Politics AGAIN

“We live in a political world.”
— Bob Dylan

Here it is, the beginning of another glorious June, but I can no longer think about the advent of summer without thinking about Global Warming and the unbearable heat that will eventually kill us all if unbearable cold doesn’t get us first. 

In fact, it seems that there is nothing in life any more, however innocuous, that doesn’t cause people like me, i.e., slightly neurotic Blue people, to reflect on some issue that is ultimately political, from our drive to work to our grocery store purchases to how we get our news.  Each of these choices demonstrates our political leanings: do we drive an SUV and eat fast food, or do we drive a Volvo and do yoga, which allegedly means one is “pretty much a Democrat?”  Do we read The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Buzzflash.com?  Every choice we make causes us to confront ourselves as citizens of a political world.

Last night after dinner, I was putting away some leftovers (and the fact that I was saving them and not throwing them out is indicative of my bent for recycling, but the fact that I will probably never actually eat them demonstrates my decadent wastefulness) and I decided to store them in the bowl I’d served them in.  This was a green impulse, but then I ruined it by absent-mindedly tearing off a piece of Saran Wrap and draping it over the top.  Suddenly I found myself thinking about how Saran Wrap was created by Dow Chemicals, who also made the napalm that we used in Vietnam.  For years, I would never have considered using Saran or any other brand of Wrap because of its provenance, and because it’s made of horrible chemicals that are bad for the environment and, not coincidentally, for our health. 

Yet here I was, blithely covering my bowl of leftover organic squash with it.  I was suddenly horrified by this—when had I ended my plastic embargo?—and then just as horrified by the way the implications of an ordinary domestic action sprang into my consciousness and wagged a reprimanding finger at me.

I know, I’ve already complained a zillion times about the sin of Politics.  But it seems to me that of all the sins of the 21st century, the sin of having to be so continually aware of every move we make and how that will impact future generations has got to be one of the most disturbing.  If we are at all aware of the state of the world, there is just no way to stop the hamster of political implications from running in circles on the wheels of our brains. 

I use the word “politics” incessantly, but I have only a vague idea of what it actually means.  In fact, I don’t think anyone knows exactly how to define “politics,” but we know it when we see it.  For example, today’s headline says that Paul Wolfowitz is stepping down from the World Bank.  It is quite clear that his appointment was “political,” i.e., that he got the job for the same reasons as all Bush appointees, based on loyalty rather than expertise  and on willingness to swear oaths of omertà.

In a more general sense, “politics” seems to denote the practice of trying to acquire power, i.e., to win, for the sole purpose of acquiring power, i.e., winning.  It’s hard to imagine any other reason why George W. Bush has chosen to devote his life to public office.  Is he trying to help people, or to make more money, or to leave a lasting legacy of peace, or justice, or anything remotely resembling The Good?  No, it seems that his only motive in serving as president is to continue to serve as president so he can serve as president.  His single-minded dedication to the task of continuing to serve as president is alarming; what will he do with his life when his term is finally over (we should live so long)?  It seems to me that rather than turn his throne over to a President Clinton or Obama, he will stage a faux terrorist attack and declare martial law, then fly down to Texas in Air Force One and hole up clearing brush until we forget all about having another silly election.

I think about this often, and it makes me tired—but perhaps I’m wrong to resent politics for intruding upon my consciousness; politics are only the symptom of the problem.  The real problem is that as Buddha has told us, life is inherently full of suffering, and our global mentality means that it’s now impossible for us to go on with our own happy lives without constantly being aware of other people’s pain—of wars, murders, school shootings, horrible accidents, toddlers trapped in wells, grisly train crashes in Uzbekistan, things we would know nothing about were it not for being constantly bombarded with information.  Maybe this is a good thing, as it leads to compassion, or perhaps merely to compassion fatigue. 

Similarly, because of the constant presence of News, one is also constantly made aware of the minutiae of what our increasingly sinister government is up to.  But perhaps like a computer whose RAM is finally over-full (or do I mean ROM?  I’m never sure), after a while one’s mind becomes clogged with data.  I can feel this happening to me: I’d like to write about the latest Bush excesses—perhaps the firings of the state attorneys general which were not merely politically motivated, which seems obvious, but which apparently stemmed from a desire to fix elections.   But there have been so many Bush excesses that I am simply unable to keep up with them; if my head ached at the complexity of the Valerie Plame case, the saga of Alberto Gonzales, with his weird late-night Tony-Soprano-esque visit to John Ashcroft, sends my entire cerebral cortex into paroxysms.  It’s all too complicated, and too bizarre, and to truly understand it all, one would have to devote all of one’s time and energy to it—and even then, one would be unlikely to fully grasp the picture of what the Bush administration is doing to our country and our world.

It’s true that life on earth has always been difficult—there have always been wars, though most of them made more sense than our current one.  But I’m not sure there has ever been a constellation of political events, sub-events, and events we don’t even know about of such complexity that one can hardly wrap one’s mind around them.  As a citizen, I try to stay well informed, but this has been taking longer every day and requiring increasing amounts of not only energy but expertise, not to mention mental acumen.  People always wonder how it is that according to polls, 25% of Americans still support Bush and his crazy war; perhaps these pig-headed, benighted individuals simply don’t have time to read a variety of news sources and then interpret the Jackson-Pollack-like splattering of contradictory detail, the hieroglyphics of government and the trompe d’oeil of corporate-sponsored news reportage, so they believe whatever is easiest, and least painful. They believe in the Reagan-era promise of “Morning in America” and the happy fiction that we are using our enormous powers to improve the earth instead of to destroy it.

Right now, at 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday, those people are already up and at it, out Turtle Waxing their Hummers before pouring several bags of weed killer on their immaculate lawns.  They’re not thinking about the mysterious deaths of bee colonies, and unless they have relatives in Iraq, they’re not thinking about how many people have been killed there this week.

Sometimes I envy them.
           

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