Cathie Bird's Open Salon Blog

I'm with E.J. Dionne - GOP rhetoric is not enough

Thu, 6 Jan 2011 16:01:32 -0500

It was snowing here in the holler yesterday, but for a few brief moments I had some very warm thoughts toward John Boehner after he took the gavel from Nancy Pelosi. I imagined (or intuited?) his enjoyment and celebration of winning his new position as the 61st Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the pride his family would experience with his achievement.

I don't cleave to conservative ideologies, and I never would have voted for this guy even if I lived in Ohio. I can remember times when I was disappointed that a GOP candidate beat out the person I voted for, but that fact didn't threaten to drop me into a pit of dread. That has not been the case lately. George W's administration marked the end of that, though I must say that I occasionally can wrap my heart around him as well. I think I must have a lot of mirror neurons firing together in my brain's federal government.

As I listened to the Congressional shift yesterday, especially to Boehner, it occured to me that it didn't matter if I'm not from Ohio. When somebody gets to be speaker of the House, they become one of MY Reps, whether I voted for them or even like their politics.

In his remarks, Boehner spoke -- as many on both sides of the aisle have lately -- to the mandate of "the American people" via the last election. Frankly, this phrase uttered by any politician lately induces kind of a primitive growl because a good bit of the time they are claiming to speak for me -- one of these "American people" -- in a way that sparks zero-resonance with how I really think or feel.

Boehner's rhetoric sounded at least a little inviting, open, friendly to views different than his, and a willingness to work on real solutions to the multiple crises that we face as a nation. But on that point, I'm from Missouri. I need him to show me.

That's why E.J. Dionne's opinion piece in the Washington Post yesterday -- New GOP House can't govern with rhetoric alone -- spoke to me in a way that Boehner and many of his Republican and Tea Party colleagues have not:

There is nothing wrong with reading our Constitution as part of the new Congress's debut. It's a good Constitution. But note that conservatives would much prefer to pronounce various liberal initiatives "unconstitutional" - again, in the abstract - than to say whether they are for or against minimum-wage and environmental laws, Medicaid and a slew of other initiatives that never crossed the minds of those who wrote our foundational document. The Founders couldn't conceive of Facebook, either.

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to some of the rhetoric such as Dionne describes, and decided to take a few minutes to think about this phenomenon -- the empty speech more rooted in the realms of what we imagine to be real. I catch myself in it many times a day. We all do it...it's a human being thing. As a species, we are driven by unconscious beliefs and agendas for which we have virtually no awareness -- unless, of course, we have dedicated ourselves to exploring the depths of our humanity to become aware of these forces and learn to transform them.

I ended this contemplative session on two equally scary thoughts: that what's beneath this rhetoric is...nothing, and no one has a clue about how we can get out of the many messes we're in; or, that there is an agenda -- conscious or unconscious -- that no one will disclose. And maybe it's both? Or neither?

Whatever the case, I believe that every citizen will be challenged in the next two years to ferret out the truth and not succumb to fear or escape into conspiracy theory in doing so. I intend to test Mr. Boehner and the House by writing to him when the occasion seems to demand it, and tell him -- as the new Speaker of "our House" and as one who professes to have heard "the American people" -- how this American person sees things.

Boehner -- and all of our Senators and Representatives -- have a core Self, just like I do, just like you do. They get the messages that we, the people, send them at that level of being, even though the response from the smaller self may be to barf back more empty speech. Of course, that also puts it back on us, the American people, to be very clear, conscious, and conscientious about the messages we send.

[Cross-posted from my Citizen, Ink blog.]

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As we head into 2011, the question of why diversity matters

Sun, 2 Jan 2011 01:01:06 -0500

...is pretty much in our face

This ambush bug (probably Phymata sp.) represents the awesome diversity of living beings here in Frog Pond Holler. Photo by Cathie Bird

I'm always curious about that "one more thing" I feel compelled to do before I go do something else. Last night, that "last thing" I had to do before celebrationg the death of 2010/emergence of 2011 was to read an editorial on global threats to biodiversity in The Guadian:

Biodiversity is all we have. Living things provide humankind's food, fabric, fibre and pharmaceuticals; they fertilise and pollinate crops, generate oxygen and recycle water. The wealth of nations is built upon biodiversity: even the oil, coal, peat, chalk and flints dug from the ground were once living tissue. So the case for the conservation of life's variety ought to be obvious. But biodiversity is a problem in four parts. We do not know, cannot identify, and cannot even begin to count most of the creatures upon whom we depend; nor do we know how these unidentified species interact with and depend upon each other; yet we are extinguishing this richness at a rate perhaps unparalleled in the 3.5bn year history of life on Earth; and we have as yet no masterplan with which to address any of these challenges.

