The image here is me, in the Attica Brickyard, long abandoned. It still seems significant to me. At the time, at the start of the seventies, the US seemed to me a shattered wasteland. The Vietnam War was in its most destructive phase, the civil rights movement was splintered, and a deranged president was still in power. Anything I’d done as part of the counter culture felt like this picture, putting a single used can in a trash can that would never be emptied.
But I chose to keep doing it, in my own way, in the following decades. But while on the surface, things got marginally better for people of color, women, LGBTQIA+, and the environment, nothing in the fabric of US society really changed. The military-industrial complex still ruled, capitalism was the religion, and white male supremacy remained unchallenged in any fundamental way. The two parties ruled the political scene showing a limited range from far right to the slightly left of center liberals. Republicans had embraced racism as a core value during Nixon’s reign, and have become more and more open about it until they were openly welcoming white supremacists and the KKK. The Democrats, after getting trounced behind a modestly progressive candidate in George McGovern, move steadily rightward; by the time Bill Clinton became president, his politics were about the same as Nixon’s in many ways.
Now we are facing a one-party state by 2024. The Democrats will probably lose control of both House and Senate nationally in 2022, the majority of state will remain under Republican control, and gerrymandering will ensure that things remain so for the foreseeable future. The Supreme Court has already become an arm of the Republican party, and even more so a part of the capitalist autocracy. I will not live long enough to see this change, if it ever does – I fear that the US is fast becoming a failed state.
I faced a little blowback over my anger at Joe Biden’s wimpy response to the Rittenhouse verdict, and for my vow to refrain from voting for moderate Democrats, including some fairly discouraging comments on my motives and understanding. I need to reiterate here that I am not a Democrat, politically speaking, I’m a socialist (although I would call myself a communalist). I am registered as a Democrat because the only alternative was registering as a Republican, or, in Indiana, the even more far-right Libertarians. I have voted for Democrats for the same reasons.
But my votes continue to make no difference, and there is no prospect that they ever will. I live in Republican districts in a Republican county in a Republican state in a Republican nation (despite Republicans being a minority nationally). No matter how I vote, Republicans will win almost every office I vote for. So I will at least limit my voting to people who approach my own beliefs, and most Democrats are no longer in that range. This will have no outcome in any election.
Any real change will have to happen through collective action against the real rulers of the country, the wealthy and the corporate elite. Until they are forced to relinquish control, nothing will change for the better in any significant way. Neither Democrats or Republicans are in charge: money is.
With the Rittenhouse verdict, and the doubtful prospects for the outcome of the lynching trial in Georgia, openly protesting against racism, sexiam, or the denial of civil rights for anyone, and even against destroying the environment, will not be safe. You will be risking your life to do so, and expending effort in a cause with little hope of making a difference. It will be easier and safer to just give up.
But I won’t. Gotta trash that can and keep the wasteland a tiny bit cleaner.
A Diary of Interesting Times 