CHAZAH

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29th, 2007

CHAZAH
--To gaze

WHO IS IT who wrote: Without A Vision, The People Perish (?) It is timely to consider this bit of wisdom for me I think because I think this people, these citizens of the United States of America, need some thing besides the pain and fear chronicles with which we’ve been subject for these countless decades.
If you grew up in the 50’s it was natural to be scared and to rebel. You had the bomb and Red Menace and you built your career around that, baiting and debating it, chasing reds or outing writers in Hollywood. But what now? Muslims are evil? There’s a terrorist under every turban or burka? What kind of image of stupidity is that? Vision? What has 4 eyes and cannot see? Mississippi. Are we that dumb? Burka’s aren’t even in our dictionaries. They’re red-flagged by the writing programs, unless we turn that option off. Even this one: Burq, red-flagged. Stupid.
The thing is this: Yes, we could be afraid and hide under our beds or covers at night reading the comics by flashlight, some cheap lead-based metal thing from China, while we learn of superheroes that might save us. Short hair slicked back. Tighty-Whities underwear worn high-high up above our waists if we’re boys back then, the 50’s. Ah, the class of 57 may have had its dreams dear Statler Brothers, but what nightmares we think of now, eh? Of the phantasms you must have had flying after you. What of those our children get run down by now? What do they fear? And, why should all of these people have such fear and loathing?
Or, we could rebel against the prevailing winds/conventional wisdom, and say, perennially: The Emperor Is Naked. Naked and Stupid. We have to have someone saying that, forever. Forever and a day, just like, we have to have people saying what needs to be said; the real truth, what’s politically correct is to say, yes, it is hot in here, or it stinks, etc. Just remember, when the stop light is red, to stop however, because we can’t just for the fun of it yell: FIRE! inside a crowded theatre, because some of us want to watch the show, in its entirety, without interruption.
Yes, occasionally, late at night, with only a few people in there, you can maybe ride your Peugeot Mo-Ped inside the theatre, down to the screen in front, wave to the projectionist in back, if he were looking, and then ride back out, through the lobby, and just be on your way home. Maybe you’ll get a ticket for stopping not long enough at a stop sign on a hill that your feet have to come off your pedals and an overly-aggressive cop in the area that every one hates, may write you up; maybe you won’t. Yes, occasionally one can and should be able to do that Mo-Ped Movie Theatre Run, and one should for sure DARE to do that and indeed for sure DO IT! But, we can’t be all doom and gloom, Doom and Gloom, DOOM & GLOOM. We grow tired of it. It doesn’t help forever. It doesn’t get us very far.
Our country was founded in turbulent times, built on philosophies borrowed by the French and written by smart guy lawyer’s way back when. It was a positive and possible movement which caught fire and like a wildfire spread heartily, as a disease, and formed a nation, a congress, a people, a legend, an ideal, a vision. But what is our vision now?
What/Who will help us with a vision for the next couple of decades? Non-Interventionism? Cleaning up the miasma that is the quagmire of Afghanistan/Somalia/Serbia/Croatia/Iraq? Producing finally, a workable Health Care Program, which is again based on something the French people have? But something twisted to fit our Bureaucratic Nonsense that is our wit and wisdom, our conurbations and way? I think so, and I certainly hope so. Woe unto those candidates who cannot come up in 2008 with some kind of sense making platitudes through which we as a people and individually will have to live with after deciding alone in our quietest moment, who will be the next president of these till (?) United States.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but Rome did fall. How long has it been for the United States? Where will we go? We almost lost it a long time ago, and it wasn’t all about slavery, but money pure and simple, keeping a people from gaining a foothold in the world. How dare you keep us from earning our keep? Don’t you dare cut us off of our livelihood. We want to continue to make that filthy lucre to be able to buzz off in our virtual worlds every now and then and escape the unanswerable questions of global this/that and every thing else. Who cares about any of this whack if we can’t figure any of it out? Let’s keep on dancing, let’s break out the booze and have a ball, if that’s all there is.
Depressing. I’ve had enough of it. Driving down the road once with Peter Drucker, Business Management Guru, and he said to me: “I don’t get depressed, I get busy,” indeed. Get busy, but a lot of roads there are to hell if you get with the best intentions vein. Look, there’s all this death and utter destruction in the desert miles & miles and a day away from here. What in the HELL are we doing over there? Why can’t we get out? How do we do it? We need a vision, else we’ll surely perish. Don’t want to be all doom and gloom on you or any one, but so too, I don’t want to be all Pollyanna sweet, pure-bread. That’s just as dumb as fear and loathing.

“Without a vision, the people perish.” –Proverbs: 29:18 Author unknown