Grasping at Straws: notes from a personal journey

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It’s tough to be a real leftie in America, and the inevitable existential pressures exacerbate and render more painful the quest for a just and decent world.  But once visualized, who can let go of the impossible dream?

BY DIANE GEE
I’m guilty, I know it.

After all, did I not join a liberal blog once, tired of a message board that had become basically a good old boy network that insulted its female membership until we all left? Only to find that liberal blog ridiculed those of us left enough to see the collapse coming (which has since) and call us doomsayers, until we all left there too?

So, I created my own blog, The Wild Left, first as a blogger account, then a soapblox one as its needs grew. I wanted a place that fit my ideology. I wanted a place of kindreds. I wanted an intellectual and emotional home with beloved friends who shared the commitment to making a REAL difference, and a bond of supporting one another in a world largely set against us.

Sure, I still enjoyed other blogs, despite resenting a ban on I/P there, or an Obamabot here, or perhaps a lack of humor on another… but WWL would be a place to shelter and let blossom the ideas and ideals of we the dreamers and prophets of the Left. The bikers have 1%ers, the left had WWL.

I feel like that 1% has become .001% that still bother, carry the torch, see the importance of sticking together and working toward our shared dreams.

Twitter was a tool that became old. It moves so fast if you don’t use it for a while, you are quickly forgotten by volume. Others were afraid to use it to advertise the blog or the show, because “someone” might see their Leftiness, not in the approved clique or something.

Facebook, I really had no use for at the start. Mine languished untouched for years. Then history repeated. More grasping.

I ended up using facebook more when Mike got sick. A place to let relatives and friends know what was going on en masse without the painful, mind-numbing repetition that kills your soul and makes the horror we were going through nothing but a litany of sad, dry facts. I soon found solace in the morning conversations there, that used to occur HERE. I enjoyed seeing pictures, I LOVE pictures, of my friends lives, their kids and pets, just snippets of their lives in bright colors that made me feel more alive and connected to them.

The next thing I knew? People who knew me friended me to like-minded activists… people they thought had the same radical ideology as me. Next? Those new friends added me to a “group.” “Links for Progressive Activists,” which really has wonderful links. As long as you don’t cross a line of leftiness, that is.

And again? I found the Democrats are the only answer, Obama-bots and petty arguments happening there. People banned. Socialists and Communists marginalized. Flag wavers that hailed Osama Bin Ladens illegal assassination. Not kindreds, and some quite intolerant.

I created a spin off of that too. “Links for the Wildly Left,” a subsidiary of this blog and my show. It has gained me some wonderful comrades, in the show, and in blog-land. I now am a front pager at the prestigious “Greanville Post.” I have nabbed great callers and guests.

Links for the Wildly Left is a group in which anyone who joins can add anyone to the group. I am finding in my own space these purity police who tell people what they can and cannot espouse on my very own group. Its like herding cats, all over again. People spinning off, people nit-picking and dividing… even when I ask them to not. Of course, there have been trolls and right-wing apostles of (ron) Paul trying to infiltrate and get converts. There have been a few die-hard Democratic campaigners trying to push their (s)elected official and sell us on incremental lesser-of-the-evilisms, too. Mostly? Its just good people, though.

The thing is? It has not generated any activity here whatsoever, other than increased readership. Very little added wonderful writings by new faces, with the exception of Al Osorio who rocks. Little in the way of additional comment. This blog has the feeling of another morgue to me. Perhaps blogging itself is dying. It is good to read links to stories I might otherwise miss…. but where is the in-depth analysis, where is the sudden inspiration of linking two different stories that end up telling the whole tale? Where is the original work?

I can’t blame Facebook. Tools are what you make of them, and the comments and discussion there are often very good.

But I am now finding that every third new member has their own political FB page, which they can take the luxury of adding me to at will. The same way I added others to mine. (guilty) I now am members of groups whose ideologies I don’t even espouse. We will get to that later.

It seems, like me, everyone has their own group they are trying to grow.

So at what point do all these collective conduits of thought, all these separate straws if you will, become a hive?

t seems to me at times, I am floating in a river of competing garbage, the noise to signal ratio is so low. I am NOT a Democrat any longer. Read my bio. I despise Libertarians, read my words.

