Soapbox

It was no grand event… perhaps
as quiet a moment as a president can ever have in public
but some things are in such perfect proportion that they simply have to be.
Some echos do not die out but grow louder on return
until, at the right moments
they ring like a bell.
Courage and truth spread roots,
lift branches, cast seeds to the wind
and the future grows.
My skin tingles at  the thought of him there,
living embodiment of the ripples spread from one small act.
Sliding quietly into the seat she took that day
in that same old bus smelling of  diesel and sweat,
of long days and hard looks
and the dry stone dust of walls suddenly cracked
though not quite ready to fall.

He looks out the same window where she once  turned her weary gaze
upon a world that seemed the same as  yesterday- but was not.
In a moment of quantum truth, the world was changing before her eyes
simply because she was sitting there
looking at it.
She was surrounded by angry people frightened of change
and she was just tired, maybe wasn’t trying to knock anything down
but she sat like thunder and woke the world.

And now here he sits, the circle completed,
the ripple returned to the source
the very change she wanted to see
through that soot-streaked window.
He is the echo that has become a new, ancient song,
looking out that window, now wiped museum-clean
yet still streaked with blood and resentment
wondering, perhaps, what  he may be changing
by some simple act at the end of a long day.
He is alone here, palpably so- yet no less surrounded
by angry people frightened of change,
and wondering how far his ripples will spread ,
peering forward,
hoping to catch a glimpse  of the change
he wants to be in the world.

They call themselves by many different names- pundit, anchor, blogger, spokesperson, surrogate, consultant. But their proper label, the name that truly describes their profession and the role they play in America is “Pusher.”

Yes, they are pushers, and they have a product to move, folks. The product they’re trying to get you to buy is anger- specifically, anger born from fear.

They are the merchants of partisanism, jingoism and racism- from the subtle music of racially coded dog whistles to the freight train thunder of hoods and crosses. They’ve also got homophobia, Islamophobia,  xenophobia, changeophobia, paranoia, ethnocentrism, self-righteous delusion, persecution and blaming the victim. Lots of exciting, brightly colored product with such entertaining labels but all containing the same base ingredients; the dynamite of fear and hate.
You name it, they have  little bag of it in their pocket, and when they see that you’re curious they’re always ready to dip their fingers in, touch them to your lips, give you just a little taste.
             You like that, huh?

They hang out on the virtual street corners of cable TV  and the playgrounds of online chatrooms and message boards, ready to prey on the ignorant and confused,  the worried, frightened and the disenchanted.
They sidle up to you in late-night email forwards and through talk radio while you’re stuck and frustrated in traffic, always ready to capitalize on your weakness, hunger, dysfunctional need.
They come on like your best friend, the only one who really understands what you’ve been through. They clap you on the back and say,
Man, have I got some great product for you!
Check it out: Biden is a communist, man! For real! A Nazi communist!
And he’s using drag queens in the Department of Education to try to brainwash our kids
so they all grow up to be gay atheists!
           You like that, huh? Yeah! That’s an even better high than that birther
dust I hooked you up with a while ago, am I right? Hey, only my best
product for you, my friend!

Like so many of the pushers who haunt the streets of our cities, most don’t sell this poison because they believe it themselves. It’s all about profit, folks. A gentleman has to make a buck, and dirty money spends just the same as clean.

And they sure don’t give a crap about the squalid emotional state of fear, division and self-loathing that having this kind of hate addiction brings. It’s not their fault if your emotional crack habit causes you to work against your own best interest and tears apart your community, bankrupts your neighbors, sells out your children’s future.
This is just the politics of capitalism, man, and Jesus loves the free market. It says so right there in the bible, right after the part where he said “Thou shalt not raise a rich man’s taxes.”

And once they have you hooked on that feeling that someone else, someone different than you is responsible for all the messed-up shit in your life: your dead-end job, the mountain of bills, your rude pissed-off kids, the freakin price of gas- everything wrong in this country is the fault of those others,  those weirdos… you realize that anger  actually feels much safer than fear, gives a much smoother high without the gut-churning afterburn of withdrawl that daily anxiety leaves.
And when you find that grabbing your pitchfork and storming the castle is a much bigger rush than sitting down and hammering out grudging, common ground…
…they’ve got you! You’ll come back again and again, pass it on to  your friends.

