Column by George Sibley
Politics – November 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
I DIDN’T KNOW what else to do, so I went out among the aspens and cut some firewood. I cut down a dead-standing aspen, then sat on it, looking around amazed and wishing I belonged to a species that measured up to it all. That’s how I celebrated the recent death of the America I’ve always known, because I didn’t know what else to do.
Let me drop back a step or two.
One of the beauties of electronic mail is the way you can, with just a few additional key strokes on the “TO” line, send a message to several people rather than just one with no extra effort. Thus, when I am sending an email about this or that concern to my former senator, Ken Salazar, I’ve usually also performed the empty democratic exercise of sending it the other guy who also claims to be my senator, Wayne Allard.
I eventually get somewhat relevant, if canned, answers back from both of them, but I also always immediately get an “auto-response” from Senator Allard that I used to think was funny. Here’s my favorite paragraph:
While this response is automatically generated, your e-mail and thoughts are important to me. Based on the topic you have chosen, you should expect to receive an issue-specific response either by e-mail or U.S. Postal mail. If it is not the correct answer, please re-visit my website, to find a more appropriate topic.
Uh– run that by me again, Senator? If the answer I get from you is not the “correct answer,” I should “re-visit your website, to find a more appropriate topic”? In other words, if I don’t like what you say about what’s concerning me, then I should– go to your web site and figure out what you want me to talk to you about?
So, since I never get what I consider to be even an intelligent answer from Sen. Allard on anything that really bothers me — the fiscal insanity of cutting taxes while running up huge war debts, the medieval refusal to act on the scientific evidence of global warming, the utter insensitivity to the health care needs and other economic problems of most Americans, the callous cruelty of sending physically and psychologically underequipped young soldiers off to hellholes in Iraq and Afghanistan on fool’s missions, et cetera — I need to start raising more appropriate topics?
All right, then. Senator, what are we going to do about the threat of gay marriage? Or terrorist flag-burners? Or godless scientists wanting to murder stem cells? Or demonic immigrants overrunning our naked and helpless border? Is that what you mean?
But now the senatorial madness has escalated, and both of them are in on it. Yes, even my former Senator Salazar — who is no longer my senator until he explains or apologizes for this — voted to give The Decider the Blank Check, the Rubber Stamp he wanted so he can now hold forever people once presumed innocent until proven guilty, with no charges, no nothing. Now, he’ll just keep them out of circulation on the mere suspicion that they might be “terrorists,” and The Decider can order their torture without ever having to fear that– should America ever again restore its collective sanity– he might be punished for such egregiously un-American acts.
THEY’VE GONE AND DONE THAT, just casually undone habeus corpus, checks and balances,and the rule of law in general. From now on it’s The Decider’s version of what’s the law, and I am feeling ever more like the frog in the pot of water where the temperature is slowly being raised to a boil, and I simply do not know what to do about it.
I’m wishing I could find a pen-pal in Germany– someone about my father’s age who confronted– or failed to confront– this back in the 1930s, when Germany got a demagogue rather than a real leader. Then as now, the demagogue only sliced off a little bit of “the blessings of liberty” at a time (all in the name of protecting liberty) — the frog-pot strategy. I would like to ask this aged pen-pal if, in retrospect, he or she has thoughts on when and how the “good Germans” might have shut down the disaster of allowing power to centralize in the hands of extremists who are good at persuading people that it’s in their own best interests to stay in the pot and appreciate the increasing warmth.
So what to do? Yesterday I sent off a very angry letter to my former senator Salazar (forget his flag-draped brother) about his despicable act in supporting this madness. I’ve since signed petitions in opposition, and sent a few other emails and ebucks here and there. But I have little faith that these are worthwhile investments in anything. I have no meaningful sense of a voice in my own life beyond this valley.
I TRULY DO NOT KNOW what to do about the slipping away of America. How did the people of the richest and most free nation on earth become such a fear-ridden huddled mass? And how do I noticeably say — never mind intelligently, politely — noticeably say that I am more frightened of those who purport to be my leaders than I am of Al Qaeda? Or am I as alone in that conviction as my purported leaders would have me believe?
At the Headwaters Conference at Western this year, (Nov. 10-12, see the ad elsewhere), we’re going to look at ways to rebuild a truly civil society, capable of actually solving real problems, from the ground up, rather than the usual top-down stalemating over extreme positions. I think this is very important. But I am also not sure that it is enough at this time.
My thinking for the past decade or so has been that all meaningful action has to happen at the local levels of governance because the higher levels are so thoroughly corrupted by those entities that can afford to bend governments to their will. From the local perspective here in Central Colorado, I have occasionally suggested that it is best to think of the federal government as a kind of weather; though it may be foul and ugly weather, weather is weather and there is nothing to do about it down here on the ground except figure out how to adapt to it. And thus we need to learn how to protect ourselves against it, survive in spite of it, and maybe even use what we can from it (to make lemonade from its lemons).
But now I am starting to realize that there may be no adapting to certain kinds of heavy weather. Hurricanes, droughts, a toxic legislature, a fanatical fantasy-ridden president and other excesses from above and beyond cannot be adapted to; they simply destroy whatever is in their way.
So what to do? The frog in the pot observes that the water is getting very hot. But it could be worse, couldn’t it? And if it gets worse, then maybe it’s time to take to the streets, take it all back….
Meanwhile– it was so beautiful out among the aspens. So beautiful. I would love to be a part of a species worthy of such beauty.
George Sibley writes and organizes in Gunnison.
