levertovfan | (no subject)

I liked this article (http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/04-2om/TempestWilliams.html) enough that I wanted to share it with y'all. It's rather long and cumbersome, so I edited most of it out to highlight the issue to which I relate the most, political communication and language.

"SINCE SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, we have witnessed an escalation of rhetoric within the United States that has led us to war twice in two years. We have heard our president, our vice-president, our secretary of defense, and our attorney general cultivate fear and command with lies, suggesting our homeland security and safety must reside in their hands, not ours. Force has trumped debate and diplomacy.

Our language has been taken hostage. Words like patriotism, freedom, and democracy have been bound and gagged, forced to perform indecent acts through the abuse of slogans. Freedom will prevail. We are liberating Iraq. God bless America.

For many of us, the war on terror is not something that has been initiated outside our country, but inside our country as well. We wonder who to trust and what to believe.

I have always believed democracy is best practiced through its construction, not its completion -- a never-ending project where the windows and doors remain open, a reminder to never close ourselves off to the sensory impulses of eyes and ears alert toward justice. Walls are torn down instead of erected in a counter-intuitive process where a monument is not built but a home, in a constant state of renovation.

How do we engage in conversation at a time when the definition of what it means to be a patriot is being narrowly construed? You are either with us or against us. Discussion is waged in absolutes not ambiguities. Corporations have more access to power than people. We, the people. Fear has replaced discussion. Business practices have taken precedence over public process. It doesn't matter what the United Nations advises or what world opinion may be. America in the early years of the twenty-first century has become a force unto itself. The laws it chooses to abide by are its own. What role does this leave us as individuals within a republic?

To commit to the open space of democracy is to begin to make room for conversations that can move us toward a personal diplomacy. By personal diplomacy, I mean a flesh-and-blood encounter with public process that is not an abstraction but grounded in real time and space with people we have to face in our own hometowns. It’s not altogether pleasant and there is no guarantee as to the outcome. Boos and cheers come in equal measure.

If we cannot engage in respectful listening there can be no civil dialogue and without civil dialogue we the people will simply become bullies and brutes, deaf to the truth that we are standing on the edge of a political chasm that is beginning to crumble. We all stand to lose ground. Democracy is an insecure landscape."