The race
It's Tuesday November 6 in Australia.
The day of the race.
Unlike America's Tuesday race, businesses here actually close. People dress up and then get ridiculously trashed or "pissed" and destroy their hairdos and outfits in a glorious party that will only be repeated once per year.
I get the impression it's something like how American Halloween sort of marks the festive party beginning of the winter holiday season.
Except that it is summer here.
And this race involves horses.
As a horse lover, I of course find nearly nothing enjoyable about the whole thing except to watch those creatures running. Which is the smallest part of the race day. Carnival weekend. Whatever.
It's 80 Fahrenheit today and windy as can be. Perfect for running, the wind dried any sweating and kept me cooler than I would have been.
I unexpectedly got the day off (due to the race) and got to talk to my April.
With all this free time on my hands, I have experienced a beautiful yoga practice this morning and now can commence to shape the flat to my liking. Oh. Happy freedom.
But about the election.
I read an article about the abstainers and their reasons for not voting. Nearly 100% of them were progressives. And young.
Something about us, my generation, we don't seem to have the gift of the long view.
The lesser of 2 evils is often the way it is. And it's often the way it goes, heading toward progress. We don't expect our first job offers to be the dream job, but we take the best we can and work it until something even greater opens up, and we are more ready for it's particular responsibilities.
Why do we think that there will be a viable candidate who will put an immediate end to military aggression? Or one that will legalize gay marriage and end the war on drugs tomorrow? Do we really expect that there will be a candidate that stops oil and coal subsidies right away, who demands women are paid equally and education gets all the funding it could possibly need?
Here is a suggestion of what I think we should do......
We use our ideals to feed our imagination, our creativity about how to build a better world. We use them to nourish our hopes and keep us buoyant in what is often a dark and cold ocean of existence.
But when it comes to action in the present tense, we must use what we have now, not to romanticize the ordinary, but to use it as a means. God. I waited my whole life for a candidate I felt decent about voting for. Not to say I haven't voted for the lesser of evils before, but I hoped.
I imagine there are progressive idealists all over the USA who don't vote for whatever reason, mostly that the system isn't ideal or the candidate isn't ideal. And, I just can't help feeling that non participation is not working. It doesn't say much of anything to anyone.
What's that saying I remember from the wall of my high school US history classroom?
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Not that the other side is evil.
They just don't strongly believe in women's rights or gay rights or environmental quality rights or education rights or health care rights. They believe money comes first. That economy comes first.
It's a perfectly legitimate view.
It just isn't my view.
And in our hearts, I don't think it represents most American's views either.
The day of the race.
Unlike America's Tuesday race, businesses here actually close. People dress up and then get ridiculously trashed or "pissed" and destroy their hairdos and outfits in a glorious party that will only be repeated once per year.
I get the impression it's something like how American Halloween sort of marks the festive party beginning of the winter holiday season.
Except that it is summer here.
And this race involves horses.
As a horse lover, I of course find nearly nothing enjoyable about the whole thing except to watch those creatures running. Which is the smallest part of the race day. Carnival weekend. Whatever.
It's 80 Fahrenheit today and windy as can be. Perfect for running, the wind dried any sweating and kept me cooler than I would have been.
I unexpectedly got the day off (due to the race) and got to talk to my April.
With all this free time on my hands, I have experienced a beautiful yoga practice this morning and now can commence to shape the flat to my liking. Oh. Happy freedom.
But about the election.
I read an article about the abstainers and their reasons for not voting. Nearly 100% of them were progressives. And young.
Something about us, my generation, we don't seem to have the gift of the long view.
The lesser of 2 evils is often the way it is. And it's often the way it goes, heading toward progress. We don't expect our first job offers to be the dream job, but we take the best we can and work it until something even greater opens up, and we are more ready for it's particular responsibilities.
Why do we think that there will be a viable candidate who will put an immediate end to military aggression? Or one that will legalize gay marriage and end the war on drugs tomorrow? Do we really expect that there will be a candidate that stops oil and coal subsidies right away, who demands women are paid equally and education gets all the funding it could possibly need?
Here is a suggestion of what I think we should do......
We use our ideals to feed our imagination, our creativity about how to build a better world. We use them to nourish our hopes and keep us buoyant in what is often a dark and cold ocean of existence.
But when it comes to action in the present tense, we must use what we have now, not to romanticize the ordinary, but to use it as a means. God. I waited my whole life for a candidate I felt decent about voting for. Not to say I haven't voted for the lesser of evils before, but I hoped.
I imagine there are progressive idealists all over the USA who don't vote for whatever reason, mostly that the system isn't ideal or the candidate isn't ideal. And, I just can't help feeling that non participation is not working. It doesn't say much of anything to anyone.
What's that saying I remember from the wall of my high school US history classroom?
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Not that the other side is evil.
They just don't strongly believe in women's rights or gay rights or environmental quality rights or education rights or health care rights. They believe money comes first. That economy comes first.
It's a perfectly legitimate view.
It just isn't my view.
And in our hearts, I don't think it represents most American's views either.
posted by hymenoptera's honey at 9:03 PM
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