Tuesday, January 18, 2005

…But Not One Cent for Tribute

The good news: I’ve finished with the bugs, it’s out of my system.  Thanks, all of you, for playing along; you’ve been great sports and we’ll have a lovely parting gift for any of you still hanging around my porchlight later tonight. 

More good news: there is ever so much crap for me to drone about.  I’ve got stuff about mass-transit preachers and girl-on-girl contact sports and a Geary Boulevard inventory; wigging out and dining out and painting the bedroom and many other lovely things.  It would be easy and fun to start this short week-after-a-three-day-weekend with an entertaining bit of fluff, a giggle or, possibly, an eponymous chuckle.  But today I can’t do it.  Today I actually am going to try to be responsible, politically relevant, and part of an even more important meme than even Obfuscations or the Vanity Project were.

Here’s the deal: in two days, we here in the U.S. of frikkin’ A are re-inaugurating our president.  He’s already president, of course, but he won reelection and he wants another party.  Maybe that’s healthy - maybe it’s something good for democracy, to celebrate the peaceful non-transition of power and the electoral system at large.  I was thinking of organizing scraps of democracy-related decoupage for an Electroral Collage, but that medium really isn’t the message I want to send. 

Here’s the issue for me: we’re on our way to spending some $40 million on the re-inauguration.  I understand this is all privately donated money, so all I can say about it is that I’m not sure why we need a bigger party for this “How Can We Say Goodbye If You Don’t Leave” soiree than we had for the first GWB inauguration, or for the first Clinton inauguration for that matter (and, by the accounts I’ve been able to unearth, nearly twice as much as for the second Clinton inaugural).  This party is so big it’ll have nine balls, of which only the one for the military is free, if you call that “free.”

But nothing is really free, not even free stuff: it seems that the city of Washington DC will still be forced to spend close to $18 million of public money on security, of which close to $12 million is not coming out of “homeland security” funds but will be paid for with dollars that might better go for an afterschool program or a senior’s meal program or something.  And here’s where I really start to dig in my heels: This event exemplifies, for me, the selfish excesses of this reactionary regieme.  They’re not conservatives, by a long shot: conservatives don’t spend this kind of money on a party, they save it.  They also preserve civil rights and national resources.  This administration, on the other hand, has never found a reason to stop spending the people’s money on programs and policies that are explicitally partisan and parochial in nature: it has bought and paid for positive-spin p.r. and called it news (most lately on No Child Left Behind, but previously on abstinence training, environmental issues, stem cell research, and a long list of others); it’s overpaid the veep’s former company by billions of dollars; it’s squandered a budget surplus and turned it into a budget deficit without increasing funding for education or supporting veterans or the elderly.... This is why “compassionate conservatism” is a crock: they’re not conserving a damn thing and their only compassion is for themselves. 

And now they’re lining up millions upon millions of corporate dollars to celebrate a one-minute ceremony that I don’t really feel too good about in the first place.  We started our response to the greatest natural disaster in 100 years with a pledge of $35 million.  Add another $5 million to that and you can throw one hell of a party, I guess. 

This festival of self-congratulation is just too narcissistic for me to take any part in it.  In fact, I’ve decided to take part, instead, in a simultaneous nationwide statement of disapproval.  I don’t buy into the cant and rhetoric I see on line about this counter-event: it’s not going to affect the national economy in any meaningful way, it’s not going to put one dollar in a better place than it would otherwise be - but it is a way for me to express how sorry I am that we’re still pissing away money on onanism when our own people, to say nothing of others around the world, need it so much more badly. 

So here’s what I’m going to do, or not do: on Thursday, January 20, 2005, I intend not to spend any money.  I’ll have a bus pass to get to and from work; a sack lunch; coffee or water from the corporate teat… I urge anyone who is not happy with the way this country has handled itself lately, whether or not you thought Bush was the better man in the race, to join me in spending NOT ONE DIME on thursday.  I’m giving you lead time so you can get any necessary expenditures out of the way early.  Plan ahead, and then go without for one lousy day.  It’s not gonna kill you.  It’s not even going to make you stand on a box with electrodes taped to your privates for 8 hours at a shot. 

It’s also not going to change the world, but if enough people participate, it may get someone’s attention.  Let’s not forget the national movement to burn albums by the Dixie Chicks when one of them said she was ashamed of being from a state that spawned our president.  That movement recalled the excesses of Nazism but was considered, by the reactionary ranks that embraced it, as nothing more than free speech and the expression of personal opinion.  And I can’t say I’d have stopped them even if I could have, though I disagreed with them.  It was their money, their property, their right to free expression.  That’s the American way, or it should be.  And now it looks like it’s my turn to use my wallet as a bully pulpit, and I’m going to take the bait. 

Forty-eight percent of us who voted did not vote for this President, and many of the remainder gave him the nod only with grave misgivings.  Does he have a mandate?  If you don’t want him to think so, join me and many of my friends on Thursday.  We’ll be the ones with the lunchboxes and the sanctimonious looks on our faces.  And really, isn’t it time the liberals got to feel sanctimonious for once in a blue moon?

I’ve decided to do it. I’m also broke so that helps.

Will do, sir.  I’m even going to work from home (for other reasons) so I can really save on gas, food, and wont be buying anything.

Every week I hear about something like this from our current administration and all I can think about is how dumb we will be judged in 100 years when we look back on these times.  I hope it is noted that nearly 50% of America diagrees with the way we are writing history.

This is particularly encouraging because these first two comments are from smart, thoughtful people IN RED STATES.  Texas, Missouri - you’re on record now as NOT being unanimous in approval of GWB’s agenda or tactics.  For all those times I have heard “conservative” commentators blaming all our woes on NY/CA liberalism, take note - the feet of clay are already cracking pretty badly beneath you!  Thanks, guys!  (For the record, my cash flow situation makes most days a “not one dime” day for me, but at least this time it’s for a bigger cause, if not a better one...)

I’m with you my friends....it won’t stop the wheels of commerce but it might make a dent or at least get someone’s attention.

BRILLIANTLY said!  I’m with you!  Not a blooming dime on Thursday!  And like so much of the twisted American thinking lately, the only way it will not have an affect is if people believe the hype that it won’t have an affect and don’t do it.  I AM NOT A SHEEP!

I am SO in. This has been sticking in my craw for weeks (and don’t even get me started on the latest supreme court ruling). Yeah. Not only *not a dime* not even a *thin* one.

I’m in, man.  No Starbucks, either.

One declaims endlessly against the passions; one imputes all of man’s suffering to them. One forgets that they are also the source of all his pleasures. by free poker