans were invaders. I may love my country, but I have had to admit that our founders’ fight for liberty came at a very high price of repression and slaughter of the Native American people. And those founders who we like to think of as being great crusaders for liberty condoned slavery and many owned slaves. They were great thinkers and successfully formed a strong nation—a very rare deed. But they were not saints, though some texts I had as a child liked to paint them as such.

Here’s why this matters to me so much right now. As I’ve mentioned, something that happened yesterday is history today. It seems to me that even though we live in a technological age that makes it ridiculously easy to verify information, our window onto recent events is more dirty than ever before. You should know about me: I’m somewhat of a skeptic. I don’t rely on a small number of sources to inform me about issues I care about. I get some of my news from more mainstream media, but less often, because it does not frequently report on or delve deeply into issues that I think are most important. I don’t usually repost Facebook memes unless I take the time to verify what they say. I call myself a progressive, but if you look at the podcasts I have on my phone, along with podcasts such as The Best of the Left and Moyers and Company are Armed America Radio and Alex Jones’s show. Originally I added them to my podcast lineup because I wanted to understand their points of view. But often their content is not fact based and they are interested in generating a culture of irrational fear. They use their airtime to create a demand for the products sold by their advertising sponsors. Armed America Radio’s advertisers are gun manufacturers (excuse me, “firearm manufacturers” because that word is better because…why? I don’t know but that’s the nomenclature used in the broadcast.), firearm accessory manufacturers and distributors, firearm classes, etc. The advertisers are also given airtime to “discuss second amendment issues.” Alex Jones has sponsors who benefit from the fear he works overtime to instill, like the EFoods Direct company that sells food for the survivalists in our country who are stockpiling food and arms and silver and gold for the disaster that is coming: drought, flood, famine, nuclear disaster, Obama’s youth army or the UN forces, whichever comes first. I still tune in every once in a while to hear what they are saying, but not with hope of gleaning any truth.

I do investigate stories that are important so that I can be sure that I’m not just hearing what I want to hear, but I often have to dismiss them because they are (choose as many as apply):

• Factually incorrect: They state something as a fact that is either untrue or is actually an opinion that can’t be substantiated.
• Contextually flawed: They “cherry pick” a quote so that the intent of the speaker or writer is perverted.
• Drawn from unreliable sources: To support their position, they refer to research or sources that are not qualified to be an authority on the subject or who are not objective because they stand to gain monetarily from their position. I can often be heard crying, “Follow the money!”

I’m not going to do the rhetorically obvious here and follow up with examples of each of these offenses. You have found or can find them for yourselves. Some good topics to start with include global warming, vaccinations, abortion and conception, Regan’s legacy, and “you didn’t build that.”

When I was visiting England this past fall, I read (most of) Allison Weir’s The Princes in the Tower, which tackles the subject of the fate of Richard III’s shady ascension to the throne amid the mysterious disappearance of the child heir apparent, Edward V. I really appreciated that she devoted the entire first chapter to explaining the sources upon which she would base her book. She explained who each person was, the person’s relationship to the action, the geographical locations of each person, what their possible interests were in the doings of the court and so on. It is a great example of laying out the reliability of sources and it added invaluable context to her historical account of events that took place in the late fifteenth century, which she states plainly, is a “poorly documented period of English history.”

We don’t live in the fifteenth century. We can verify our sources and our facts. It’s never been easier to verify recent events. And yet, it seems obvious that very few people do that. It seems that more false information than ever abounds out there in the “Internets.” It catches all information in its nets regardless of the veracity. You can “verify” any point of view you choose, so you need to be willing to dig just a little and think critically about your sources. And you may need to dig beyond Wikipedia, a digitally myopic source that only can accept digitally accessible citations.

But please, ask yourself some questions when you read or listen to the news or watch documentaries: Is this inaccurate or slanted for some reason? Did he really say that? Where does that raw data come from? Who is funding that research? Who stands to gain from this?

