To Gather Up One’s Rage
Posted on 16 December 2009
On Monday the important banking CEOs were to attend a Presidential meeting at which it was billed Obama (getting slammed in the polls for his entanglements with Wall Street) would dress them down for their unrepentant behavior since receiving hundreds of billions of taxpayer’s cash.
But the biggest CEOs didn’t show up because of “fog and rain”.
Don’t ask if they might not have taken a limo from NY to DC. Or (better yet) the Metro liner. Or (even better) gone the night before to prepare. Don’t ask if they feel any need to help their Obama (at least a little) in the public relations department, even as he has helped them beyond measure (keeping them, for instance, from drowning at the bottom of their deep blue financial sea).
Don’t ask who the hell they think they are? Don’t ask who the hell Obama thinks he is, even as he was elected with the solid majority of millions of us, even as he was delivered a mandate that it now appears he has squandered to such an extent that there isn’t even a peep from him or “his people” as he was snubbed like the butler it appears he is to these gargoyles of human excuse coiled up in their pinstripe suits and “grounded” Lear jets.
So how do I contain my rage at the absolute lack of separation of church and state that now exists in this country? Because, let’s face it, our national religion isn’t something cooked up in the deep Baptist south nor in ephemeral New Age San Francisco. No, it has been built stone by gothic stone down on Wall Street.
Our new Popes are the likes of Vikram Pandit, Robert Rubin, Lloyd Blankfein. Our new cathedrals the multinational sky scrapers that gleam with post-modern panache. Our altars of choice are the numbers rising to heaven on the stock market, which will only fall when the mysterious devil of whatever it is intrudes (not deregulation – God knows – not greed, not murder of ethics, etc).
So how do I contain my rage that unemployment soars; that millions more children have gone hungry in just these past three months; that the mass transportation systems throughout the nation are going the way of a corpse; that school systems slip into the red, chaos and bewilderment; that Health Care becomes another way to say “I love you” to the big boys…while all the while these giant financial tumors of Citicorp, AIG, Bank of America and Goldman (let them eat cake) Sachs — now too big too fail, therefore backed by our government forever — are able to “pay back” their TARP money by raising speculative billions from around the world because…
…well, who wouldn’t invest their money in monsters backed forever by the US government? Who wouldn’t invest in as sure a thing as the United States of America with it’s Army, Navy, Air Force, Blackwater and taxpayers willing to pay for it all till there’s nothing left? Who wouldn’t give as much as they possibly could to institutions that claim to be doing the “work of God” (Lloyd Blankfein’s proclamation last month, CEO of Goldman -let them eat cake- Sachs)?
So is it true that our President is now little more than their butler?
I am reminded of lines from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:
“And indeed there will be time/To wonder, ‘Do I dare’ and, ‘Do I dare?/Do I dare/disturb the universe/…For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”
Yes, I believe Obama is their butler, albeit an intellectual one (so many of the great butlers were intellectuals, after all) with his “decisions and revisions” which can so easily be reversed – ever the Harvard grad. For hasn’t Obama emerged with the same kind of twisted dialectic ala Alan Greenspan (with his Harvard’s honorary degree) that bankers will ultimately do the right thing when pushed a bit? And yet how is it that even the least sober bum hanging out on Main Street; the sharecropper bumping along in the back of his nasty boss’ truck; the private in any army on this planet; the guy (or more than likely in the coming months – the child) peeling carrots in a kitchen knows better. Again Eliot:
“I grow old, I grow old/ I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
For what is going to happen to our “thinking” President after all is said in done, sinking deeper into his little war in Afghanistan (graveyard of empires)? His war looks so good on paper, I suppose.
But what is going to happen with what has brought on all this rage in me (and in so many others)?
I am reminded of another quote from a fellow African American that Obama has so assiduously attached himself to: Martin Luther King, a monstrous crowd of humanity swirling around the marble steps he stood on at the time:
“I have a dream…(that) we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”
Rage was the order of the day then. I remember that brutal time. But Martin Luther King risked everything to gather up that rage to try to use it to hew that mountain.
