The view I take of 2005 depends on the frame of reference through which I'm looking at it. It's been a thoroughly mixed (and mixed-up) year from all perspectives, and much more so than any other in recent memory (mine, anyway).
For me personally, this was a pretty good year. I got safely away to France and spent a productive month there to start out the year, and came safely home again. I was blessed with the opportunity to see some of the more beautiful stretches of the country in the company of good friends, and also to return to my alma mater in the company of one of my best friends in all the world, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of our graduation from college.
I've gotten more involved, politically, than at any time in my life to date. I've also found a lot more places for getting reliable information, so that I'm no longer forced to rely on the increasingly unreliable media that served that pupose in my younger days. In the course of both those endeavors, I've met (virtually and in real life) some extremely cool people, and, as in any human enterprise, a few complete assholes.
My work world continues to keep me occupied, and the benefits of stepping up and getting involved are becoming more and more clear to me. It's a wonder to me that more people don't take the trouble: for the expenditure of a little bit of effort and the loss of a few hours of time each month, you learn so much, and get the opportunity to influence the direction of policies and at least communicate your frustrations to those who can actually do something about addressing them.
But in the wider world beyond the immediate scope of my friends and family members, it's hard to see much that is good in the year now winding down to its close. We started it with the unfolding spectacle of devastation of the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, and worked our way through the London bombings, a spate of deadly tenement fires in the African immigrant neighborhoods in Paris (followed, later in the year, by two weeks of apparently racially motivated violence beginning in the Paris suburbs and then spreading across the whole of the Hexagon), the most severe drought in the Midwest since the days of the Dust Bowl, the worst hurricane season in recorded history, the milestone of the 2,000th American servicemember to die in Iraq, and an avalanche of political scandals touching the Republican administration whose scope is still unfolding--and which already rivals Watergate in terms of the depth and breadth of corruption being looked into.
The Worst. President. Ever. continues to lie, cheat, obfuscate, evade, steal, and then either lie about having done it or, perversely, brag about it and promise to do it even more. The media have awakened--briefly and fitfully, alas--on a few occasions from their torpor and remembered that it's their job to ask the tough questions and follow leads and stories that may embarrass and offend those in power, even if it means being tossed out of the Kool Kidz Klub for a while. But on the whole they have continued to suck up to their corporate and political masters, recycling the same tired old talking points, evasions, obfuscations, and outright lies without so much as a whimper of protest.
Meanwhile, the preznit and his handler-minions rove around the world, wrecking a system of alliances which we have painstakingly built up and nurtured over decades or even centuries, bungling operations of all kinds, and laying our formerly great nation open to ridicule, derision, and making us the target of ever more fulminant hatred from quarters of the world on which our national security truly depends. And when they're not busily alienating our current allies, they're either offending people who could become allies or else sucking up to tinpot dictators who will provide us with little (if anything) of actual benefit, but who will doubtless become embarrassing distractions from important policy goals in the future.
We've learned that our government lied to us about spying on American citizens and domestic organizations, about the use of torture to gain information in the War on Terra, about the existence of Soviet-style gulags, about the practice of "extraordinary renditions," whereby we violate international law, treaty obligations, and the laws of friendly nations to kidnap people of interest (often on the most specious of pretexts) and then turn them over to some of our tinpot dictator friends who haven't our scruples about finicky little things like the use of torture, due process of law, speedy trials that are fair and open, and the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment. We're still trying to figure out how many people in the Bush White House were involved in the exposure of a covert CIA agent for partisan political purposes, waiting with baited breath to see whether the Hammer will get hammered and sent to prison for corruption, even as more of his political homeboys are receiving target letters from federal and state prosecutors on even more corruption charges, whether as the result of the Coingate scandals in Ohio, the Duke Cunningham fiasco in California, or the Abramoff investigations.
