I Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself

This is what I wrote: "All wounds, in a democracy, are ultimately self-inflicted."

This is what Sheila replied:

"I'm sorry, but this is almost the only time I've ever disagreed with you. I am a huge fan of personal accountability, civic activism and the causality inherent in most decisions. I have (and have always supported) the world's best congressperson, Henry Waxman, who is the smartest, toughest, most righteous member of the House and Senate combined.

Does that mean that most people in my area have clean air, affordable housing, healthy food, good schools, access to healthcare and plenty of clean water? FAR from it!!

For one thing, global issues are just that -- global. Apparently most of the air pollution in the UK originates in China. How will my vote change that? I always knew the war in Iraq was a horrible idea and so did Henry Waxman. Does that exempt everyone in his area from paying for it? I was in favor of immediately rebuilding New Orleans, and vehemently opposed to the rapacious "free trade" pacts with our southern neighbors that guarantee their poverty, desperate (and often illegal) immigration, and ecological destruction. Ditto on my vote's impacts.

Everything I believe in has been crushed by so-called "democracy" because the system has been gamed. Greed, revenge, pettiness, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, you name it -- it was used to "market" the Bush plans, so we got the double whammy of destructive Bush policies and a drastic increase in hatred, ignorance and all the baser human instincts.

As long as "marketing" (read "propaganda") that preys on insecurity, greed and weakness is the driving force behind democracy, it will always be a race to the bottom. As long as corporations, industries and yes, unions, dictate the voting patterns of our representatives instead of "one man, one vote," democracy will also remain a pyramid scheme with the richest at the top.

This seems to be one more reason for publicly-financed elections with simple, comparable publicly-financed media outlets for all candidates and measures, with NO ads, money, or propaganda poisoning the well of democracy."

In a few paragraphs, Sheila has cogently captured our national dilemma. I'm tempted to stop now, and let Sheila have the last word, because it seems to me that she is right, and somehow the comprehensive nature of her rightness takes away my will to argue.

At the same time, in my gut I'm not as hopeless as Sheila. After all, the Supreme Court did say that the EPA has to consider carbon a pollutant and regulate it. After all, Gonzales looks like he's on the way out. After all, Congress has begun upon the mountain of investigating it has to accomplish. After all a bill has been introduced in Congress to repeal the parts of the Military Detainees Act that I detest so much. After all, McCain seems to have no chance, and seems to know it. After all, the internet is not a two-tier system yet. After all, in her recent Nation column about the Conrad Black trial, Naomi Klein writes, "Regardless of what else happens in the Black saga, the jury-selection process has already provided an extraordinary window onto the way regular Americans, randomly selected, view their elites -- not as heroes but as thieves."

God forbid that I should sound like what I am, which is a novelist who prefers happy endings and always goes for a bit of irony and a joke here and there, but I do think that it is worth asking ourselves how fast we can realistically expect the pendulum to swing back, and how far. And after that, asking ourselves how we can get it to swing faster and farther toward a society that is just. Clearly, Reagan/Bush ideas about not only what our society should be but about what our citizens actually want have turned out to be a bust. The fact that they are busted does not mean that we don't still have to fight them, but it does mean that those who embody those bankrupt ideas have a smaller and smaller hiding place, and are more and more likely to be revealed for all to see as naked tyrants. And while revealed tyrants still have to be taken down, it is easier to take them down than it is to prop them up.

Sheila brings up Henry Waxman here, and he is our model. He's been around for a long time, he's ready to kick into gear as soon as he gets the chance, he knows how the system works, and he has a conscience. I feel more or less the same about Pelosi, Boxer, Sam Farr, Maxine Waters, and other California politicians -- even, (can you believe it) Himself, the Goob. Yes, California has been corrupt from day one and continues to be corrupt, and is often the political laughingstock of the nation, but the nation has to wipe the grin off its face and agree -- yes, the California energy crisis was a scam, and yes, California has put some thought into greenhouse emissions and other pollutants, and yes, California has been dealing with immigration issues for a long time and has demonstrated more or less what works and what doesn't. The key in California is that money talks here, but it doesn't say everything. The citizens of California have plenty to say, and they can put their ideas on the ballot anytime they can drum up a minimum amount of support. Initiative and referendum. We're always being told by other states that initiative and referendum, California style, lead to chaos. Hey, let's call that "Creative destruction". Californians are self-starting political machines. It's a good thing. So, I live in California, and I am more hopeful than Sheila, and more hopeful than I was when I lived elsewhere. I think that Bush and Cheney have taken us very far down the road to tyranny, and they and their ilk may still get us there, but I also think they are going to have a hard time subduing California. Sometimes I am less hopeful than other times. But last week, when Sheila so perfectly captured what has happened to our nation, in the end I didn't buy it.

Please go to my website, therealjanesmiley, and help me in my Atlas of the Novel. An entry in the booksblog explains it. If you are a novelist, by all means, put your books in the atlas!