Bill LaCroix: Reading Tea Leaves in the Bottom of a Cracked Pot; The Dregs from the 2013 Montana Legislature

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Reading Tea Leaves in the Bottom of a Cracked Pot; The Dregs from the 2013 Montana Legislature

Nancy Ballance, Bob Lake, Rick Hill and the bullet-riddled “Obama Presidential Library” Ravalli County Memorial Day Parade, 2012

The 2013 Montana Legislature is over and there are lessons we can learn, especially if you’re a fortuneteller, like I am.

It’s easy to be a fortuneteller, or at least it’s not rocket-science. I can teach you how to do it.

Here’s how. Just look for clarity. You can find it anywhere, but in this case let’s look for it in the bottom of the the 2013 Montana Legislature, the cracked teapot where the dregs that passed for reasonable debate in Helena this year settled.

Clarity in the dregs, you ask? Of course. Simply observe how the various strands of tea settle on top of each other, which strands dominate, which submit. Use your intuition if you wish, but you don’t have to. It’s pretty damn clear in the case of the 2013 Montana Legislature, which is what we fortunetellers love. Clarity. It makes us look good.

Are you ready? Let’s give it try. Any cracked teapot will do, but let’s do use the 2013 Montana Legislature, since it’s so handy, and they’re done with it anyways. No argument there? O.K. Now give that glop at the bottom a good, thoughtful look. It’s pretty clear, isn’t it? Look at which strands float to the top and dominate, and which strands submit. Think, but don’t think too much. They didn’t. Are you ready for your fortune, Montana. Here it is:

Paranoia Strikes Deep.

Look at the strands. They're like animal tracks. They don't lie.

We must have more guns, but we must have less healthcare
We must preserve our god-given right to self-preservation through firepower, with no correlating god-given right to self-preservation through affordable healthcare.
We must preserve our sacred right to own enough massive firepower to kill and maim hundreds of people at a whim, but we must not have any correlating sacred right to heathcare.
If you can’t afford it, you don’t deserve it. It's quite clear, this maxim applies to both guns and healthcare, and is god-given.
A gun shop owner’s feelings are more important than the feelings of a mother whose six-year-old child was gunned down in school by a card-carrying N.R.A. member with an assault rifle that his "sport-shooting" mom had safely tucked away in her closet.
We have the right to preserve our personal selves with guns and more guns, but the planet that preserves us all can bloody well go to hell.

Look across the mountains this morning into the next day and your kids’ futures. If you still believe that Montana is the best place to raise them on the face of the Earth you’ve seen so far, you’re right.

But consider, as you read the dregs of the 2013 Montana Legislature, the severe fault lines separating reality from the wicked ideology displayed in Helena this session and how that thoroughly-avoidable crack is going to shape your kids’ futures along with our Big Skies.

And take heed the warning gifted us by the majority of Montana’s state legislators who, with due diligence, said the following to you and yours:

"Your kids matter less than our guns."

Paranoia strikes deep. That’s your fortune, Montana. You’re welcome.

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Why I Blog

Thoreau and Emerson had a discussion in May of 1846 about the Mexican War--our first war that set us on the course we still track today. Conquest of nation-states and the inevitable Imperialism that follows. Emerson counseled his friend that we can supersede the transgressions of a well-meaning State by the Muse. Thoreau wasn't so sure that the State was so well-meaning or that the Muse alone would be enough to supersede it. But he tried both the Muse and "other means" to our everlasting benefit. Civil Disobedience, in the American sense, has always been his child, in large part because he raised it to the level of Literature. "Other means" requires the Muse to be lasting and effective, and vice versa. How would anyone know what the hell you were talking about otherwise, let alone emulate what you're trying to do?

The problem with Progressives today, I think, is that we have been in the habit of letting other people--Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, Sun Myung Moon--tell our stories for us, people who do not mean us well. We haven't plugged our muse into our political discourse very much, and that's a big mistake. Mark Twain didn't make that mistake, and he was among the first American writers to use the new-fangled typewriter. Why do we children of Twain, Emerson and Thoreau make that mistake now with our new-fangled computers?

For all its faults, Corporate America understands that people are story-based critters, like it or not, and I think we progressives should like it. By definition, people make many important social (read: political) decisions based largely on who's the best storyteller. It’s in our nature, and Corporate Media is a classic example of how Nature abhors a vacuum. We’ve collectively created a cultural ‘narrative’ vacuum by allowing ourselves to be so easily entertained by—Corporate Media! And Nature hates that. She’ll allow the same garbage responsible for that vacuum (Corporate Media!) to be sucked in and to rattle around until it ruins our cognative motors before she’ll let that sad state of affairs stand. I'd ask any "America Firsters" stumbling on this blog and reading this far to consider: Rupert Murdoch is from Australia. Sun Myung Moon, now-deceased but whose creatures, the Washington Times and UPI still walk the face of the earth, was from Korea. The Koch Brothers, of course, were from the sheikdom of Texas. All of them were, and the living ones still are, so obscenely rich they apparently believed they own America simply because they paid for it, and we collectively let them define who among us are “real Americans”?! C'mon!

Although it helps to strive toward the goal, progressives don't have to be great writers, and I'm not claiming to be one. We simply have to acknowledge that we have the better stories and we’re sitting on our best ones. Our truest ones. Multi-national billionaires have better versions of American Liberalism and Progressivism than the real ones told by real Americans? Us? We shouldn't put up with that. Why do we?

Like any historic attempt, we need to find our Voice. Significant action will come only after our contemporary, progressive political muse matures, which it hasn't yet. Not to paint with too wide a brush, but too much of our positions have been framed in intellectual, almost-didactic prose, which, if you don't identify as an intellectual, means boring. Not all of it, just a whole lot of it, but never mind. If history's still a guide--and I hope it still is--there's hope, because when any progressive movement's Muse matures, it generally becomes the baseline for much of Western Civilization’s meaningful and therefore lasting literature. For example, "Mein Kampf" is still in print but I'll bet you'd have to turn over a lot of rocks to find someone to call it 'literature'.

So, this blog. It's a call, I suppose, to elevate our critical modern discussions out of Fox-news-landia back to where intelligent, caring Americans can find their feet and fight back, either with the Muse, by other means, or both. It’s not up to some politician to change the narrative. That’s up to us. So by definition we still have as good a chance as we ever had. Don't lose hope. It’s always been this way. At least in literate societies.

In other words, like Emerson advised and Thoreau partially agreed with: stories matter, and may the best Muse win.