People want change, but they are so afraid of REAL change that they will back someone with whom they do not agree on most things, because they are right about one or two things… if even right for the wrong reason. Like Ron Paul. Sure, he wants out of war, but only to make us a very isolationist – profit for the US – people. He has NO problem with the MIC, and thinks they should be free to sell any kind of armament to anyone they want with NO GOVT REGULATION.

People want change, but are so clinging to their creature comforts that they think incremental change will truly become change. Its always one step forward, two back, they say. Better Dems! More Dems! Vote and things will change. Canvass for my guy and things will be different. Don’t tell me different or you are Unamerican! Garbage. They are looking for a Savior. Grasping at last chance straws, because they cannot accept the fact that the power and the money are consolidated to a point that we are powerless against it short of a bloody revolution. No one in history has ever had the global power the Elite Class now has. But history does indeed prove, time and again, even those with MUCH smaller scale power never relinquish it willingly.

The final grouping I see of people who want change are thus: By claiming the “people” are not ready, that it would fail without numbers, they exactly CREATE that reality by dissuading people from thinking outside the box, and considering reality as it is. When challenged, they inevitably tell you to take to the streets right now with guns, and call you a poseur when you do not. That is not the way it works. Revolutions do not happen as a proving of creds. Revolutions do not happen on a dare. But trying to convince people it is impossible is counter-intuitive to the Left. It is the worst of self-fulfilling prophesy. of thought become inaction.

And certainly, demonstrations are not revolutions, though they may be the seeds of them.

Revolutions take a catalyst.

Ours has not yet happened, and neither my crystal ball nor magic 8 ball are telling me what it will be.

Sometimes it is a charismatic leader, like a Che, a Fidel, a Hugo. Sometimes it is an injustice like a man against a tank in Tienanmen Square. Sometimes it is simply enough hunger. But charismatic messiah be damned, horrific event spared? A revolution is coming nonetheless.

I do know this… the world is beginning to rise up, from Africa to the Middle East. I do know that America, as the world power at the moment should either join in or be left behind, with retribution to follow. I do know our PEOPLE, as individuals, despise what our rich do in our names. But I also know its time for us to lose the “old world” ideology handed us by European colonists, to any illusion of whitey as a master race who knows better and should lead the charge.

It may be time to shut up and listen.

A Wall Street analysis of the “Happiest Countries” summarily left out anything but white European Countries. Color me a skeptic, but I think the power structure is frightened enough to be testing the waters for some Semi-Socialist “Democracy” in which they are still the ruling Plutocrats doling out a few concessions to keep their power.

It counters entirely what Forbes listed last year… with Costa Rica, Brazil and Venezuela soundly on the list.

Even that counters what International (UK in this case, but there are many) sources have been saying for years. Left unmolested the “Pink” countries of Latin America are by far the happiest with Costa Rica almost always first.

We need to look South. We need to follow. We need to LISTEN and LEARN to the greenest, happiest Democracies on Earth.

We need to “have” less and “live” more.

And we need to be willing to fight for one another to all have the same thing Globally.

Everyone is grasping at straws, I guess. Perhaps mine is elusive as the next girl or guy’s. I know my dream here certainly has eluded my grasp. My best allies failed me when I was down, my closest friends have wandered away from activism here. The best writers give up, take their crayon and go home.

Maybe I am just bundling straw that will soon be mowed down for the next crop of useless fodder.

I don’t know.

I write because I have to. My muse is becoming thinner and thinner though, starved out by lack of faith. Life is really short. Maybe I should just move to Costa Rica and live my days out in simple pleasures and let the world burn. Give up on the idea of kindreds, unity, solidarity, trust and nirvana on Earth. I keep losing soul mate after soul mate. To death. To abandonment. To distraction with other things. I look at who is left sometimes, with the thought, “When and what will make me lose you…” like its only a matter of time. Maybe I should just wake up to the fact that I am a needle in a straw-stack.

I don’t know what I will do, except probably keep fighting alone amongst millions.

You will know me when you see me.

I’ll be the one still grasping….

DIANE GEE is a senior contributing editor at The Greanville Post.  Her personal blog is The Wild Wild Left. She also runs a very lively discussion group on Facebook, Links for the Wildly Left.

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