The eleventh day of the ninth month is a day painful to mark. On this day in 1973 the duly elected government of Chile was overthrown by instigation and with the active support of our government and the CIA, bringing a reign of terror that lasted for almost twenty years. On this day in 1991 my beloved friend and comadre Guillermina Valdés de Villalva was killed in a Continental Airlines plane crash near Houston, Texas. On this day in 2001 the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York were brought down by terrorists. With the destruction of the Towers went a great part of our democracy, an accomplishment, not of foreign terrorists, but of our own government. In response to the destruction of the Towers, the questionably elected president and his cronies invaded Afghanistan in an unsuccessful search of terrorists. And, in defiance of the United Nations, with out-right lies to justify it, invaded Iraq, destroying its land and killing a great many of its people, sacrificing many of our own, and enmeshing our nation in an illegal, immoral and untenable, on-going war. In the process, it shredded our Constitution and Bill of Rights doing away with habeas corpus, torturing prisoners as a matter of policy, spying upon the general citizenry, abusing the environment, squandering the national wealth for the benefit of the rich minority, wrecking the economy, creating a culture of fear, fomenting more terrorism, and making us the most hated nation on Earth. By any measure, a failed policy. That same Republican party controlled by the so-called Neo-cons (which should more accurately read Neo-fascists) would continue such disastrous policies by trying to sport a new face. They put forth a sickly old man, whose sole claim to being a hero is his survival as a prisoner in another equally dishonorable war. (If suffering be the sole criteria for heroism, then heroes there are everywhere.) John McCain has taken on the illusion (or lie) of being a “maverick” although as senator he has voted for the Bushnian Neo-Con policy ninety-percent of the time. For his running mate, they offer an incompetent but comely former beauty-queen with more presence and ability to speak but with the same tired values and ability to lie. They run their campaign putting to the fore the more attractive Sarah Palin (self-styled “gun-totting soccer-mom”) as if she were the actual Presidential candidate. (Which she might well be given the age and fragile health of McCain.) Heaven help us! But as the adage goes, “heaven helps them that help themselves.” As a nation, as a people, we can help ourselves; we have a choice. The Democratic party has put forth Barack Obama, a young man of great intelligence and charisma, an articulate and moving speaker who clearly plants the issues that face us in the 21st century: need for diplomacy in an ever shrinking and interdependent world, protection of the Earth, renewable resources, the right of everyone to have universal health care, of everyone to have a decent public education, an end to the war on Iraq, lowered taxes for the poor and middle class, a more humane and just treatment of immigrants, reasonable gun control, restoring the safeguards of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Issues that both McCain and Palin avoid and instead posture and repeat tired clichés. And Obama’s running mate for Vice President Joseph Biden, an intelligent and capable man trained in law, is experienced and knowledgeable having served in the Senate for six consecutive terms. We do have a choice, the choice is clear, and we can help ourselves. But let us not delude ourselves that it will be easy. Many of us have been trained to think in vague generalities, to respond unthinkingly to ill-defined shibboleths such as “patriotism,” “country,” “flag,” “morality,” “family values,” “democracy,” “freedom,” metaphors and terms virtually meaningless unless given a concrete definition and context. Many of us are incapable, or careless, of distinguishing a symbol from a sign. And it is these catchwords and clichés that constitute the “platform” of the Republican candidates. Let us not be deluded; intellectually it may not make much sense, but it is politically powerful. The Republicans will try to avoid the issues we must confront by diverting our attention with personal, irrelevant attacks upon character, with other irrelevancies of flag-waving, pietistic moralizing in black and white, and a thinly disguised racism that is a grave weakness of our culture. We must not allow such to distract us. Let us be very clear that we are in a formidable crisis (in the Chinese sense of the word, both great danger and great opportunity.) We either elect for a real change equal to the demands of a 21st century world or follow that same road of a world that’s past leading to destruction and extinction. Many of us hold contradictory and unexamined values inherited from a world that is no more. It is our task to examine our values minutely to make certain that they be true and commensurate with what we now know of the Earth and of a world that has made it small. For we risk not only to lose our democracy, but to put the Earth at greater risk. This very day seven years ago, I wrote:
Now is come the hour of our test as a nation, as a people: we either honor our living and our dead by casting our votes for freedom, justice, and peace by electing Barack Obama as our next President, or we continue on the dead-end road toward the destruction of freedom, justice, peace, and eventually our demise. © Rafael Jesús González
2008 Reprinted with permission of the author.
Rafael Jesús González is a published writer and poet, a visual artist and a Professor of Creative Writing and Literature who has taught at the University of Oregon, Western State University of Colorado, Central Washington State University, the University of Texas at El Paso, and Laney College, Oakland (where he founded the Mexican and Latin American Studies Dept.). He has also taught in the public schools under Poets in the Classroom. In 2002 he received the Annual Dragonfly Press Award for Literary Achievement and was honored in 2003 by the National Council of Teachers of English & Annenberg/CPB for his writing. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the University of Creation Spirituality; on the Latino Advisory Committee of the Oakland Museum of California; and on the Alameda County Office of Education Arts Alliance, and Peace Education Network. You may contact Rafael at P. O. Box 5638, Berkeley, CA 94705 |
