HOW BROAD IS YOUR SOCIAL CONSCIENCE?

What is a social conscience? I couldn't actually find a good simple explanation, when I googled on it the other day. But what I take it to be, and I think alot of others too, is that part of us that feels empathy and concern for other groups and kinds of people. Not just our family, relatives, church-members, business associates, etc. but complete strangers with different ways of life and belief systems.

It seems like the last eight years, but even more than that, since the late 1970s to early 1980s, this country has been ruled by people with very narrow social consciences. Which is why we see the economic meltdown, two wars of occupation in middle-eastern countries which will go the way that all imperial adventures in that region have in recorded history, and a very polarized election and nation at large.

For me, mine was shaped growing up in San Diego, CA in the 1970s, 15 miles from the border. Since my Mom liked latin cultures and spoke Spanish fluently, as children my siblings and I visited Tijuana and adjacent parts of Baja California frequently. I never could understand the frightening poverty there, and the difference just that line we crossed made. My parents tried to explain as best they could, but it made me realize that things were not all Happy Days and Fantasy Island out there, even just 15 miles away. We could see Tijuana from most of my schoolyards, in the far distance, and it's pall of air pollution especially. That always made me remember what things were really like there. My social conscience was further broadened by having friends of all races and cultures in high school and college, and by being in an inter-racial relationship several years ago, where I witnessed first-hand actual racism, that I had only in the past related to distantly.

This is why I am a "One-Worlder" as a conservative man called me disparagingly several years ago. I just happen to believe that all people, cultures, and countries, deserve to be able to create their own destinies, and live the way they prefer, so long as they aren't hurting other people, cultures, or countries. And that no one country, group, or belief system has a monopoly on spiritual truth at the expense of others, and hence all are in the greater sense, equal. I grew up on science fiction, in books and the usual t.v. shows and movies. One nice thing about most sci-fi, in these books and t.v. shows, is that in the future, it showed the human race in space, as a race, with all groups and cultures. Major problems like poverty and war were solved, and there was some form of effective world government. I've taken that to heart, and hope I will see that in my lifetime, wouldn't you?

All that said, The Alaska Progressive Review supports the historical election of the multi-racial man named Barack Obama as the president of the U.S. Granted, our staff voted for Nader, as we wanted our change faster, nonetheless, this does at least provide some hope for the future. Mainly because we see this man as having to have a much broader social conscience, than that ever seen in a U.S. President. Why? Because he spent time as a child in a third-world country, Indonesia, and got to see the poverty and political repression at the time there. And, as a non-white man, I guarantee you he has experienced direct racism in some form or other, in his lifetime. These two things would certainly pre-dispose him to think about the global political situation in broader terms, and to see the disasters that have befallen this country in the last 8 years as the result of a culture in power that has no empathy for others outside of a very narrow range. I give you this disturbing story from last year, http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/interviews/049, see what you think.

However, before we get too excited, it's time to send a little hard rain down on the parade. One of my favorite writers, usually on a very good website, http://www.counterpunch.org/, is Paul Craig Roberts. He was the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan Administration, who has since changed his views on many things, and is very outspoken. This article he wrote sums things up pretty well, http://counterpunch.org/roberts11102008.html. We need to remember, Obama's senate record was hardly all that liberal, and he received an unprecedented sum of campaign contributions from all the major corporate and Wall Street players. These power sources are not going to let him go astray very far from the current sorry picture of national and global political reality.

To get away from this stress of the rapidly-changing national and global socio-political situation, the staff needed to take a ski break. One of the things cross-country skiers here in Interior Alaska like to do, is go on outings of a day or two, or longer, on winter trails that have cabins to stay in at night. The White Mountains, about 40 miles northeast of Fairbanks beckoned. The BLM here manages a trail system with cabins there, that you can rent out for 25.00 a night (My God, that sounds like socialism, privatize that quick!) My plan was to skate ski in 20 miles to a cabin on Beaver Creek, the Borealis-LeFevre cabin. But skate skiing is highly reliant on temperature, since you are using your skis as flat gliding sources, if you don't have the glide, it sucks. When the temperature gets below zero it's much slower, and below -10F, forget it, no wax works well. It had cleared out the night previous, so the valleys were about -15F, but the higher terrain, about +10. I set out hoping for the best, but as soon as I got 8 miles out and started descending into a large broad valley, reality set in. Skating another 12 miles out with 35 lbs. on at -15F on the narrow bumpy trail (there was only about 8" or so of snow on the ground so far) was going to suck bad. And then the next morning it would probably be even colder, so getting back out would be worse. So, we went back to Lee's cabin, just seven miles in, and hoped someone hadn't already reserved it. I got there in early afternoon, it was about zero there, a little above the valley. After exploring a little more, I had to spend 2 hours cutting and sectioning three small black spruce trees with a little handsaw for firewood, there was hardly any left there.

I got a meager fire started, since the wood wasn't fully cured, then a couple smokejumpers I knew from Alaska Fire Service showed up. Neat seeing them, but I had to go, so we just skated back to the car. There were a few other cabins within another 6-8 miles, but it was already 4pm, and getting colder, so we just headed back to the car and town. I didn't bring my winter tent, so wasn't planning on sleeping out. A good workout nonetheless, and much-needed.

This is what the White Mountains look like, in the distance from the trail. They are only 3500-5000 feet high, but since our timberline this far north is just 3000 ft., they seem higher.

While skiing back to the car, I remembered reading a speech MLK gave back in 1967, just a year ago to the day before his assasination. It was the one where he first publicly came out against the Vietnam War, our society's runaway militarism, and it's effect on poverty.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html This speech sealed his fate, and he knew it, that he had crossed the line. He said several times he was expecting to die soon during that year after the speech. Here are the parts I find truly profound, and unfortunately, more than ever a reality.

"In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood."

Do you think Obama has read this speech? I'm willing to bet he has. Our task is to remind him of this. He has actually said nothing new will happen, unless he receives pressure. FDR said the same thing in the early 1930s, before waves of violent strikes and the threat of socialism and communism making inroads, forced him to take action. It's up to progressive people to come forward and be outspoken, because time after time, polls show that a large majority of Americans favors progressive ideas, like universal health care, an end to the Iraq War/Occupation, and more help for the people swindled by unscrupulous and predatory lenders, instead of helping those self-same lenders.