writing in the raw: if life’s a game, then let’s play it

What I’m talkin’ about is a game.  

A game that can’t be won, only played.

^{from the movie The Legend of Bagger Vance}

I’ve been struggling with winning/losing. Right/wrong. I get caught in absolutes; they are traps.

Because I realize that George W. Bush isn’t wrong. It’s how he chooses to play the game. I can continue to look on in horror and dismay. I can say he’s wrong. I can say he’s a murderer. But really, where has that gotten me? Cause George is still banging em out of the ballpark… our country’s assets that is and people are still dying and we’re still a country that condones torture. Nobody is stopping him. Are you getting that? NOBODY. Why? Why not Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi? Heh. These bench-warmers have decided to continue to play BushCo’s game. They choose purgatory… the place in between what was and what is coming our way. They don’t get it… it’s a game and they need to start defining how it gets played.    

We’re afraid to make that choice. We’re not even sure what the choice is. Well, it’s revolt. We have to STOP playing BushCo’s game. Plain and simple: we need to set out a new game and force them to play on our board. We need to orchestrate the way we spend our money as consumers. Drastically cut back on credit card use. Get back into local politics and become delegates and work local committees. Or help by manning phone banks, knocking on doors, making brownies for bake sales, sitting at the local supermarket handing out voter registration forms, or shuttling home-bound or elderly during elections. There’s lots to do.

Then we need to acknowledge our adversary and be out loud about it: let the theocrats among us know we’ve had enough. They are pawns of global corporate power brokers in this chess game, as well as their allies in dismantling Constitutional freedoms. The theocrats need to be knocked out of local school boards and town planning boards. We need to stand up and say out loud that this is a secular country and not allow them to rewrite history… like the lie that our country is based on Judeo-Christian beliefs. FALSE. A LIE. Just say NO. Get them out of our bedrooms, relationships, and doctors’ offices. Let them know we’re changing this game.

Yeah: we are going to push-the-fuck back. And, while we’re at it, have some joy and fun and be inspired. No guarantee we will succeed, but we do something. And I don’t mean a letter writing campaign. I mean let a Republican win the presidency. Take grass- and netroots money and back candidates to unseat Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Just those two races. No others. Make it clear. Make a point. Change the game.

Use the internet to keep connected and make a movement; don’t tell me it’s not achievable. Hogwash. It is. We can make regional and national priorities in targeting campaigns… we don’t need to be the majority, just breathing down conventional wisdom’s neck. I know. I’m leaving here. But I did my stint for seven years running for office, campaigning, waving petitions for sane development at county fairs, causing a ruckus at planning board meetings… and pissing people off at our democratic committee meetings.

It is about showing up. This game is forcing your opponent to play defense. Change the rules. Change the fucking game. And when the planning board is going to cut your community off at the knees, form a coalition and let them know you will boycott their businesses. You will make this personal. Play the fucking game.

  Don’t play to win. Choose to play. Choose your side.

  And play… play to change the game.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

^{Carl Gustav Jung}

Some who changed the game…

Einstein, Gutenberg, Galileo, Abraham, Gandhi, MLKing, Newton, Shakespeare, Elizabeth I, Amenhotep IV, Mozart, Michelangelo, Jesus, George Washington (and the boys), Hitler, Attila the Hun, Stalin…