Read Online Walter Mosley by Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation - Free Book Online Page B
Tags: General, Political Science, Civics & Citizenship, Electronic Books, Political Process, Civil Rights, Political Participation - United States, Political Participation
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this land is your land ... thatâs a fact. Once you accept this reality you will find that you are better able to argue for yourself and your family and friends.
What do you mean I canât have the drugs for my cancer? Iâm worth millions. Keep your insurance, your Medicareâgive me what Iâm worth.
STEP TWELVE
DEFINING, AND THEN CLAIMING, GENIUS
M ost positions of power, influence, and importance in America seem to be out of reach of the Everyday Denizen. There are the Forbes 500, movie stars, political leaders of all stripes, and generals leading the vast armies of the volunteer poor. We live in a world of closed doors, secret headquarters, vaults, closed files, and covert actions. There are plots and counterplots, hidden enemies and terrorists who live up to their name even though they go undetected and seemingly take no action.
It seems as if we, the People, cannot seriously affect this world of secrecy and concentrated power. We cast our votes but the decisions that are made by our leaders remain unchanged. We do our jobs and are still laid off. We feel love in our hearts but still find ourselves alone.
And when hearing about the billionaires, film directors, and presidents speak to us we are often told, by their second and third tiers of acolytes, that they are geniuses.
Leave him alone , they say, he knows what heâs doing .
This phrase says two things: first, that the leader has Knowledge and, second, that we, the People, do not.
This is not a partisan argument. Iâm not talking about Democrat versus Republican. Iâm simply saying that the majority of our experts, leaders, and specialists over the past century have served to wound the world not heal it. Millions upon millions have died, have suffered torture, have been raped and sodomized, have been turned into killer soldiers at the ages of six and seven. With all the pomp and genius and holy secrets, the poor and moderately intelligent suffer in ignorance.
I take the above statements as facts. It requires an act of evil genius to slaughter six million in the camps,
to murder a million people a year in a twenty-nineyear reign of terror, to starve and otherwise kill fifty million in the paroxysm of decades that culminated in the Cultural Revolution. It takes a concert of minds in malevolent concord to maintain revolutions and covert military acts in Asia, South America, the Middle East, and Africa from the â50s until today.
Yes, he might be a genius, but so what? What makes a genius good or right or on my side? Indeed, how can a genius even exist without us? Could Mozart have made himself a violin at the age of two or twentytwo? No. Could Einstein have expressed his theories without the language in his head that had been forming for millennia? No.
We, the People, are the genius. We are repositories of thousands of years of language, wisdom, and hard knocks. When we come together in a sublime cultural epiphany: Thatâs when there is potential and growth.
The old man, who has forgotten much, holding the young boyâs hand and leading him to a lake of wonder that he knows: This is the potential for genius.
We need to know, like Socrates knew, that we are ignorant in the extreme and only through dialogue and respect for others can we begin to cobble out an understanding of the truth.
There might have been a different outcome if, before he stood in front of the assembled UN and damned Iraq, Colin Powell had shown us the yellow dots in the desert that his nameless experts claimed were weapons of mass destruction. Felicia Saunders from Cleveland, Ohio, might have spoken up and asked if there was any possibility that they could have been something else. Paolo Ein in Memphis, Tennessee, who has worked with septic tanks his whole life, might have come forward and said that he had seen aerial pictures of septic tanks that looked disturbingly similar. Ben Barcelona in East New York might have asked why one country could
What do you mean I canât have the drugs for my cancer? Iâm worth millions. Keep your insurance, your Medicareâgive me what Iâm worth.
STEP TWELVE
DEFINING, AND THEN CLAIMING, GENIUS
M ost positions of power, influence, and importance in America seem to be out of reach of the Everyday Denizen. There are the Forbes 500, movie stars, political leaders of all stripes, and generals leading the vast armies of the volunteer poor. We live in a world of closed doors, secret headquarters, vaults, closed files, and covert actions. There are plots and counterplots, hidden enemies and terrorists who live up to their name even though they go undetected and seemingly take no action.
It seems as if we, the People, cannot seriously affect this world of secrecy and concentrated power. We cast our votes but the decisions that are made by our leaders remain unchanged. We do our jobs and are still laid off. We feel love in our hearts but still find ourselves alone.
And when hearing about the billionaires, film directors, and presidents speak to us we are often told, by their second and third tiers of acolytes, that they are geniuses.
Leave him alone , they say, he knows what heâs doing .
This phrase says two things: first, that the leader has Knowledge and, second, that we, the People, do not.
This is not a partisan argument. Iâm not talking about Democrat versus Republican. Iâm simply saying that the majority of our experts, leaders, and specialists over the past century have served to wound the world not heal it. Millions upon millions have died, have suffered torture, have been raped and sodomized, have been turned into killer soldiers at the ages of six and seven. With all the pomp and genius and holy secrets, the poor and moderately intelligent suffer in ignorance.
I take the above statements as facts. It requires an act of evil genius to slaughter six million in the camps,
to murder a million people a year in a twenty-nineyear reign of terror, to starve and otherwise kill fifty million in the paroxysm of decades that culminated in the Cultural Revolution. It takes a concert of minds in malevolent concord to maintain revolutions and covert military acts in Asia, South America, the Middle East, and Africa from the â50s until today.
Yes, he might be a genius, but so what? What makes a genius good or right or on my side? Indeed, how can a genius even exist without us? Could Mozart have made himself a violin at the age of two or twentytwo? No. Could Einstein have expressed his theories without the language in his head that had been forming for millennia? No.
We, the People, are the genius. We are repositories of thousands of years of language, wisdom, and hard knocks. When we come together in a sublime cultural epiphany: Thatâs when there is potential and growth.
The old man, who has forgotten much, holding the young boyâs hand and leading him to a lake of wonder that he knows: This is the potential for genius.
We need to know, like Socrates knew, that we are ignorant in the extreme and only through dialogue and respect for others can we begin to cobble out an understanding of the truth.
There might have been a different outcome if, before he stood in front of the assembled UN and damned Iraq, Colin Powell had shown us the yellow dots in the desert that his nameless experts claimed were weapons of mass destruction. Felicia Saunders from Cleveland, Ohio, might have spoken up and asked if there was any possibility that they could have been something else. Paolo Ein in Memphis, Tennessee, who has worked with septic tanks his whole life, might have come forward and said that he had seen aerial pictures of septic tanks that looked disturbingly similar. Ben Barcelona in East New York might have asked why one country could
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