(With apologies and gratitude to Gil Scot-Heron and Loretta Ross)
In America the revolution was televised
It was monetized
All our devices blinking in bewilderment,
All our eyes blinking in wonderment,
All stock markets crawling over the walls of government.
Two theories A/B tested in the world:
Right and left. Right and wrong. Rite and logic.
Which motivation
Finds the solution:
Fear and Love. Love and Fear.
Fear
of losing power
of The Other, those people, can I speak to your manager about them please?
of communist central world government trying to take our guns our women our libber tea
of being constrained restrained having to follow laws that get up our noses and into our bizness
of, if everyone is equal how am I special?
Love
of whiteness
of rightness
of the lightness of being the almighty individual taming the wilderness, civilizing the savages and winning the bread.
OR
Love -
of mankind, womankind, gender-neutral kind, all the kinds, being kind
of glorious rainbows, suspicious spectrum of uncanny colour mixing and blending together until who even knows where one starts and one stops?
of trees, lakes, oceans, fish, fowl and beast, of land (i mean, don’t they even know about the gold in those hills?)
of even the opposite others (not sheeples!) who have had their sadness and need weaponized through manipulation misinformation meanness
Fear -
of climate change and species extinction, ice caps melting and seas dying
of homicidal righteous anger wrapped in flags and uniforms and coded tattoos
of losing rights, losing presence, pleasantness disappearing into a vacuum of frontier face offs and every man for himself (women and children first!)
of fratricide, obliteration, genocide, annihilation
Are we on the eve of destruction?
The secret Kryptonite of the left:
Recognizing that we have met the enemy and they is us.
There but for the grace of God
Heaven knows we don’t believe in corporal punishment, never could bring myself to meet violence with violence.
They think we tear babies from our wombs with our manicured hands, tear-lessly,
When we know the gravity of choices we make,
Know our systems might inject death into an innocent person because of a
DNA typo
Know that means letting child murderers live.
We live with those stones in our breasts.
We still try to model peace.
Do we have time for tolerance paradoxes?
We have already fought this war
(so many wars over “state’s rights” and oil rights and the rights of other countries and peoples to make choices we don’t agree with, so few wars to stop apartheid, political prisoners abused, public beheadings, genocide )
What if the kind of dispersed global network of ideals that we seek becomes their tool?
So many people chasing the end of the world as if it isn’t at the door already.
Is the solution motivation?
Their loud flashing hate and anger that boils hot and explodes
Our love can’t stay soft.
Not even tough love. FIERCE love. Burning love. Evangelical love.
We must stuff our hearts and our guns with glitter and blast everything to shattered shards of glory.
We must radiate the joy that can be ours, MUST be ours,
right now, in this anxious and fraught time.
We must be the beautiful terrible frolickers following Pan, bringing green life and wonder to all parts of the world.
Our revolution must be irresistible
It may be televised
It will need not be monetized
Our joy will be shared from each according to ability to each according to need.
