American Identity Issue

[W]hat really stood out about this last year is Trump himself. He is such a unique figure in our time. He’s kind of the perfect foil to reflect everything that’s excessive and vulgar and disgusting and tasteless and cheap and greedy about American culture. He is the perfect mirror to reflect everything about our society. — Matt Taibbi

Our president is not only the leader of the Executive branch of our government. In many ways, the president represents our national image, both domestically and internationally. Change is upon us. Elections have consequences. It is more than having one leader and then another. It is more than a transfer of power—it also represents a new image of who we are. With the transfer of power, we are also transferring the image of America that reflects our society and our culture.

This election forces us to raise several large questions about the nature of the American Identity and how it changes.

Are we an exceptional country because we are the leader of the free world? Was it ever true or a willing self-deception?

Must we hold the high ground as leaders of fairness and justice for all?

Are politics a Republican zero-sum game or a Democratic “all-for-one, one-for-all” mentality? Or is it the case, as author Stephen Kinzer thinks, that America has a divided soul (see Luke Wallin’s article)?

Is it the case, as Naomi Klein has said, that climate change implies the end of capitalism, because capitalism implies unlimited growth and climate change means embracing the limits of our planet’s resources?

Is racism a significant limiting force in our culture? What is racism? Is it a universal characteristic of the human species controlled by “civilized” rules and regulations (see John Peterson’s article)?

Are women’s issues human issues? Is feminism necessary as an antidote to misogyny (see “Four Million Marchers in 600 Cities”)?

To what extent is the discrepancy in our wealth an indication of the discrepancies in our morality?

Are we predominantly a nation following the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?” or “Whoever has the gold makes the rules?”

Where does Trump stand on all these issues? Where did Obama stand? How important is it what their stance is? Are we an authoritarian tribal fortress America or a cool and rational, deliberate, shared-responsibility America? How much does the president reflect who we are?

These are all questions that we would like to try and address in this and coming issues of Sisyphus. This issue is focused on American Identity. In this issue, the authors and artists struggle with our challenges as a nation, with our history of inequality, but are engaged in finding those random acts of beauty that shed light on what it means to be an American, to transcend the chaos of change that threatens to engulf us all. Art reminds us of the optimism of the culture, and a time when the spirit of cooperation was a guiding force. We reach out to our readers to continue to keep all voices heard. We have included links to inspirational speeches and organizational guides. There are essays about globalism versus populism, and warnings about the re-emergence of the Southern Strategy. There are poems about civil rights struggles, LGBTQ issues, loss and grief. There are photo essays on Alienation, The Women’s March, the beauty in the comings and goings of average Americans travelling in the United States. Where are we, as a nation, going?

These times are unprecedented. They are not normal. As we struggle to find a path in this new version of our American Identity, we count on artists, philosophers, and thinkers to help us find the way to the soul of who we are as people. Cultural shift is upon us and we must find an oasis, a light to guide the way.

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. ­— Edith Wharton, novelist (1861-1937)

The following is about the feeling of loss because of mis-set expectations.

 
We go through the house
room by room
boxing all our belongings.
Outside it is raining,
cars shining and wet.
Somehow, something was lost
and it cannot be found.
Still, we count everything twice,
until it no longer matters,
no longer makes sense to look for it.
What is broken cannot be unbroken.
But the house holds us quiet.
It’s as if someone fell asleep in a doorway,
a sense of something about to happen,
of the waiting of children
in a winter air,
and a warm room, floor furnace on.

It does not serve
that there is no forgiveness
or finding of fault.

Our present lives we never count.
Our pasts we cast off.
Our stories suddenly set sail without us
by moonlight
and we are alone in the dark.
Seas are rising.

We touch one another,
hands, eyes, tongues,
breathing odors of surrender.

We can no longer stand upright.
Empty houses, dogs barking,
the waiting of our children
like pieces of a manuscript
blown across a parking lot.

When I was 10 years old, I had the unusual experience of walking down Market Street in San Francisco with my art teacher and my best friend. As we looked out at the big city, with its vast array of businessmen and homeless people, my art teacher leaned over us and said: “I want you to look at each person we pass and find the beauty in their uniqueness. In each wrinkle stemming from that man’s eyes, or the freckled skin of that boy’s face, or the curve of the old lady’s back. I want you to look carefully, and find their beauty.” It was a difficult assignment and it took some time, but eventually we learned to find that beauty. That day shifted the way I see the world.

Years later, as I sat waiting for my flight at the Miami International Airport, I fell in love with the individuals surrounding me. As I became curious about the people who were sharing the complex crossroads of North, East, South, and West, this project was conceived. I photographed and interviewed over 200 people for this body of work. Going behind security, hanging out with Cuban families at the Customs exit and approaching complete strangers were all part of the process. The generosity of the participants was exquisite; no two interactions were alike. The resulting exhibition aims to shift the context in which nameless and unfamiliar faces are often seen, making the invisible – visible.

Thinking of each person as an individual thread, with an origin and destination, this exhibition explores the beauty of the ever-changing tapestry of humanity present at any given moment.

Washington, DC to Quito, Ecuador

Maria Olga is from a small town in Ecuador and is a live-in domestic worker for a retired couple in Washington, D.C. She travels back to see her family for one month every year and always wears traditional clothing for her homecoming. She has been doing this for nine years. Her children are 12 and 15 years old. This trip she is surprising her husband with a brand new piano and bringing MP3 players for her kids. When apart, the family visits on Skype daily. As a child, Maria Olga wanted to be a doctor when she grew up. Her favorite color is orange.

Toronto, Canada to Quito, Ecuador

Nico is 23 years old. She left her naturopathy studies to join the Occupy movement for a year. She is traveling to join her sisters and her two-year-old nephew at her mother’s new home in Ecuador. She considers her home “anywhere my family or my heart is.” Her favorite food is anything that is vegan or raw. As a child, Nico liked to build forts and run around outside with friends. She wanted to be an astronaut when she grew up.

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic to Miami, Florida

Daniel is 19 years old. He started playing baseball when he was eight after seeing his sister play the game. Two years ago, a scout spotted him in Santo Domingo and recruited him into the minor leagues to play with the St. Louis Cardinals. This is his first trip to Miami and he has come with a purpose: to train hard so he can help his family by one day becoming a major league player. His favorite color is red.

New York, New York to Kuwait City, Kuwait

Fatma, her husband Yousef, and their kids are wrapping up a one-month vacation in America. They visited New York, San Francisco, San Diego and Disney World. This is their second trip to the states; last year they also saw Las Vegas. Back home in Kuwait, Fatma is a homemaker and Yousef is a police officer. As a child, Fatma liked to play video games and jump on the trampoline. Her favorite colors are white and pink.

Miami, Florida to Seattle, Washington

Marla met her boyfriend Jay playing the video game Call of Duty a year and a half ago. They now live together in Miami. Today they missed their flight to Seattle, where Jay’s family lives. Before she met Jay, Marla had never been on an airplane; she found it nerve-racking but cool. They both like the color blue.

