Speaking out, thinking about, is only the start: action must follow | MARK HUGHES COBB
I've been guilty, but am learning.
When I see friends straining to be rational with Kool-Aid fans who are certain the entire world of facts has become a lie, somehow uniting billions of disparate people, sources and threads, concocted just to bamboozle them, rather than the Occam's Razor answer (they are simply wrong), I ponder the wisdom of Danny Partridge (or, you know, "Partridge Family" show writers):
I decline to engage in a duel of wits with an unarmed opponent.
To all who've been whining "Enjoy this Independence Day; it may be our last":
What. Are. You. Doing?
And in the words of Jimmy Malone (played by Sean Connery, written by David Mamet, from stories shared by the actual Eliot Ness): What are you prepared to do?
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Sowing despair only creates vaster wishy-washiness among those who think too hard, something we don't need more of, at least not until said overthinkers begin committing action based on thoughts. Beto O'Rourke: "Action is the antidote to despair."
Being smart, being correct, being certain? Not enough. Some will never listen to reason. Being reasonable only works among reasonable folks, and too often that's choir-preaching.
Encouraging action is an action (especially for those who could get fired for being too overtly political).
Others:
Helping to register voters;
Volunteering to work at polling places;
Speaking out and acting on all matters, because those who shoot for high office derive from somewhere. Hold all elected officials, all the powerful, accountable;
Actually running for office yourself. Think you can do better? Awesome. Go do it;
Making noise, creating John Lewis' "good trouble."
OF the people. BY the people. FOR the people.
Something I learned last month, from directing eight kids in "A Midsummer Night's Dream": Repetition.
Repetition. Repetition. Rep ....
It's not enough to say "OK guys, quiet" once. That has an effective half-life of 13 seconds. Repeat as needed, which will be until the sun-death of the universe.
Here I am, beating this drum right through its skin, for Mike Judge's 2006 "Idiocracy," yet again:
"Most science fiction ... predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen?
"Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."
Back in 2006, funny-true. In 2024, painfully, horrifically true.
A meme currently zipping around social media — thus 99.99% likely to be wrong, if not entirely fabricated — suggests "ancient Greeks" voted in officials for just a year, after which they were audited, and should "any discrepancy" be found, they'd be executed.
A brief rundown: There is an entire buttload (scientific term) of ancient in Greece, being as it's considered the birthplace of democracy, not to mention Western civilization, literature, philosophy, science, math .... It's in southern Greece where what's thought to be the earliest remains of modern humans — 200,000 years old — have been found, in the Apidima Cave, on the Mani peninsula.
A few of the ages roaming through ancient Greece: Prehistoric/Stone, Cycladic, Minoan, Mycenaean, Dark, Classical, Golden, Hellenistic ... and that doesn't even bring us up to Anno Domini.
Also, democracy forms that evolved under Grecians — salted with Persians, Romans and the like — were often but not always direct. No electoral college. Just straight up voting.
Direct mostly if you were a man of 20 (to vote) and 30 (to be elected), and not a woman, or slave, or you know, anything other than an old, white, land-owning male. Speaking of our founding fathers.
No doubt over epochs atrocities were committed, because: Humans. But I haven't seen evidence officials were offed due to an imbalance in accounts — Elvis knows anyone who's attended college armed with a first-ever bank book wouldn't still be drawing air — though there were evidently "severe punishments."
I'm OK with that, long as the time levels out with the crime. Accidental overdraft, took a few quill pens home for the kids, engaged in a little low-level elbowing to get a beneficent table in the Agora? Pay fines, give back the goods, maybe pick up trash along the Via Egnatia from one set of Olympic games to another.
Mass fraud, stealing from the public, lying on a grand scale?
Hangin', I say, hangin's too good for that duck, to quote from the venerable Foghorn Leghorn, Esquire.
Given pediatric cancer wards are still a thing, I doubt the existence of a benevolent all-powerful being, but on the off chance that, like Captain Marvel, The Power has been occupied in other galaxies, I'd like to believe They bless us, not just on the Fourth of July, and not just the U.S., but all humans who struggle to create good trouble.
But the way I was taught, any On-High expects not just complaining to Him/Her/Them/It, but that you then ....
Get off your (expletive for "butt" implied) and jam.
Courtesy of the Rev. George Clinton.
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Set down the dry white whine and go take action, to make not just this election, but ALL elections — from dogcatcher to school board to council to goobernator and national reps — safe, sane and truly representative.
Whoever told you it would be easy was selling something. The Dread Pirate Westley got one thing dead right: "Life IS pain, highness."
But maybe, assuming we exert to ensure liberty, equality, and justice for all, there may also follow rhymes, promises kept, benevolent giants, respect for artists, comebacks where earned, hard-learned lessons, chases, escapes, true love, miracles, and maybe a mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich where the mutton is nice and lean.
Not as you wish, but as you do.
Do the hard work. Care enough to make good trouble.
Mark Hughes Cobb is the editor of Tusk. Reach him at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Talk is cheap, but action speaks; make good trouble | MARK HUGHES COBB
