Part of a dream overnight, that I noted this morning:

President Obama is giving a presentation, chalking a graph line on a blackboard, showing two extremes at either end, and a large middle area. I say something to him about how a lot of problemsolving can happen in the middle, between the two extremes, a solution to dealing with climate change, for example. (In my dream I seem to be brilliant, and the President is impressed – but now as I’m typing my comment seems banal, maybe not even true – very hard to get two extremes to agree on anything – the world views are so divergent – there is no “middle ground.”)

Then I seem to be looking at a page from an interactive newspaper, that highlights the differences between the two world views. There’s some sort of an issue or trial about something. In one point of view dry “scientific” factual information about the chemistry of the product is intoned mindlessly by a simulacrum sounding disembodied, unhuman – that singsongy mindless voice one hears from local news anchors with the strange coded inflections – like automatons. This is the point of view that I reject – it has no human content, it’s just a blanket of blahblahblahblah “expert” spewing. And on the other side of the issue, is simple intelligible prose, that describes the product in terms of how it’s experienced, its effect on people or the environment (or whatever) – this I can relate to.

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Email message from 'Democracy for America' in my inbox just now:

Belle - John Boehner is forcing the country into bankruptcy as part of his right-wing war on middle class families.

Here are the facts -- Republicans don't have the votes to increase the debt limit without Democrats, but Boehner has rejected every Democratic proposal to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the rich, end subsidies for big oil, or close tax loopholes for companies that ship jobs overseas. Instead, Boehner wants to gut Social Security and Medicare.

Cutting Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid is insane. It will be a punch in the gut to middle class families and will send the country deeper into recession.

Thankfully, Nancy Pelosi and progressives in Congress are standing up against John Boehner and his right-wing Tea Party colleagues. We need to let them know that we have their backs.

Call your Congressperson right now at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to take Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid off the table.

This is crunch time. Congress has less than two weeks to find a compromise and raise the debt limit. We need to make clear everyone understands that we can't cut the deficit on the backs of middle class families...

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I don't know what to say exactly about all this. I'm just here, trying to cope. I happened to catch the tail end of President Obama's press conference this morning - there'd be a compromise but as Boehner tries to steer a course to successful compromise, Tea Party types stubbornly drag that one oar in the mud

and so the Nation can't sail

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Essentially, this comes down to a Clash between Corporatist/Wall Street interests (a/k/a capital), versus All the Rest of Us (a/k/a humans). Efficiency vs. Equity.

To me that is a severe Civil War-type clash. I really hate to put things in binary terms, especially in binary terms of Good vs. Evil.

But I do believe that there is a profound moral dimension in this zero-sum war

Corporate interests - they as a whole, don't have a vote - just gazillions of unlimited dollars

Some of this agenda is being funded by the billionaire brothers who fund the Tea Party

I guess what I'm trying to say is - we all need jobs - and many of us take jobs even with corporations whose overarching agenda we may have some personal moral issue with

And so I'm thinking - try to look beyond Party labels and, as a voter, into your own heart, and to your own self-interest, and that of your children, and your children's children

(I think now of one of my brothers, who is now some sort of billionaire himself - and if he thinks of his children, and his second set of children - it would be very much, I imagine, towards their furtherance and domination, at the expense of all others. He cut off - years ago - his own sister, for example. But it's okay with me, I so completely disagree with his world view - it is so anathema to me - I do not wish anything to do with him. He and I truly - are opposites. Representations of either hemisphere of the brain, metaphorically speaking, perhaps.)

But for the rest of us, in the 99 percent of the population supporting the top 1 percent in income (or whatever the precise statistics are, but I'm not far off I don't believe) --- then even if you have to work for a corporation headed by someone like my brother --- then at least in the voting booth - vote your conscience, vote what you believe --- as a moral being

because how is it remotely moral to put Social Security - that UNIVERSAL entitlement, its very universality (as opposed to "welfare") being why it's so crucial and popular - on the table?

Who are we as an American people? What good is a country at all if it doesn't support & maintain conditions for the furtherance and wellbeing of its population and its commonwealth resources

***

So that's it. A googled "a place in the west" landed on an Emily Dickinson Civil War poem that I'd posted previously along with a Frederic Church painting.

We are in a Civil War, I truly believe. It's not being played out the same way as 150 years ago, in geographical terms - it's not "North" versus "South." But it's a war all the same, a very dire conflict with momentous ramifications for the future

it's the very same war, I think, that's played out again and again over the millenia... and this is our time... and our place

it's a time to put away slogans, for the thinking among us
just think about it
which side are you on?
and then give whatever you can to the candidates whose side (however imperfect) you believe in
and in the voting booth, away from prying eyes, vote
what you in your heart of hearts
believe