These are times of great bewilderment. Truth is shrouded and unclear. I have good friends -- sharp, bright, politically alive, spiritually awakened friends -- who disagree with my assessment of signs of the times.
Take the interpretation of Obama, for example. Most of my friends think he's doing the best he can, given the conditions he inherited, and the resistance of the Republican Party to engage in actual governing. My friends point to victories for reproductive rights and greater openings for sexual inclusion in society. They point to the ending of the Iraq War, the disruption of Al Qaeda and the reduction of the military budget as proof that the president is restoring sanity to our foreign policy. They point out that Obama's shrewd handling of the economy saved our auto industry and prevented us from sliding into a deeper depression. They are hopeful that Obama really is the "green president" who will move our country off the fossil fuel grid. My friends think that Obama is playing a long game, chipping away at the monstrous structure Republicans have built the past 40 years. They believe things are changing for the better.
I'm on the other side of that perspective. I think that more than a political crisis of policies, we are in a deepening moral crisis about desire and meaning. I think our way of life is currently set up to create continual crisis, to keep us in a perpetual state of fear and insecurity. In such an environment, all politicians prop up the problem and resist the solution. I grant that the Democratic Party is not as odorous as the Republican, but both parties are militaristic to the core. They are both incapable of thinking outside the interests of corporate capitalism; they are both opposed to changing the American way of life so that the earth itself is seen as an equal partner in creating our future. I think the system has to be dismantled and that we need to build a whole new way of life with new desires and more inclusive, mutually dependent meaning. This is certainly a long game, but it's a different game than the Democrats have in mind.
The actions of the Occupy Movement have been a breath of fresh air but they are not enough. We also need to build the long haul infrastructure that lifts up, with visionary actions, the better world that we believe can become possible. In building this infrastructure, we need to be intentionally focused on creating cross-economic class conversation. We need to wed the working class with the professional class. We need to create environments where poor folk are sitting right next to middle class folk. It's a long haul game but those places of meeting are where the new morality will be birthed, and it will take 40 years.