Solemn Hope

I had planned on posting something on Occupy Cincinnati today; however, this is huge. It was Iraq that helped reactivate, for better or worse, The_Wizard politically, got me into this blogging game.  While I have my grave concerns about the President's commitment to the poor, working and middle class, I am not blind to the contrasts between this president and his predecessor.

It is not lost on most of us that this president has been hired to clean up the previous president's gigantic, horrendous fuck-ups, a thankless job. If there is anything to be gleaned from the two videos, it’s the humility on President Obama's part. He didn't parachute onto an aircraft carrier or anything so ostentatious. No, he solemnly, delivered the news we've been waiting for these nine years, resigned to reality of what we have lost on this fool's errand.  There's no party here; the broken hearts of tens of thousands mean that no champagne should be popped. You cannot celebrate this as a victory, because we have won nothing. You can hug a veteran, and buy that person a beer. That is the least we can do.  We didn't win anything.

Contrasting this to the PR hand job Bush foisted upon us all, and the cruel cynicism of that administration is laid bare once again, like a festering wound who's scab will not stay put.  We did this for no good reason. And he threw a party eight years ago to celebrate, with all the self-aggrandizing of an idiot Caesar. He was that stupid; his people thought we were, too.

And this seems to have been the millennial narrative written by the cold warriors hell bent on keeping the future at bay, and continue in that capacity as they demonize our slow collective realization that we are entitled to a better today, and tomorrow, than these greedy, evil motherfuckers think we are, and today, as with the past few months with the Occupations, we may yet get there.

A popular talking point with those who fear tomorrow belies the tenacity of yesterday: Quit Blaming Bush. Obama is President, and what’s he done? 

Rather than list accomplishments in an attempt to persuade the persuadable or anything like that, I would remind people that Bush really fucked things up. REALLY. FUCKED. THINGS. UP.  And while Obama, as I wrote at the outset, often gives me pause, I cannot, in all fairness, forget the nightmare of incompetence, old paradigms, cronyism and paranoia that came before, nor can I pretend that many of the same actors, or their facsimiles, would love nothing more than to bring back the “good old days”.   However much of a shit sandwich it maybe for me and my politics, I will be compelled to vote against such backsliding in 2012.

Meditations on Unemployment, Politics and the Summer of Despair

For the past couple years, as the Ohio Collegiate restructuring unfolded, the angst and dread over my future, both as an academic and a rent payer,  have sought long distance, off peak, and sometimes beer fueled (on my end) conversations with my dear friend, colleague (is it weird to still have colleagues when one no longer has an institution?) and mentor Susan Naomi Bernstein. I have always found her counsel wise, her optimism heartening, and the integrity of not only her pedagogy but the world view from which it sprang to be both a comfort and a battle cry: Tikkun Olam. Heal the World.

This hasn’t always been easy, and I’ve found myself of late reflecting her moral authority back, her counsel. Like many Americans, including this one writing, she has found herself on the outside looking in, between positions…euphemisms aside, she, like me, and like the over 9 percent of Americans (this, of course, does not include those who are no longer eligible for assistance) are on their asses and without work. And like many Americans, it is difficult to maintain any sense of optimism and not giving in to despair when the news is almost invariably shitty. 

This summer has been particularly difficult for both of us; both of us have been engaged in exhausting—and disappointing—job searches and interview processes.  I have been teaching, finishing a thirty credit hour graduate certificate, for five years (autumn, winter, spring, summer, rinse, repeat) knowing that my department would likely be dissolved, and for the last year, knowing that my contract would not be renewed, and I would teach my last class the night before I was officially separated.  On top of this, we both lost a friend, colleague, inspiration and beer buddy, Adam Vine, to the lightless void of suicide.

Through on top of that the ridiculous Rochambeau of our politics, the overheated rhetoric of the Dick Armey’s 2010 useful congressional idiots, the spineless pandering of the President, who we had invested so much into and seemed to be just another spokes model for the crypto-Reagonomics of the Clinton- era “Neo”Liberalism (or, when the New Left decided to work at Dad’s bank and go to Dead shows on the weekend), things seemed bleak. Depression and hopelessness set in: exhausted, and it seemed that the bad guys would win.  The America that had the promise to change things, to continue toward that more perfect union, that could build things and create living wages, the America that if you worked hard, found your niche, had a place for you…vamos.  If Richard III saw that “Now is the winter of our discontent…”, this was surely the Summer of our Despair.  Or, to quote Jim Lahey “the winds of shit” seemed to be swirling, and nobody has a jacket.