J. Alfred Prufrock did not.
Obama has not not.
We have not.
Will we?
Can we?
7 responses to To Gather Up One’s Rage
When reading your citation T.S. Eliot’s ““I grow old, I grow old/…” I can’t help thinking of one of the best poems about age, both one’s own and that of one’s offspring, that I have read: “At 25″.
Thank you. In the past few weeks I’ve started writing poetry again. We’ll see where it all leads…
I eagerly look forward to the new poems.
My favorite line from “At 25″
“I witnessed you suck
that first breath in and turn
as white as snow on top
of Everest. Pure. Pure.”
The miracle of the first breath, the pure innocence of the newborn, the snow-white slate we all start our lives on. ]
I like the choice of Everest. A sense of the divine and mystical(Everest is revered as sacred,) the heights you dream your child will rise to, snow unsullied by footprints, challenges of the unknown and unexplored. Is there a story behind it?
I’ve so many thoughts around your video reading Communion. Wish I had more time.
“At 29″?
“Peace, Love and Understanding!”
And Reconciliation.
Herman
Herman I’m sure this poem came to your mind also because of the theme of this post.
“Martin Luther King risked everything to gather up that rage to try to use it to hew that mountain.”
And the lines in the poem:
“Good rage. Burn us to the ground.
Good rage. So little good seems
to have come of John the Baptist
and what followed. Your grandfather
loved John the Baptist. Wept and sung
his words and went too easily
into their good night
which I won’t do.”
Don’t you feel the two-faced side of the message of the above; the awe and admiration of dr. King and the almost non-acceptance of what good also followed of John the Baptist? Because dr. King was a true believer.
In the Koran Jesus is hailed as one of the biggest prophets, and there is talk about the three peoples of the Book, The Jews, The Christians and the Moslems. And yet all this is forgotten by all sides in the present bigger conflict. Bigger and closer than the Global Warming that will happen no matter what we do or don’t.
It is not “rage” leading to violent protests that is necessary NOW. It is the “non-violence” of the kind of Ghandi. All over the world. But especially on “The Hill”.
I do believe that Barack Obama knows two things; He cannot change Wall Street and he cannot stop the Talibans by bombings in Afghanistan. Both groups are going to persue their road to their goals, no matter what victims it takes among the non-participants. And the actors of Wall Street and the Talibans are not location-bound, they are present all over the Globe.
(Where are you?)
But Barack Obama must be seen as if he could, in order to keep up the spirit and courage of his country-men and -women. Because HIS America was and still is is the hope of the World.
May The Force…
It is also yours.
Herman
Hi Herman, I’m in the same land as Gandhi was! He had his strengths(some incredible ones) and his inevitable weaknesses. Gandhian-style non-violence is not necessarily the perfect solution in every context. Better ones can evolve to cope with changing situations. My country was birthed in the idealism of a new national identity. But also in violence and bloodshed arising from the petty tussles for power and capitulating to egos. Which is not to say that it isn’t an amazing country, but we live with the fact that we are needlessly three countries where we should have been one.(My personal opinion, I know many who’ll disagree). And that far too much blood has soaked Mother Earth in the process of their creation. Stephen’s latest post speaks eloquently and without blinkers about the similar process through which America came into being.
There’s a way of directing rage. Good rage is what drives us. No, it need not explode violently or be destructive. Despite the fact that much of my countrymens’ rage is misdirected and often frittered in meaningless acts, democracy is alive and well in India. As I believe it is in America. And therefore, good(great?) leaders can channel and direct that rage and carry the people with them.
I’m more than familiar with the internal conflicts of the 3 Peoples of The Book. And with the fact that most bitter conflicts are usually within a “family” and these are the toughest to resolve.
I’ll get off my soapbox now!