Notes From A Burning House

Richard Brautigan described California as a “metal-eating flower” drawing in lives from other places in order to feed and sustain itself, to continue “the purpose of California.”  What is the purpose of California?  Is California really a place, or an ongoing consuming force as Brautigan suggests?

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     How is a flower different from a fire?

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Why are TV stations agreeing to air Governor Schwarzenegger’s staged town meetings? If the governor sees no reason for an honest debate about his special election initiatives, our media should be cluing him in.  Democratic societies benefit from dialogue.  If our governor truly cares only about protecting his message from that dialogue, he is not governing democratically.

If we value democracy, we are entitled to demand it from our governor and from our media outlets.  Tit for tat sloganeering is okay for selling toothpaste; as a means of deciding public policy and setting the course for the future of our state, it stinks.

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     A special election has been called for November 8.  The Governor felt frustrated that the state legislature was not executing his agenda, so he used the ballot initiative process to put four measures on a special election ballot.  He paid for the services of professional signature gatherers (yes, that is an actual industry), got them on a ballot and bypassed the legislature.  Every tax-paying citizen of California should be calling the governor’s office and asking him what he thinks we have a representative democracy for. 

     The special election will cost $54 million. 

     The initiatives are not popular, yet they may pass if voter turnout is low.  Now that our governor has run around the democratically-elected legislature, low turnout is his best hope for getting the laws he wants.  Do you see what’s going on?

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I fault our country for accepting a politics that is bad for community and at odds with democracy. We get the politics we deserve.  Instead of feeling cynical, we might feel embarrassed, and ask ourselves honestly what we care about and where we want to go from here.

     John Daido Loori, an American Zen Master, says it often and my heart agrees: if we understood what we really are, there would be no need for laws protecting our environment from our behavior and our habits.  It would make no more sense than me cutting into my own flesh with a knife.

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We do not have to put up with economic arrangements that harm community and discard human beings.  We are entitled to an economy that does not operate on the logic of a wildfire, consuming everything it can and moving on until there is nothing left and it starves itself. The logic of exhaustion is as clear as the bathtub ring that grows around Lake Mead as it is swiftly drained away by unsustainable development.

    The hard question is, do we really want anything different? 

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Speaking of op-eds, oh! how I wish I had written this! It is one of the funniest things I have ever read in The Onion, and definitely the sweetest.

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