to rouse the rabble

It's not that government is bad.  Government is our imaginary servant.  It is we who are bad for relinquishing social consciousness, civic pride, and letting the old lady fall into such a pitiful state of mismanagement.  Then we want to whip her into shape without respect or compassion, or the right will and good grace to accept responsibility.  A bunch of lazy, undisciplined brats whining for our supper, complaining that "Jimmy pinched me!" "Suzy took my right to free self-expression!"  Squabbling among ourselves as if our jealousies were matters of state.

 

Grow up.  Take a good, hard look at just where you want to be; and get going.  There are beautiful vistas to climb to.  There are problems a'plenty that everyone can agree to wanting changed, even if we have a trillion intractably opposed solutions.

 

Start talking -- not screaming, talking, in measured tones, out of real self-interested concern, allowing that everyone else might also have legitimate concerns, allowing that we all deserve a chance to listen, think, exchange anger for enthusiastic energy.

 

Now, where was that, who was that, you wanted to be?

 

 

Wild, romantic energy

surging surrender

friends I never thought I'd see

out at sea, memory

laughs at how I care

a sudden scent of air

aching in places, ways, I

didn't know were there, in me.

When we begin, it's so thrilling,

surreal --

in the end

there's just too much to feel

When I dream, you no longer appear

in my scene.

Where have you been?  Thinking of me?

 

 

Taxation to pay for the national enterprise is part of the social contract.  You can get off the grid, off the dole, off road, into the wild and fend for yourself.  People do.  I guess it is harder with all the surveillance.

 

After 9/11 we insisted that the government keep us safe by any and all means necessary.  Any of us could have been in those towers in lower Manhattan.  Suddenly we are all in danger from terrorist attack.  That's why none of us can be allowed to be free.