If a Politician Falls in the Woods...

First of all, I know that my last couple of posts have been a hair on the long side, even for me. For those of you who actually took the time to read them, I appreciate the effort. I suppose, in a larger sense, I’m really writing to and for myself, but it’s always nice to imagine that something I say might eventually find its way into someone else’s mind, where it might come to some good. Anyway, I think at least for the present that I’ve said what I have to say on the subject of politics and of the demise of life as we know it. That sort of thing is all fine and good as mental calisthenics, but it’s exhausting. It’s also non-productive. The fact is that regardless of what lurks in the deeps of our murky little socio-political tide pool, life must go on. We’ve still got to drag our limp and wrinkled carcasses up with the sun every morning prepared to laugh, learn, get drunk, go to work, shop, fuck, fight, cook, gamble, and pray, and then totter home and tuck our children and ourselves back into bed each night and get ready to do it all over again. As I reflected on this notion this morning, something occurred to me. I cannot recall a time when I felt so adrift, so remote, so fundamentally disconnected from whatever it is that turns a long and meaningless string of events and circumstances into a life. I’ve been a great many things just lately: I’ve been an American, I’ve been a liberal, I’ve been a libertarian, I’ve been a radical reformist malcontent and a fumbling political commentator, and any of a dozen other things. What I haven’t been, for all this time, is a human being. If this seems an empty philosophic distinction, then perhaps you’re right, in which case you should stop reading right now and go switch on your television set. But I’m willing to bet quite a great deal that I’m not the only one to whom this sounds familiar.

I must own that I am not a particularly spiritual individual, and am not at all inclined toward organized religion. For good or ill, science and reason are my bosom companions, and mine is a God who slumbers not in Heaven but in Newton’s Cradle. Therefore, it is none of my intention to foist upon you advice of a religious nature. Part of our problem these days is that we already have too many people telling us what we need to believe. What I do intend is to suggest that there is—for the sake of all that is good, there must be—more to life than the hell that is other people. There has to be something in life that makes it feel good, else why would we bother going on? Take a guy like Bill O’Reily, for example. I have a hard time imagining ol’ Bill being moved to tears by a piece of music, or going all warm and fuzzy at a sunset, or even simply sitting down and introspecting on what it’s like to be alive. I’m sure this is, to some extent, unfair and simplistic, but I think the point holds. After all, if you spend your entire professional life skipping stones over the open cesspool of humanity and shit-sticking the wretched abominations that slither up the bank, then pretty soon you’re bound to be little better than they are. And no matter how clean you manage to stay, your world is every bit as small and foul-smelling as theirs. That’s sort of how I’ve been feeling for a while now, although it’s taken until now to sort out enough of the English language to set it to paper. I (and a lot of people like me), not-so-innocent bystanders drawn into the vortex of social awareness and political activism, have spent the last who the hell knows how long bleating at the wolves that menace our fragile eggshell happiness, vilifying them, demonizing them, then weaving mantras and incantations to ward them off; distilling all the rage and fear which helplessness can breed and pouring it, 200-proof emotion of the blackest kind, down their grinning gullets and what we’ve done, at the very end, is we’ve built ourselves an army of monsters.

Frankly, I’m feeling a little filthy and a whole lot tired.

So I’ve got a little homework assignment for you, friends. Don’t worry, though, I’ll be playing right along with you, and we'll go over the answers in class on monday. This idea is the extension of an idea voiced to me numerous times in recent days by the omnipresent and insufferably self-righteous conservatives who cannot wait to smear the offal of victory all over me. Their advice, to paraphrase gently, is that we, the defeated and disgraced liberals, should sit down and shut the fuck up.

And that, my friends, is just what we need to do.

However, I don’t mean that we should pry our twitching, pre-RSI hands off our keyboards and cease our war vigil. What I mean for us to do is to really sit down, and really shut up. I propose that, at some point over the course of the next couple of days, we all set aside an hour or so, find a quiet spot, settle ourselves down, and stay that way until we find ourselves some peace of mind—or at very least an idea for a revolutionary new sexual position. Stranger things have happened. I know, you say that you cannot possibly find the time to find complete inner harmony. Well, bullshit. First, we’re not talking about journeying to Nirvana; just think quietly to yourself for a while, if you like. After all, the unexamined life is not worth living, isn’t that right? Your next complaint is going to be that you’ve got too much to do. Yeah, so does everybody else. But we all know that we’re not going to accomplish half the crap on our to-do lists anyway, and if you’ve got to skip the second half of Sports Center in pursuit of a little relaxation and tranquility, then worse tragedies have befallen mankind. So let’s all stop bitching, find a quiet spot, chill out, have a drink if that’s what you’re into, pray if it gets you giddy, but mostly just keep quiet and sit there until we feel a profound connection with something, even if it’s only our chairs.

The worst that could happen is that you fall asleep. And who knows, you might just find a little slice of that elusive thing called enlightenment.

Here’s hoping.