Miami, Florida to Merida, Mexico

Days after receiving his law degree, Armando left Cuba because of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution. He never had a chance to practice law. In the United States, he joined the Air Force and was sent in with the Bay of Pigs invasion as a member of the assault brigade. Armando was one of the very few to make it out alive. He and his wife Elsy chose to retire in Merida, Mexico, because it reminded them of their Cuban hometown of Santa Clara. His favorite colors are red and blue.

Miami, Florida to Norfolk, Virginia

Dustin is a journalist for the U.S. Navy, joining the military after 9/11. His deployments since include “a 6-monther to the Horn of Africa, where I was working Public Affairs in Djibouti, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia.” Recently he returned from Afghanistan, where he did live radio and television broadcasting. He is now preparing to do Combat Documentation, training in S.E.R.E: Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. When he travels, he likes to dress slightly flashy. “If that bothers people, it amuses me.” He was in Miami to see WrestleMania. His favorite food is sushi.

Havana, Cuba to Miami, Florida

Miguel always wanted to go to the U.S. to build a business that helps people; he feels he is now living his dream. When he started selling Amway three months ago, he became part of a team that shows support for each other. Today, they are gathered to welcome one of the teammate’s families from Cuba. The Winnie the Pooh bear is a gift for his colleague’s daughter when she gets off the plane. After leaving the airport, the group will have a Cuban-style house party and make caldosa. Miguel studies theology, methodology, psychology and math, “everything that is about life.” His favorite color is white.

Miami, Florida to Richmond, Virginia

Rajneesh grew up in the foothills of the Himalayas. He now works in software and continues to run the antique gun business his grandfather started in India decades ago. He is traveling with his wife and children from their home in Virginia to Miami for a family wedding. While in Miami he plans to see the sites and take his kids to the Museum of Science. As a child, Rajneesh dreamed of being many things: a pilot, an astronaut, a plumber, then a car mechanic. His favorite color is green.

Spearman, Texas to Key West, Florida

Richard is 16. He is in high school and helps his father with farming and ranching. In the Spring, they brand the calves; in the summer they plow, plant, and cut wheat. He lives in Texas and is traveling to Key West for a seven-day Boy Scouts’ trip. They’ll go snorkeling and deep-sea fishing. Richard’s belt buckle is a trophy; his pig won Grand Champion at the Hansford County Stock Show. His favorite meal is steak and potatoes. When he grows up, he wants to be a veterinarian.

Nashville, Tennessee to Orlando, Florida

Matt is a senior in high school and skateboarding is his passion. While his younger sister Emily competes in a world-class archery tournament in Orlando, Matt will be visiting the skate parks, showing off his skills. He is hoping to catch the eye of a talent scout so he can attract a sponsor. He likes the color green and his favorite food is lobster.

Fort Hood, Texas to Miami, Florida

Adrian has just arrived in Miami to spend Thanksgiving with his large, extended Cuban family. He is excited about reuniting with his brother, parents, and grandmother after many years away in the military. Growing up, Adrian always knew he wanted to be a soldier. His favorite color is green.

The Dominican Republic to Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Michael is 28. He works in Afghanistan for the large corporation Honeywell, as a Senior Logistics manager helping the military with their supply needs. Previously he worked in Iraq. He gets to come home every six months for two to three weeks and spends as much time with his family as he can. Today he and his nephew are returning from the Dominican Republic where they stayed at a villa with a private cook and went clubbing every night. Michael’s favorite color is blue. If he could go anywhere in the world, he would visit Brazil to “see the attractions.”

Miami, Florida to Cairo, Egypt

Luz, a Florida housewife born in Colombia, has three children and is an advocate for Hispanic Muslim women. Today she and her Egyptian husband Khaled, who designs leather handbags, are dropping off his mother who is returning to Egypt. Luz has been on radio and television advocating for Muslim family values. “The perception that the hijab, or head scarf, degrades women is false,” she says. “On the contrary, it allows women respect and frees them from being seen as only sex objects.” Luz was drawn to Islam because “everything has logic. Everything has a ‘why.’” As a child, she liked to read. Her favorite color is green.

Las Vegas, Nevada to Miami, Florida

Olga is an aerial acrobat and flying trapeze artist. She was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her career takes her around the world; she has lived in such places as Paris and London. Today she flew into Miami for a four-day business trip with her husband, who had been traveling in Germany. As a child, Olga liked to play chess and wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up.

Miami, Florida to Flores, Guatemala

Juan has worked many different jobs during his three years in Miami. Today he is returning home to work with his family in northern Guatemala. He came to America by himself and says about Miami, “The dollars are beautiful, but nothing is here. I am not leaving anything.” He grew up around agriculture and always thought he would do that type of work one day. His favorite color is white.

To see the entire Origins and Destinations show and current projects created to promote cultural awareness, please visit the link to the artist’s website here.

For more about the development of Origins and Destinations and to be a part of the next installation, please see the Indiegogo video here.

after J.S. Bach (1865-1750)
for Nina

My efforts at writing are mainly about gratitude. Of course, being grateful doesn’t protect one from possible loss. There are always threats, and if one plants a vineyard at the edge of a glacier, it is hard to ignore that fact of life.

How slowly should we go, the age going on?
Or is it an epoch, an era or,
—perhaps nothing more or less than a stage?
I didn’t think they’d sheer us quite so close,
what with the storms approaching from the north
approaching swiftly, and the northern range,

volcanic, already burdened with snow.
The bird boxes I set out up the hill
have done their work; the young are nearly fledged.
The vines, at last, seem to be doing well,
well as expected, at a glacier’s edge.
I’m open to the weather. Idea of mine:

these lichens and mosses like you and me.
And when we’re gone, they’ll carry on, endure.
Shrug off the loss, and prosper. Even thrive.

Interview by H. Varian

Tell me a little about your art and inspiration.

I am an American storyteller.

I trained in classical Nogaku, Japanese theater developed in the Muramachi period (14th century). There are two complementary elements of the art. Noh is structured, refined, and elite. It is song and stylized dance, historical, literarily-inspired theater expressed with beautiful masks on an elegantly spare stage. Kyogen is spoken word, kind of lightly comedic folktales of the “everyman” performed on the same stage. Together, Noh and Kyogen are meant to represent human destiny and human nature, performed for the Samurai classes.

Eventually, I gravitated to Kabuki , a theatrical style begun in the 17th century by a woman and performed for the merchant and lower classes. Legend says that Kabuki developed from itinerant priestesses sharing stories across the Japanese countryside, sort of oral Pony Express. Of course, the patriarchy co-opted the art and men performed all the parts on the stage. Like Shakespeare. I was particularly fond of the Japanese art of storytelling, Rakugo . I studied hard with a master and I really loved it.

I know what you are thinking right now. What does this have to do with America? Mainly, that I almost gave up. Because I asked myself the same thing. Was this really my calling? I am a woman. I am an American. I don’t even speak Japanese. But my teacher was a master and he encouraged me (in broken English), “That is what is so exciting. America is a new people. You will make a new art form. You will create new stories.”

