...'cause here comes football season. Professional sports are rife with owners, investors, managers, coaches, even players in the One Percent, not to mention broadcasters and advertisers (and the beer and snacks and t-shirts we buy on our own) generously helping America partake in the thrillingly addictive self-sabotage of enriching the One Percent, game by game, sport by sport, season by season ... nation by nation. They got us, babe. They've got us by ganglia.
Or do they?
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Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, and interesting videos, as well as links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate. Readers may notice that most who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but newcomers should not feel excluded. We welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
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This is why it's hard to change the world. We'd hafta change ourselves a lot, simply to not give our power away to the Ones who pocket their fair tax share of survival services to the poor, disabled, and dispossessed, their fair share for equal rights, affordable good education — the whole now-pot-holed path to self-reliance, healthy families, productivity... In plain view, they herd us together season by season like clockwork, and shoot us up again with the "free" dope we crave, sneaking the price into every manufactured product Americans purchase, every cable fee Americans pay, every movie and stadium ticket Americans buy... even the food in the mouths of the poor, the fluid in all our veins, the impulse across the synapse.
Yay team.
That's why die-hard sports fans who boycott professional sports and 'just say no' to the accoutrements —and with them the sky-high conditioned-response pleasure and sense of connectedness these rituals trigger— is enacting commitment on an extraordinary level. The more so the ones who even buck the pressure of family and friends, and try to get them hooked on the high that builds and changes communities, communities that literally change the world we live in.
Call me harpy for harping on the same note over and over of yes we can do it... We've done it before. And don't we all know how those Ones lure us into complicity every day, loading more social, financial and political burdens on the backs of us 99%...especially the poorest nine. Sports, fashion, movies, cars, coffee, computers... We're a consumerist society, conditioned that way by the One Percent for them to feed on us. We even worshipped the tv show that showed us how, us munching and chugging corporate-label treats all the while.
In this season of harvest, with so much of the world in sweatshops, banana republics, barrios, oil kingdoms, "conflict zones" going hungry, heartsick and footsore to provide us the bounty that flows to the pockets of the One Percenters we claim to oppose and despise,
how about just one change, no matter how small, in the way we give our power away that leaves so little for the needy to glean. Follow the money, face our addictions, acknowledge who really profits, and gut out those withdrawal symptoms.
Just for now. ...or also next week? ...and maybe a month or two after...
Most readers here have probably done the One Small Thing often over the years. Yes, we have. Yes, we can. Why not some more? Leave the One Percent a little less rich, so the gleanings are just a bit more.
Wait, don't commit to anything yet. For now, just
consider that 'one thing more'. What have we seen friends or neighborhoods do, what've we heard about, that gave them
the highs of their lifetimes? Look back to our families' pasts: what did they achieve together despite even the worst — Potato Famine, Dust Bowl, Great Depression, Holocaust, tsunami, Cold War. These were heroes, not mere idols. ...hardship's sole virtue is when it inspires determination, creativity, and joined hands to raise each other up and keep each other keep on keeping on.
Is it like that now? Could be. Instead of sweaty spectacles of thudding impact for the sake of an almighty million dollars, these seasons let's share ideas, recollections, news reports, stories, photos, of "yes, we did" and yes we can. Not what even the best politicans did, far less the One Percent. And not ask or tell them to do, either. Just us. Our families, our forbears, our friends. Those Ones have money and power, but we have something better: our muscle, our memory, our experience, our colleagues, sisters, brothers and fellow travellers on this road.
Let's celebrate not just what we can watch and not just what we can
have, but what we can
do! A little less a subject spectator nation, a little more our own power to be reckoned with. Paraphrasing Paul Newman, want to get really stoned? Try wet cement...
rebuilding our communities' rutted roads of mutual aid and shared endeavor. Rediscover ourselves, the best we can be and often are.
So, here's to us and one new change! But hey, make it a small one. Small enough to make it stick, make it sustainable and sustain it, and drive home safe every week or month and sleep sweet dreams. Because we need you back here tomorrow.