I had one of those mornings where I started painting and lost myself. After about an hour I remembered I’m leaving in two days, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and there’s a new Jan 6 Hearing today. I love that. It will be nice to get out of town, to turn my phone off, to be free of the internet for 30 days. As much as I enjoy paying attention to all the drama, I need break.
I lost myself in my painting of Bazan. I was painting the detail around the front door, the subtle shading that turns a flat wall into a 3 dimensional structure. I also added dappled light to the ground leading up to the entry way, where two large shade trees tower over the building. I’ll work on it again tomorrow but I’m not sure it will be done before I leave.
I listened to The Ezra Klein Show as I worked. He talked with Bhaskar Sunkara about Socialism and the Left. What I got out of the interview is that the movement of the left is about race, gender, and class, but rather than the working class, as it was in the past, the current left movement is comprised of middle and upper-middle class folks. People with educations and professional careers.
Where are we going? It just seems like these political ideologies from the past just don’t hold up anymore. People don’t even seem that concerned with the fall of democracy. Or, as a Trump sign I saw outside Boerne the other day read: “Socialism or Democracy? You decide. Vote Trump for democracy.” Maybe we just don’t understand what democracy or socialism means anymore.
One thing they talked about in the interview that I’m totally on board with is that governing in a democracy is not very satisfying. It’s hard to get things done. No one is in control, and that was the whole point. But people can’t be satisfied with not being in control, so now our elected officials are con-men and bullies and we expect nothing less of them. “Get in there and get my shit done. Any way you need to get it done. Or I won’t vote for you again!” The problem isn’t the media or congress. The problem is us.
We want politics to be a football game. We want to know, clearly, that we won (‘cause we don’t lose) and we want to go out in the street afterwards with our chests puffed out, daring the other side to mess with us. That’s what we’ve turned politics into. It’s a sporting event, and we’re stark raving mad over it.
They talked about what would have happened if Bernie Sanders had become president in either 2016 or 2020. I’m glad Ezra Klein disagreed with his guest, pointing out that Bernie Sanders probably would have faced just as much opposition to getting things passed as Joe Biden has and Donald Trump did. We can’t expect our candidates to make the country ours. We share it with 330 million other people. We have to learn to let things go and walk away.
It seems terrifying to do, but I think it’s the only way. What if they, the bad guys, do something that puts me in jail or makes me a menace to society just because I’m different? Then what? Are you suggesting I just take it lying down? No, of course not. But there has to be another way to feel respected, to feel respectable, to feel respectful, other than what we’re doing. There has to be another way to feel safe. There has to be another way to find a sense of security in an insecure world; while living this unpredictable life. Freedom is great, but it’s also free of structure, the thing that often gives us a sense of security. Which do we want?