But pretty soon just the occasional  “socialist liberals are giving free stuff to lazy people” epithet isn’t enough to keep you going any more.
You need that outrage to get you through your daily grind, to take your mind off all your misery-  which you’re actually making worse by buying their product, but you can’t see that, because they whisper in your ear that it’s the kindergarten teachers teaching kids how to be gay that’s the reason why you can barely afford your rent.

Like the typical hard-core tweaker  who can’t see that the biggest problem he has is his habit, you can’t see that a few illegal immigrants washing dishes and picking crops isn’t the reason why you leave for work every day scared you’ll be laid off as soon as you walk in, but there you are at 2 AM screaming in all caps on a message board demanding that  we build an electric fence around America “with a moat!” before it’s too late.

It’s crazy, and it’s destructive, it’s eating you alive and it’s dragging the entire country down along with you. But who’s the real villain here?

When cops want to clean up the streets, they don’t waste too much time rounding up the dumb addicts. As dangerous and destructive as they are, the true evil is done by the ones who put that crack pipe in their hands and make sure they always have more even when they really want to quit.

The real criminals are the pushers; the merchants of suspicion and blame, the hate pimps who hawk their wares to the gullible and weak.  The ones who put on makeup and straighten their suits and look right into the camera with their brilliantly white smiles and tell America that we need to stop asking billion-dollar oil companies to pay taxes and start demanding that the single mom with 2 kids whose income is so low that she can hardly put food on the table- she needs to starts coughing up her fair share by God!

Just like all the other  pimps and pushers, the ones who traffic in human misery are driving luxury cars and flying first class, and living in gated communities, protected from all the division and discord they sell. They’re living quite well  from the spoils of rancor, by convincing the average man  that their lives will be better as soon as women stop getting birth control and can be executed for having an abortion.

The only way to stop them is to hit the streets ourselves, to step between them and their customers,  to stop them from corrupting any more hearts and minds than they already have.
We have to call the station and complain, demand our cable company take the station off their line-up, snopes back the e-mail chain, report the white supremacist and anti-semitic crap we see on social media. Call out the lies and offer the miserable addicts, whose habit enriches and empowers those pushers, the methadone of  truth.
Even if they won’t take it.
Also, as difficult as it is and even though it’s probably too late for many of them to ever get clean, we need to offer civility, common ground and a little compassion for people who, after all, may have been groomed since childhood to hate.

But most of all, we need to point our fingers and call the predators at the top of the food chain what they are: rage-pushers, hate-pimps.
The scum of the earth.

One thing his opponents agree on is that they hate him. Ohh, how they hate him, with a spittle-flecked ferocity that far out-strips any hatred we held for their guy. But why? You scratch your head, ask them- what is it about him that you hate so much? and they'll tell you "We hate him because, because… um…"

We hate him because he's a socialist!
    ….which he isn't. not even close. This is a word they thoroughly and proudly refuse to comprehend the meaning of, but they use it because they're sure it means "evil"  and "freedom-destroyer" which depends, I guess, on your definition of freedom.
We hate him because he's going to take away our guns!
     …which he isn't, hasn't said a word about it, though given the number of their buddies who threaten him with assassination, maybe he should.
We hate him because he's raised our taxes!
     …except he has lowered them- but that's impossible, and irrelevent, because he's a democrat so therefore he has raised taxes, just as all the Republicans who are raising their taxes must really be lowering them, because everyone knows it always works that way.
We hate him because he's bankrupting the country!
     …except that studies show the stimulus package helped. Their own party's decades of corporate welfare, tax loopholes and bloated military spending did much more damage than unemployment extensions, a few road projects and some extra cash to keep our teachers working ever did.

