Mabon                                                                 Moon of the First Snow

The cold war. Hard to imagine explaining this to someone who didn’t experience it.

That Sputnik, for example, was not just or even primarily a first satellite in space, but instead a dire political statement of the advanced Soviet state.

That there was an iron curtain that separated eastern Europe from western Europe, a series of checkpoints and border controls that kept folks in as much as it kept folks out.

That the possible advance of communism became a convenient tool for paranoid patriots, just as muslim terror is today. That once the Soviet Union strode across the world as China has begun to do today.

That Kremlinology referred to the arcane practice of reading the intentions of the politburo from esoteric sources like economic reports, propaganda, and spy gathered intelligence. That the wave of spy movies and books had their roots in the post-WW II struggle between the advocates of communism and those of capitalism (not democracy).

That we put missile silos in the prairie and mountain states of Colorado, Arizona, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Montana seeding the earth with the most poisonous and powerful weapons ever imagined. That we did it to create a balance of terror which was seen as rational policy. And, even stranger, that it seemed to work.

Movies like Dr. Strangelove, Fail Safe, On the Beach gave creative expression to the unspeakable angst of a world living under the threat of annihilation, not from an exploding sun, not from climate catastrophe, but from decisions made by politicians. This angst, symbolized by the odd notion of fall-out shelters, is perhaps the most difficult aspect of the cold war to convey. It created an atmosphere in which children feared the future and adults worked with an atomic cloud not far from their consciousness.

A great deal has been done in popular literature and media  to explain Hitler and the nazis, the holocaust; but, there is little comparable work around the cold war. This is a mistake and one those of us who lived through it are responsible for rectifying. Why a mistake? Because at an emotional level it is so close in tone to the Bush/Osama Bin Laden created fear of terrorism. The cold war shows the ultimate futility and extraordinary cost of using fear as a primary definer for foreign policy. And, we are already far down the same road in our so-called war on terror.

Lughnasa                                                                    Labor Day Moon

When a worker with a high school education, maybe less, gets hired by an international corporation, the imbalance of power is obvious. It may be less obvious, but no less true if that new employee is a college graduate. What is the imbalance of power? It is the individual against the collected wealth and authority structure of corporate America.

When a Procter & Gamble or Ford or General Electric decides to take action against an individual unless that individual has a union on their side, they will not get a fair hearing. Even if corporate structures were not captive to greed and oligarchic interests, which they are, the imbalance of power would still exist. With greed and class placed on the fulcrum as well, an individual is powerless.

When an individual in the employee of a large corporation wants a raise, better health benefits, improved vacation leave, their opportunity to win the conversation comes at the bargaining table, negotiating from collective power rather than depending on the kindness of middle management.

Labor Day celebrates both workers and their unions. As a child, the UAW (United Auto Workers) made a huge impression on me. The parents of my friends were members of the UAW. More than once I saw them, through their union, fight General Motors, Chrysler, Ford and win. Many, perhaps most, of these parents were recent immigrants from the hills of Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky. Most had less than a high school education, but they earned middle class wages with good health care, retirement packages, vacation and sick leave. I saw first hand the benefits of union membership.

Decades later I’m still convinced of the power and necessity of unions. Support them, if you can. Goodwill is not enough.

Lughnasa                                                             Labor Day Moon

And now, news that Donald Trump has staying power. Oh, my. A few days back I wrote about the possibility of a four-party presidential election with Trump on the right fringe and Sanders on the left fringe. If this should happen, it raises the possibility of a Jesse Ventura outcome on a national level, a minority candidate sliding into office. I’m not sure how plausible such an outcome is, but the thought of Jesse the Mouth being followed by Donald the Hair gives me shivers.

Presidential elections, the silly season, have extended themselves back in time. We’re still over a year from the election and yet news of candidates and candidacies are everywhere. There is no incumbent. The first viable woman candidate is making her case, trying to make doubled history by following the first black president. Bernie Sanders has quite literally come out of left field, giving voice to many of us who’ve felt disenfranchised by the center right politics of the Reagan era. And Trump. The mean side of the American dream, only white dreamers need apply.

Politics since the mid-1970’s have lurched from outright criminal to benign neglect, from the right’s right wing to the horrific posturing of the neocons. Obama has been better, Obamacare a good start on national health care, but his use of drones, failure to close Gitmo and his defense of the industrial/governmental security state have made his years since then look status quo.

There was this bright moment, from about 1965 to 1975, when politics had the will of the people behind it, pushing, keeping up pressure, not letting old fissures of race, gender, militarism, class go unchallenged. It was an anomaly, I see that now, but it was my youth and my young adulthood, so it became what I hoped for, what I continue to hope for. Politics enacted at the grassroots level. Politics done for the needs of the many, not the interests of the few. Politics that listen to the voiceless: the tree, the river, the mountain, the land, the elk, the pika, the wolf.

Yes, the 60’s were an anomaly, but they don’t have to be. That spirit can come back, the realization that we are, all of us, responsible for each other and that a primary executor of that responsibility is government at all levels. That spirit can lift us out of the corporate state and back into a citizen state. It has happened before and can happen again.