Amber (@amberausten) says if I don’t blog right now, I am not authentic. (She’s kidding of course, but I’ll take the bait.) Susan (@firecatsue) says that I need to delegate myself as the ‘authentic police’, monitoring the authenticity of everyone, calling them on their bullshit as I flash my ‘authentic police’ badge. (I made the ‘badge’ part up. Susan didn’t really say that.)
When I flash said badge, I will say simply, ‘I call bullshit’.
By the way, today, I call bullshit. There is so much bullshit out there today in the media, where we give people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh (and calling them ‘people’ makes me cringe) a loud and largely heard voice as they spew lies and nonsense. Every man is a stage, says Shakespeare.
I long for the day those stages turn as Solomon’s building of salt turned – into dust.
Are the lies harmless? Susan says, no, but she also believes that frothing up the American public with lies and bigotry, misinformation and twisted, hateful reasoning is the only way to get to the ‘other’ side – the side where there’s light and reasonable, honest dialogue about our differences, our uniqueness, our pressing needs, not just locally, nationally, but globally.
For me, the Becks of the world, including anyone who turns him on and actually listens with respect to his violent voice, are living lives that are untrue – not-authentic. I call bullshit.
Let’s be clear. I hate the word ‘authentic’, unless of course you’re making a distinction between faux and authentic marble. We are all ‘real’. We are all ‘authentic. We’re all made of atoms and DNA, energy and matter. All of us.
That means, yes, even the African American President of the United States, born in Hawaii, of a Kenyan father, is authentic, like his, dare I say it, birth certificate. And he deserves respect as a leader, as an educated man, as a flawed man, as a father, a son, a husband, a basketball player.
The issues that go with the office of that man are being lost in a sea of violent, dangerous, hate-stirring lies perpetrated by media monsters and tea baggers and people so afraid of their own shadows that they’ve created a monster in every room; and they’re creating those monsters for their children – a new generation of hateful, fearful, unquestioning people who somehow think racism and its many facets is ‘normal’.
We are one. As Susan says, we are ‘co-creating our own universe’. Co means ‘together’. It means what I do or say is affecting what you do, what he does, what “THEY” do. A quick study in physics 101 will clarify that one action begets another. Something in motion will stay in motion. Something stagnant will beget inertia.
We are one. We can co-create a better universe just by virtue of staying in motion – by being active, being activists, not being stagnant and allowing inertia to keep us from talking about and effecting change.
The sooner we realize as a society that we are all responsible for our own behavior, that as Amber says, if you’re to be ‘authentic’ you simply must remain true to yourself AND to others, the more effective activists we’ll all be. That means that you – all of us – have a responsibility to know the truth. That means we can teach our children not to be afraid; to understand that we are all one, that racism and bigotry on any level, in any guise, is dangerous. That the real ‘bogeyman’ is racism and the only thing to truly fear is elitism because it’s based in hatred, in the idea that some of us are ‘better’ than others.
Susan says we’ve already opened Pandora’s box. The theater will have to go dark before the light can come back in again. The stages must first turn to salt.
We’re heading full speed ahead to the dark side right now – and that’s not to say we aren’t becoming more ‘enlightened’ along the way – maybe some of us are. I hope so.
I’m just worried about the ‘theys’ who aren’t concerned with reaching the light, unless it means the end of the world and a lake of fire and man named Jesus coming to take the whitest ones with them; you know, the ones who hate government and taxes and dirty immigrants.
Frankly, I’m just worried.
Susan says we’re living during the fall of Rome. We are living lives of excess with an uncontrollable, insatiable thirst for adrenaline inducing thrills and, yes, lies. We are fed by our frustration with our imperfect lives. In a search for endless distraction, we are listening and giving credent voice to mentally ill, Palin-esque narcissists who have no regard for honor or truth or, heaven forbid, facts.
This post is a bit of a downer. I get that. It’s o.k. Playing Pollyanna all the time, 24/7, can be a bit, let’s say, tedious. It’s hard not to let the concern slip out. So, for this post, I’m letting Pollyanna take a rest.
Check this post on Alternet out – how Beck and his ilk are inciting an Orwellian society – not kidding. http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/08/30/how-glenn-becks-perversion-of-dr-kings-vision-is-proof-positive-of-orwells-wisdom/
How’s your attitude coming along these days?
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