I’ve just found myself in celebration of my 27th birthday, somehow suggesting that I might be significantly older or at least under expectations to take on more responsibility. I’ve done that as well lately. I’ve had to truly take responsibility for my own life and decisions I’ve made well into adulthood. I’ve paid some prices for these decisions and I’ve put some of the debt on layaway, hoping to work it off in slow, sometimes painful, increments. After years spent as an acknowledging but still-in-denial drug addict, I’m learning to make the kind of acknowledgements that actually mean something. I’m learning to do what I’ve always expected of everyone else; be a god-damn responsible adult. And with that late blooming, I’ve reexamined many parts of my life that might otherwise remain undisturbed if I weren’t so hell-bent on overthinking everything all of the time. But I am, and so, I do. Which brings me back to the title, or rather, finally to the title after the always annoying and confusing intro-tangent. I could apply the title to many different aspects of my internal life, and I just may go back and re-title this “When Do Principles Become Failed Dreams: Part 1,” but for now, I’ll focus on my political and ideological standing in this nation of ours.
So let’s start with the title itself, outside of the title conflict, but only as a posed interrogative: when do our principles become failed dreams? We’ve all had both, often going hand-in-hand as we stand by crying and screaming in utter futility, proof that our knack for red-faced temper tantrums never leaves us. Just as with that sugary cereal or movie on after our bedtime, our pleas for those dreams to come true fall upon deaf ears. And I find myself on a strange fence between fist-beating futility and my desire to “grow the fuck up”. I’ve always considered myself to be defined politically by the specific beliefs I hold. Somewhere, sort of, between a constitutionalist and libertarian, I truly believe that our role as human beings is to look after ourselves and our own and keep our fist away from others’ noses and our noses out of others’ affairs. Anarchy certainly fits in there somewhere, but being born in 1984, a dream for the peaceful realization of that ideology has never been even a whisp of reality in my world. But perhaps I’m not applying that exact same realistic expectation to my own beliefs. After all, how is one able to even define their beliefs with recognized labels anymore? Republicans certainly don’t value a true conservatism anymore; if anyone clutched to their chest any hope after Nixon, Bush certainly dealt the fatal blow. Anything else is simply relabeling and deep-seeded denial. It’s difficult to walk away from that label, from the belief that an elected group represents the core beliefs you hold so dear. Partisanship and bi-partisanship has become increasingly limited to semantics, rather than labels of partnership and spirited debate.
So where do the chips fall for the outsiders? I’m not making any mind-blowing revelations about the two major parties in American politics, but since I’ve been of voting age, I’ve touted the necessity of the third party, the expansion of power to shake up the stagnancy and laziness of our political landscape. And I still believe that. But how long do I stand outside sound-proof glass and continue to scream? I’m not the only one, not by a long shot, and many have been doing it far longer than I’ve been alive. Are they unrealistic? In denial? Or is there hope for the fringe? I’ve come to two conclusions that are briefly holding up for me as I write this, however, all that may change as early as tomorrow. First, what’s the other choice? Giving up. Apathy. I’m certainly not going to be a “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” joiner. Out of the question. So the other choice is saying, “Who cares? If I can’t make a difference on my terms, I’ll just let the whole damn thing go down.” Aside from the inherent self overestimation in that statement, because the whole damn thing is going down with or without my permission, it’s actually being a joiner after all. Sure, maybe that path wouldn’t lead me to a Republican or Democrat label on my chest, but it still got me to the same place that I have to have something on my chest if I want to be of any worth. I have to find that label, be it Libertarian or Conservative or Anarchist or whatever. Well, fuck that. Conservative has ceased to fully embody my core beliefs, Libertarian (at least with a capital “L,” which can become an exhausting distinction to make in conversation) aligns me with a party that nominated a former furious anti-medical marijuana, pro-war on drugs lobbyist as their presidential candidate, and I’ve already discussed the futility of being an Anarchist, although that one might just carry the most unfamiliar whimsy for a time where a peaceful realization of anarchy just may have been possible. So the realization is that standing beside my core beliefs without searching for a matching label, or even a small group of people that may agree with them, is simply my only choice. And that’s alright. Which leads me to a second realization.
Well, not really a realization. I know that paragraph break brought with it all sorts of anticipatory forward leans, bated breath, but it’s true. Just an old adage revealing its wisdom to me on my own terms. There is no revolution without violence. Or as Che famously, regretfully, admitted, a revolution without guns would just never work. This doesn’t just apply to radical outsiders or a suppressed opposition to a brutal stranglehold by government powers. It applies to us long-winded, literary, argumentative revolutionaries, blindly dedicated to our cause of convincing just enough people through dinner-parties, casual bar conversation, and blog-writing that the tide will suddenly shift, and the wave of dogma we’re fighting will break and roll away. But that won’t happen.
There’s a million of us, working at our own small projects endlessly in isolation. This doesn’t just apply to liberty-minded, small-government, pro-education anti-liberal liberals like myself, but to the red-blooded, patriotic American socialists, hippie commune and biker gang and isolationist anarchists, and everything that falls through the giant cracks that separate us all. We’re everywhere and equally as hard to label as our beliefs are different. But we all believe in one thing: that the current system, this runaway machine, is broken. That those who are supposed to represent our beliefs or their beliefs or just fucking something need to be held responsible. That the level of debate be raised while we lower the level of hostility. That we believe in material prosperity while believing in spiritual and intellectual prosperity as well. That the country starts thinking about how to fix our own colossal cluster-fucks at home before installing even more colossal cluster-fucks all over the globe. That someone answer the question of why a large portion of our skyrocketing debt is just assumed as being necessary because “Defense” is somehow defined as the spending of billions around the globe. In an extremely difficult to define nutshell, we all want a country that is worth all the belief we have in it, even if it doesn’t fit each of our own definitions of a perfect society. I can live with that. And anything is possible, as we have seen in North Africa recently; they didn’t need the might of the American military to overthrow the governments that had overstayed their welcome. They didn’t need UN intervention to realize their vision (well, it helped grease the wheels in Libya, but something tells me that it was going to happen, with or without the UN and Obama’s brief posturings). But it also proved what we fringe American idealists fear, but never want to admit. We’re either going to have to pick up a gun or face the barrel of one if we ever want to see the change we believe in. That theory may have been proven wrong before, but if there’s anything turning 27 in a world of neo-imperialism has taught me, it’s that days like that are far gone or in some yet unrecognizable future. So the question I’m left asking myself is, if not me, who? If not now, when? If those two questions are answered for me while I sit around pondering them, as is my nature, will I at least have the conviction to stand up behind that “who” when it happens, and bear arms or face them to be the change I keep saying is so necessary. And I don’t have any of those answers just yet, because I’m thinking it through, being honest with myself, and, although it’s really difficult, trying to be a god-damn adult.