That was it. I was moved and inspired. And I am glad I stuck with it. Because, in the research for and performance of my art, I discovered my ancestry. My patriarchal grandfather was the founder of San Francisco Japantown’s Buddhist Church. My matriarchal grandmother was one of the founders of San Francisco Chinatown’s garment district. I didn’t know any of that because my parents didn’t know. I thought we were sharecroppers from Salt Lake (but that’s another story). 2017 is my family’s 120th anniversary in this country. When does my art become American?

What exactly do you do? How do you share your stories?

I make my living as an itinerant storyteller. I have travelled all over country—from the coasts to the heartland, Appalachia to the South. I have to say, the people that I encounter on my travels are almost never what I expect. And the most important thing I have learned is that, when you tell stories, you have to be ready to listen, too.

Will you talk a little about your touring and the Americans you meet on the road?

My stories started out to be distinctly, traditionally Asian-American, because of my Japanese and Chinese heritage. And that fact is sometimes confusing on its own because Asian culture isn’t as prevalent in the rest of the country as it is as part of the Pacific Rim. As a Californian, I was surprised that a college co-ed from Minnesota, a girl I was trying to bond with woman-to-woman, would interrupt me to remark about my remarkably fine English. And that, after explaining that I was Sansei (third generation), she did it again. After enquiring about her heritage (her grandfather emigrated from Germany), I think it says a lot about our educational system that she didn’t understand why I mentioned that her English was remarkably fine, too.

These kind of misunderstandings persist beyond the youth of America. In Las Vegas, I was part of a series that promoted artistic crossover—multicultural understanding—and my performance coincided with the grand opening of the brand spanking new performance art center. The presenters held their opening gala prior to the event. And the donors and other Very Important Money Men (no, just say “people”) wanted to meet me. If you have ever performed in a show or run in a race or spoken in a debate or presented a sales pitch or anything that you needed to psych up for, you know that before whatever-the-challenge is not the time to break concentration. But I was honored and intimidated (and new) and so I went. I met the PAC president, who also told me that I spoke very fine English. Not trying to be offensive, I said that my family was from Salt Lake. “What part of Japan is that?” he asked. I totally didn’t know what to say. “Um, Salt Lake is in Utah?” He stammered and stumbled, suggesting that must be why my eyes were rounder and prettier, until the presenter finally noticed everybody’s mutual embarrassment (mostly mine) and steered me back to the dressing room. She chattered away, all apologetic, as I stared into the dressing room mirror. I was appalled! “Oh, no! Why tell didn’t you tell me I had lipstick on my teeth this whole time, besides?” I nearly shouted at her. I was mortified! “I thought it might be a cultural thing,” she mumbled sheepishly.

But the truth is that America is such a vast cultural landscape, it’s hard to know everything that we don’t know about each other. In the South (New Orleans specifically), I was invited to do a secondary school residency performance. The teachers let me know that the black students and the Vietnamese students were having conflicts and she hoped that my show would help. I was supposed to be the traditional voice of a culture. Never mind that it was not the right actual culture and I had yet to even visit the continent. Art can be both cathartic and inclusive, after all. At show time, though, only the Vietnamese students were present. They were slick, hip-hop, cool. I delivered my traditional stories. Two claps and they were gone. I bombed. That had never happened at a school before. I was almost breathless as I stood there in the auditorium. There was just me and one young Vietnamese girl left—glasses, plastic shoes—she was totally FOB (fresh off the boat). She was very apologetic for the other kids who left so unceremoniously. “Ms. Oakie? Sorry ‘bout that. Your stories are nice, but this is N’awlins. We all Cajun here.” Wow.

I go to Appalachia a lot, too. Kentucky has a big storytelling festival and it’s a storytelling community. In some parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the unemployment rate hovers around 70% and storytelling is entertainment. I mean, it’s not a place where they disdain things like electricity—some places just don’t have it. I don’t know what I expected when I was booked for a workshop connected to a Louisville performance. We drove for ages to get to this place—a bus/van, and then a four-wheel drive. It was nice terrain, but I was starting to think about tolerance and, sure, a little “Deliverance.” I knew there were out-of-work coal miners here, but that’s about it. Finally, we hiked a long, long way. After forever, the woods opened into a meadow and we arrived. In Disneyland? It sure looked like it. The houses were fresh and the yards were pristine. There were gardens and flowers, just really beautiful. What gives? “You still on money?” one of the ladies laughed, when I tried to be discreet about asking why the community didn’t look like the shantytown I assumed. Apparently, they had long ago “regressed” to the barter system; money doesn’t work in an out-of-work community.

By now, I realized that the most potent stories—that touch people and elicit the most response— come from real-life, personal stories. So I told my life story (to that point) of growing up poor in Long Beach, of gangs, of LA smog and refineries. My dad had emigrated from Salt Lake to raise the six of us in a two-room house next to the flood control. My father was an orphan raised by his eldest sister and that is one of the stories he carried with him—of the sacrifice of the onesan . So, as the eldest sister myself, I feel the responsibility of the onesan , too. Two beautiful girls waited long after the audience left to thank me. For telling their story. Even though we were from such different places and cultures and worlds, each girl recognized the responsibility and guilt of wanting a different life in the portrait of the elder sister.

A Native American storyteller once shared with me that there are really only twelve stories in the world and we reinvent them. Like the hero’s journey.

We can all make judgments about others, but it is better to stand in their shoes. I assumed that the hip, chic young couple I met at the Captain Cook hotel in Alaska were yuppies from the lower 48. In fact, they were Inuits on break from their respective Ivy League colleges to visit two different bush towns and their reindeer-herding parents. They talked, too, about the importance of wealth—the girl was concerned that her mother was sometimes getting paid for her reindeer milk, sometimes not. “My customers do pay me,” her mother said, “with their laughter and their stories.”

What do you think about the future of storytelling? The future of art in America?

It’s important that we recognize the value of cultural heritage; it’s most important to remember that people’s stories are the threads in the tapestry of life. I have just been at national conferences and statewide conferences and regional conferences about the future of art in America. And the takeaway is that the most important thing we can do is continue. The Dalai Lama said, “The best revenge to genocide is to survive.” The best thing I can do right now is share stories. I am a storyteller and I have to honor that and keep doing it. If you are a teacher, teach. If you are a climate scientist, keep going. Create a safe space, an oasis, a place to recharge for the long challenges ahead.

Brenda Wong Aoki will be performing and sharing her road stories in Random Acts of Kindness (featuring master shamisen player Shoko Hikage) as part of the San Francisco International Art Festival ⋅ Southside Theater ⋅ Fort Mason Center Building D ⋅ Marina Blvd at Buchanan Street ⋅ San Francisco CA 94123 ⋅ Saturday May 27th 9:30 pm ⋅ Sunday May 28th 3:30 pm ⋅ Sunday June 3rd 7:00 pm

Trump seems mad, insane. Many are still drinking the Kool Aid. Why?

He seems to repeat a lie three times and then believe it. He transforms from someone who appears to smirk with skepticism at his own statements, to someone who embraces them emotionally on the third repeat, then calls up righteous anger for subsequent repeats. This TV star can spin a new reality for viewers as they stare, agog.