We hate him because he's anti- business and is killing jobs!
     …except he's the only one who has managed to create any jobs at all, and he's been pro-business and anti-regulation and reform to such an extent that many in his own party shake their heads in despair.
Death panels, then! We hate him because he's going to make death panels that will decide who lives and who dies.
     …if you want a death panel, look no futher than the roster of  Republicans voting to take away a woman's right to have an abortion to save her life. And what is lobbying to kill the Affordable Care Act if not a death panel? Sorry- that flea-bitten dog named "death panel" belongs to you.
We hate him because he's trying to take away our freedom of religion!
     …. except that nothing he has done interfers with their right to believe what they choose and to live their own lives accordingly. One person's religious freedom ends where another life begins, and they are the ones who too often fail to respect that boundary.

We hate him because he is weak; he ended a war and appeases terrorists!
     …except he has been surprisingly militant, taking out, one by one, the top eschelon of those labeled enemies of America (and more than a few innocent bystanders) with rather chilling  efficiency.
We hate him because of all his horrible, dangerous policies,
     …many of which were policies they proposed themselves a few years ago and were cheerleaders for until he signed on to them.
We hate him because he's a Kenyan!
     …except of course he's not. No one even actually believes that anyway but the kind of folks who are desperate to keep the mask in place long after the costume party has ended. Others may say it, may answer that way on polls but you can see in their eyes- they're not that stupid, they know it isn't true.
Well, we hate him because he's Muslim!
     …Oh come on. He  has attended a Christian church all his life. What part of that seems Muslim? This reasoning also presumes that being a member of the Muslim faith is, in itself a reasonable cause to hate and revile him and millions of people on earth (whereas hating someone because they're a bigoted, close-minded Christian is just ridiculous).
We hate him because he wants to murder babies!
     …which to anyone who has ever seen him with children is just patently moronic . He's the one trying to feed them: their party is the one cutting infant nutrition programs!
We hate him because he has made the world a more dangerous place
     …except by every measure of every group except theirs, he hasn't. In fact most of the rest of the world trusts him, finds him careful, reasoned, honest.
     
Why then do they hate him, this quiet, smiling, thoughtful man?

    They will tell you that they hate him because he is too smart, too foreign, too devisive, too savage,  a communist, a fascist, a communist fascist.    
    They hate him because he's the worst president this country has ever had- how else would you describe a Kenyan Muslim socialist gun-stealing tax-raiser? They clench their fists and brandish the second ammendment and list you a dozen different justifications for their hate based on a dozen proveable lies.
    Many will eagerly admit to thinking he is the anti-christ or is possessed by demons- yes yes, they'll cop to that one in a minute!
    But the one reason for their hatred that you must never, ever dare to suggest, the one outrageous and over-the-top accusation which leaves them shocked and insulted and unable to figure out where you got such a ridiculous and untrue idea and which they will not tolerate you even hinting at is that they hate him for being the one thing he actually IS:

Black.

Dedicated to the governor of Pennsylvania, who suggested that women upset at being forced to have an unnecessary internal ultrasound should 'close their eyes',  and to the Georgia legislator who wants to outlaw abortion even for a woman carrying a dead fetus because 'cows and pigs do it all the time' , and to the gentleman in Wisconsin who wants to outlaw divorce and says that women who are abused by their husbands should just 'remember the good times', and… and…. and…. 

 
"Just close your eyes" he said.
Close your eyes and maybe it won't hurt so much.
Maybe you can make the shame go away if you don't have to look at it,
don't have to meet the eyes of the doctor who is ready to violate you,
who is no longer allowed to address your pain and need,
Close your eyes and deal with it because from this point on,
health care for you is nothing more than a power play,
the political blood sport of men, drenched in your own desperate blood.

Close your eyes, ladies, and think of Jesus
who wants you to know that you are a sinner- and a slut
for having dreams beyond the ones given to you by your pastor,
your employer, and your governor.
See, they are worried that you might get an abortion mistakenly
thinking it's a treatment for the flu or something,
eager to brand you a wanton  for having sex at all,
a Jezebel for  enjoying pleasure without consequence…
the way that they get to.

Close your eyes and pretend that you are still a person
with the right to make your own, most intimate decisions about your future,
Close your eyes and remember  when planning your own family
wasn't considered dirty,
when owning your body was still your birthright
and the right to give birth also included the right not to.

Close your eyes and forget that you are supposed to be a mindless object of desire,
to be salivated over and then dismissed,
used by men to sell beer and shoes and laundry detergent,
expected to exist only for their sexual pleasure, reviled for feeling it yourself,
condemned for being what they so determinedly make you: a sexual being.