I contend that we don’t live in much of a democracy—at least not any more. It’s a combination of an oligarchy and plutocracy. Jefferson said, “Whenever the people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government.” If we no longer have our government entrusted to us, do we have ourselves to blame? Well, I feel cheated. I work at staying informed and yet my democracy is hobbled to the point of uselessness. We don’t all need to spend hours sorting the truth from the lies, but I can only conclude that a large part of our population spends plenty of time listening to information from limited sources that are not reliable. We can disagree on the reasons that our people are not well-informed and what can be done to rectify that situation. But I think we are viewing recent history through a window so flawed that it’s nearly opaque. While it may be more colorful, it does not serve us in seeing our path.

Let’s Get Behind the Wheel

Let’s not back up the truck.

My second wish is for a society that accepts that the future will be different than today and where people work together to make that future more comfortable for all beings. Most people seem to fear change, and yet we live in a world where nothing can remain the same. Banks will fail. Technology will improve. Scandals will occur. Needs will change. People will die and people will be born. These things do happen! Stasis in human life is impossible.

Even if human curiosity and drive to explore new ideas were somehow ripped out of civilization’s engine, its wheels would continue to roll down the hill. Let’s not back the truck up. I think we need to accept that forward motion is a given and grab that steering wheel and drive somewhere that will please the masses that are huddled in the truck bed! The masses are all that really matter, because that’s almost everybody. Our common interest wins! That’s part of the beauty of a democratic form of government. (Hint: if you have a job that you have to go to regularly or if you need a job or if you depend on government aid like Social Security, you are the masses. You are not a part of the 2 percent, so stop worrying about your taxes. Nobody wants more of your money. Oh—except through the payroll tax reinstatement that just happened. But that is your money, and it theoretically goes to fund Social Security, which you will then be entitled to receive when you reach a retirement age that is constantly being raised. So it may be best to keep that tax in place to prevent trouble later on down the road when you want to collect what you are entitled to.)

So, given that time rolls on, the country needs to discuss where we are going. The discussion can center on which direction to drive and how fast we should drive. In other words, how will we use policy to shape society, and how large should policy changes be, and how fast do we want to implement policy? We can disagree about which direction will actually help the masses. But why do we still get mired in discussions about whether we should try to help at all? Or worse yet, why is there silence on the issues that matter?

I cringe when I hear people berate those who are struggling to survive as lazy or stupid or somehow undeserving of society’s help, and they deny that society or our government (which, after all, was designed to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”) can or should do anything to help them. These heartless and pessimistic views used to come from the right—the so-called conservatives—but now they come from leaders in both major parties. And I have two quarrels with this so-called conservatism. (I know, right? You are wondering where the love is at this point. It’s under the heap o’ frustration I feel. But it’s okay, because I have object permanence, and I know it’s still there.)

First, cries for a return to “traditional values” appear to be at odds with the conservative leaders’ refusal to extend a helping hand to the unfortunate people who have few opportunities to improve their lots in life. (And also at odds with a huge war mongering defense industry, the death penalty and other conservative sticking points but we will hide those under the seat of the truck today.) Talking about traditional moral values while looking the other way as your brothers and children sink into a morass of poverty contradicts the traditional values of faith, charity, honesty, and love. God helps those who help themselves, right? This adage is not, by all accounts I can find, actually from the bible. So what is behind this refusal to provide social programs? Why are people going along with the trend to cut social safety net programs? This is where the fear kicks in. I think people are, in part, buying into this notion of “tough love” because they feel their own grasp on the lifeline is so tenuous. People get very upset about the idea of paying more taxes or having their tax money go toward social programs that are intended to aid people who are at risk in our society. They don’t look at the intended benefits of those programs and think, “It’s good that these programs exist. I may someday benefit from this if an unpreventable misfortune overtakes me through no fault of my own. I can pay it forward today and may benefit later.” (It’s okay if you hear that spoken in your head by some sort of robotic Pollyanna. That’s how I hear it too.) Instead they seem to think angrily, “Why should these good-for-nothing so-and-sos get something for nothing when I don’t get something for nothing? That’s not fair!” I’ve noticed that some people who protest these programs and vote against them are benefiting from them or have benefited from them in the past. I have met some in person and some online. (This is not one of the people I have interacted with personally, but it’s my favorite example of what I am talking about: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-september-19-2012/chaos-on-bulls–t-mountain—the-entitlement-society.) Also, rudimentary math indicates that if about 47 percent of our voters are voting a conservative ticket, then 45 percent of them are voting against their own self interests.

