Today at work in a What Did You Do This Weekend conversation, my friend was telling me about making calls for a candidate in the upcoming primary. Talking about how satisfying it is to hear someone go from disenfranchised to sounding eager to register to vote, she was like, “If only I could get my mom to vote.”
Her mother was born during World War II, in an Eastern European country that doesn’t exist anymore, and told her that she’s never voted anywhere she’s lived because it’s not safe to vote for candidates that are truly liberal and propose policies that are against the status quo. “She gets so happy hearing me tell her about calling to register people to vote, or tell them about Bernie, living vicariously through me,” she explained.
“So I’m like, ‘Ma, you can do it too. Let’s go and register you to vote this weekend,’ and she’s like (my friend makes a swatting motion, as in total dismissal), ‘Are you crazy? It’s risky to vote in primaries.’ (making a sour face and another swatting motion) ‘The whole point of a primary is the government is tracking who you would vote for before you vote for real. No way,'”
The funny thing about this 80 year old saying voting is risky is she has lived experience that informs this. Born while Hitler was in charge. Grew up in a puppet regime that Stalin was in charge of. Worked and travelled most of her adult life in other countries where the government was obviously installed by another government, the military, or was controlled by a tiny elite of power brokers and oligarchs.
Even though it’s been dialed back a bit in the past couple of decades, what she’s saying is, “Yeah, I get you live in the United States, and you grew up when this sort of thing was on the wane where we lived and where we live now, but do you think the fascists stop fascisting just because you like funky sweaters and protest marches?”
Sorry, that’s flippant and this is real. What she’s saying is, “Have you ever even seen a fascist regime? I have. It looks like this,” and spreading her hands like a game show host showing a you the fabulous prizes all around you.
The title of this post is a well-known quote from Maya Angelou. The someone I mean is the military-industrial complex.
I thought it was ridiculous to consider that the world could ever be any way other than what I could see at the time I was seeing it. Even though I grew up with people who weren’t citizens of any country in 1945. Following the defeat of the totalitarian regime that took them prisoner for 6 years, another totalitarian regime was annexing their country of origin.
This is Poland we’re talking about. I was born with citizenship where I was because the largest mining company in the world did things like sponsor people for citizenship and pay their emigration fees in exchange for a lifetime of working in a mine. Even though my family mostly had firsthand lived experience that was not much like mine when I grew up, and they even had lots of evidence suggesting things seemed ok, my grandparents though it foolish to be anything but vigilant and skeptical. I thought this was ridiculous, then.
75 years ago Auschwitz was freed.
50 years ago the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered.
20 years ago we started a war because of “weapons of mass destruction,” that didn’t exist.
12 years ago we held up signs that said CHANGE and graffiti artists immortalizing the first president to order over 500 drone strikes, killing over 500 civilians (according to The Council on Foreign Relations).
20 months ago the president who used to be a game show host revoked the law requiring the the government report the number of civilians it killed when they were trying to kill people they thought weren’t civilians.
My grandmother was 12 when WWII started, and lived in a tiny remote village in a country annexed by the Nazis. She thought it was ridiculous how kids like me violated her social norms with stuff like our hair styles and noisy music, and breaking minor laws easy for privileged white kids to get away with. Not because she was offended, but because that would get you killed where she grew up.
I even knew about and believed things like MK Ultra and the US support of the Khmer Rouge. I was the kid would could tell you Coca Cola, Ford, and GM profited enormously from supplying Nazi Germany with soda pop, trucks, and planes, among other things.
I thought it was ridiculous.
What an idiot.
Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon want to help the government decide how to regulate AI.
Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon sell the government law-enforcement, military, infrastructure, and marketing software tools powered by AI.
If you think it’s ridiculous that conflicts of interests are of concern there, or there’s potential danger to the liberty and safety of people as a result of these agreements, that’s okay.
You’re not ridiculous.
You’re not an idiot.
Prajna is a journey, not a step.