Three Things: Hope Within Us
[NB: check the byline, thanks. / ~Rayne]
The orange bawbag signed that execrable dog’s breakfast into law yesterday all the while having his greasy ego stroked by the wretches who continue to work toward their fascist ends.
It’s gutting, sickening.
But the cruelty is their point – they want us to throw in the towel, roll over and yield to them.
Fuck that with a pointy object.
I refuse to go out on my knees. This is my country, our country, a country which is both diverse and struggling to encompass that diversity. It’s been great because of that diversity. We are rich as a nation because we do not have one groupthink but a wealth of thinking.
We are rich because we have learned how to work toward common goals without being forced to do so. We have been rowing this same craft together wielding our different knowledge and skills like paddles.
If we are going to stem fascism’s revolting cultural backslide, we need to get in touch with truth and hope.
I offer three perspective to help on this day-after, when we should continue to demand and celebrate No Kings.
~ 3 ~
Small farmer, crop scientist, former farm worker Sarah Taber published a thread yesterday noting a singular difference about this point in American history:
Sarah Taber @[email protected]
Hello Americans on Mastodon, I know we don’t feel like there’s much to celebrate this July 4th. It’s been a rough several years.
So I want to talk about how we’re making history right now.
It’s a long thread but you can read it in its entirety as a single page at this link:
https://mastoreader.io/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmstdn.social%2F%40sarahtaber%40mastodon.online%2F114797147748852077
You may learn some US history often hidden from Americans because it doesn’t reflect well on this nation. We need to get over this aversion to the gritty parts of this country’s experience, including how slavery was present in 1619. Otherwise we continue to cycle through the same crimes against humanity again and again.
Clearly we have the tools to do better and faster at that. This should give us hope.
~ 2 ~
MSFT VP of Developer Community Scott Hanselman also published a thread yesterday; most of you will nod your head in agreement at some point as you read along. But the most important part are these first two posts in that thread:
Scott Hanselman @[email protected]
It’s so frustrating that there is this illusion that we are all 49%/49% right now. Us versus them, good versus bad, and it’s all because of the BS that is the electoral system. It’s very likely 70% versus 30% and we’re just not seeing representative government. There’s just no common sense right now
Scott Hanselman @[email protected]
Absolutely insane that every vote is a squeaker, and literally no one wants this bill but they don’t wanna get primaried. This bill is insane trash and will make everyone’s life worse except mine. And I don’t want the tax break. I want to pay for kids meals and Headstart with my taxes.
You can also read this entire thread in a single page at this link:
https://mastoreader.io/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmstdn.social%2F%40shanselman%40hachyderm.io%2F114792483543360039
Too many of us have allowed the dominance of the right-wing media ecosphere to persuade us we are in the minority.
WE ARE THE MAJORITY. If we weren’t they wouldn’t be trying so fucking hard to suppress our votes.
Do we need to organize our much larger numbers, our greater energy? Heck yes, but our numbers should give us all hope.
There are more than enough of us to storm this iteration of the Bastille; we’ve kicked a king to the curb before, we can do it again.
~ 1 ~
As I have several times for Independence Days past, I’ll point to Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”
I wrote three years ago on July 4 after SCOTUS’s Dobbs decision that June, after Russia attacked Ukraine that spring:
But again, I think of of Douglass’s speech, made in 1852 before abolition of slavery with the 13th Amendment in 1865.
Though blunt about the young nation’s failings toward Black persons, Douglass used the word ‘hope’ and ‘hopefully’ seven times in his speech.
“…There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon.
…I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. …”
Hope is not an easy thing when one is under constant threat of enslavement and death simply because they had the luck to be born with a particular skin color to a particular group of people. Yet Douglass had it, as have the BIPOC people of this nation who have had to resist and persevere through many waves of progress and regression.
Douglass could see a trend which fed his hopes, writing,
…my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. …
This trend remains, obvious in the response of democratic nations toward Russia’s assault on Ukraine intent on overthrowing a sovereign autonomous people. This attack will not succeed; it has already failed in many ways by encouraging more cohesion between other democracies including Finland and Sweden’s intent to join NATO. It has failed by exposing how hollowed out and threadbare Russia has become, eaten away by the kleptocratic forces which emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The increased solidarity of democracies relied on regressive action and thought, stripping away the fuzziness of economics and culture, distilling the choice: violence against a sovereign autonomous democratic nation will not be accepted by other free, autonomous, democratic nations which will unify to support defense against such an illegitimate attack.
The solidarity across the European Union and NATO – apart from the US thanks to the orange bawbag – has only deepened. There have been hiccups but the EU and NATO are in a better position to respond to transgressions against their integrity than they have been. They took the threat seriously and organized.
That could be us. That should be us. It will be us. They’ve demonstrated hope is reasonable even under threat.
Other pockets of hope exist even within that solidarity, like the city of Paris’s efforts to become green through a 15-minute city approach. Parisians are building a new and brighter future in spite of political and existential threats.
Again, that could, should, and will be us.
We simply have to consciously choose it, get our shit together, and move together in that direction – with all the hope within us.
~ 0 ~
I’ll leave you with three more things — two quotes and an aphorism:
“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History
Either we have hope within us or we do not.
It is a dimension of the soul and is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world.
Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.
Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy that things are going well or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not because it stands a chance to succeed.
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
It is hope, above all which gives the strength to live and continually try new things.
― Vaclav Havel
E lauhoe mai na waʻa; i ke ka, i ka hoe; i ka hoe, i ke ka; pae aku i ka ʻaina.
Hawaiian proverb: Paddle together, bail, paddle, and we’ll arrive together at the shore.