Bigots continue to try to write hatred and discrimination into the law all across the country--including here in Illinois, where voters will be asked to support an advisory referendum encouraging the General Assembly to define marriage as all and only the union between one man and one woman. The Catholic Church indulged in a degrading fan-dance of pretending to try to address the pedophilia scandals that have rocked dioceses all across the country (and the world) by banning the ordination of openly gay men to the priesthood. Even liberals and progressives are not immune from this particular malaise: I can't begin to count the number of times and places where I've seen people allege, in all seriousness, that it was Democrats' support (half-hearted, lukewarm, lame and wishy-washy though it is) of gay rights that cost them the 2004 elections and that if we'd just dump the fags and dykes and all their whiny demands for equal rights, we could start winning again.
"But what about the Iraqi elections?" I hear you cry. "What about the schools we've rebuilt, the hospitals we've stocked with supplies?" The Iraqi elections were, largely, meaningless. Bush and his advisers can bluff and bluster all they want about how we're spreading freedom and democracy in the Middle East, but nobody with a functioning brain will believe them. We democratically allowed the citizens of Iraq the freedom to choose any form of government they wanted--as long as it was acceptable to us (and therefore not what the majority of Iraqis would otherwise have chosen, which would have been an Islamic republic governed by sharia law). We tried to fob off our own chosen band of bungling bullies, corrupt crooks, and outright thieves, and then got all huffy when they were roundly rejected.
Moreover, all the elections in the world are not going to lead to a stable parliamentary democracy in Iraq--or at least not one that will be able to hold the whole country together as it is presently constituted. Iraq was never really a unified nation in any meaningful way to begin with--and anyone who thinks that we're going to be able to turn it into one after yet another unprovoked foreign invasion and the subsequent heavy-handed attempts to impose our values on a country that neither understands nor wants to understand them, should have his/her head examined. The best that we can realistically hope for is that when Iraq breaks into its constituent parts (a Kurdish region, a Shi'ite region, and a Sunni region), each of the three will wind up being fairly stable and willing to try living next to one another in a reasonable facsimile of peace. It is most unlikely that any of the three regions are going to be staunch allies for the United States, and equally unlikely that they will not continue to be breeding and training grounds for legions of insurgents, terrorists, and haters of all things American--thanks to the bungling of the Bushoviki.
And while schools and hospitals and sewage treatment plants are undoubtedly good things, they are nowhere near enough. There aren't enough of them to turn the tide of public opinion in our favor either in Iraq or here at home. Nor are the (minimal) instrumental goods that these things represent in any way sufficient to excuse, to justify, or to explain the alleged necessity of invading a sovereign nation and forcibly changing its form of government. They certainly aren't enough to justify the continued hemorrhage of American lives and American treasure that Georgie's Big Iraqi Adventure represents. If the Shrubbery has such a jones to build houses and schools and hospitals and sewage treatment plants, then let them turn their attention to our own inner cities--or better yet, those areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, most of which are still waiting for the government to show up and do its job.
What I hope for in the new year is an increase of peace, security, tranquility, and prosperity--for all people, not just the corporate fatcats and the monied interests so favored by the Republicans, and certainly not just for Americans. I would like for the world to become a little more aware of its multiple interconnections and interdependencies. This is after all a small planet in a small galaxy that we really know next to nothing about. We're going to have to learn how to live with one another--at the very least until we figure out some reasonably economical and practical way to go exploring and eventually colonizing other planets and other galaxies. If that's going to happen, we're going to have to start broadening our horizons beyond the confines of our immediate neighborhoods and recognizing the humanity (and the interests) of more than just our nearest and dearest--including people who don't look like us, don't speak our language, don't worship the same god we do (or at least not in the same way), don't have sex the way we do, don't share our philosophy or our preferred means of self-government.
I would very much like to wake up in 2006 without having to be embarrassed or ashamed at whatever my government has just done, allegedly in my name. I would love to wake up to the news next year that the whole corrupt Republican cabal has been swept from power in the midterm elections and/or convicted and sentenced to prison for even a few of the multitude of high crimes and misdemeanors they have been charged with or are liable to be charged with once we can get the requisite investigations completed. I would particularly welcome the news that the Worst. President. Ever. and his chief henchman had both been impeached, ending our long national nightmare of despair and dysfunction without the necessity of waiting for his term to end in just over a thousand days.
