Get Up, Stand Up

Bill Moyers' terrific sermon from this Friday.  I fully understand that we're tilting at windmills with all our crazy dreams of peace and prosperity and a future for the human race.  It's all complete bullshit; we're finished and we know it.  But what else is there to do?  You have to fight.  You have to fight for yourselves and a better future.  The alternative is to lie down in your grave and pass the time until you die.

I was watching Chuck D host a show on PBS called, "Get Up, Stand Up," which chronicled the history of political and social activism in 20th Century music.  It seems so naive to believe that some Pete Seeger folk songs could change the world, that James Brown and Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix could inspire young people to embrace the troubles of the world.  It seems so far away.  It seems like another world.

I don't believe that this nation and this species has a future.  Human beings are far too suicidal, and this cruel empire is being eaten away by its corruption and its cruelty.  What sort of a nation believes its President wants to set up "death panels" and kill Grandma?  What sort of a nation would embrace, celebrate, worship torture?  Taking an electric drill to another man's face is now an American Virtue.  Universal health care is now The Second Coming of Stalin.  And the cattle is perfectly fine with that; either they don't pay attention and don't care, or they're fervently yelling and cheering it along.

But what else is there to do?  We might as well fight.  Perhaps the only successful revolution is the one you can wage yourself.  If you can liberate your own heart mind, perhaps that is good enough.  It is a crucial start.

On that happy note, Happy Labor Day!