CHANGING THE WORLD, ONE PERSON AT A TIME

I wrote this in mid December:

It does indeed appear to be completely hopeless. The whole fucking country has become a sick and twisted shadow of its former self, or rather, what it has always, if clumsily, tried to be. How do you persuade an entire nation to change its ways? How do you take on a whole country? The far easier choice is to concede, give in, give up, try to look out just for myself because that's what everybody else is doing. Of course, giving up makes me sick to my stomach, which is a drag because resisting, in the face of incredibly overwhelming opposition, makes me nearly as nauseated.

For years now, inspired by the writing of the late radical historian Howard Zinn, I have tried to content myself with something similar to Hedges' notion that "any act of rebellion...chips away at corporate power," but it has been unsatisfying, especially as I've watched the tentative hopefulness of the Obama era give way, once again, to despair. I mean, you know, it's all I've got really, small time stuff. People are like "great blog, Ron," or "good set, man, great songs," or "wow, you know a lot about this stuff," but I never really get the sense that I've really honestly gotten people to think deeply about their country, about how they feel disaffected from the political system, about how they are oppressed by the wealthy.

And

Words and deeds, even small ones, have power. They may be all I've got, but history has shown that simple, small-scale acts may very well be enough to do the job, or, at least, start the job.

So I have this belief, but it's difficult to keep up. I talk politics and culture to people hoping against hope that there's some payoff down the road somewhere. But then I look and see something like how incoming congressional Republicans are threatening to freeze the federal debt ceiling, which would amount to a massive default on the US debt, or how Obama caved in to the bullshit "death panel" hysteria, and the prospects for changing American attitudes seem totally miserable.

Then I get this on Facebook from a former student:

Happy Birthday and I just wanted to say thanks for everything you did for me as my speech teacher at Sterling High School my Freshman year back in ?02??. I can honestly say I would not be where I am today if you weren't there to open my mind and start helping me see the bigger picture in life. I still remember the Noam Chomsky video you showed our class that described the U.S. backed massacres in East Timor and just overall about the biased corporate controlled media in the United States, which has gotten fucking exponentially worse in the past years. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know, that at least in my life, you and the information and ideas you presented, really had a tremendous impact on my life as well as the fulfillment in it.

Yeah, it was my birthday on Monday.

But that's not nearly as important as the fact that this represents the payoff I feel like I never get. I mean, I've gotten several messages from former students along these lines, but nothing quite so specific. It's all been very much about how I was a good teacher and whatnot. But this guy actually listened, and thought about the ideas to which I was introducing him. It's like, wow, there's hope, after all. Words really do matter. Ideas really do matter. People are hungry for them. And they're much smarter than you might give them credit for.

Maybe things aren't as bad as they feel. Maybe it really is darkest before the dawn. Maybe we really can change the world.

I'm going to bed happy tonight.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$