Some have suggested he is trying to “gaslight” the public, a term that comes from the movie Gaslight (1944), in which a man leads his wife to think she’s losing her mind. Trump makes people believe ridiculous lies. Fans are so imprinted on this rooster that, as he said during his campaign, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

An example of Trump’s mind control: when he spent years denying that President Obama wasn’t born in the USA, surely he didn’t believe it, and surely his listeners didn’t either. My friends and I thought this was stupid theatre. But like many con men, the actor drew a crowd. Eventually the crowd became enraged about the “Kenyan” president. Pitchforks and torches all around.

We alert students to confirmation bias, but do we teach them to read pathological liars? What is the administration end-game?

People who feel angry all the time anyway enjoy hearing about some outrage that’s not their fault and can be changed by violent intervention. These are not just private, semi-conscious matters. They play out within social resentments that build until they’re released in rage.

Consider American ambivalence about intervening abroad. We want it, yet feel it’s wrong.

I recently listened to a Fresh Air podcast featuring author Stephen Kinzer discussing his new book The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of the American Empire, published in January 2017. His main theme is our ambivalence about U.S. interventions. Since early “framing” debates in 1898-1902, such discussions have included the need for markets abroad to buy American goods. At that time farms were producing a surplus, and people were desperate to sell it. 

Kinzer says that Americans have “a divided soul”: we’re driven to invade other lands to protect suffering people, eliminate dictators (or elected presidents), seize security outposts, resources, or markets. On the other hand, we believe such interventions are un-Constitutional, unwise, and unfair. The arguments between Roosevelt and Twain have played out again and again over the years. Often they are within ourselves. Shown pictures of a suffering child in Syria, or hearing Colin Powell tell us that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, we think, “Let’s go to war!” But reminded of Vietnam or of our interventions in Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador—of the suffering we caused and the bad outcomes that resulted—we think, “Let’s don’t go to war!”

Kinzer’s “divided soul” concept got me wondering what other unconscious pressures and motives might be driving us. Surely the underground feeling for our situation, whatever it is, makes Trump’s supporters susceptible to cons.

Globalism and Populism

Long ago Henry Ford said, “Pay a man a decent wage and he will buy a car.” He raised his workers’ salaries so that they could buy a Ford, and it worked.

This was corporate planning which sought to balance the needs of workers with those of shareholders. It made the community strong, provided a model for the nation, and made him rich. Such high-wage balances in the US economy continued for almost 40 years. Remember that in the sixties you could buy a new car for $3,000 and a decent house for $10,000.

But then corporations discovered offshoring jobs and free trade agreements, which compel dispute resolutions through arbitration, thus sidelining and gutting the unions.

“…in the late 1970s…GE’s then CEO, Jack Welch…argued that public corporations owe their primary allegiance to stockholders, not employees. …companies should seek to lower costs and maximize profits by moving operations wherever is cheapest.”

The public (including workers) bought stock in the same corporations, often through retirement plans, and became invested in maximizing market share and profit margin.

As the corporations rose in power, increasingly detached from national controls, they consolidated ultra-cheap labor in poor countries and tax havens abroad. Steve Coll’s Private Empire: Exxon Mobil and American Power tells the tale. 

The US capitalist system, relentlessly seeking the lowest wages around the world and the best tax havens, intensifying fossil-fuel burning and dumping waste into oceans, land, and air is unsustainable. Yet left and right join in repeating the mantra of GROWTH. “That’s what we need,” say politicians and economists and talking heads. They drill this article of faith into everyone, every day.

How has the system kept going from 1975 to now? Borrowing, hateful rhetoric, false advertising, and cheap goods. Citizens became consumers. Thoughts of long-term stabilities were replaced by thoughts of shopping. TV made people passive. Eventually it made them stupid.

We imagine GROWTH as the solution to everything. We probably hear familiar voices in our dreams, whether from Fox or PBS, reporting the “growth statistics” and making that little TV-person frown if “the growth” is off a bit.

How does this differ from the unconscious mantra of Americans in 1898 who were desperate to export the farm surplus? Kinzer’s “divided soul” concept is apt. We are riding a train to hell, yet see no alternative to increasing the speed.

Are there no limits? Can we endure ever more people, energy use, pollution, wage reduction, and consolidation of wealth at the top? The elite 1% fight for more globalism, believing they can continue to bribe or suppress citizen-workers. Eventually, as Bob Dylan sings, “…power and greed and corruptible seed, seem to be all that there is.”

Against the elites comes the rising populism of Trump, Marine Le Pen in France, Franke Petry in Germany, Matteo Salvini in Italy, and Geert Wilders in Holland. They represent anger at the policies of globalist, “neoliberal” capitalist democracies. But they also lead parties that are anti-immigration and anti-EU.

They appeal to “past glories,” pseudo-pasts when nations could be prosperous because people cared about each other as fellow citizens and had the power to resist corporations and their greedy titans. But what do these so-called populist leaders really offer? Protectionism isn’t effective in globalized Late Capitalism, as Trump is about to discover.

A New American Identity, Underground

Let’s return to Ford’s, “Pay a decent wage and a man will buy a car.” Could this be a key, a touchstone, of what makes things work? Wages relative to the price of cars was a key input of the economic and social fabric. When that factor changed, decline ensued.

The puzzling thing is how ecosystems operate with various balances, sometimes for millions of years, with competing species that try to destroy each other, but instead help each other. Could ecological modeling inform economic planning? Could ecologists who model such balances become central to our national conversation?

To oversimplify, Republicans want border security which restricts immigration, but not planning for environment, wages, or health. Progressives want environmental and health-care planning, but expect security without population or immigration limits. Each group shakes its head at the other. Both dream of endless market expansion.

There are examples of successful planning, of course. Plans have saved industries like fisheries, zoning has saved towns. Iceland and Norway, with high taxes, universal health care, and free education seem to have social contracts that keep people healthy and cheerful. 

We see a lot of overreach, too. Housing developments have their homeowner’s associations. The Obama government banned importing old ivory, so now my friend, a modest farmer who embodies sustainable ideals, can’t make piano keys, which was half his living.

Of course, there is a lot of planning by corporations and public officials, focused on the short-term goals of economic growth and reelection. With enough growth, elites think they can continue to rule, consumers can be dazed and bribed, and politicians can be reelected.

But the ambivalence of public policy, the dichotomy of economic priorities, makes things worse and the pressure builds in people.

When Britain voted for Brexit, and when the USA voted for Trump, it looks as though the populace may have made terrible mistakes. When they had a chance to strike a blow against the system, they took it. For once it wasn’t “shut up and shop.” Who can blame them? The pressure rises.

That pressure is part of our Underground American Identity, now.

