Maybe There is Hope?

The holiday led me home to visit the family of origin. My two aging siblings and I found ourselves comparing notes on how we're managing various health issues: back pain, sleep apnea, a recurring tooth abscess resulting in jaw bone erosion, a shoulder with nerve impingement, a hiatal hernia, olfactory hallucinations, and possible motor seizures.

We range in age from 47 to 53. Believe it or not, we come from pretty hardy stock. We all work at least 40 hours a week in jobs that are considered professional. We all have health benefits through our work place. Of the three of us my sister has the most difficult situation. She provides life saving counseling services to families with children in crisis. In return for this she earns $36,000 a year. In January the deductible on her health benefits will rise from $300 to $1,000 putting the oxygen she uses at night for her sleep apnea out of reach after December 31st. She has no dental coverage to help her pay for the periodontal treatment for her abscess, and her income barely keeps up with basic expenses.

Our conversation shifted to health care reform and how hopeless the circus in Washington feels. My mother pointed out that Obama said during the campaign that he was counting on the American people to hold him and the congress accountable. I asked what we an do to make any real difference when elections are bought and sold by corporations?

The next day my sister and I returned to the conversation. I asked her if she would ever go to Washington to march knowing that she is not and never has been the protest type. She said she didn't see how it would make a difference. I couldn't disagree. She admitted she is so discouraged she isn't sure she would even bother to vote in the next elections seeing how little progress we've seen since after supposedly making history last November. I pointed out that low voter turnout always results in big wins for Republicans. She thought for a minute and then surprised me by saying, "if someone organized the bus, I think I would get on it."

Since that conversation, something about my non-joining, non-activist, even apathetic sister saying this has given me new hope. Today, as I read comments on Robert Reich's column "2009: The Year Wall Street Bounced Back and Main Street Got Shafted," I noticed that the "trolls" and devil's advocates seem to have quieted and the comments posted are less cries for help and more sharing of in depth knowledge gained from independent investigation and research. Multiple posts contain calm, reasoned arguments for the necessity of revolution.

When I was first introduced to Marxist ideas about revolution, I was a young adult. That was thirty years ago; then revolution seemed to promise only chaos and needless suffering. I could not have foreseen where I and the world come to. As of now the only source of hope I have found is the willingness of the people of Iran, Huffington Post readers, and my sister to consider revolution a reasonable response to unreasonable oppression.

No brakes left on this runaway train

Reader comments under Huffington Post's recent post about the 15 biggest Wall Street payoffs to members of congress are full of the usual vitriol and snark. No doubt the streets of Rome rang similar insults and recriminations in the weeks and months leading up to the end of that civilization.
The vomitous mess we're in won't be solved by us shrieking insults at each other.
The crisis is real.
We are on a socio-econ­omic-indus­trial runaway train together.
The few people with access to the control room of this train are caught up in a video-game like delusion, as if all that really counts is their individual score at the end of the game.
Meanwhile we're thundering down the track headed for a crash that really will end life as we know it, and not in the too distant future.
It used to seem that nuclear war would end everything.
Instead it is this unstoppable global orgy of consumerism, greed, corruption, and passing the buck.
This time around the empire itself is too big to fail, and when it falls it will take everything with it.
No one with the courage or integrity to confront the lies that hold it all together will be permitted anywhere near the controls to this juggernaut.
No matter what party, what station, what anything.
There are no working checks or balances or brakes left anywhere on this train.
Will we tear at each others' throats over the ignominy of it all?
We, neighbors one to another, will have work to do to after the looting and gluttony leave behind ashes and wreckage.
We will each fare better, with hope of avoiding another narcissistic mess like that which plagues us now, only if we can commit ourselves to doing the work together.