There's a scene in John Boorman's film Hope and Glory, that took me straight back to grade school. In that scene, a teacher proudly smacks, with a long wooden pointer, all the "pink bits" of British colonial holdings on a map of the world.
Many years ago my own third grade teacher had smacked with her wooden pointer all the counties on a map of Kansas that could be "taken over by Democrats in the next election." Her announcement terrified me. My young brain -- obviously already messed with by conservative Kansas politics -- understood the message as equivalent to being seized by the communists. At the time, of course, I could not have told you what a communist or a democrat was or, for that matter, a republican. I just knew it had something to do with elections (whatever those were) and that it sounded like a very bad thing could happen.
Other than that, state and national politics had not been of huge interest in my life, even though I occasionally had to laugh at the irony of being a left-leaning Democrat who had lived the first few years of her life on the banks of the Republican River.
The section of the Republican River I grew up on as seen today via Google Earth. The Kansas Landscape Arboretum (marker A) sits on what was my grandparents' farm before the Army Corps of Engineers took it for construction of the Milford Dam and Reservoir (another reason I might be interested in politics and social-uplift environmentalism).
My interest spiked in election years, at which time I'd scurry around trying to inform myself about candidates and issues. But after the polls closed and winners were announced, I'd reinvest in other pursuits. If my candidates won, I trusted they would do their best to represent my interests. If the other guy won, I trusted that he or she would at least represent the interests of fundamentally good citizens who elected them. In four years we might be in a little bit different place than I would have wanted, but we would not, as a nation, be in irreparable trouble. That's what I thought...
Until 9-11 and the war on Iraq, that is. Over those 2-3 years, the disjuncture between what seemed to be becoming of America and what I had imagined (or desired) was becoming of America started to look as huge and uncrossable as the Grand Canyon. Of course, there is an alternative to crossing the Grand Canyon, and that's going down it.
Sometimes I feel like that's the wild ride I chose when I decided to become a better informed and engaged citizen. Whenever I've taken on exploration of new territory, I've often felt like I temporarily left all else behind. Eventually, though, all that was left behind starts to re-emerge -- by bits and pieces -- for integration into a larger, more complex, less certain view of the world.
I've certainly cultivated a deeper interest in politics over time, but one that cannot be isolated from my personal, relational, spiritual or professional paths. If I were to list some of my favorite books about politics, I'd have to include the Tao te Ching (Lao-tzu), The Art of War (Sun Tsu), The Evolution of Man (Nada-Yolanda), The Political Mind (George Lakoff), The Political Brain (Drew Westen), and The Emotional Life of Nations (Lloyd DeMause).
Despite the chaos and complexity that enfolds my relationship to political spheres of life on Earth, I occasionally have a very clear and simple experience that brings on something new...like this blog. I'm doing this blog because of Zack Wamp. Sometimes a politician says something so wildly outrageous that I am inspired to new heights of creativity, new dimensions of action. Here's how Jeff Woods, in his Pith in the Wind blog at Nashville Scene, presented the quote by Wamp that inspired me so:
In the world according to Zach Wamp, it's good for the environment--and particularly for birds, it seems--for coal companies to blow the tops off our mountains. Asked at today's GOP debate why a bill banning the devastating mining method known as mountaintop removal keeps failing in the legislature, Wamp gave this incredible response:
"The way it's done today is very responsible. We need an all-of-the-above energy strategy in our country, and we need all the economic opportunities that we can bring to our state. This is done in a responsible way. I sat around a campfire in Campbell County with all the experts--biologists, geologists, fish and wildlife--and it's actually good for the birds, and good for the environment, good for our natural environment in this state to actually mine coal in a responsible way. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. We need the energy."
Anybody who lives near a mountaintop removal operation can confirm that blowing the tops off mountains is, by definition, an irresponsible act. And, no, Wamp is not the only Tennessee politician who thinks like that, which is why his statement fired me up -- it just reminded me of all the legislation introduced in Tennessee over the past two or three years that seems hell bent on destroying the state's land and resources, and limiting the power of its diverse citizenry in deference to its corporate rich and famous.
So -- fair warning in the interest of transparency and disclosure of possible bias -- I'll be using this blog as a soapbox from which to discharge frustration, share links to other news and opinions, weave in my views from political psychology and psychoanalysis, and think out loud about a positive transformation of political institutions.
