No Easy Answers

I was reading this series of essays in Harper's Magazine called Undoing Bush. It was a long article for a magazine, almost 20 pages of text, but I was struck by a feeling of immediate mistrust, the headline read like a fad diet or something like "Take OFF Twenty Pounds in a Week Without Dieting or Exercise!!!". What's disturbing is not the substance of the essays, there are some great ideas, but the idea that a Presidential election will suddenly solve all of our serious national problems.

I used to be a part of the crowd that believed that a change of political parties would solve all of our problems. After six years of a Republican majority, I believed we would see significant change with the election of a Democratic majority. I thought my blogging days were over, and I could go back to playing around in my garden, and watching the Gilmore Girls. But since we elected the Democrats, we are still at war in Iraq, we still hold detainees illegally at Guantanamo, and while the Democrats did the right thing by calling for a timetable for withdrawal attached to the war funding bill, they caved after a Presidential veto.

That was fast. And the last episode of the Gilmore Girls aired last Tuesday.

Read this piece at Tomdispatch by Chalmers Johnson. It's long, but it's brave and true, and the conclusion that I have drawn from reading it is this:

The only solution is revolution. A radical change in the way Washington does business. A complete reform of campaign contributions, and the dismantling of our military-industrial-congressional-complex. True oversight by Congress and the Courts, and a constituency that is truly informed by the press and involved in the process of governing.

Shit. I really was looking forward to a my middle years spent gardening or knitting. But I'm a lousy gardener, and since I can't spend Tuesdays oogling Lorelai Gilmore, I guess I will continue to search for better answers.

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