If you listen carefully, you can hear the screams echo from every progressive meeting, email list, and web blog within fifty miles.
AAAAAAAAAAH!
Be afraid little activist, be very afraid. Alito is coming. He is going to bomb women’s clinics with judicial activism and give anybody who listens to Ted Nugent a semi-automatic to play with. He’ll search every 10 year-old-girl for dope, spy on your uncle for sporting a Veterans Against Bush bumper sticker, and even scale skyscrapers to grab unsuspecting blondes from their penthouses.
Yes, Judge Sam Alito’s nomination could be the Bush administration’s worst attack on our shared values since, well, damn near two weeks ago. But wait, there’s hope! Remember wondering what y ou are going to do with your degree that’s costing way too much? Well, its time to meet Prominent-DC-Liberal-Think-Tank-Hey-Wanna-Hang-out? Guy! He just wants to be friends with everybody and then give out FREE super-cool glossy flyers and pamphlets about stopping Alito. The kids in the Marxist groups would totally have to pay for these. Even better, he’s got the only job your Integrated Degree in Political Arts and Linguistics Communication will ever land you, whatever it is, so you can get some great tips on having a future.
As it turns out, our options in stopping this neo-con nut are groundbreaking. At one meeting I attended we discussed the possibility of a candlelight vigil, and even tabling at College Green with all the sweet FREE stuff we get from Prominent-DC-Liberal-Think-Tank-Hey-Wanna-Hang-out? Guy. Plus, there is no way our loyal representatives in Congress could confirm Alito after their mail boxes fill with sweet FREE pre-made dissent notes signed by their college age constituents.
Now there is a problem. How are we going to get enough people to sign our sweet FREE stuff? There are thousands of students who would agree, but they are all to busy drinking and caring about other things than politics. Don’t they understand the urgency of this situation?
I confronted one of my politically apathetic friends about this issue, and even gave him one of my glossy pamphlets from Washington.
“Man, this is messed up,” he said.
“I know dude, now do you understand why I am so worried about this stuff all the time?” I said.
“Yeah, but you get stressed out because you spend so much time on it. You go to all these meetings and make a bunch of copies of stuff, but in the end some old dudes you don’t even know are going to make these decisions for you. Maybe they’ll care what you say, but probably not.”
But our flyers are so glossy…
My friend has a point.
We work far too hard to ensure our leaders make the right decisions for us, but get little in return. This can be frustrating and cause people to burn out of grassroots activism. We could be putting this energy into solving our problems on our own, but instead we throw pebbles at the institutions that attempt to solve them for us.
Samuel Alito’s appointment could be the breaking point in the Supreme Court during a crucial time in American politics. He could decide what is taught in our schools without ever meeting a student. He could make a drastic choice for millions of women, even though he is a man and has never held another life in his body. The consequences of his discretion, and those of his elite colleagues, could enter into a million nameless lives on any given day.
Perhaps this explains my friend’s attitude. It’s not apathy that keeps him from action, is hopelessness. It’s not worth it. They are too many, we are too few. They have the bombs, we have television. Sit down and go back to work.
Fortunately, we don’t all feel that way. Those of us who believe in a better future know that good things take time. Perhaps one day our wish for control over our own lives and communities will be fulfilled and we won’t have to waste our time fighting some old rich guy we’ve never met. Until then we should reconsider our habit of simply reacting to oppression, and instead take action that reduces our obedience to the top-down structure that allows it to happen in the first place.
I hope this piece made you laugh a little, for it is our ability to laugh at ourselves and our world, to admit that no one is above criticism or comedy that proves our potential. Our minds and movements are free to evolve as we discuss, disagree, overcome, and learn from each other and every passing moment. Relax. Samuel Alito’s ascendance through the ranks of the Right may give him a seat of unreasonable power, but it’s just that, unreasonable. At least we will still know what it’s like to be human. •
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