We're Not Powerless

Ethan Ableman Children's Chorus of Washington by Scott Ableman

In 2002, the man I love lost his 19-year-old son to a car crash. Six months later, I had to face the growing evidence that yet another beloved family member was suffering from a mental condition which was causing him and those who loved him a great deal of emotional pain, but for which he was adamantly not going to seek treatment. Two minutes after that, I had still another falling out with my parents; regarding their obsessive control issues that dogged me right up to my mother’s death. A few months later, my 14-year-old son began his rebellion stage with a vengeance. Not to mention that throughout all this turmoil, I was making the slow and unbelievable discovery that a woman who I thought had been my friend for the past twenty years was simply…not. And then, of course, there was the Bush administration’s decision to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

Some people might wonder how I could possibly include that last sentence in my list of personal woes. But I do, because since I’ve been in my early twenties, I’ve had what some call the annoying propensity to read the newspapers and use my God-given strategic thinking skills to analyse the information therein. And I don’t just read American newspapers. There are all kinds of news reports one can find online, many in English, but if not, I find that if I use a dictionary, I can read the newspapers in a few different languages. And being able to do that gives me a bit of an edge, because world reports are markedly and sometimes, scarily different than American reports.

The reason I go to all this trouble to read whatever I can and think about all of it is simple - I want to know when policy-makers are lying to me. I don’t care what party they belong to, nor what country they’re heading. I don’t join teams and stick with them doggedly to the bitter end, no matter what ‘my’ team does or says, when it comes to politics. In fact, after the dirty play I witnessed by the Italian team during the last World Cup, a team I’ve been cheering for since I was a little girl watching European football with my uncles, I don’t even do it with sports any more.  Because I know that whenever anyone who’s been put in power opens his mouth, whether in sports or politics, sh*t happens.  And that sh*t usually gets dumped with a heavy hand on the littlest guy.

But reading the newspapers and analysing the news led me to having to face the final personal trauma of the many personal traumas between the years 2002 and 2003, which was that my country was going to attack another country for a reason that I knew to be an absolute LIE.

Five years and countless deaths (of humans and civil liberties) later, I’m proven right. Oddly enough, that doesn’t make me feel one bit better about it.

But I digress.

Regarding every harrowing incident I lived through between 2002 and 2003, well-meaning supporters said, “There’s nothing you can do.”

It was true that there was nothing I could do to prevent the series of events that led to my stepson’s death. Nor could I stop the deluge of grief that followed and that will trickle forever. I couldn’t force my family member to seek counselling, nor my parents to be anything other than what they were. And, like everything else my son does, he did his rebelling so well, that nothing I, his father and his stepfather managed to come up with, would alter his course until he was damn good and ready to alter it himself. As far as my long-held acquaintanceship…well, I thought about it long and hard, and at the end of the day, I saw I was pretty much powerless there, too.  

Powerlessness is terrible. It leads to hopelessness. Even though I coped as best I could with these events, I admit to feeling hopeless more than once during them.

But when the President of the United States starting talking about invading Iraq, I heard, “There’s nothing you can do,” once too often. I wasn’t powerless in this situation. I could at least have my voice heard. And so I began writing, writing, writing. I wrote essays, articles and satires. I wrote emails and letters to Congress.

What difference can the voice of one woman make? Maybe not much, but add it to another voice and now you have harmony. Add ten more and it’s a chorus.

There are a growing number of us who are less and less afraid of singing against the norm. We are tired of the different factions sniping at each other and pointing fingers. It doesn’t matter who was playing the fiddle when Rome started burning, it's time for us all to step up and begin to put the fire out. 

I haven’t written about the presidential campaign because I am disgusted by it. I am sickened that this past week alone there was devastation in China and Myramar and none of the candidates - one of whom is to be the future leader of the free world - could stop his or her own personal crusade for self-aggrandisement long enough to bring these up in any real context. If I thought that any of the three could sincerely care about anything other than, “I want to be the next president of the United States,” just for a single moment,  that in itself just might give that person the one precious vote that is still mine to give.

When I lived in Greece, there was a devastating earthquake in nearby Turkey that rivalled the one China has just suffered. Greek television is not like the television here in the United States. Reality TV in Greece is not who gets picked by the bachelor, reality TV is seeing your Turkish neighbour clawing through the rubble of his village, screaming in agony because he hears his family crying beneath the stone, and he has no tools save his bare hands to free them. When you see the tears and the blood of your neighbour, does it matter then if he is Muslim or Christian, friend or enemy? It shouldn’t and it didn’t to the Greeks. Long time foes of the Turks, with centuries of ill-will between them, the Greeks were the first outsiders to step on Turkish soil to help.