I cry every day.
But I cry as I move. –Mamie Till-Mobley

The Coffin of Emmett Till, which I first spoke by heart at a poetry reading celebrating International Women’s Day in 2015, is a poem of the courage of witness by a mother who lost her son to the atrocities of lynching. Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941-August 28,1955) was fourteen years old when, in the summer of 1955, he visited family members in Mississippi from his hometown of Chicago. It was during this visit that two white men abducted him from his relatives’ home. Emmett’s mutilated body was found in the Tallahatchie River three days later. Had his mother Mamie Till-Mobley complied with authorities, her son would have been hastily buried in Mississippi. Had she complied with authorities, the box that contained his mutilated body, which was transported by train to Chicago at her insistence, would never have been opened. Had she complied with authorities, the open-casket funeral for her son, attended and recorded by tens of thousands of witnesses, would never have taken place. To see this boy’s body was to know the true barbarity, not only of acts of lynching, but of the systemic racism that quietly perpetuated such crimes. This devastating witness galvanized the Civil Rights Movement. Mamie Till-Mobley’s resolve is what we need to remember now more than ever in our struggle for justice and humanity. We must have the courage to witness, to break the silence of oppression.

As a white person living in a country founded on both the ideals of democracy and the economics of slavery, I recognize the necessity of breaking my own silences, and waking up to my own implicit biases, as a fundamental part of being able to be present as a true ally with those who are targeted by oppressive forces.

It is the silence
the barn door slammed shut
on a child in the middle of the night
the way the river water
rushes, covers what it covers
the way the heavy lid
stays shut
stays shut
until she refuses silence
the awful lid
her child shut beneath the moon, the ink-black water
that covers
what they did–it took more
than one beating, it took the fan
of a cotton gin
it took a knot of barbed wire
it took
the fear of big white men
yet still
he floated up and she refuses silence
and she names him
and she refuses
to bury this
boy beneath the lid
he’s traveled far
all the way back
from any hole in Mississippi, far
from orders of that government
and it can’t just be
a leaden box
of stones or bricks
it can’t just be
a trick with no boy there
on that returning train
a box big enough to fill
three graves
she refuses, she unseals
she needs to know
the way the distant river
and its little markets,
little houses,
sheriffs with their guns and beer and pop
the official state itself
Mississippi would cover him
she would know
this is her child
from his well-made
slender
ankle bones
his sturdy legs
none of Emmett’s body scarred
all the way up
up to his chin
she needs to
face him
face him

open it

In 2009 I lost my career to an off-shoring deal: my entire department had been laid off, a department that numbered in the hundreds of people. Our jobs were sent to Asia. We trained our replacements, packed our boxes, and then we went home.

In the long months (and years) which followed, I was mostly shocked, paralyzed. I felt like the whole world was falling away from me, like a scaffold falling away from an unstable pile of brick. Having lost my status and income, I found myself increasingly on the margins. I was now surplus, like an extra, milling about the set of a film in which I no longer had a role.

With my camera I looked for subjects that were attuned to my alienation, to my sense of having been forsaken, abandoned, to being lost among the ruins.

I didn’t lack for material.

This is how The Recovery looked to me.

There wasn’t much to advertise in the Winter of 2010. No one was buying, no one was hiring. The system was down. An alternative title for this might be “No Options.”

Next to what looks like an old cabin that would be right at home in a Civil War-era photo, someone had erected a standee of a woman with text alongside reading, “Reach the Ocean, Walk for Days.” I found this compelling, fascinating. Who had erected such a thing and why? To reach the ocean and walk for days, alone and solitary, wandering, lost, was the most compelling thing I could have imagined. There was a sense of solidarity in this, a sense that I wasn’t so alone, a negation of alienation in an image that reeked of it.

These two images were taken within a few miles of each other, from the window of a moving train, somewhere in Grand County, Colorado. Having moved in with a friend, still jobless after three years’ time, I was on my way for a long visit with my mother. The “roadhouse” itself astonished me, having a distinctly “Dust Bowl” quality about it. The graininess and bleakness and collapsed building could easily have been found in a photograph from 1931.

Although the Motor Pool vehicles were stationary and unmoving, they appear to be like angry bees, circling, furious and ready to tear into each other. The Dust Bowl feeling depicts the alienation of forgotten rural America, as well as juxtaposing the relatively contemporary appearance of the vehicles with the implied poverty of the Great Depression.

Sometime in the Spring of 2011, I passed a playground on my morning walk and found this message written in chalk. Here, in the midst of the Long and Never Ending Downturn, a person wishing s/he felt nothing nakedly wrote his/her heart on the pavement, perhaps unwittingly expressing the angst of so many forgotten, left behind as the “Recovery” gathered steam.

I began venturing onto the abandoned military base in Alameda, fascinated by the ruins of Empire. Having stopped for a moment near the aircraft maintenance hangers, I turned and saw a man riding his bicycle across the former tarmac, where fighter jets had once taxied on their way to and from the hangers and aircraft carriers. I found this compelling, because the bicycle is old, pre-flight technology. The man is grounded, stuck to the Earth and riding among the ruins.

And the Wright Brothers had been bicycle mechanics before their trip to Kitty Hawk.

Travelling to Colorado by train, I passed this queue of people lined up for holiday food at the Stockton Food Bank. The framing of the image makes me feel as if the people are falling through its borders, as they are indeed falling through the margins of society. The poverty in this image easily equals anything I’d seen on a trip to Latin America in 2012. This is a scene of the American Favela.

On a supply run from our own encampment, I found this neat lineup in the alley behind the enormous supercenter. I was intrigued, not only by the poverty and desperation of fellow exiles living behind Walmart, but also by the air of domesticity (bicycles neatly racked on the roof of the ancient RV, travel van parked neatly in front, etc.). The neat placement and descending lines, from the cargo truck to the two smaller vehicles, suggested camouflage to me.

This family stayed in place for several months. I passed by regularly throughout the autumn, as the Presidential Campaign lurched on. After the election, the family moved on.

The spot is now vacant.

The Mojave Desert is the driest, most arid desert in North America. Joshua trees, native to the Mojave, thrive in this environment. With little water and often bad weather, these weird hybrid trees live for decades in defiance of their environment.

The Joshua tree has become something more to me than just the title of a decent album from my youth. The tree symbolizes hope, strength, and survival against the odds in a harsh and hostile climate.

I recently published Leroy Moore’s book Black Kripple Delivers Poetry & Lyrics. Leroy really affected me. I like Leroy. He is the kind of person I wish to be inspired by, showing us how to include all people in our human community, encouraging all of us to give up our prejudice and ignorance. He works tirelessly for the rights of the alternately-abled, for the rights of blacks and women. May his love spread far and wide. Leroy has similar speech and physical patterns that characterize other “disabled” persons with whom he shares compassion. And, let me tell you, his intelligence far outshines mine and our new president’s.

I can’t even express how I felt when I saw Donald J. Trump’s callous, disgusting, and abusive characterization of a disabled person.

Around the time of the Republican primaries, when it was becoming clear what kind of a man Trump was and the televised political “pundits” began to again spew out the stereotype of disaffected white men voting for the likes of him, I had a felt need to speak about an idea that first occurred to me forty years ago, in the blooming era of the “silent majority:” Donald J. Trump is just the most recent candidate of a long line of politicians to employ the Southern Strategy.

