Bringing it back home

I have liberal friends, or acquaintances who say they speak up when they have to but when it comes to their friends and especially family, they remain quiet in order to maintain "civil". That's what's wrong with freedom of speech, or for that matter, any freedom, even democracy. We either are self-restricting or as in the case of democracy, only gripe if our choices, which have been restricted, are not that satisfying. Freedom of speech also becomes irrelevant at thanksgiving dinners, office water coolers, or in bars and social clubs where dancing or drinking are supreme. Sure, one can make alot of trouble for themselves by utilizing any of the above-mentioned opportunities to rant and rave about what anyone considers grave injustice in the world. 

Since people need jobs, it's not too bright to be the only one at your place of work who wants to speak up about injustice. Of course, one can exercise freedom of choice by finding another job or just not working at all but that seems like a luxury most people can't afford. Only fascist politicians, comfortable with their wealth and power, have the full use of the language to make atrocity, genocide, totalitarianism functional or practical for their purposes. The rest of us must maintain silence, not as cowards but as realists. For you cowards out there, don't say you agree because there is always something you can do, you might have to use your freedom of resistance.

Besides, it's mostly to no avail to just speak up, people don't talk about things openly and passionately because we almost always don't want to be bombarded with information at those places because the news, in its own semi-quiet way, is constantly reminding us what's going on and as per freedom of speech rules in the media, we are designed to read between the lines anyway.

Where do all these so-called freedoms leave us? Everyone eventually runs up against one of those freedoms and has to make a "choice" as to what to do about it. Plug your nose and vote for the "lessor of two evils, or bad choices", shut up and bite your tongue for the sake of harmony, turn your other cheek and take your punishment, and ignore it and see if it goes away. And its true, we shouldn't always have to answer the unanswerable. What good is that?

I've found democracy as practiced, freedom as practiced and not as described, to be basically fruitless when it comes to actual change. If one wants to quit smoking, talking about it with all the scientific facts behind your decision or indecisiveness, makes you just boring, rather than magically making you a non-smoker. Unfortunately, the main political forces opposing fascist or neo-liberal thinking have chosen , almost exclusively, freedom of speech as their main weapon outside of liberal lawyers.

It's not a good look. People want change and it does seem like the only change the left wants is who can go to what bathroom, who can dance, shout, and rumble in the streets rather than building community by sharing resources, traditions, culture through food, working and respecting one another. When thats done, most people are more than willing to accept idiosyncrasies or differences. I say most and I believe thats true. Again, living isnt trying to be perfect, everyone makes mistakes, and the only ones who need to be restricted are the ones who hurt, hate, and try to control everyone (they're the ones who want to run for some official status). Leaders should arise out of the community not the political machines or parties. The world needs activists, those who are involved in the community, are investing time (and not money) to improve the community, those dedicated, not those who are overseers, chosen by special interests.

Now, I want to allay the possibility some of you readers are thinking that what I am implying is for state or local running of the community and to some extent i believe the closer one is to the community ( and its working class) the better it is for maintaining all the other aspects of living, including traditions, cultural standards, and freedoms. BUT, if you're going to have a Federal system of governance then the Federal cannot run the show nor be manipulated and corrupted by big money interests where everything becomes a battleground for power, money, and international policies taking the majority of resources.

Its a recipe for disaster, which we can see has brought us to the current political standoff. This the opportunity for us to excercise local and community control but it will have to be done without the help from state and federal resources because we're not going to get them, not now and even going back, we never got what is necessary. Public education, social security, rights to privacy (among many other priveleges) have been decimated and corrupted over decades if not centuries.

The cold war definitely played a telling part in our reliance on the federal government. Federal, state's and local (Public) rights have been fought over since americas and civilizations beginnings, but the cold war brought us all involuntarily under the nation state's protection, influence, and Democracy became the instrument for making consensus dependent on supporting the cold war mentality regardless of what party you belonged to. Thats why social, communistic, liberal, union parties and voters which were popular before world war 2 were either banished or broken up or outlawed, either by decree, law, media isolation, and/or absorbed/isolated by the main two-party system, which despite its minor differences has always been united in its defense of americas interests, mostly abroad, due to cold war fanaticism.

Bringing the politics home(local) eliminates all the bullshit at the top, which we really have no control over at all. Thats one of the misgivings about representative democracy at the top is its so prone to corruption, bribery, and influence from wealthy and powerful individuals.

I want to see my representatives working alongside or nearby, see them walking down the street. When I was in alaska, small town capital juneau, it was commonplace to see the governor walking around town. Maybe I didn't agree with his politics at the time but it was impressive to say the least. There was a vulnerability there, I don't think I'd see that today anywhere. They all have limos and armored cars and big bank accounts. politics is about money now and they have lots of it at their disposal, and I believe, thats ours but we won't ever see it unless we take it back and put it to use on our streets, schools, local economies. Everyone should have a job if they want,