Because so many people are one or two paychecks away from disaster, they let fear-thinking take over. Many people now hate the idea of workers having unions too. They don’t think, “Unions have historically done much for the welfare of the common worker. I’m glad they exist. I will get a union to help me because everyone deserves to be able to organize for better working conditions!” Instead they think, well, honestly, I can’t figure out why people are so afraid of unions. They have bought into some made-up propaganda dispensed by the far-right plutocracy. My point is that people these days don’t react in a spirit of (get on your robot Pollyanna voice) “all great things are possible and our society can be a much happier place if we work together and try to make it happier! What can be lost from trying? We will keep trying until we find a way that helps! This is a facet of the persevering American spirit!” They react with “No! Leave me alone! I don’t care about what other people lack! I only care about what I have and you can’t have it! No, no, no, no no!” (The last time I heard “no!” so much was when my kids were toddlers.)

The second development that is preventing us from working together to build a healthy society is that this push toward a more “traditional” society is not actually a conservative movement. It is nothing of the sort. This is a radical movement that has commandeered the label of “conservative.” It has hijacked the word so thoroughly that Merriam-Webster has changed its definition. I am not making that up. From my hardback Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 11^th edition published in 2003:

Conservatism. 1 a : the principles and policies of a Conservative party b : the Conservative party 2 a : disposition in politics to preserve what is established b : a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change  3 : the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change

I get it. Let’s not get carried away by some utopian vision of society and start making a bunch of huge changes. Jolly good. Let’s chip away at the job of governing in a slow, methodical way, and not make any huge blunders, shall we, what, what? (That, you have to hear in the voice of a mustachioed British octogenarian.) That’s fine. My dad was a conservative.

But then I looked at the online Merriam-Webster dictionary and got this definition. (Please recall that the hardback version I referred to was also a Merriam-Webster dictionary.)

From Merriam-Webster.com (courtesy of Merriam-Webster Incorporated, an Encyclopaedia Britannica company) in 2013 [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conservatism?show=0&t=1357428925]:

Conservatism. 1 capitalized a : the principles and policies of a Conservative party b : the Conservative party 2 a : disposition in politics to preserve what is established b : a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change; specifically : such a philosophy calling for lower taxes, limited government regulation of business and investing, a strong national defense, and individual financial responsibility for personal needs (as retirement income or health-care coverage) 3 : the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change (Italics mine)

SAY WHAT?! So in the last ten years, Merriam-Webster has changed the definition to include the radical Republican/Tea Party platform? Merriam-Webster. How do you define collusion? (For the record, the definition of “collusion” is exactly the same in both versions of the dictionary.)

That today’s conservatism has gone off the radical deep end is no longer just my uncredentialed opinion. More and more dyed-in-the-wool conservatives are jumping off the truck every day. I quote from Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein’s Washington Post op-ed:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges. [http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-04-27/opinions/35453898_1_republican-party-party-moves-democratic-party]

None of what they had to say sounds like a description of a platform of conservatism. I’ll repeat what I said: The discussion can center on which direction to drive and how fast we should drive. The disagreements can even be about which direction is going to actually help the masses. The problem is that now there is no discussion at all. Not really. Talking about finding ways to provide our citizens some dignity and security is now attacked as being socialist or class welfare. It’s labeled as fiscal irresponsibility. To me, fiscal irresponsibility is borrowing trillions of dollars to fight wars and rain down indescribable horrors on other people of the world on false pretexts. (That’s also morally reprehensible.) Socialism and class warfare is what I call handouts and subsidies to wealthy individuals and corporate cronies while simultaneously hauling up the ladders that help regular folks climb out of destitution. And in a civilization that is supposed to be a democracy, those actions are radical, not conservative. The fact that most of our population does not realize what has been stolen from them is a shame and it’s due to a systematic disinformation and propaganda campaign. But if the GOP has real conversations about issues, the people might find out. The radicals can’t allow this to happen.