Maybe today’s voters have forgotten what that was. After the failure of Reconstruction in 1877, when Lincoln’s Republican party withdrew the United States Army and federal support for the Southern states, the Democratic party capitalized on post-Confederacy fears by intentionally instituting voting legislation that disenfranchised both blacks and poor whites: poll taxes, residency and literacy requirements. Jim Crow laws, “grandfather” voting clauses (a person could vote if illiterate, only if he had already voted prior to the Civil War), and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan solidified a racial caste system in the primarily Democratic Southern states for decades. Until the Voting Rights Act of 1964.

Southern blacks regained the vote in an era when racial tensions were high during an era when the populace was marching for the end of legal segregation. Generationally indoctrinated, disaffected Southern white voters switched to the Republican Party so as not to vote “with” the black voters. Republican conservative presidential candidate Barry Goldwater swept the former Confederate states, but nowhere else in the nation.

Political strategists pounced, capitalizing on the desegregationist fears of that white demographic, with the false rhetoric of white superiority as a founding ethos of the country. By 1972, Nixon’s “Southern strategy” was widely considered the path by which he won the presidency. Political strategist Lee Atwater mobilized the same demographic for Reagan. And then Atwater strategized with Roger Ailes (yes, the one from Fox News) for G.H.W. Bush. And here we are again.

Stereotypes of all sorts are false: mindless, ignorant and dangerous nonsense. If Americans don’t look backwards, we are doomed to repeat an abhorrent history. May we extend to the masses a way to see through the false rhetoric so they may realize their interests are being manipulated and thrust back at them in a demeaning manner. By succumbing to media stereotypes, the Trump demographic are in fact placing America in great jeopardy. The fallacy of Manifest Destiny—that the white working male is the privileged “owner” of this country—perpetuates a divisive myth. Muslims and Mexicans are just the latest immigrants under threat. Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Irish; divide and conquer.

I am a white man (an older one), my three sons are white men, my two little grandsons—four and one—are budding white men. I don’t expect any of them to behave in such despicable ways, and I reject the implicit media stereotypes—racial castes are inherently wrong. Racial stereotyping began in the earliest iteration of this country as native peoples were marginalized. We should acknowledge that. The scurrilous denigration of women is also detrimental to our society. My daughter, the mothers of my children, my own mother and sisters and the myriad women who have blessed my life are being attacked. To whose benefit?

I have spent the last 45 years associating with people who have been working for civil rights, immigrant rights, workers’ rights, LBGTQ rights, religious freedom and understanding, women’s rights, and the freedom of people around the world not to live under the heel of economic and political subjugation. The opportunity to work with people who share these values—black, women, gay, Hispanic, Asian or yes, even white men—gives freedom (both intellectual and economic) to us all. So much is gained.

I wish the media would find a more accurate and enlightened way to characterize the “older white men” demographic that supported Trump than by employing the Southern Strategy and implying racial animus as the primary motive for their vote.

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

― Walt Whitman
preface to Leaves of Grass (1855)

for Cleve Jones

Movements come in waves and waves come in sets. One certainly predicts another.

At the time of the incident the following poem describes I had been working as a trade show worker at Brooks Hall in San Francisco.

That particular night I got off around ten, exhausted, and climbed up the concrete stairwell to the open air. Within a few minutes, I was in the middle of a violent demonstration in front of SF’s city hall, the culmination of an angry march from the Castro the day after the verdict came down for Dan White, who had shot and killed supervisor Harvey Milk and mayor Moscone: manslaughter on both counts.

The gay community was outraged. For a public official to kill two other elected officials and not be convicted of murder, to have the sentence reduced to manslaughter on the grounds he was temporarily not responsible for his actions because he was on a sugar rush, having gorged himself on Hostess Twinkies, was blatant injustice. It went beyond sexual orientation issues to defy the laws democracy is founded on. It reduced electoral process to gang warfare and exposed civilized life as a hypocritical veneer.

I felt a drastic contrast between the world I’d just been part of and the scene suddenly around me, where anything might happen, and was happening. It came as a jolt. To some extent we usually live in a bubble in our everyday lives, a bubble that protects us even as it imprisons us. The contrast I felt between that and the world where anything can happen is similar to what is going on today. The streets of the world are becoming the stage.

I came up out of Brooks Hall
the old convention center beneath Civic Auditorium
tired from working until ten at night
into the Dan White riots

a police car was on fire
a long line of newspaper racks knocked over also on fire
the plaza full of protesters
culminating a candle-light vigil down Market Street from the Castro
to throng beneath City Hall, a gothic dome
that rose above the hostile crowd

Supervisor Diane Feinstein, elevated to mayor
by way of Moscone having been murdered by Supervisor Dan White
came out into a niche in the castle like a tiny doll
our new queen, no doubt aghast at the spectacle
and the murders that had provoked it
helpless above the scene below

I was afraid to go too far into the crowd but was drawn in nonetheless
although hung more toward the back
my attention caught by a lean white guy blowing a whistle
urgently, wherever the crowd quieted down
he seemed apart from the demonstrators
and when he saw me looking at him
darted away
I began to notice replicas of him, almost identical
shifting throughout the crowd blowing whistles
wherever the crowd grew quiet

I had the hunch
they were some sort of government agitators
maybe hoping to incite enough violence
to justify unleashing the police

the incident in fact was not without casualties:
I read in the paper a few days later a policeman
took a brick in the nuts
and lost a testicle

the whole spectacle felt medieval
flickering shadows cutting apart the scene like a collage

above it the moon
having witnessed many riots and atrocities in her time
hung splendidly
bestowing serene radiance
as she has done for millennia

calmly pulling ocean tides
back and forth over the earth like a black gown
the suspiring waves rising and lapsing, as if the earth
were breathing in deep sleep
despite another violent nightmare.

By Laena Wilder (San Francisco) and Judy Brackett (Washington, D.C.)

“I am marching to do my part in addressing the wounds of my country. As I have been thinking about the values we hold most dear in this nation, it is becoming increasingly clear there are people who have been left behind and not included in those values since the beginning of our nation’s history. So before we can come together and unify in any real way we have to address that. I recently learned that I’m distantly related to one of the signers of the Constitution which I guess technically makes me a Daughter of the American Revolution. I wanted to riff on that and claim my part to atone for some of the harm that early colonists did to the people who already lived here. I think our history of the treatment of the Native American peoples of North America is really shameful. And it’s not that the people alive today are at fault or guilty but we are responsible for making it right so that is why I included the quote by Abraham Joshua Herschel, ‘Few are guilty but all are responsible.’ I think it’s not about blaming anyone it’s about really walking our talk and aligning our actions and how we treat each other with these values.”
Lucy, San Francisco
Photo: Laena Wilder

On January 21, 2017, hundreds of thousands made our way to Washington, D.C., from everywhere. We stood and listened and marched that chilly gray day, a glorious mishmash of people—many in wheelchairs, babies in slings, toddlers on shoulders, kids holding tight to moms’ and dads’ hands, pink-cheeked teens in pink pussyhats, boys and men, too, and all of us seemingly moved simultaneously by anger, frustration, yet also joy and hope, even a fervent patriotism.

