01.17.2006
Shall We Overcome?
Yesterday was my brother’s birthday and Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday (observed). I would like all of my birthdays to be (observed), but instead of one day away, possibly several years. My thirty-fifth will be a national holiday in 2097.
Seriously . . . as I live only a few blocks from both a major boulevard bearing his name and a wasteland of desolate inner-city neighborhoods, I think about Dr. King a lot, and his unfinished work. The era that he embodied was a time of monumental obstacles to justice and freedom, but it seems also to have been a time of tremendous hope of something good coming. From the way I have seen it described (because, of course, I wasn’t born until 1987), history itself was a progressive force, buoying the efforts of a brave few with the idea that, eventually, their common-sensical ideas would not appear so radical.
It is interesting to note that, with the rate history seems to have speeded up on a daily level, we are still subject to its underlying currents. Those who were confidently dismissed as being on the wrong side of history in the 1960s have spent the intervening years consolidating their power and now are back with a vengeance, running the world. It’s like the Empire has been building its new Death Star behind the scenes, and now Emperor Cheney has sprung it on us. Only in our universe, Luke Skywalker has been discredited with a series of nasty campaign commercials.
These things happen, I suppose. The seesaw of progress and repression totters back and forth every few centuries or decades. Only now, with the fate of the world in the hands of an Orwellian death cult, I wish I could say that I had a lot of hope that things will swing our way again.
posted by
David at 12:11 PM
What do you think changed between now and then, to allow the Empire to get back in the saddle?
posted by:
tfg on 01.17.2006 at 11:16 PM
TFG: Simple. What allowed the 'Empire' to strike back was complacency. We thought we had the whole thing done and dusted. Always, always a mistake.
posted by: Campbell on 01.18.2006 at 5:31 AM
That, and there's been a lot of really good television on, and Netflix... I mean, I was just watching some embarrassing DVD that I'd never glance at in a video store, and then all of a sudden we had these retarded color-coded terror alerts...
posted by:
jwer on 01.18.2006 at 10:48 AM
jwer: And you were EXACTLY who (whom?) I had in mind!
david: Oh hi! Are you still here?
posted by: campbell on 01.19.2006 at 4:50 AM
What I think changed was that after the economic upheaval of the 1970s, the hideous and irresponsible policies of the 1980s supercharged the greed and consumerism of the American public at the same time that advances in technology made "entertainment" both more compelling and more pervasive. As Americans became fatter and stupider and more irresponsible, they lost their revolutionary zeal and gave into the idea that if they just sat back and played with their toys, they would be taken care of, and personal comfort trumped justice as the democratic ideal.
posted by:
David on 01.19.2006 at 10:10 AM
Campbell: I... I don't understand what you mean... now, quiet, Gilmore Girls is on... (yes, it's 10 in the morning, but I'm sure it's on somewhere)
David: I read an entertaining thing at the bottom of the Sun-Times' Ebert page this morning, which was a quiz to see which right-wing pundit-harridan said which thing about which movie; one of them likened War of the Worlds to the War on Tara, and scoffed at the notion that we could just sit back and wait for terrorism to quietly go away... but isn't that exactly what happened in the 80's? I mean, making sure that the terrorists never use a cellphone or computer or television again, what that really smart? Really? How are they going to get Nike ads? How will they watch the Sinful Gilmore Girls?
posted by:
jwer on 01.20.2006 at 9:54 AM
Make that "was that really smart" in the 2nd incoherent para, please...
posted by:
jwer on 01.20.2006 at 9:55 AM
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