I NORTH
I COAST
TIMES~
EAGLE
In a dark time the eye begins to see
OCTO/NOVO 2002
~Theodore Roethke
50CENTS
VOL24NO3
REAL COMMUNITY ACTION ESSENTIAL
BY MICHAEL PAUL McCUSKER
‘Every time we are in a national crisis someone always
says as sure as night follows day, ‘The problem is because we
are too free.
-DANIEL SCHORR
“Even in a democracy, there are a lot of little Hitlers
running around."
-ARMIN LEHMANN,
former courier to Adolf Hitler,
speaking at Seaside High School
Democracy begins at home. First in the heart; from
there it radiates through the house into the neighborhood
and community. It is found in smaller places rather than in
massive standardized illusions of popular culture that reflect
mind manipulation and mendacity as well as gross distortions
of constitutional purposes and interpretations.
Democracy is after all a compromise between the
yearning for freedom and the urge to frustrate it. It is an
elaborate though inherently fragile system of concessions
between diverse and disparate ambitions and ideologies
represented by a variety of economic and political classes
despite an enshrined myth that a democracy is a classless
society. The only possible survival for democracy is to establish
and sustain balance between conflicting factions so that none
gain such power as to be capable of suppressing or ravaging
the rest. In that sense, no debate or problem can be fully or
finally resolved without its solution becoming repressive.
The true extent of the variety and depth of American
politics was expressed by Edwin O'Conner in his famous 1956
book, The Last Hurrah. ‘Each (campaign expedition through
the voting public) was aimed at a special group of the electorate
What (was) astonishing was not that such special groups existed
but that they existed in such numbers. They were divided not
only along the broad lines one might have anticipated: race,
religion, national background, sex, capital and labor; inside
whichever category one chose, it seemed there were limitless
special cells, each of whose concerns seemed to be in direct
opposition to those "of every other cell... (a staggering)
multiplicity of minority interests, (a) chaotic diversity of the
democratic process."
Diversity is democracy, and vice versa.
Unfortunately, the country is rapidly retrogressing from a
diversely construed democracy centered on the rule of common
folk to an aristo/plutocracy of billionaires and immense multi
national corporations. The USA is at a crossroads as severe and
consequential as the Civil War: a crisis that will determine its
future as a nation and society — either as a corporate oligarchy
administered by questionably elected figureheads; or an open
society as envisioned in its most fundamental beliefs and laws
as well as a leading member of a world confederacy of presum
ably eventual democracies.
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Periods of national crisis reveal the real impotency of
average citizens who have very little input other than letters or
e-mail to elected representatives whose interests are at the very
least distracted by powerfully unelected elites who more often
than not initiated the crises.
9/11 precipitated a crisis of democracy that might well
be more momentous and more prolonged than the war on
terrorism. Civil liberties are dramatically threatened and average
citizens have little say about it. Ordinary people are rendered
impotent. Most citizens are at the bottom of the crisis and are
affected every day by the consequences — social services are
withdrawn as well as public health because tax money is being
diverted toward war, and of course to the corporations of the
military/industrial mafia who unabashedly profit from making war
possible. The USA Patriot Act that was rapidly cobbled together
with hardly a whimper of protest by Congress in the wake of 9/11
circumvents and erodes Constitutional rights and liberties.
The country is at war yet not at war — but the U.S.
is shifting from a defensive democracy to first-strike attacker.
Pre-emptive war implies perpetual war for attainment of a post
modern pax Americana The President ardently desires to invade
another nation, claiming only through war will the nation have
peace and security. Dissent is inhibited, treated as unpatriotic
and possibly a form of terrorism Huey Long said, “Fascism will
come to the United States wrapped in the American flag."
The prospect of war and decline of civil liberties only
exacerbates the malign neglect of the huge and growing under
class that lives virtually abandoned and without hope in our
crumbling inner cities and impoverished rural areas. Surging
disparities in wealth and living standards that undermine our
society and threaten civil disorder on a massive scale are also
the death knell of real democracy. Ambrose Bierce in his The
Devil's Dictionary cynically but pertinently defined politics as
“a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles."
Attorney General Ashcroft’s determination to overrule
Oregon’s Death With Dignity law is a ominous indication that
individuals have no rights except those government allows,
contrary to the intent of the Bill of Rights; denied the right to
make essential decisions over their lives that the state demands
as its own perorogative — such as the choice to die, which the
state permits only through war or execution aside from natural
or accidental causes
We in our small cities are as vulnerable as the people of
Iraq who are being held implicitly accountable for the excesses
of Saddam Hussein which our President is using to justify the
very real possibility that hundreds of thousands of them will be
killed, injured and displaced by an American invasion." But such
a war will also set up American citizens as targets and casualties
even though we go about our daily lives hardly involved in a war
except we are as guilty and innocent, and as vulnerable, as the
“collateral casualties" inflicted in our name with or without our
consent or approval
A city like Astoria is just the sort of place ripe for a
terrorist attack. They've gone after the big symbols of American
power, now to really terrorize us they might do something really
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bad to an average small community that represents any and all
Americans.
Because Astoria is a vulnerable target at the mouth of
the Columbia River, the city must as a community, as should
every community, have the right and perseverance to help guide
the nation’s policies rather than simply allow loftier echelons of
government determine its present and future without the input
of those most directly affected.
The impending war with Iraq is an example of small
communities denied any voice in decisions that will directly
affect them to the point not only will public services be cut
but many neighborhood kids will be swept up into the military
machine whether the draft is reinstituted or not.
The societal ceiling is cracking over our heads and it is
up to us — common ordinary citizens who live in neighborhoods
and communities who are ultimately responsible to prevent the
sky from falling down around us. Individual voices are not nearly
enough; they are lost, diluted, neglected — certainly diffused.
Only through groups, associations and political parties is there
any sense of personal influence, yet with each successive level
even that is diluted and essentially marginalized to evaporation
A level to reflect the personal voice must be closer to home, a
community voice.
Cities and communities are not simply parochial entities
concerned only with schools, sewers, streets and strip malls.
They are also integral parts of a political whole and represent
the American citizen at home and work.
Cities such as Astoria must be actively engaged in
the critical and urgent national dialogue of terrorism, war and
the dangerous abrogation of civil liberties in the name of
national emergency. Astoria certainly has a myriad of local
issues and problems that demand attention and resolution,
but they are secondary to the current assault upon the nation’s
fundamental freedoms and constitutional rights by avaricious
national leaders transgressing their sworn duty to uphold them.
It is vital that small communities question and influence state
and national policies that ultimately affect the lives, liberties
and fortunes of their citizens.
As everybody knows, “All politics are local."
‘Iraq is a nation of 20 million people being personified as
one person, Saddam Hussein who is demonized as evil — so all
Iraqis are evil by implication and the slaughter of them to get at
Saddam is justified
An error by the opposition to invading Iraq has been
to use the Bush terminology to describe it, such as ‘regime
change" rather than the more accurate terms "invasion“ or
‘aggression." The word ‘imperialism"is considerably overplayed
after decades of misuse, and ‘colonialism" seems quaint and old
fashioned — but they clearly define the intent of invading a
sovereign nation and setting up a puppet government (another
stale antiquity) favorable to the Bushies, which would be
occupied and policed by American troops who will, of course,
be the real law of Iraq
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