THE REVOLUTION IS HERE

I am a late bloomer. I hit college in my late twenties already having suffered the strains of the typical working life, having three children, and having been married then divorced again. I was excited to start this new venture and had an idealized vision of an intellectual life where I would sit around with other passionate people discussing art and literature and politics and how we could make the world a better place.

I was sadly disappointed.

There were a few of us here and there but the level of discussion that I had dreamt of was not to be found during that time. Oh, there were other places in the world where one could walk along the street and into a café and chat with others about such and such bill being passed and about all the important changes happening in the community and in the world. That place was not where I was however. It was a ‘commuter’ college. People were desperately trying to finish their degrees and had little time for being involved in the machinations of potential political change or in intellectual social life. Poetry readings were rare and were usually put on by me. The level of apathy and lack of interest in the world were profound. People didn’t see themselves as part of a community of any kind, didn’t see their involvement in the outside world as anything that might bring benefit to their own lives. They were therefore unconcerned about changes that were going on- and there were immense changes.

It didn’t surprise me that over the next ten years our civil liberties were slowly taken away from us. It was a sleepy hostile takeover that most people didn’t even bother to roll over in beds and acknowledge.

I was determined that as my children grew that they would have a knowledge of the constitution and government. The majority of people in this country don’t even have a cursory knowledge of the constitution. The American Constitution is one of the most innovative groundbreaking pieces of literature has ever been written. It has been also a living document that was evolved with the needs of its people. In terms of all the things that came before it, it was indeed audacious. It was part of a way of thinking that wasn’t just revolutionary for America but also for the world.

You can be fairly sure in those exciting and unsettling times every person in America, such as it was, had an opinion about politics and the government. What a different world it was when I was in college! You had your occasional Go Green! fanatic but for the most part there was a dearth of people willing to care about the terrible changes that were occurring around us.

A decade passed and I fell into the malaise that I knew most people had fallen into. I lost faith in the ability of real people to make any substantial change. Things weren’t very bad, they just weren’t very good. The first years of the new millennium were marked with the kind of constraint that wreaked of McCarthyism, but we have great cell phone coverage now and Ipods and dvd players in our cars. People rarely change unless things are bad.

But it is clear that we are now ripe for change. The Bush administration reports that the economy isn’t as bad as it seems though the price of food and fuel have risen dramatically in the last year. Even in the town where I live signs have gone up all over banning large bags taken into stores, a sure sign that shoplifting is on the rise. The middle class has gotten smaller and people with nicer cars are showing up, bewildered, in charity food lines.

The fists of Americans have drawn tight around what little they have left as they lose their houses and their credit and the dreams promised to them as their birthright. They blame the poor and the immigrants and the other political party and people of other religious persuasions. And their government, the one that took away their civil rights and supported decisions which robbed them of their prosperity- their government often supports these accusations.

What a diversionary tactic.

Most sad of all is the fact that for Americans, the world is getting smaller and smaller. We have made enemies of many groups and countries. We have isolated ourselves. That isolation has not brought us greater abundance or security and it certainly hasn’t brought us any friends.

Almost seven years ago when the twin towers went down and we had the sympathetic eyes and ears of the world upon us, when flags were flown at half mast in the countries of the world, including Iran, we did not rise to the occasion. We did not remember any of the values that this country was built upon and we did not honor any spiritual values whatsoever. We acted in wrath. We brought two countries to its knees in search of one sickly man and in the end it was a feat which brought no glory or resolution. Our leader declared that we were to be afraid, that we had enemies. The conquest of these countries was done first in the name of ending terrorism, although we acted like the greatest terrorists of all. Countless innocent men, women, and children died in the name of ending this supposed tyranny. We even stayed in those countries in the name of acting for the greater good of their people, though the people of those countries do not want us there.

I have witnessed these things in the last ten years and I must admit that I had grown jaded and petulant at the thought of anything significant ever changing in this country. The people of this country had grown afraid of helping create any change within the structure of the government that is supposed to serve them. “You can’t fight city hall.”

But a few weeks ago this changed for me. I went with my daughter, who is now in college, to a conference with other students, teachers, and commentators. I listened to people that cared about this nation and who had a vision for what could be. These were people who were different, even had different political party affiliations, religious affiliations, and sympathies. These were not mere critics of the system as so many of us are. They had a dialogue that was astounding. This was not the usual party to party issue shouting that you see so often. These were people that were open to the differences and the places where they met in the middle. And though I was a child among adults in terms of the concrete knowledge I had in areas of world economics, I found myself talking and hoping. I found myself dreaming once again of a new way of doing things. I opened my eyes and saw that a new revolution was starting, the likes of which this nation and world has never seen before. We might all have different religious ideologies and cultural differences. We can honor that and still find a place to meet in the middle.

So often we forget that all human beings want the same things: sustenance; shelter; a respectable way of earning those things; and good health. So often we forget the natural laws that govern these, of doing to others what we would want done to us. The law of abundance states that for all the good things we get, sharing a portion of that and not holding onto it with tight fists means that more can come to us.

There is much work to be done in this nation. We are at a critical point in our evolution as a society and for many of us, as human beings. But we are ready for a revolution. We are ready to see what a society looks like that embraces diversity in opinion and still manages to be grounded in our humanity. We must be human beings first and Americans second.

My name is Jacqueline Bass. I am a one girl revolution. This is a political blog.

"Be the change you want to see in the world." – Ghandi
“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.” - Confuscius
“I am only one, but I am still one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”
Helen Keller