I think I've finally figured out that I'm not a specialist at heart. I like to look for the ways in which many different things are connected, how they operate together in larger systems. Perhaps that's why I felt immediate resonance with the editor(s)' notion of biodiversity as "a problem in four parts" -- this view implies an appreciation of ecological systems, their complexity, and why that matters.

For a long time in my work as an activist, I experienced my interests in liberation for people and liberation for nature as kind of a double lineage of inspiration, parallel tracks for exploration and action. I think that, in my heart, they had always been fundamentally braided as a monorail system inducing (sometimes pushing) me along my life's path.

But in so many ways these interests seemed to come alive in my view of the world -- in the institutions of culture, politics, education, religion, health, law, business -- as being separate. This has been a huge source of frustration for me as a citizen-activist (especially aggravated in the past decade) because arguments based on systemic realities, such as the Guardian editors identify in their discussion of biodiversity, are simply not heard. There is no way for the institutionally-compromised brain to comprehend it.

I've been sitting here for a few minutes trying to think of some collective activity, some arena of life that all of us engage in every day where diversity doesn't matter for the well-being and stability of people and nature. I haven't found it yet.

Given that diversity enhances strength and persistence of life itself, I find it interesting that so much emotional fire has been ignited in opposition to it.

Immigration law battles in several states, intolerance directed at Muslims, gays and lesbians and Latinos, efforts to disempower the Environmental Protection Agency (an agency with a huge role in protecting biodiversity), increased monitoring of American citizens who engage in protected dissent, persistent leftovers from the American Civil War that perpetuate racial and political division -- these are just a few of the hot issues bound up with how much we value diversity.

It's hard to follow national discussions and reportage without becoming acutely aware of the tremendous amount of fear that permeates them. The energetic impact of fear is to limit, constrict, foreclose, exclude. I'm wondering if fear will be the greatest obstacle to achieving and maintaining diversity?

The Guardian editorial hints at these dynamics of fear as they may be playing out in global negotiations on biodiversity:

There is a global convention on biological diversity with 193 signatories, which declares that living species are not the common heritage of all mankind; instead states have sovereign rights over their own biological resources, and therefore implicitly a direct interest in conserving them. Since the richest concentrations of biodiversity are held by the poorest nations, scientists from Europe and the US must negotiate formidable bureaucratic and social obstacles before they can begin research, train local naturalists and start to advise on conservation techniques. Such intricacies forced the last-minute cancellation of a London Natural History Museum initiative in Paraguay in November.

Ultimately, I think it is through our willingness as a group to protect and nurture diversity of people and nature that we express our desire for life or for death, not just for ourselves but for many generations of diverse life that could follow.

Orange day lily near my house in Frog Pond Holler. Photo by Cathie Bird.

Choosing to connect with the Guardian editorial on biodiversity was auspicious. It generated much thought about where to focus my energy in 2011. I see myself exploring all of this -- and writing more about it -- in the coming year.

I sense, as do many others, that we are in an evolutionary moment of profound possibility to choose a lively way forward for Earth and humanity. That path is marked by an energetic matrix of peace, love, co-operation and co-ordinated, harmonious action. All four represent activity that tends toward openness and inclusion, and thus are consistent with protection and cultivation of diversity.

It should be interesting to see how this all turns out...for the Earth...for all of us. Until then, I can certainly stand with the editors at the Guardian who hope for "some serious political investment" over the long haul.

[Cross posted from my Earthbytes blog.]

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Just Experimenting

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 13:04:16 -0400

I've got a great story to tell...just trying to decide where to post it first. It's about dirty coal and dirty coal politics in Appalachia. Somedays it seems like an armageddon-level event we're facing here in the coalfields, but I try not get sucked in to the urgency of it. Doing so would unleash nuke-level feelings that, at this point, need to be harnessed for good, not a repeat of Hiroshima. The world already has too many people waging war over coal and other things that come out of the ground.

So, when I tell this story, I need some blogging software that won't hassle me in the process. I need to post it somewhere that it will be seen, because I have too many friends and compatriots whose lives -- yes, literally -- are riding on the will and resolve of the social collective in the United States to stop the genocide and ecocide within our own borders.

So far, very little hassle. So next I'll try to insert an image:

(TN Hawk Photo: Muddy waters in Dan Branch following an "Act of God," a.k.a. mine operator incompetence, at Zeb Mountain mine in Campbell County, TN)

Not bad! This could be sweet!

Okay! The "save draft and preview" button works too...now, one final test -- cut and paste a few lines from one of my other blogs:

"If this bill passes in its present form, we can officially announce that coal interests now run Tennessee’s water quality program, and neither we, the people, nor scientific integrity have a real place in the process."

Okay, now check for wonky formatting...yep, it was wonky but the little "remove formatting" button seemed to fix it...let me check it out...

Holy Moly! It worked! Alright. I'm going to go think about this.