I wish we lived in a country where economic justice was a priority. In a world where people could feel more secure, everyone would get a chance. If the fear that you might die on the streets and the medical treatment that you need might not be available to you were both erased from your life, would you be spending your time worrying so much about what your contribution to that world would cost? What would the cost matter if you knew you would never be abandoned? What price would you pay to know that you could pursue your dreams without having to worry that if you fail you could die of starvation or untreated disease? Anyway, in my opinion the question is less about what we, the masses would pay, and more about why we, the masses, are forced to worry so much about these things in the first place while 2 percent of our citizens are controlling the “discussion.” It’s not a discussion about the real issues. It’s subterfuge designed to distract the people. It’s a “let them eat cake” dismissal. It’s a discussion that’s been labeled “class warfare.” Well, okay. That’s not a very loving, peaceful term, but I for one am ready to accept the discussion on those terms. Let’s talk about class warfare. Let’s talk about why welfare is a dirty word, even though our beloved U.S. Constitution assigns to our government the task of promoting the general welfare. I ask you, is there “domestic Tranquility” in our country today? I don’t think there is, and government is not doing its job. That’s in part because we elect people to run our government who admit that they hate government. Would you eat at a restaurant that hired a chef who hated food and only ate as a chore to stay alive? Well, I’d like to live in a country with leaders who believe in the beneficent power of a true democratic government.

The fact is that the 2 percent are in control of the U.S. government, and they made their money through our labor and they used our natural resources and our infrastructure to do it, and their government has rewarded them with giant tax cuts and subsidies. Social programs are not about giving lazy, undeserving people a handout. The handouts have already happened and the 2 percent got them.

This is about recovering what is owed to us for the last 30 years of hard work that we did. There is a deficit in this county, but it’s not the one that all the fuss is being made about. It’s the debt owed by the oligarchs and the plutocrats. These “leaders” and “job creators” act like spoiled teenagers who wrecked the truck (i.e., the economy) and want us to pay for a new one. If this imbalance of wealth were really good for our society, then why is our economy and infrastructure in such terrible shape? Where are those jobs that pay living wages? They have been disappearing since I graduated from college in 1986. That’s about the time that the huge income disparity began to appear. So for almost 30 years we’ve been waiting for the trickle to magically fall onto us. The drought has only gotten worse.

Oh, yeah. The love. It’s here somewhere. I think maybe I left it under the seat of that truck. My point was that we should be able to at least agree that since things will always be in a state of flux and the future will be different than today, we at least should be able to agree that a better tomorrow is worth working on together. We should be able to agree that we have not been put on this earth to be helpless and useless to our fellow humankind. I used to think that it was not government’s role to help. I really did! I went through a very brief Libertarian phase. I hoped that other charitable organizations would take that role. But we can all see that this has not happened and is not happening. I changed my mind about that idea. Because I know that change can be a good thing, and anyway, it’s unavoidable. Let’s make them changes for the better.

With love,

Margot

Fearless 2013

I’ve been thinking about this “theory” for quite a while now: in a world that we view as being comprised of negative and positive events and actions, most of those we label as “negative” stem from fear. “Fear-thinking” is a huge component of much of the discussion about the second-amendment controversy that has been re-lit by the killing of the Sandy Hook school children and staff. Gun ownership is an obvious example of fear in action. People are frightened of other people, be they oppressors in the government, run-of-the-mill criminals who want to rob your home, or psychopaths. People want guns to defend themselves and to give them an illusion of safety and power in a world that they can’t control.

But I don’t want to talk about gun control here. Gun violence is just a symptom of the larger culture of fear that we live in. I’m thinking of the quagmire of less specific, but more pervasive and insidious, human conditions caused by fear: what terrible wrongs exist in our world, and how do those relate to fear? We can all quickly come up with a list of wrongs: war, poverty, discrimination, oppression, murder, rape, theft. It seems to me that these wrongs are often manifestations of fear, usually fear of losing something we have (or that we think is within our grasp) or fear of not getting what we want. Look at that list of wrongs next to this list of things that people want: power, money, love, acceptance, dignity, comfort, freedom. Fear of not having these things causes people to inflict war, poverty, oppression, and criminal acts upon other people in an effort to get them or keep them. Incredibly, wrong-doing sometimes stems from the fear of losing what we think is our moral high ground. Much violence is inflicted on the world in the name of religion that is masquerading as God’s will but can actually be attributed to the fear of losing something: ascension to heaven, face, authority, power, land, resources.

