Corrected vision

A late blog today.

I was going to blog about another topic today, but I remembered an appointment that I had this afternoon. It was an appointment that I needed. I knew something was wrong and I was compensating to deal with it. I grew tired of doing the compensating and made the appointment.

I needed new glasses. I was wearing my glasses and I had to use a magnifying glass to read some of the comics on the comics page. (Sometimes it's the only part of the paper that makes any logical sense.)

So I went to the eye doctor received a check up on my vision. The eyes are healthy. They just have different focal points now. Astigmatism in both eyes and for the life of me I don't understand the prescription fully, but when the good doctor put a pair of (real funny looking) glasses on me that had the correct prescription lens in them, I could see perfectly.

(Somehow three different focal ranges in the lens makes bifocals. That I will never figure out. New math?  Must be Common Core.....)

In two weeks I will have new glasses and all sorts of problems – eye strain, headaches, squinting – will all go away.

That's what it was like for me back in 2006. The Participation in Government (PIG) class teacher and I came up with a project where the students would take a Political Compass™ quiz and then compare their results to those of political parties and candidates from the 2004 Presidential election. (We repeated a modified version of this project , eventually using the Political Spectrum™ quiz, every year until the teacher retired. I am hoping to continue some form of this project with the new PIG teacher.) Students were surprised at the results. They liked seeing that there were political parties outside the two man capitalist ones. Some were even curious about socialism.

When badgered about my scores, I took it and scored very near the Socialist Party candidate. This surprised me as I was a registered member of the NYS Conservative Party. It surprised my students less.

So I looked into socialism and communism. I read the Communist Manifesto and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, and other books. I began checking into independent media – Free Speech TV, Link TV, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Project Censored, and many other indie news sources, which are now part of my daily diet.

I began seeing things through the lens of class- rich versus poor ; race – white versus anything else ; gender – male versus female and LGBTQ ; among many other ways. I still have to deal with what the (lame) mainstream media was dishing out, but then digging into the independent media to see what they say.

And take a guess who was more accurate…..

A decade later, with much reading, watching, listening, and learning , I see things differently and have a better understanding of what is going on and why. Something I never had when I was younger and in any of the  different political parties that I belonged to.

So, do you need a new pair of glasses to help you see things different?

I know a few good eye doctors.


Update:  Evidently I really needed new glasses as this is at least twice that I have forgotten to fill in the title field.  

On this day in history.....

On this day in 1947, HUAC – the House Un-American Activities Committee began it's witch hunt of communists in Hollywood. Many people saw their careers shattered as this violation of First Amendment Rights proceeded.

This grew into the McCarthy Era insanity where communists were everywhere and had to be hunted down and, in some cases (like the Rosenbergs), murdered by the state on trumped up charges. (You can put a pun in there if you want.)

So many people that were abiding by their First Amendment rights had their lives destroyed. Freedom of speech and of the press. Freedom of association (peaceably assemble). Redress of grievances. All violated by the state out of some form of paranoia.

This paranoia dragged the US into the Vietnam war, which saw 58,000+ American servicemen and women die in combat and over 1 million Vietnamese killed as well. The aftermath of the war was worse – Agent Orange poisoning and PTSD with its high rates of alcoholism & drug abuse. Dare we look at the damage done to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos?

This happened before in American History. Look at the work that people did to organize unions. And the capitalists turned the power of the state against the workers.

Look at the WWI era United States, where President Wilson put the research of Walter Lippman into practice, lied the US into a war that was none of its business (sound familiar?) and jailed prominent socialists, like Eugene V. Debs. (By the way – running for president from jail, he still pulled in an incredible amount of votes. Over 100,000 when you had to be a 21+ year old male in order to vote at that time.)

Post WWI was as bad. Socialists were denied their seats in congress, driven out of political positions they were democratically elected to across the US. People were jailed. And J. Edgar Hoover began a reign of terror that lasted into the 1960's that would make Hitler, Stalin, and the East German Stasi proud.

Look at the Minneapolis strikes, Cleveland, and any time that workers rose up for their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and you will see the capitalists using (or trying to use) brutal force and the power of the state to put them down.

Thankfully it is hitting a wall. In the 18-30 year old demographic socialism is as acceptable as capitalism as an economic system. Even in the 30-50 year old range  support is growing as well. Look at the unemployment and under-employment rates among these groups and you can see the cracks in the facade of capitalism forming and growing.

People are getting tired of the stresses of capitalism and want something different. They are reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, and the many inspired additions to it. They are reading Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA and liking what they see.

We are approaching the Rubicon. Socialist ideas are being introduced and no matter how hard the media tries to ignore them, they keep leaking out. People are seeking out socialist writings and reading them on their own. The Internet, e-readers, and independent book shops are helping them get what they want – something different.  Something better.

Chicken Little is starting to scream “The sky is falling” again. And the people are saying “No. We remember the past.  And it's not worth the price .”

It's time for some socialist action. 

 

Let's go. 

We have nothing to lose but our chains.