Lovely, Dark, and Deep

It has been quite a ride, my whole life, following politics and current events. Sometimes I think it is the only real talent I have, that of watching the passing parade of history and keeping track of the changes. If I have second talent it is talking and writing about myself and my own life.

There were the long years of my youth when I was a liberal Democrat and railed against conservatives and Republicans. They were selfish and unintelligent. The world would be so much better if liberals ran everything. It annoyed me that people did not see this, but could only see the narrow confines of the small world they lived in. A global perspective would make people smarter, more compassionate, and more wise in how they voted. 

What I typed in the previous paragraph is pretty close to a monologue given by Ralph Bellamy as Franklin Roosevelt in the 1960 movie Sunrise at Campobello. The screenplay was written by Dory Schary based on his stage play from two years before. In that scene, if I remember correctly, Roosevelt is explaining to members of family why it is that the country lurches back and forth between enlightened eras of doing the right thing (liberal) and ones where fear and bigotry overcome them, and conservatives take power, leading to a contraction of the national spirit until sun of liberal warmth returns..

This interpretation was decidedly was not a universal sentiment among Democrats at the time it was written. For one thing, there were plenty of "reactionary" conservative Democrats back then and they feuded for control of the party.  Now, however, the parties are much more fixed in ideology (at least on the Left) and Schary's description pretty close to an article of faith of among Democrats today. 

Today I am apt to label myself an archconservative, at least in cultural matters. On economic matters I am much more middle-of-the-road and open to "liberal" solutions. Like many I flirted with Libertarianism for a season years ago, when I first started breaking away from the Left (which was a long journey. Oh how that vexed my late father! "Your idea of freedom," he would say, "means freedom to starve!" For the record, he was right about the capital-L. I am decidedly not in the camp anymore. 

But who cares what I think, really? I am just one man with a life of experiences that have led me to where I am. Why is my point of view more valid than anyone else's? Yet I espouse certain trends in politics and have voted with passionate conviction up to the most recent election. What do I gain by this other than the opprobrium of friends and relatives with whom I once agreed?

Yet if I don't stand on my convictions, then what I am worth as a man? If I do not defend what I think is right and just, then I am truly a man at all? 

A great part of me yearns to disconnect from it all, from being the witness to the passing parade of history, which of course now happens by social media consumption. It is not through disgust, but rather exhaustion, and even a sense of completion, as if I've done my part, played the role I was supposed to play and can now retire from the battlefield. Others can take it from here. Like many I fantasize at times about disconnecting entirely from the world, but that is not a realistic option right now.

Among other things, I have a weekly podcast that is one of the joys of my week, as it keeps me interacting with people. It is part of a network on Rumble that is explicitly political and my audience hyper-aware of current events, far more than me, and tends to be more radical and passionate about political issues. I spend part of each broadcast making my audience aware that I know what the big stories of the week were, as people want to hear about those and discuss those. Retreating to the woods, whether literally or on some metaphorical level, remains a persistent fantasy. There is a famous poem about it, one that expresses something close to the universal-within-the-specific, which some say is the hallmark of great poetry. 

I would quote it here, but most people know it anyway, and---wouldn't you know it---the poem has been so politicized in its usage that citing it puts me in the company of people who make my skin crawl (link).

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