Bill LaCroix: Standing Rock

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Standing Rock

Part I

My main intent in heading to Standing Rock two weeks ago was to witness (to see for myself and then tell my community what I saw) and to try to understand and then attempt to support and follow the Lakota/Dakota leaders of this movement in whatever way I felt I could while I was there. I ended up spending a little over a week at Oceti Sakowin -one of several water-protector camps at Standing Rock—and then headed home for family duties and to better prepare myself for my next trip out into the teeth of the North Dakota winter (if in fact the leaders at the camps still want me to come)

My intent was to write up a big, long blog/screed/sermon about what I personally witnessed and participated in because my head was just bursting with impressions and ideas, and I still intend to do that. But now that I sit down to write it I see that the form of the intended narrative is shifting. In just in my short week of being there, I saw, experienced, felt, thought out and schemed up far more than I could fit into one single post that would adhere to my personal standard (not always achieved!) of not boring my audience. This is the nature of writing and of true movements, I think. The birth of true movements (which is what is happening at Standing Rock is) overwhelm its witnesses with new thoughts, paradigms and possibilities, and in that excitement the witnesses who write about it tend to go didactic (professorial or whatever) and then your audience gets bored and doesn’t believe you, can’t believe you because what you have seen and experienced and want to share is so far out of their norm. Of course, I don’t think I’m personally in danger of putting too many would-be activists to sleep because I don’t think I have that big of an audience. But I recognize—and want to call out--the dangers of silo-building and single-issue-defending that the “left” has been so infamous for in the past, and although I know I’m just this tiny little thread of narrative, I also know that you are reading this now, that stories are vital to what lies ahead and that words are what our stories are bricked together with. For me to say that what is happening at Standing Rock is huge would be, I think, an understatement. So therefore it’s crucial, I believe, that stories coming out of this paradigm-shifting event are not only believable, but true, and I want to treat you with the respect I would hope all journalists and essayists with larger audiences should but don’t.

Beware, then, is the first thing I have to tell you, of what you read and hear about Standing Rock and this larger movement that has been catalyzed there in the corporate papers or hear on T.V. The corporate paradigm is dying, or is at least being effectively assaulted and, being corporate, those outlets want to put you back to sleep, which is one of the only real dangers of this moment, I think. False negatives, lies, willful news blackouts, etc. Don’t believe ‘em, in other words. That's your job. Read this blog. Read others. Get on Facebook. Talk to people who have been to Standing Rock. Sponsor awareness-raising events. Don’t silo up around single issues. The danger of “divide and conquer” everyone in this complex country to the “left” of Attila the Hun will be overridden by your vigilance. Get the best information you can get, and keep the narrative on track and true with what you want our world to become. Take a side. It's that simple.

Well…this is getting to be one of those long-winded explanations that I maybe should have avoided according to my own rules. Oh, well…people are people are people, my mom always said, and I’m just another one of those. I hope you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt that I’m doing the best I can with a very large thing that I just happened to be blessed with being a witness to, and give me your ear as I try to put it down into as many installments to this blog as it takes for me to feel like I got it adequately out, which may be what I’ll end up writing on for the rest of my natural existence, it's that big, I think.
That's OK. At least I know my time could be a lot less productive. I could be neurosing on DC politics for the next 4-8 years.

Evolve, folks. Read on, please.

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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.