The Politics of Culture

Another thing people
really need to understand
is that the New Fade
works in terms of culture, too.

Countries were originally
built around the idea
that culture was mainly
what a country was built around.

That simply isn't the case anymore.

How many times does America
have to fight a war over this
for people to realize that?

Culture no more identifies
a country in the 21st century
than does the concept
of a breakdown for a music group
assumed to have become a
permanent part of the "mainstream."

Swimming in the same direction
doesn't make everyone the same.

You can't win or lose "culture"
by joining a new community.

You can't define "culture"
by the same concepts
that define a religion,
a family, an ideology.

Culture is now only
a means to define
what the majority
of a people are doing.

Heck, that's probably
what it always was.

But now we seem
all the more concerned
with "losing" it,
as if somehow culture
is immune from the same
basic laws of constant
permutation, of evolution,
as everything else in nature.

Doesn't it seem silly now?

I have a hard time
when supposedly learned people
discuss this topic
and think they're right
when they speak of
doom and gloom,
of the children of men
destined for doom
and to live in gloom
because progress
loosens borders
and causes problems,
as if all opinions
are to be taken as fact
and connections that
can be made are to
be made as fact.

You cannot come to the end
of anything, you cannot
split every quark to
nothingness, you cannot
find the end of a rainbow
with a pot of gold beneath it,
because that, folks, was only
ever something culture created.

I am living in a world
that has been changing
around me. I am only
near 30 years of age,
but already some of the basic
terms of my youth I wonder
to see still exist,
as if a new language
sprouts up around me,
constantly, flows forward,
bursts free without
my permission.

Do children still see
rainbows with the luck
of the Irish? Hell,
I already know that a
new Red Sox Nation exists
that does not need
a curse of the Bambino,
that someone watching
Lost today
will never wonder
what kind of show
it will be (it
is every show),
that a theory of Relativity
is more relevant to me now
than Einstein himself.

Culture is a fickle -
hammer & sickle -
and quaint creation,
nothing more.

It defines me
as much as
I define it,

and only as useful as that.

The Politics of Globalization

Yeah, so explain to me
how globalization really
can be so bad. Go ahead.

Tell me how it isn't
inevitable, that the world
doesn't get smaller by
the day no matter what
we do, and so it is
probably better to embrace it
than fear it. Please, tell me!

Does a culture remain so pure
if isolated, free from
stagnation, from alienation,
harmful no matter how you
describe it? Does not the free
exchange of ideas make us all better,
no matter how big or small
the transition? Does it not
begin from individual to individual,
from parent to child, anyway?

Who's to say you can really
repress change without
causing more damage than
what you hope to prevent?

Don't you become more like
what you fear when you avoid it
than you would if you embraced it?

Globalization is about
new possibilities, new ideas
built upon old ideas, which
is the true source of progress.

But I guess it's more
politically advantageous,
no matter who's trying
to prevent it, to fear
a bigger world filled
with bigger families,
because then you can't
hide so many of your secrets,
you begin to lose
your "advantage."

The Politics of Courage

When Kennedy wrote
Profiles in Courage,
he chose to spotlight
a number of American
Senators who'd
risked their careers
on matters they thought
more important than
their own political
well-being. It's
interesting, is all,
that for a party that
has so often virtually
deified him, the Democrats
don't seem to actually
share his value.

Now would be a great
time to remember that,
when we're considering
the weight of history,
not just in favor
of someone who can
be popular, but the
man who came before him,
who persevered, turned
every cheek, for
ideals he thought
worth fighting for.

That's the kind of
courage I care about,
the kind of politics,
not purblind doomsters,
but that sees Value
even when it seems
like a challenge.