So come here, little girl, here's a push-up bra, stilettos and a chastity belt
Learn now that sex is something for a man to do to a woman, not actually with her.
Understand that you must grow up to be either a slut, a dyke or a mother…
and a mother, and a mother.
Close your eyes, girls, and enjoy your patent leather Mary Janes and princess dreams
that don't yet end in blood and probes
and congressmen playing doctor behind the statehouse,
insisting that the princess carry even death in her womb, all in the name of life.

Close your eyes and think of your grandmothers, and of their grandmothers
owned by their fathers, traded to their husbands,
needing permission to go to college.
Think of the days when the few  lady-like jobs that existed
were only for those un-natural old maids
unable to join the ranks of the real women doing a woman's real job of having babies.
Think of not even being allowed to learn or to help support yourself and your family,
of depending on a man to feed and clothe you and your children,
your own love and need to protect them a chain and an anchor
that keeps you in the harbor of even a loveless, abusive marriage,
your yards and yards of beautiful sail forever stowed belowdecks,
because the open seas of life is no place for a woman.

Close your eyes, ladies, and think of England,
and of Iran and Afghanistan
where women are chained for their own good, beaten for showing their faces,
stoned for going to school, sewn shut between babies, robbed of the ability to feel passion,
used for a man's desire but allowed none of their own,
receptacles, incubators, cooks and maids.

So close your eyes, and shut your mouths, and be thankful that you live
in such an enlightened, modern land.

We hear it said once again that it is not safe to give a woman control of her own body, that a mere woman must not be allowed to control her own destiny- that such independence in a female is immoral, such liberty is licentious.

For a time it seemed we had defeated this ancient foe, that in the daylight of modern enlightenment, such nonsense was only still muttered  in dark rooms by small, frightened men desperate to turn back time. But  now, like a mob made bold by the setting sun and a lighted torch, they begin to shout it  again in the public square.

And so they say that our daughters' fertility- and thereby their lives- should properly be subject to the whims of their husbands, lovers, employers and abusers and, like unruly livestock, women should not be allowed to choose when to breed. If you have sex, you should get pregnant-– slut!

I do not know why some men are so eager to return to the days when passion and happy sexuality were the province only of men and something no proper woman would  enjoy.  I do not know why they are so determined that sex without risk of pregnancy must be something only men should be allowed to experience.

Perhaps it's that old  fear that a woman free to enjoy sex without physical consequences will choose another, better partner. You know- the way men do.  Perhaps they worry that a woman who is allowed to make motherhood a free and loving choice  rather than an obligation or possibly dangerous burden might start to get ideas… like the idea that her ideas matter, that her education and career doesn't have to be interrupted by constant child-bearing, that she can compete with a man and that maybe there are a few things she'd like to change in this world.

It is being said that a woman, born in blood and beauty, somehow cannot comprehend the reality of new life inside her without the help of a man, cannot possibly judge right and wrong for herself, the way he can.

But we say that a man, born of a woman and begetting his own daughters who  refuses to let them have an equal place in his world is no man.

We have tasted the autonomy that once belonged only to them, and it has not made us want to stop being women, to stop being mothers and wives, stop tending our family gardens.  We only want freedom to make our own decisions. That river has been crossed now, and we will not be pushed back across the Rubicon just because you find our presence on the other side with you inconvenient.

Do not mistake the softer nature of our geography and the nurturing manner of our souls  for weakness of resolve.
Do not think that we will allow you to take from our daughters that which our own mothers fought and suffered and bled and died to give to us, will avert our eyes meekly while you put their bodies, passions and their lives on a leash.

For it is not in the nature of a woman to surrender a child to a predator without a fight no matter how outmatched she may be.
We would die before we would allow you to violate her with your body, with your pinch and tear, your slap and thrust, and  no more will we step aside while you violate her with your laws, with your leering contempt and lecherous statutes, let you play doctor to amputate her rights and cauterize her dignity.

Do not make us choose between our children and you, for that is a contest you will never win no matter what enticements you offer or weapons you bring to bear upon us,
For such is the nature of woman.