I would love to see the Israelis and the Palestinians arrive at some kind of workable condominium arrangement, such that I could seriously think about making another trip to the Holy Land. It's been five years now, and I'm seriously jonesing for the chance to "go home" again. I want to feast on the peaceful solitude of the Mount of the Beatitudes, and sit beneath a velvet sky sparkling with a billion stars, sipping a Maccabee and listening to the whoosh of the waves lapping the shores of the Sea of Galilee. I want to wander in peace over the ruins of Jericho and Qumran, to hunt for Oskar Schindler's grave in Jerusalem, and to hunt for familiar names on the plaques along the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Gentiles at Yad Vashem.
I would like to experience a new birth of the Spirit in the Church. Instead of fussing about finicky legalities, and legions of canon lawyers, I'd like to see us get back to a more pastorally oriented Church. It is a crime that there are so many parishes languishing for want of a priest, and that the hierarchy is further restricting the available pool of candidates for the priesthood. I would like very much to see the bishops and cardinals (and the pope) remember that they are called to servant leadership, and that the role of the laity is not defined by the three words, no matter how traditional they may be, "pray, pay, and obey." We can think and reason every bit as well as you can, reverend lords, and in at least some instances, considerably better. Ignore us at your peril, and get ready for us to make a lot more noise in the future. This is not the sixteenth century, even if that is the epoch in which you are most comfortable: we have resources that the Council of Trent never envisioned, and we know how to use them.
I want our servicemen and -women in Iraq to come home--in one piece. I want them, and even more so all their wounded colleagues, to receive every bit of the benefits which are their due for having put their own bodies on the line on our behalf. I want the administration to stop futzing around and skimping on their health care (especially mental health care) and their equipment. I want them to stop hounding openly gay or lesbian citizens out of the ranks, and to admit that there is not the first scrap of justification for their ridiculous "don't ask, don't tell" policy--and also that they have not been following that policy themselves. I want the people affected by Katrina and Rita to be assisted in rebuilding their homes and their lives, and I want the government to spend what it will take to see to it that the devastation left behind after the passage of those two storms never occurs again--nor the nightmare of ineptitude and inefficiency that characterized the federal government's response thereafter.
I want our legislators to realize that we simply can't keep cutting taxes and increasing budgets. We must address the orgy of deficit spending that the allegedly fiscally responsible Republicans have been indulging in these last five years. If we are going to cut taxes at all, let it be on those who find them a disproportionate burden and a hurdle to the enjoyment of anything remotely resembling a secure financial state--and not for those who are merely looking for a way to finance a slightly bigger yacht or a third vacation home in Aspen. Let us spend some money to ensure that no American goes to bed hungry--and that every American goes to bed under a roof in a room that they can keep comfortable without having to spend their life savings. We should do something to end the ridiculously inefficient and unjust provision of medical care in this country: it's not only the right thing to do, it's going to be necessary if we want to end the decade-long trend of losing jobs to other countries. Same thing for our educational system. What company is going to want to locate in the United States if it is going to have to spend a fortune training its workforce to a creditable standard, and then spend another fortune trying to make up for the woeful lack of health coverage and a social safety net in this country?
I want those same legislators to stop my government spying on me, stop trying to curtail my civil rights on the pretext of a war on yet another noun, and to stop worrying about things that are not by any stretch of the imagination any of their business--such as who might be sleeping next to me each night, what I might choose to read or to watch in the privacy of my own home, or what material I might decide to cover, and how to teach it, in the classroom. I want them to remember what they took a sacred oath to do when they were sworn in--and I want them actually to do it, instead of jockeying for campaign contributions or political advantages.
That's my list of New Year's wishes. Got any suggestions of your own? Feel free to drop them in a comment, or post 'em at your own blog and leave a trackback here.
I dunno, me. I think you've covered about all of it.
Posted by: Anya | Saturday, 31 December 2005 at 19:35
I have hope of seeing more of the Congress on Court TV than CSpan.
Since they have no attention of helping the average American, they should just leave us alone.
Happy New Year, Michael.
Posted by: Bryan | Saturday, 31 December 2005 at 22:47