I remember being in my little bookshop in Athens, crying with relief as my business partner and I watched on our telly downstairs, Greek police, Greek firemen, Greek doctors, Greek nurses, Greek university students, all doing their damnedest to help their sworn enemies save their children, their spouses, their parents and whatever was left of their homes. And when just the following month, Greece had its own earthquake, the Turks were there in a show of solidarity that should make every self-proclaimed follower of God or any kind of spirituality here in my country hang his head in shame.

When I asked one Greek why he was able to help so wholeheartedly a people who have been at war off and on again with Greece practically since the beginning of time, his answer made me think. He said, “It’s not the Turkish people we Greeks dislike. It’s their government.”

We are all citizens of the same country here and yet we don’t show the respect for each other that those centuries-sworn enemies did. And don’t think for one moment just because you assume you are on the ‘correct’ side of the “Republican/Democrat, Christian/Non” debate, that it gives you the right to slander anyone else, or feel smug and superior to anyone else.

First off, it’s not helping. What it does is keep us occupied while all politicians- all - screw us. All.  We are all in this crappy economy together, we are all in this war together, we are all suffering under the same antiquated health care system, school system, and electoral system.  We may all have different opinions on how it should be changed, but the point is we all agree it should be different and the only ones who are benefiting from it as it stands are the ones who set us squabbling about it in the first place.-the politicians.

Here are three thoughts for both liberals and conservatives both in and out of the United States:

1) How is political protest “anti-American” when it was what the country was founded on? There would be no United States of America without someone - or once again, that small chorus of people, who said, “This isn’t working. Time to start over. Let’s start by having a tea party.”

2) Did it ever occur to anyone who criticises those who believed George Bush unequivocally, that they should have been able to believe him? George W. Bush is like my mechanic. He’s hired to fix my car. If my mechanic tells me my transmission is out of whack, how can I argue, unless I take a course in car repair? I have to trust him.  And I do. I hired him to do a job. How can a person who believes in the office of the president be criticised for that same trust? It’s this president who violated that trust. It’s this president who should be blamed, not every Republican. Are you telling me there are no lying Democrats? 

3) And lastly, there are three hundred million people who live in the US. Can we all be alike? Do we all have the same levels of exposure to the outside world or the same education? I just met a man recently, a good man, who believes fervently that we need to “stop the terrorists.” He is a stone mason, he is out of work, and my guess is he has no clue that the reason he is out of work goes back to Alan Greenspan’s incompetent,  partisan fiscal policies and George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. How could he know if he never had an economics class, maybe never even graduated from high school?

Granted, not everyone who is ‘pro-invasion’ is this man.  And many people on both sides of this equation are just not nice people who have their own agenda, their own desire for personal gain. And then there are those who simply see things differently.

I see things differently than most people. I believe that we should all be able to learn from each other and that the differences amongst us should not be a threat to any of us, but an opportunity to grow and learn as a species. I want to know how the people in India came to believe in a God with an elephant face, and the ones in Italy believe in a God who was born again as Himself. I’m not alarmed by either of these beliefs, nor do I mock them.  I’m intrigued by them. How did they start, and what can I learn from them? Most importantly, what do I believe myself, as an individual, when I gather these facts? Am I strong enough to stand alone if I have to, when my beliefs are different than those around me? Can I also use what I learn to help build a better world? 

That is the purpose of my life. To learn and to teach. To help leave the planet just a little bit better than it was before I got here. It will most likely make only a small difference, really, one woman’s voice. But if I can add a chorus to it, well…you never know.

And that’s how I’ll introduce you today to my new online magazine and podcast, Harlots’ Sauce Radio.   It still only has a small voice, but the sound is unique and beautiful to me, because the chorus is comprised of people from all different parts of the world, coming from all different perspectives. Yes, we can do that without snarling at each other.

I’ve sent this post as an invitation to everyone in my VOX neighbourhood and in my VOX groups today. Not only do I invite you to read Harlots’ Sauce Radio and listen to our podcast interviews of many extraordinary people who make up this planet, I urge you to add YOUR own voice. There is a wealth of talent here on VOX - writers, humorists, musicians, poets, photographers, and deep thinkers. Please go to the submissions guidelines page and offer up your talents. Then, enjoy the talents of your fellow human beings who have already been published there.  If nothing else, we make a pleasant change from Yahoo’s home page daily reports on who got thrown off American Idol.

I hope you will take me up on this invitation. If we sing loudly enough, sooner or later, our song will be heard.