american hero

pete seeger died monday night.

he spent his whole life working and fighting for clean water and for peace and for the future of children and for people in general to sit down and settle things best they could without killing or namecalling and speaking of names, he didn't give any, not even when they were going to send him to prison for it and he didn't refuse on the weight of the fifth amendment, he refused on the weight of the rights to free speech and freedom of association and he said that it was un-american to force americans to answer questions like HUAC was asking, which i imagine bothered those sumbitches a lot.

and they needed bothering.

we're seeing a lot of the same problems today, in which governments (and i am not just talking about ours) increasingly place under suspicion those of its citizens who want to speak up and question what's being done in our names. increasingly resistance to corruption and totalitarianism and militarism is criminalized.

when they tell you that if you were a real patriot you would want dirty water and not enough money to live on and you should LIKE government spying on your personal life and make sure you wear your flag lapel pin, you can bet their definition of patriotism has little to do with the actual freedoms and rights of citizens and everything to do with power and political theater.

don't wrap yourself in the flag and demand discussion be stopped; true patriotism demands that the government, every government be afraid. it should always be afraid that if they are not doing a good job, they will be unseated. governments should always be afraid. not the nation, not the citizens; the sitting government.

properly their job is conditional and it is conditional on its performance.

hello, ukraine?

ok, so i don't have all the specific answers to all the problems.

but i know that in a larger sense the solution is for everybody to be working toward decency and fairness and to let people speak.

give people voice.

pete knew that.