Empires Fade

The clear blue skies that dominated the Bay Area since Saturday still shine somewhere up above, but are now out of site, hidden behind a dark foreboding storm front steadily marching across the valley. Fitting on this gloomy day of defeat and uncertainty. When the rain comes, I'll take solace under the roof of our house, calmed by the sound and fury of the weeping heavens.

Voter disenfranchisement and insecure Diebold machines aside, a slight majority of America has affirmed it's distrust of intellectualism, it's fear of diversity, and it's abiding faith in the dictates and dogmas of religion. On the surface it seems ironic that the principles of Christianity include big business, warfare, and destruction of the environment. Yet digging deeper there is no paradox here: LIfe is regarded as a cage of sin and temptation, a relentless moral battle against Evil, whose victory promises release from the bonds of matter and ascendence into the glory of death. Indeed, a cursory appraisal of pop culture in America reveals a deep, morbid fascination with death and destruction. The majority apparently feels it's best to just take all you can get while the getting's good, cause it's all just gonna go up in flames when Armageddon hits.

The America that elected Bush lives in the South and the Midwest - that part of the country that seems perpetually shrouded in the fog of ignorance, happily trapped in the bliss of their own making. These are the people that fear anything different from their own ways. They're ever suspect of intellectualism and the scientific method that so rigorously continues to disprove so much of their cosmology. Those among them who question the narrow world view fed to them invariably try to leave for the big cities along the liberal coasts. The coasts swell with thinkers who find facts to be of greater import than faith, leaving the heart of America to stagnate, lost in stereotypes and archaic logic structures. At the core of their own backwards slide is the opiate of religion feeding fear and hatred and ignorance.

The momentary extension of the Bush Dynasty highlights both the inability of middle America to evolve and the confusion confronting the intellectual caste as they embrace the onrush of technology and information. Arguably, America is far more informed than ever. We just don't know how to sort and manage all of the information - how to apply it our lives. The pace of discovery is too fast for us to properly integrate the truths being revealed. While the backwaters stagnate, the seas are churning, rising up towards a great crest. When the wave breaks no one will be left dry.

The powers of control are scrambling to keep up with the ever-quickening pace of change. But conquerors rise and empires fade. In the heart of order the seed of chaos finds sustenance. Control is predicated on stasis and the oppression of dissent. In a dynamic nonlinear world, control will always be cast off by the forces of evolution. Power-mad apes battling over dwindling resources, driven by competition and the illusory fear of otherness, are simply caught in the spasms of a vestigial tail held on the chopping block.

It's fair to be worried and it's critical to remain vigilant. A lot can happen in 4 years. But history has shown that the human spirit has only ever continued to grow in power, always moving forward against seemingly huge odds. If we're just floating and bobbing along in the currents of life, the political game is like a small boat on the surface trying to make us all believe we need to get onboard in order to survive. Everything we need is right here right now. Blaming politics or foreigners or drugs or any other scapegoat is a cop-out for weak minds unwilling to take responsibility for their own actions.

Evolve yourself and politics will eventually catch up.

Posted by LVX23 at November 3, 2004 02:21 PM | TrackBack