My generation had a cartoon character called Wimpy, from the Popeye cartoon show. Wimpy was a stereotypically rich glutton who always said, "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."
Back then it was a joke. Today he represents financialization, neoliberalism, and all the broken promises that ideology entails. The financial crisis of 2008 showed us that they don't have to honor their contracts, or even obey the law. They are all-powerful.
Hence, fear.
Fear creates an aversion to change. Help us change that, please. I will gladly vote Tuesday for some organizing today.
Last Call
Here's another secret: All the medical tests your doctor has you take every year, the ones that keep coming back negative? Sooner or later, one comes back positive. Then, maybe, another. There's a blood disorder, an immune system failure, some permanent change to the lungs or heart or some other vital organ. You're not going to die, yet. But death has transmuted itself from an abstraction into something closer to a reality. The cloudy thing just outside your field of vision has begun to coalesce into a familiar shape. You've seen that shape come for your family and friends. For now, it's just stopped by to say hello.
I'm 66. I know now that I walk with the dead, and with death. That awareness is part of the job description, at least if you're wired a certain way. That said, though, I'm not in any f*cking hurry to go. I've got 20 good years, if I'm lucky. Maybe 30. (Keep going, Noam Chomsky!)
The coronavirus has exposed the vulnerabilities in our world order, just as medical tests reveal vulnerabilities in our bodies. COVID-19 has bombarded this system with a kind of radiation. It's some planetary imaging scan, illuminating every vessel and wire, every channel where blood and electricity should flow. But the flow is blocked. The prognosis is bad. This is the test result you knew was coming. This system is dying, infected with a contagion as old as humanity: greed.
You know that, inside. And we, the older, should understand it better than anyone. But we don't. How can their our minds be changed? We on the left must talk more about the shared interests of the older and younger working class. That much is obvious. I think that's a project worth taking on.
We're not a herd: not yet, anyway. But we can adopt the best that herds have to offer. Living herds have a collective awareness. You can see it in the beauty of a thousand deer moving as one across the desert, or in the liquid physics of a bird flock as it turns. Individual members die, but the herd lives on. It moves, it sings.
The time will come, the bell will toll. It sounds obvious, and it is. Until it happens. Then it feels as new as birth, as new as waking up in an unfamiliar room.
And so, in the meantime, all I can do is pass on what the survivors of past worlds told me while they lived. They said you can survive by remembering to love. They said you can learn to care, even if caring doesn't always come easily in this life.
And they said that, after a lifetime of hellos, you always hope that there will be one last chance to say goodbye.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
