Friday, December 31, 2004
Wild Changes
In a few hours, 2004 will be history. I'd be tempted to say, "good riddance," if I wasn't afraid 2005 is going to be worse. Peter Schrag of the Sacramento Bee:
But then again, as I wrote before Christmas, "Hope is the last thing left in Pandora's Box after all the world's evils are loosed." Which is why--in full acknowledgment of my own pessimism--I'd like to leave you for the year with a post from Tom Engelhardt's blog, TomDispatch (another good one I don't read often enough). Engelhardt posts an article by Rebecca Solnit, who is as optimistic about the future as anyone I've read in a long while. She says that while events of 2004 looked hugely important to those of us in the middle of them, historians will see the year differently:
Solnit finds no reason to believe that the "stream of wild changes" won't keep flowing.
In his introduction, Engelhardt writes of another hopeful sign for the future:
And so, 2005, here we come. This is the final Daily Aneurysm post for 2004. If you'd like to revisit some of my favorite posts of the year, they're here. Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year to all.
In a few hours, 2004 will be history. I'd be tempted to say, "good riddance," if I wasn't afraid 2005 is going to be worse. Peter Schrag of the Sacramento Bee:
But never in the memory of the living generation have the errors, falsifications and unreason of policy come in such rapid and overwhelming succession that each buries its predecessor before it's even partially absorbed, much less understood.There's little reason to think that one morning in the coming year, the American people will collectively awaken and suddenly see their country clearly and whole, and thus, little reason for optimism as we approach 2005.
The result is an historic dynamic of error, dishonesty and corruption that's far more frightening than any individual event. The counterpoint of revelations of flawed and myopic foreign policy decisions against the deepening quagmire overseas is itself so overwhelming that most people must have trouble keeping track of it.
But then again, as I wrote before Christmas, "Hope is the last thing left in Pandora's Box after all the world's evils are loosed." Which is why--in full acknowledgment of my own pessimism--I'd like to leave you for the year with a post from Tom Engelhardt's blog, TomDispatch (another good one I don't read often enough). Engelhardt posts an article by Rebecca Solnit, who is as optimistic about the future as anyone I've read in a long while. She says that while events of 2004 looked hugely important to those of us in the middle of them, historians will see the year differently:
[H]istory will remember 2004 not with the microscopic lens of we who lived through it the way aphids traverse a rose, but with a telescopic eye that sees it as part of the stream of wild changes that exploded in 1989 in one of the greatest years of revolutions the world has ever seen, the first great harvest of seeds sown years and decades before.She's talking about Tienanmen Square, the Solidarity movement in Poland, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the demise of the Soviet Union, the end of apartheid in South Africa, and other liberations in other places. In this year alone, she says, progressivism was on the march in places not accustomed to it, such as Venezuela, Uruguay and Chile, and in the Ukraine. And all of these movements came not from the primary political actors of the time, but from below, when people decided they'd had enough.
Solnit finds no reason to believe that the "stream of wild changes" won't keep flowing.
The US election was bound to be depressing, since its very nature was to fix our gaze upon national electoral politics, the arena in which they have lots of power and we have hardly any. At these times, the world is organized like a theater; politicians are what's on stage; and the message is that this and nowhere else is where the fate of the world is decided. It's easy to let your gaze lock onto the limelight, helped along by all the mainstream media. And staring at a bright light makes it hard to see in the dark areas around and beyond. It takes time for your eyes to adjust. The brightly lit stage is an arena of tremendous power, but of almost no creativity. Much is decided there, but what is at stake comes from elsewhere. I wonder nowadays if the fear of the Other -- communists, gays, lesbians, immigrants, terrorists -- displaces into safe terms the very real recognition that change comes from the edge. Those with a stake in the status quo are there to protect the center not just from assault, but from imagination and transformation. But change will come anyway.The question is whether that change can come fast enough to save our asses. As Engelhardt writes in his introduction, "I fear we don't have the stretches of time that all complex movements need to come into their own, not with an administration so intent on eating the Earth." That's my fear also. Buckle up and we'll see what happens.
In his introduction, Engelhardt writes of another hopeful sign for the future:
In a mere three years, the flickering of a historical eyelash, he [George W. Bush] almost single-handedly has given life and vitality to the political Internet, while creating an antiwar and anti-him movement of surprising size, one that nearly lifted a recalcitrant candidate into the presidency. What took the right in America years and years after the Goldwater debacle of 1964, we -- whoever or whatever we are in this strange, new world -- seem to be doing at a double-march pace. It's invigorating to watch. Imagine, then, along with all the expectable destruction and mayhem, what our President might be capable of producing in the four years to come.Despite the electoral defeat of the left in 2004, despite all the rhetoric from the right that says we should sit down, shut up, and do as we're told, this defeat does not necessarily represent destruction. We have the will to rise again.
And so, 2005, here we come. This is the final Daily Aneurysm post for 2004. If you'd like to revisit some of my favorite posts of the year, they're here. Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year to all.
