There's Nobody Coming to the Rescue

This is America, right? Something always comes along to put us back on the right path. Our patriotic songs claim God's blessing, either directly, as in God shed his grace on thee; or indirectly, as in the confidence that our star-spangled banner will survive the bombs bursting in air. It's our national faith that some Power controls America's destiny. Things can get only so bad before our inherent virtue shines through.

Is it possible that Americans have stopped looking to solve current problems because of a sense that things are bound to fix themselves? We may be waiting for a Godot figure who exists only in our imaginations. If there's nobody coming to the rescue, we would be behaving differently than we are now. At the risk of being accused of lack of faith in America, perhaps we haven't understood God's intentions at all.

I'm frankly worried about demagoguery. Somebody will come along claiming to lead the cavalry that has come to the rescue. A lot of people are looking for that, and I think it's an unrealistic expectation. There's nobody coming to the rescue; why don't we just admit it? We should carry on from there and do something.



America - We're the exception.

I was musing earlier today on why all the movies are so derivative of past stories, to the point where I can't even THINK of a TV show I watched as a kid that hasn't been repacked into a super graphical movie: Duke's of Hazard, GI Joe, Transformers, Batman, Hulk, etc. Then a possible answer hit me as to why: All the entertainment - games, movies, the rest - has become so explicit in detail, that nothing is left to the imagination. But when I read Lord of the Rings as a child, I learned to imagine Gandalf in my own mind through my own creative imagination. I moved 8 bit icons around and imagined the heroes fighting dragons in my own mind in those early video games. But now that capacity, the capacity for creative imagination, has been totally outsourced. Our minds aren't expect to create our own pictures, our own realities, our own destinies, because its all been offloaded to somebody else. And superficially, we like it - its easy, its cheap, like out sourcing production to China - but its in the end its totally robbing us. Its robbing us of our own ability to create, to dream, and therefore to ultimately to have the sense that we are the drivers of our own destiny, which is thing that will steer us away from embracing the "hero" you warn about in your post.

proper service. It will give you hope that we are indeed the ones we have been awaiting, and that we are just the right ones to do the job. And to do it well.

The Occupy movement may be coming to the rescue but they are taking a lot of beating just to establish a beachhead. I'm looking at how the #OWS idea comports with America's being favored by destiny. The ends don't quite tie together, and not because there's anything wrong the OWS. There's a huge amount of resistance to the Occupy movement, principally on the part of people who are expecting divine intervention.

And crown'd thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

Yesterday's trip to #Occupy LA has changed me. I was positive about this before...now I feel it my entire being.

No one wants their head beaten in without there being some amount of gain for the movement. There are discussions about who is willing to be arrested, how to make it count, what can those unable to be arrested do to make it all for the best, etc. It is wonderful, even with the trouble involved. There is no going back.

Opponents of the Occupy movement have tried either to discredit the movement or trivialize it. They haven't been successful, and the beatings only serve to make the protesters bear down harder. It's a great time to be alive.

I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands.

--As quoted in "Life of Eugene V. Debs" by Stephen Marion Reynolds, in Debs : His Life, Writings and Speeches (1908) edited by Bruce Rogers and Stephen Marion Reynolds, p. 71

He was talking, essentially, about a movement that incorporates aspects of direct democracy and consensus-building, a do-it-yourself movement controlled by the base from the bottom-up, not some charismatic leader working from the top-down. Movements with charismatic leaders tend to collapse once the head is cut off, but movements with many heads can't be decapitated.

"Of course we will have fascism in America but we will call it democracy!" Huey Long - 1935 or so.