Jan 26

Written by:
1/26/2009 9:12 AM 

The time has come to assess Vashon, to make sense out of the disconnect between global disintegration and our denial that it will affect us. Was going to say “complacency” but that did not seem strong enough to express my dismay, and in fact denial is not strong enough either. If you have not yet noticed, the highest priority of the Council is to maintain ferry service for the commute in spite of overwhelming evidence that car commuting by ferry will be an early casualty of the looming collapse of the US domestic economy. How blind can we get. Well, make that crosseyed, because we are neither blind nor stupid. Let me tell you what we are. We are in an advanced state of mass hysteria induced by the Apocalypse of climate and war, which state is not ameliorated by our leaders because we do not have any leaders. We are unincorporated, ie, without body, and specifically, without the part at the top. We are a raggle taggle bunch of highly intelligent and capable people who do not realize the mortal cost of relegating leadership up the line. I do not have to mess up this tirade with reminding you of the lives our denial is costing. You know as well as I do what unimaginable misery US arms and policies are causing in the Middle East. You are more responsible and capable than me, yet you refuse to let yourself absorb the meaning of US criminality. I am trying to do just that because of the happenstance of a brief tour of duty in the streets of Seattle that hooked me into a pipeline gushing bad news. Most of you are not into that. I’ll try to be more specific.

Bill Moyer is trying to fix the broken US body politic from the top down and has energy left over to help POI fend off Glacier. Roger Fulton and the Island Democrats are trying to fix the US body politic by reforming the Democratic Party. My Green Party is trying to de-thatch the American Grass Roots. The past and present Chamber of Commerce presidents are engaged in a slalom race at the K2 course. SEEDS is trying to press our faces to the sweet green earth and take a deep breath. The Council is trying to find consensus on issues raised by private and civic groups while doing its best to maintain the feeble social machinery granted to unincorporated communities. None of this steps forward.

None of this will affect US policy either foreign nor domestic. None of this prepares Vashon for the loose nuts and rusted bolts of the looming depression, particularly in food and transport. It would seem obvious that Vashon should take two steps in the direction noted above. One, prepare Vashon for an existence far less dependent upon the ferries. Two, screw a head on the unincorpus we call Vashon that will enable collection of the fragments of genius listed above into a single social organism. An organism that opposes Glacier, that opposes the detention center on the Tacoma tide flats, that wants the US to eliminate its war outposts in Asia, that wants US corporations to cease and desist raping South America and Haiti, that quits using Mexico for a labor pool, that brings manufacturing back to a new America free of agribusinesses. Possibly you get the drift. Vashon needs the kind of unity that is achieved by recognition of common need, not agreement on beliefs. The Council is the only means by which this can be achieved, and yet in all these years has not stepped in that direction. And nothing on the agenda takes the first step. Joe’s NERO comes the closest. Now all we have to do is broaden the definition of earthquake.