A Green State of Mind

Well run political campaigns are often like well crafted movies. The best ones have exceptional script writers, who dutifully supply the actors with the words the talented thespians wouldn’t otherwise mouth. The much praised “race” speech Obama gave on Tuesday, 03/18, was evidence of the presence of masterful spinmeisters, that are diligently working behind his stage’s curtain, providing soothing phrases not always consistent with his actions. Obama has been displaying a pattern of ideological unreliability, and a quickness to discard inconvenient friends… a profile in cowardice.

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During the early part of the primary season, as Republican candidates had one of their debates, a small piece of legislation was in Congress that would establish a Woodstock museum. Supposedly the museum would begin being built during the 40th anniversary year of the music festival that ended the 1960’s. Of course Republicans took great pleasure in ridiculing this bill, especially John McCain who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam at the time. Setting aside the fact that his remarks could have illuminated the inherent baselessness of that past war, the general attitude of many Republicans and conservatives toward that era show that the basis of their ideology today is to refute the many movements and ideas of the 1960’s. The revolutions and dramatic change of that time are minimized in conservative rhetoric as part of a counter-revolution and restoration of the old order. These movements and ideas forty years ago were summed up by the counterculture, and what was missing in the ridicule is the fact that a counterculture always attempts to create a new society. The counterculture of the 1960’s in particular may not have completely succeeded, but it offered a template for future attempts and illustrates the need for a recurring counterculture as a phenomenon in the United States and the world.

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It is assumed that democracy is a good thing, based on the premise that it is the best way to prevent dictatorships. However, as recent history has shown, there have been cases where a government elected through a democratic process assumed absolute power, usually through the catalyst of a supposed state of emergency. There is the democracy of small groups and there is the democracy of the nation-state, both seeming to arise from the historical period of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment also was the introduction of reason as the main organizing principle of human action, and there is an implied connection between the exercise of reason and the best possible application of democracy. The positive perspective on reason and democracy that began with the Enlightenment has shaped the current discussion of how to have a just government and society, going to democracy as the default method. But it has ignored the inherent structural characteristics that is needed in order to have any exercise of power, any meaning in reality, or any functioning economic system. It is in fact these structural characteristics that has demonstrated that the Enlightenment was not necessarily a complete reform of the human condition, and that the movement toward transcendence that occurs in structures has at times moved reason and democracy toward a negative and destructive direction against human needs or wishes.

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