John Lennon was visualizing a world without religion and countries when he wrote the song “Imagine.” He was imagining a “brotherhood of man,” or a world free from fear. But he also says “it isn’t hard to do.” I think it’s extremely difficult to imagine. We’ve never seen a world like that. It’s a world without war. It’s a world without poverty, discrimination, deprivation or other miseries that man directly inflicts on huge numbers of world citizens in the world we do know. It’s a world where people’s differing religious beliefs can coexist peacefully, where the validity of one religious ideology does not hinge on the debunking or destruction of another.

It’s a world where power is diffused instead of being amassed within the political strongholds. The world without fear is mainly a world where resources are fairly distributed so that the masses don’t suffer while a relatively few people have vastly and obscenely more than they need. It’s a world where profits are irrelevant because people don’t fear not having enough money to have everything (and more) they can dream of that will make them secure and comfortable and happy. Without a profit motive, how do things get produced? It’s a capitalist’s worst fear! I sometimes wish that the newer generation of Star Trek writers would have delved more deeply into the Federation’s inner workings and politics. In that series, while the rest of the universe still has its battles to fight, the Federation has solved the issues of poverty and deprivation. It no longer uses money, so its people don’t need to be rewarded with more money if they have been particularly successful at saving Earth (or the universe) that day. Like our world, in the Federation model people are rewarded with more power for being good at being heroes. But have you seen Federation officers abuse their power much? Power struggles within the Federation’s ranks or upper echelons are rare. The Federation’s people are highly evolved human beings who are not much ruled by fear. Its people don’t even get headaches anymore. Is that a medical improvement or a condition of living free from fear, I’d like to know?

I take a hopeful message away from the series, but many viewers might be more fearful. After all, the Federation rules the entire planet. It seems to be benevolent, but how do we know that everybody hasn’t been brainwashed into compliance with its wishes? Those Federation minions all seem so placid and satisfied! Is the Federation actually trying to take over the entire universe? (On its face the Prime Directive, which Kirk certainly needed, prevents this.)

The truth is that we don’t have a good model of how a society and economy work in the absence of fear. How do you create true democracies that are not castrated by power-hungry oligarchs? (I won’t bore you by going into the ways U.S. citizens have been manipulated by government fear mongering. Hint: the so-called war on terror.) Can we become an enlightened, fearless population that participates in a world economy that is not dedicated to excess and is somehow sustainable? Our present world economic model is not sustainable. We panic if the economic growth rate dips below 3 percent. How can our planet sustain this growth of its population and its economy indefinitely? The planet’s resources are not endless. New solutions will need to be found or the cost of energy, materials, and food will become prohibitively expensive. If or when the materials for an iPhone and staples like oatmeal become so scarce that only a millionaire can afford them, how scared will we all be then? What wars will we fight then?

In the meantime, corporations use what belongs to all of us and demand high profit margins for goods that are necessary for survival. Must our agribusinesses profit from feeding the hungry people of the world? Does the pharmacology business need to make a larger profit from patients in the U.S. than everywhere else in the world? Does the U.S. healthcare industry need the insurance business skimming profits from it? Should energy industry profits be put to use to solve the problems caused by drilling, spilling, and burning the fuel? In other words, do we want to live in a world of desperation and stratified wealth where relatively few people can allay their fears, or do we want to live in a world where all people have some security and a decent standard of living—clean water, clean air, food, health care, and shelter?

Okay. Now I’m just feeling angry, and I’m trying to feel the love. I will postulate that the good in the world stems from love. It sounds corny, but a culture of love must be our future. I don’t want anger and fear to win. Every day we hear stories of people who act fearlessly and from love and they do wonderful things. If we all tried harder to live in that state of grace, what is possible? Is living in grace so hard to do? When you think of the people you know personally, doesn’t it seem possible? Because the people you know are not malicious, are they? Probably not. They are probably just afraid.

