Last Tree Falling.

(2PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

Between the hours of back breaking but super cool accomplishing tree-work yesterday, I popped in an out of my three usual haunts. It always amazes me how each site and its users have their own personalities, and as such, interpret my words differently. WITR thought my very personal “Shades” stupendous, while it failed at DD.

DD thought my Clueless Class worthy, but that I went too far in my UMC rant. In fact one guy decided that I was a tea bagger! Heh. My sister IS a Prius-owning, illegal alien housekeeper employing Tea Bagger. I know what they smell like, and yeah, I’m not one of them.

Of course the guy who tagged me with it also despises my writing because I don’t “quote” the right people. I don’t do short quotes or a video with a few lines describing them, or rants about dKos-fail. I am no raw reporter quoting others. But my style includes fiction, allegory, rants and very personal tales. I am a propagandist for the far left, of the commie-pinko, all hail Che, viva la revolucion type.  I guess being post-partisan enough makes me outside the mental safe-zone of people who want to not see anything bad about the Libs or the D’s and solely to castigate R’s and Neo’s. I don’t want reform, I want to re-form the system.

Perhaps I did go too far. I don’t know, a decent piece of writing is not meant to make people complacent and feel good all the time…. it is supposed to jar people enough that they may at least look at their own actions through a different lens. I’m a writer who reads many, and draws my own conclusions. I also have allegory tourette’s – you know Obama as the string-tying puppet binding himself into oblivion – things like that just pop out unplanned.

So when pfiore8 asked the “Number One: The Problem” on WITR, stating the premise,

What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do,

not what I am to know…

Søren Kierkegaard

she ended up concluding that,

I think Kierkegaard is right: nobody really knows what to do. Not the people in control/power. Not the activists or political operatives. Not those funky fundies or principled progressives. Not the everyday people struggling to get by or those still lucky enough to be suspended in the American dream. Not even those BushCo would label as terrorists know. What to to.

and asked what it is we should do.

Its a great question, one for which I have no conclusive answer.

I think what is key is communication. We keep having to use every tool in our repertoire, from joking, to ranting, to gentle soul stroking to make people engage with one another. My interaction with the poster who thought me tea-bagger was not at all comfortable for him, I am sure, but I am glad I responded. Pfiore, Night Owl and Masslass communication about the intricacies of law and business on the KO case really expanded everyone reading its point of view. Elian’s response to my Obama-puppet “Real Boy” piece gave me tons of fodder for thought, on how I could have/should have expanded the allegory.

The thing is? Everyone has differing opinions. People have conflicting opinions within themselves from day to day. Its good to be open to other thoughts, not just comfortable ones, and give attention (and thus value) to those expressing them.

The demand to “define UMC!” was not unheard by me. I blended a large group, from McMansion owners to Starlets. Point made. I wonder, though, if the gentleman who doth protest too much will actually take a look at his portfolio and maybe divest from the worst groups. That alone, that thought makes it all worth it to me.

Yeah, google is a moneymaker, but what of privacy? Things like that. My broader point was that Class Warfare is sustained by the investment class, and divesting wouldn’t leave these people homeless, they might just have to settle for one home and a cottage. One less new kayak or car, one less vacation. Sacrifice would cause them way less harm than it would the lower tiers of income.

Activist guy made a great point too, on Clueless.

After work and sleep, the Lawrence workers were left with less than four hours a day for every single other thing  in their lives–and they still managed to organize a great movement that resonates to this day.  It’s not that we don’t have time, we have multiples of the time the Lawrence workers had, we simply allow ourselves to be distracted into squandering that time.  And we allow ourselves to be so distracted because we have accepted the advertisers insinuation that we are worthless, not worth fighting for ourselves, and we have accepted the politician’s wedge, that all our solutions must be individual, that we have no class self-interests, and that the people holding us back aren’t the rich, the powerful, the bosses and pols, but the other working class people, the ones that might look a little different, the ones that might make a buck or two an hour more or less than us, that those are the ones holding us down.  In the end, through accepting our distraction, and our division, we end up being the ones holding ourselves down.

Thinking about that more this morning, I think part of the answer to that isn’t just (and its true) that we have come to accept our “powerless” condition… but in that most companies around here only employ a couple hundred people doing the work of twice that number… with thousands outside dying to have work, any work.

That is how we end up set against one another.

Writing, the radio show, connecting, jarring people is an action of sorts, and the only thing I can do right now to make a difference. You cannot save everyone, but you can try to bring them into the dialogue that connects them one by one. Some will become an “us” some will return to the life of “me.” Having tried is the only way I can live my life.

People will never connect in the ways I envision, the ways so many who looked to frame a Utopia have. We only bond long enough to defeat common enemies, and perhaps in the end, that will suffice.

I’ve tried to wake white Americans up to the fact people of color are not their enemies, nor are people of differing faiths. I have preached “Worker Party” for YEARS. The Problem is Class War, and the ones keeping us down are the Uber-rich.

I just thought it time to make those are the “better offs” see that there are ways to be brought into the fold, make them realize that much of what they DO as opposed to SAY is outside their own ethical standards.

I realize it was a propaganda move essay, but its intent was not to anger the poor against the affluent, but to make the affluent re-evaluate, on the outside chance some Hollywood or Beltway Liberal read it. Heh. I do realize, too, there are unreachable ears. At some point, you either change tactics, or change targets. But you never give up.

pfiore8 said, in reply to me:

We all do have inherent worth, yes. I AM SOMEBODY, and I am going to be the last tree falling in my own Universe, even if no one hears me or takes the dive with me. And I will draw my last breath knowing I chose the right path, a righteous journey through the forest, and it will count to me.