Culture Wars

    I was delaying getting up because I went to bed early, in order to avoid following the election. I don’t really want to know who won, but now that I’m up (at 4am), I do know: Donald Trump. And so I feel frightened for America and the world. I lived through Reagun’s election, I was right out of high school a couple years. It was a surprise and a complete downer for my world. We weren’t headed for legalized pot after all. I liked to smoke, I was somewhat of a mini rasta, at the time. I beleived in love and was not materialistic. I wanted to change the world. I’d gone to Seabrook Nuclear Plant in the late 70’s and almost got arrested. We were in a line of people holding hands chanting near the fence and I really wanted to break through the fence. I started to surge forward and as I recall, people followed me, but then I realized my power and kind of chickened out! I didn’t want to be leader of all these people breaking down the fence after all. It was just too sudden for me. Of course someone else could have continued my momentum and I probably would have followed. But no one did and the surge ebbed. Seabrook ended up costing 6.5 billion dollars and its parent company went bankrupt. Nuclear power stations stopped being proposed and built somewhere around that time. But as we speak, 4 new nuclear reactors are being built in the USA, though Germany has abandoned nukes and is committed to alternative energy sources.

Another memory of late 70’s is dancing the whole way through Bob Marley’s gig in Philly on his last world tour, at the back of Houston Hall on Penn’s campus. By myself, I figured what the hell, why not have a good time -so I went all the way up back, behind the last row of seats where there was some room to move. It wasn't a big hall and I knew Bob could see me, I could feel it. He was dancing through the whole concert too. And he died of cancer a year or so later. 

Looking back now I can see the cumulative effect of Reagun’s legacy. The expansion of the war on the poor, the mass incarceration of black people, the continued exile of jobs overseas with the rise of the super-super rich elite corporate cold-hearted as anointed ones. Enormous tax breaks for the wealthy. The selling off of National Forests to the lumbering companies. I managed to find a group of like minded artist, musician and political people to hang with in my city, but for many, such as my younger brother, the wandering life was the only choice. He died in a jailhouse in Austin Texas in 1996, supposedly of alcohol withdrawal but you never know. The way he liked to talk back to cops, you never know. I don’t like cops either, but then again, I pretty much avoid them entirely. Which may be the point. Maybe its time to stop avoiding cops, maybe its time to step forward.

It might nice to avoid it but some moments you have to say theres a war on. A culture war that manifests in political moments of obvious import. “Many more will have to suffer, many more will have to die, don’t ask me why.” I’m just wondering if the right wingers will apologize to me personally when climate change is completely over the top and we see how terrible Trump’s legacy on planet Earth really will be. Powerless, thats how I feel now. Not that Clinton would have been much better...