I am. I’m afraid to post my ideas and writing. I’m afraid that my fragile finances will fall apart and my family will starve on the street. I’m afraid that my children will face horrible hardships. I’m afraid I will end up alone. I’m afraid that I am powerless and I will die while feeling powerless. These personal fears prevent me from functioning at the enlightened and selfless level I envision is necessary for all human beings, if we are to wrap human kind in a blanket of peace and justice. I feel unable to see beyond my petty fears and the minutia of my own life, trapped in a cramped cell of my own making that hinders my efforts to break out and take action. I am paralyzed, unsure of what fearless actions I can take today that will make a better world tomorrow.

For today, I’ll just post this, with love.

My Holiday Wish List

What I want for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Solstice, Saturnalia (and whatever other winter celebration you wish to observe) is a society that:

1. Acts out of love and intelligence rather than fear.
2. Accepts that the future will be different than today and works together to make that future more comfortable for all beings.
3. Examines history fairly and in context.
4. Is open to possibilities and willing to begin work on building a world that is beyond the present scope of our vision.
5. Celebrates and learns from our diversity of ideas, religions, sexual orientation and ethnicity.
6. Understands that each generation is responsible for making sustainable choices for future generations.
7. Embraces the notion that more is not better, “better” is better.
8. Embraces learning, exploration, and knowledge.
9. Uses technology to shift our unsustainable energy paradigm to one that is sustainable.
10. Values and extols generosity and denounces greed.
11. Assists its poor instead of denying their existence, ignoring, blaming, or bullying them.
12. Cares for its mentally ill instead of letting them hurt themselves and others.
13. Aids its disabled instead of wishing they would “get better” or go away.
14. Values all benevolent contributions to society regardless of the size of their impact.
15. Rewards whistle blowers rather than punishing them.
16. Removes money from politics.
17. Limits or outlaws lobbying.
18. Advocates for its working poor instead of pandering to the corporations and corporate executives who steal workers’ pay.
19. Makes our children’s education a priority rather than a burden.
20. Ensures that access to health care is not a privilege.
21. Takes steps to ensure that our food is safe.
22. Encourages sustainable and equitable farming and food production.
23. Supplies poor neighborhoods and rural areas with better food options.
24. Realizes that a capitalistic profit-making model is not the best answer for all of our nation’s problems.
25. Makes changes to ensure that our free markets are diverse enough to really foster competitive vigor and stops encouraging monopolies and oligarchies.
26. Ensures that our free press is diverse and has integrity.
27. Puts tight restrictions on truth in messages for election campaigns.
28. Converts a large piece of the defense budget to a peace, rebuilding, foreign aid and environmental budget.
29. Dreams together of possibilities.

I’m writing this first post on the afternoon of the Sandy Hook shootings. The temperature, real and perceived has dropped precipitously today. I began my day reading a Mother Jones article about poverty in America. It prodded me into sharing the article on Facebook along with my rant about—well—about poverty in America. I started thinking for the quadrillionth time that maybe I should go ahead and use the WordPress blog I set up four years ago. I felt a little better after the rant. Maybe I should formalize the rant and exercise my right to rant more often and in a place that feels less like the McDonald’s of the Internet. “But what’s the point?” I wondered for the quadrillionth time. Nobody will read it. It will change nothing. It will be pointless. The world needs another blogger like it needs another sad little egotistical attention whore. Exactly like it needs that.

Then the shootings happened. I cried. I felt angry. I responded to friends’ posts on Facebook. I decided to start writing the blog. It doesn’t matter if my words fall dead into the blogosphere the moment they hit it. My cries for change, my hopeful pleas, my pitiful little ideas about how the world is compared to the way I wish it could be can exist just for me. I can simply enjoy having an outlet for ideas and themes that I spend a lot of time thinking about. I am giving myself permission to dream out loud. I welcome you to join me but if you don’t care to, I will dream alone.

Margot