a liberal helping of change

Thus, the people who are the public voice of American liberalism rarely have any real connection to the ordinary working people whose interests they putatively champion. They tend instead to be well-off, college-educated yuppies from California or the East Coast, and hard as they try to worry about food stamps or veterans’ rights or securing federal assistance for heating oil bills, they invariably gravitate instead to things that actually matter to them – like the slick Al Gore documentary on global warming.

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“Unfortunately, today, when you talk about the ‘American left,’” he says, “as often as not you’re talking about wealthy folks who are concerned about the environment (which is enormously important) who are concerned about women’s rights (which are enormously important) and who are concerned about gay rights (which are enormously important).

“But you’re not really referring to millions of workers who have lost their jobs because of disastrous trade agreements,” he says. “You’re not talking about waitresses who are working for four bucks an hour.” As often as not, he says, you’re talking about “sophisticated people who have money.”

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A hell of a lot of what the left does these days is tediously lecture middle America about how wrong it is, loudly snorting at a stubbornly unchanging litany of Republican villains. There’s a weirdly indulgent tone to all of this Bush-bashing that goes on in lefty media, a tone that’s not only annoyingly predictable in its pervasiveness, but a turnoff to people who might have tuned in to that channel in search of something else.

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Rich liberals protesting the establishment is absurd because they are the establishment; they’re just too embarrassed to admit it. When they start embracing their position of privilege and taking responsibility for the power they already have – striving to be the leaders of society they actually are, instead of playing at being aggrieved subjects – they’ll come across as wise and patriotic citizens, not like the terminally adolescent buffoons trapped in a corny sixties daydream they often seem to be now.

~ excerpts from the article The American Left's Silly Victim Complex by Matt Taibbi on Adbusters

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This articles touches upon alot of what annoys me about "liberals" in contemporary American culture. It's quite cool and trendy to be liberal, and sometimes I'm tempted to call myself one. But I try to remind myself, that at the end of the day, regardless what I call myself, I am in a position of amazing privilege in this world. I am part of the establishment. I am part of the problem as much as I can potentially be part of the solution.

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When we were done, I started wondering if we had accomplished anything. I started wondering whether we could actually change the world. I mean, of course we could -- we could change our buying habits, elect socially conscious representatives and that sort of thing, but I honestly don't believe we will be solving the greater human conflict with our efforts. The problem is not a certain type of legislation or even a certain politician; the problem is the same that it has always been.

I am the problem.

I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.

The thing I realized on the day we protested, was that it did me no good to protest America's responsibility in global poverty when I wasn't even giving money to my church, which has a terrific homeless ministry.

I tried to get my head around this idea, this idea that the problem of the universe lives within me. I can't think of anything more progressive than the embrace of this fundamental idea.

~ Donald Miller on leaving a protest against a World Bank meeting in Blue like Jazz

A man on a park bench in Rittenhouse Square spoke to me in a soft gentle voice today. He mentioned something about wanting to buy something at WaWa. I wasn't listening very closely. I don't like giving money. I don't like changing my plans for others. So I walked away, without hearing the rest of what he had to say. Heart hardened. No, not even hardened, just dead.