There were waves of pink hats and homemade placards and banners, profane and profound:

Girls just want to have FUNdamental rights.
Respect existence or expect resistance.
Tweet women with respect.
You’ll never overcomb the Constitution.
We are the wall and Trump is going to pay.
“Thou shalt not mess with women’s rights.” — Fallopians 3:24
Dump Drumpf.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of women’s rage.
None of this matters if we destroy our home.
Down with the climate change deniers!
Dumbledore wouldn’t let this happen.
Can’t believe I’m still protesting this same shit.
A woman’s place is in the resistance.
Now you’ve pissed off Gammie!
I can’t breathe…Say their names—Eric, Trayvon, Sandra, Dondre, Jordan…

Mid-march, we stopped off at the National Archives to have a look at the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and scanned the compelling words written and signed in elegant script two-hundred-plus years ago—not one woman’s name on those documents, yet they promise the freedoms we marched for and will work for, the freedoms we demand for our children and grandchildren, for our wounded country.

We ended the day on the National Mall after dark, walking along the Ellipse where thousands propped their signs along the fence, and stood in silence taking in the barricaded White House across Pennsylvania Avenue, the People’s House.

We took a couple of extra days to visit other sites—the Newseum, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, and the Holocaust Memorial Museum (with its unsettling reminder of what happens when good people avert their eyes and their hearts, when tyrants are appeased).

Pink hats and signs were everywhere, including one that read “We marched…now what?”

Permission to reprint courtesy of author.

“Heads up, all you pacificats, you retro radicals, you bohemian bourgeoisie. It’s time to get ready for action once again. Time for all good people to come to the aid of their country, their species, and their planet.

So, are you ready? Ready to get up, stand up, join the movement, take it to the streets? Go on strike – shut it down? Make some news of your own.

Sure. You can do it. Even if you’ve got a bad back, or a bum knee or some other hitch in your giddyap, just pop some Ibuprofen and put on those old tennis shoes and get ready to do something.

Maybe just like you, friend, I thought I was a retired radical, no longer needed. I thought I had turned in my badge and that all I had left to do was listen to KPFA and go to Mime Troupe shows and make donations to worthy causes, like “Clowns Without Borders.”

But I’m now starting to remember that exhilaration and purpose we felt in that distant past when just like now, “the operation of the machine becomes so odious, and makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part… and you’ve got to make it stop [Mario Savio].” Remember that feeling.

Maybe you’ll get inspired by looking through your radical memorabilia. Just go into the closet and pull out some of your old protest posters – the ones that you carried into the streets – thirty or forty or fifty years ago, back in the nineteen-hundreds. When the world was young.

And maybe you were there with me – way back in the civil rights movement – when we sang with Pete Seeger, “we shall not be moved,” and then Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and we thought we were pretty much done with that struggle, not realizing that it would take a few generations for any real integration to start happening in America. But remember, it’s solidarity “forever.”

And hey, there in my closet is a poster calling on people to boycott grapes – and we kind of won that one too – helping the farmworkers get their rights.

And way back there in my closet is the flyer that announced the march on Washington – when we chanted om and levitated the Pentagon. And later there were other anti-war rallies where we gathered hundreds of thousands of people, back when it didn’t take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. And even though we didn’t exactly stop the war in Vietnam we sure enough slowed it down – and it’s one, two, three what are we fighting for… And don’t forget, People’s Park is still here, and the humpback whales are making a comeback.

So now is the time to get ready again, friends. Go dig out that old pair of jeans with the “authentic” rip in the knee – and there’s the t-shirt that got torn in the white night riots, and the hat you wore at the Diablo Canyon nuke protests.

And maybe in the garage you’ll find some signs and posters you can use again like “make love, not war” which is vague enough to be valid forever. I found one of my favorite posters – it says, “U.S. out of North America.” That’s still applicable. And there was that placard calling for a boycott of grapes. And maybe we could just paint it over and call for a boycott of the excessive consumption of everything.

And as I look through the radical memorabilia, I’m thinking we won lots of struggles – at least partially. And we changed the culture of America. And now it looks like we may be called upon for another tour of duty, if for no other reason than to protect the positive changes, the ones we helped to shape in the last half century.

So, get ready friends. Maybe all of us recently retired radicals can form a boomer brigade – we will protest anytime and anywhere, as long as we can fit in a little afternoon nap. And if they dare to touch our Social Security we will get our canes and walkers and go to the streets chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho. Now we’re old we want our dough.”

And finally, I am compelled to ask, what would Buddha do – and I know that, first of all, the Buddha would do no harm and inflict no pain. And maybe take the position advocated by the Dalai Lama, who calls the other side “my friends, the enemy,” acknowledging that all of us are members of a species out of control and we humans are just now learning how to overcome our greed, hatred and delusion.

So, we may not know how we will be called upon, to which crisis or what sacrifices we might be asked to make. But we’ve done it before and we can do it again. We can stand up for justice and truth – with compassion and strong determination – with the sole intent being to ease the suffering of all people everywhere, and to heal and sustain the life of the Earth.

Finally, friends, as we move through this winter in America, may I suggest that you offer some extra reverence to the sun, the s-u-n, el sol, our father who art in orbit, hallowed be thy rays. Celebrate the natural miracles that are inside of us and that surround us, the mystery of consciousness and the movement of the planets, and the immensely improbable wonder of our life on Earth. And this is Scoop Nisker saying, once again, stay high but keep your priorities straight, and if you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.

Inspiring and empowering speech given at the University of Oregon on November 13, 2016, about human rights, total equality, and making personal choices to draw moral lines against hatred and bigotry (21.49 minutes)

Permission to publish is given under Creative Commons. Copy, distribution, display, and performance of original copies of work granted by author. Additional permissions required for any modification thereof.

The following essay was written to inspire the amazing artists and authors who submitted and those who became a part of Issue 4.1 American Identity. The most fascinating reminder here at Sisyphus is that the challenges we face as Americans today are not new, but only different, part of our collective identity because they are part of our history. Yes, there are new threats to civil liberties and rights. We the People will have to fight for equality and justice going forward. But part of our national identity is both embracing change and rising up for justice. There is no denying that America has problems, but we have come so very, very far.

Pay attention. Today is the day, America. It is time to heal and galvanize and fight. Stand up for the downtrodden, speak up for the voiceless, be articulate and smart, wickedly educated, steadfastly united, and fiscally shrewd.

Now is the time to say that We the People refuse to be further politically maneuvered. Since the 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup of oil-rich Iran and the covert acts “of U.S. foreign policy” that followed, America has been for sale to the highest bidding corporations for decades. Doctors of history and economy and demographics know the players and the game and tell us about it repeatedly. Now we know. We should never let that happen again. Well, except in Cuba, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Like a mark in a shell game, We the People let ourselves be distracted by reality TV and he said/she said Oval Office shenanigans. We let the apprentices of 1950-60s CIA shadow wars—the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld trifecta—pull a disappearing act with the 2000/2004 United States’ Presidency and any chance of effective ecological legislation. Oops.

