From "Greener Times" Aug 10, 2008. This week’s Thought is a frustrated sigh over tacit acceptance of a failed government. Attempts to get rid of it seem like, well, like towing a ship with a rowboat.

 
“Making an ash breeze” was the last resort of sailing ships becalmed in the doldrums. In the eighteen hundreds trade with the orient and Australia was carried out with consummate skill by the captains of sailing ships. Speed and cargo capacity evolved rapidly under intense competition, In their heyday the “extreme clippers” could average eighteen miles an hour in a trade wind. Trade winds are easterlies angled towards the equator from north and south. At the equator there is a shifting band of nothing known as the doldrums. Ships could get stuck there for weeks, in which events a ship would put out hiserher boats and the crew would tow the ship, or at least lift the lines out of the water. The analogy between an ash breeze and attempts to get rid of this government is close, but at closer look breaks down as the crew at least knew where they were going.

Putting that wisecrack directly, progressives do not agree on where they are going, do not agree on the nature of the problem. Some believe it to be the work of ogres epitomized by Cheney. Others believe it to be the cancerous growth of capitalism. If it is the former, then the fix is electoral. If it is the latter, then the fix is any and all measures that do not require being registered to vote. So what is the nature of the problem? Maybe we don’t have a clue.

 
Another wisecrack; of course we have clues. There’s the electoral clue: the one in 2004 failed. There is the prison census clue; the land of the free having the most in prison. There is the dunning clue: progressive “junk” mail is requests for money to support victims of capitalism. There is the damn the tornadoes clue: the US goes it alone against climate change. There is the refugee clue: the US directly or indirectly has put some two million middle eastern people out of their homes and livelihoods. There is the East Timor clue: we supplied the materiel and permission to slaughter thousands of people unfortunate enough to live on desirable land. There is the food-like substance clue: GMO stew in a box. And there is the opportunity clue: Katrina was the long awaited opportunity to whitewash New Orleans. Clues, menwomen, to ogres, or to cancer?

I wouldn’t mind rowing if I thought it would do any good.