In 2008, we democratically elect a President—a senatorial Constitutional lawyer, an honest exemplary family man who inspires international respect—and let Congressional bullies engage in a playground/Senate-floor game of keep-away with the nation’s legislation for eight years. We the People say nothing, allow our elected official to wrangle legislation by Executive order. When those same Senators and Congressmen refuse to do the job for which they are elected—namely, to vote on the citizens’ behalf—they are not fired, fined, or even reprimanded. We’ve lost interest. Supreme Court? Instead, we binge-watch surgically-enhanced, Murdoch-financed extravagance on Netflix, distracted while unions erode from representing 56% of American workers to 9% and the commercials are talking about the gig economy and health care is a problem. Huh?

The sanctimonious DNC not only didn’t Feel the Bern, but dismissed as fringe a vast, aghast army who stood not only for the President (as the Committee perceived), but against the elected who did not vote their constituency and respect the rights and responsibilities of office. While the pundits were distracted by the Fox News/MSNBC ping-pong game rhetoric and the unprecedented indignity of a reality-TV presidential campaign between a xenophobic misogynist and a vilified woman, Citizen’s United was watching. The down-ticket races were quiet battlegrounds, gerrymandered, outspent by billions, and lightly-challenged. We the People stood with the world, stunned and dumbfounded, reeling in disbelief. A sweep of three houses. A promised dismantling of decades-long, grassroots campaigns supporting equality, ecological, and civil rights. Tsk.

We the People no longer have the luxury of the five stages of grief—disbelief and anger are all we can afford. There is no time to bargain with trickle-down economics. There is no time for the depression over the 3% of climate-deniers left on the planet having newly-minted positions in the Trump cabinet, poised to determine the legislation of the world’s most irresponsible ecological legacy. There is no time for the resignation that the political machine is moneyed, convoluted, and incomprehensible. In the rallying words of Stan the Homeless Man, “If I can look up, I can get up.” So get back up. And look around.

The “Stop Trump” faction was rioting in the streets, bashing corporate interests and local businesses alike. The alt-right was using the distraction to bait-and-switch America’s economic dysfunction with a supremacist agenda. A lot of people are terrified by the vitriol spewing from American mouths. Others feel justified at the exposure of resentments. See? Republican vs. Democrat, Woman vs. Man, Christian vs. Muslim, Blue vs. Black, Capitalist vs. Socialist, Winners vs. Whiners, Us vs. Them. It’s a class war! It’s a race war! Except it’s not. Not entirely.

It’s an eighteen-month propaganda campaign that stoked traditional resentments to accomplish its goal: a divide and conquer smokescreen. Exorbitant amounts of corporate money then poured into ballot races unchallenged. Overturn Citizens United barely passed in California. Despite the megalomaniacal chest-pounding of the alt-right, electing Trump was probably more of a Michael Moore f-bomb to political cronyism; an impotent, pre-pubescent, frustrated door slam in the face of a calcified status quo.

“The rhetoric of the past election cycle has insulted, demonized, and threatened many of us—women, immigrants of all statuses, those with diverse religious faiths, particularly Muslim, people who identify as LGBTQIA, Native and Indigenous people, Black and Brown people, people with disabilities, the economically impoverished and survivors of sexual assault,” say the Women’s March on Washington organizers. Who’s left? That’s right.

If there is one thing that the Trump election has done, it is to clearly frame the discussion, to personify the intangible. We the People have spoken and we have the result. It is now it is up to each of us, individually, to take the responsibility: to educate and be educated, to inform and be informed, and to make sure that our elected officials—whoever they are—represent the agendas of their constituency faithfully. And to resist distraction and never stop.

Now is the time to deny that Columbus discovered anything but a fortune, that Manifest Destiny justified entitlement, that the United States should only represent certain populations for their personal economic gain, that women and marginalized don’t matter. The United States represents all of us—immigrants from every continent in the world (who should have been gracious rather than genocidal to our/their hosts). We all matter: civically, socially, and fiscally. Fertility rates in the United States have been declining since 1975 and immigration is the key to the population growth and, by extension, the GDP matrices.

So get up! If you are a lifelong community supporter, dust yourself off. If you are shocked to attention, connect. Today is the day. If you don’t know who they are, find out the names of your Congressmen and Senators and tell them what you want. Robert Reich offers a few suggestions for navigating the first 100 days of the Trump Presidency. Don’t have time? Start donating money to projects you care about: ecology, free press, poverty, civil rights, public art. Scrutinize Facebook “news” gingerly and judiciously. No time or money? Economic boycotts are remarkably effective—if few people buy a product, it will disappear from the market.

Be a valuable citizen: learn about economy, law, real estate. You can’t win the game if you don’t know the rules.

In California, one vote influenced hundreds of thousands of dollars of legislation. In a swing state, the value of one vote was millions of dollars. Now is the time to be thankful that the United States represents millions and millions of divergent voices. Speak out. Be heard. Start now. Keep going.

Coming Spring 2017

mind·ful·ness ˈmīn(d)f(ə)lnəs/noun

1. the quality or state of being conscious or aware of something.

The sign outside the yoga class you passed on the way to Starbucks before you were late for work. The current buzz word on the cover of the Time Magazine dismissed on the newsstand you glimpsed in the supermarket line. Mindfulness is more than the latest trend. Mindfulness=Awareness. Not just the moments that you put away the smart phone and listen to the birds, or the Sunday you take the Headspace app for a spin, but letting those important personal moments connect you with your everyday: the ecological empowerment of minimalism over consumerism, knowing the agricultural methodology for your food, caring how your Senator got reelected, why your town square is designed that way, where your taxes go. Share a piece that exemplifies a cause you are passionate about. Remind readers of the simple things that freedom ensures. Pay attention to the details of a thriving society. Sisyphus asks you to express yourself—in short story, poetry, essay, photography, art. A solid civilization and vibrant community looks to art for its inspiration. Please submit material through Submittable, deadline April 30, 2017.

A Preview: Speed Dating Buddhism

By Tom Webster

In my view, two fundamental paths¹ have emerged in Western interpretations of the Dharma:

1. Mindfulness path – In spiritual language of Vipassana Buddhism it can be considered a metaphysical psychology that aims at opening awareness through a process of self-discovery of the fundamental nature of life and death.In Western modernity, mindfulness has become a science-based meditation practice focusing on personal development and psychological well-being or happiness. However maintained is its underlying spirituality as coined by Jon Kabat Zinn, “mindfulness is paying attention to all experience, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.”
2. Enlightenment path – Spirituality-based “deep” Buddhism as represented by “non-dual” and other practices. The “goal-less goal” is some form of awakening that yields “living in the world but not entangled with it.” All items below marked with an * are essential elements of this path.

¹The connotation here is “course” or “way” or Tao in Taoism.

To read Tom’s complete article and find out what is marked with an *, watch for Sisyphus 4.2 The Mindfulness OS Issue (April 2017). To subscribe to Sisyphus, click here.