Hail, and Farewell

This post has been coming for a while, now, and writing it is easier than I thought it would be. I started this blog back during the election. It was a response to all the “Joe the Plumber” nonsense that was going on. For a while there everybody was talking about “Main Street,” and what “Main Street” wanted. I was given to understand that by “Main Street” they meant me, and people like me–small business people, enterpreneurs, leading small lives. Everybody had a lot to say. The thing was, none of what they said sounded much like me–what I wanted, what I needed, what I hoped.

I learned that I wanted affordable health insurance, that I wanted less taxes so I could buy my health insurance myself, that I wanted a tax rebate, that I wanted money invested in infrastructure, that I wanted the banks fixed, that I wanted the credit card companies fixed, that I wanted to have tea parties, that I wanted an affordable mortgage, that I wanted special needs children and Sarah Palin’s parents not to go in front of death panels, that I wanted politicians who were “just like me”.

Some of the things I was told I wanted sounded like good ideas. Some other things sounded just plain looney. But the thing was, for the first time I really heard politicians professing to want to know what would be good not for the nation, not for the states, not for businesses, but for people like me.

I thought they wanted a conversation. And so I, who had never voted, who had always believed that there wasn’t much to choose among politicians, started a blog. I started reading the news. I started having political discussions with my Sister the Mostly Republican. And then, because it turned out I was Mostly Democrat, and because we love each other more than we love politics, we decided to leave politics alone and go back to talking about horses, our kids, the books I’m trying to publish, and our crazy family. In retrospect, it was the right decision.

I’m new to politics. As I said, I’ve been pretty apathetic about the whole process, but something about this campaign inspired me to actually believe that things could change. It took a lot of other people the same way. We all hoped.

And then the mortgage companies got bailed out, and even though I get daily ads in my inbox about how President Obama would like us to refinance and take advantage of the lower interest rates, and even though my credit was excellent until a few months ago, and is still pretty darned good, no mortgage company would consider me for refinancing without imposing ruinous penalties.

And then the credit card companies did bizarre and egregious things to interest rates, even for people like me who had never missed a payment in living memory, and now I’ve gotten a note informing me that though my interest rate apparently can’t be raised any more for some newly imposed legal reason they’ve decided to raise my “base” rate. God knows what that means. Nothing good, I suspect.

And then my clients disappeared, swept away in the financial hurricane that consumed us all, and my credit card balances went up, and up, and up, and then my line of credit dissolved, and one day about a month ago I realized that I had no money in the line of credit, no money on the credit card, no money in the bank, clients who owed me money but hadn’t paid, and the mortgage, telephone, and electricity all coming due.

I had honed. I had pared. I had cut expenses wherever I could. And it wasn’t enough. And on the news, all anyone could talk about was how Americans really must not want health insurance reform enough, and how the bailout hadn’t worked, or how we had to be patient just a little longer, and how Sarah Palin had decided not to be governor any longer for some mysterious, Palinesque reason that undoubtedly made sense to her.

The war is going on. Mortgages can’t be had. Credit card companies have become usurers. People like me–sort of–go to town halls not to glean information or engage in a dialog, but to shut down debate, to shout, to vent their fear, frustration, and rage at the very people who seem to be trying to help. The party of Big Business has co-opted the rage of the masses and turned it to their own advantage.

It’s ugly. It’s frightening. And none of it has anything to do with me–at least not in any good way. The things done to help me haven’t helped. The nonsensical, crazy things being done to destroy the one hope I have left–the hope that we might actually emerge from all this with some kind of public health insurance plan–seem to be carrying the day with too many people.

The arguments are crazy. Looney toons. I would never have believed such idiocies would actually merit consideration, even to the extent of disproving them. But they are, and my hopes of a victory are fading with the craven Blue Dogs.

I started this blog because I wanted to be part of the conversation. But no one’s listening, and I’m tired of talking to myself. And so I’m stopping.

Some might consider this giving up. I don’t. I consider it facing reality, and choosing to spend my energy not in trying to persuade those who will not be persuaded because they are fueled by prejudice, fear, greed, hatred, and jingoism, but in getting my own family, my own town, through this time as well as I can.

For one thing, suddenly I have a great deal of work to do. When things got really, really bad a month ago, I had a couple spells cast on my behalf. I do that from time to time. I’m not much of a joiner, and faith is not a commodity in which I traffic well, but spells seem to work for me. A week after I had them cast I had more work than I could do. I’ve been working fourteen to eighteen-hour days to keep up, and still it comes in.

I still have some financial challenges, but the rain of work has reminded me of something that I had forgotten in the midst of all the furor, drama, and fear–the world is a wonderful, bountiful place. It deserves our respect, our love, and our care. Politics seems to be failing us–again. Business is surely failing us; the sheer cold rapaciousness of what’s happening in the financial industry leaves me breathless if I think about it too much. And so I’m stopping.

This has been a hard time. It drove me to my knees. But then I remembered who I am, and I remembered the resources I have. And I realized that in following the news, in trying to do my bit to guide public opinion into constructive, positive channels, I was destroying my own life. I was using energy I should have been using to develop the bounty that has landed on my desk to talk to people who weren’t listening, anyway.

Perhaps the lesson in this, as far as I’m concerned, is that I don’t need to correct every wrong opinion about me. I don’t have to engage in every debate. I don’t have to care about the vicissitudes of Congress. Much as I mourn it, perhaps it is time I accepted that below the loudly stated assertions of public service there is a far murkier substrata governing decisions, and that strata isn’t going to be changed by my best reasoning, my most poignant remarks.

There’s an old saying: “Don’t wrestle with pigs; you both get dirty, and the pig enjoys it.” Perhaps I have been wrestling with pigs. I keep getting notes from various politicans urging me to make my opinions known, to call, write, attend, speak my piece, talk to my neighbors. If you’re going to live in Crazy Town, you have to be at least a little bit crazy. In order to comment on politics these days, I have to deal with absurd, nonsensical attacks that do nothing be destroy any hope of progress. As long as I keep blogging about politics, I have to live in Crazy Town. I don’t want to live there any more.

Politics has taken over. Fear, frustration, and manufactured outrage are killing hope. But I don’t have to watch. I will go another way for a while, step back, sit on my lawn, feel grateful for the bounty of the earth, eat tomato sandwiches, watch my son hold water fights with the neighborhood kids, and work, read the cards, and remember to be grateful.

And so I’m putting my digs in Crazy Town up for sale and moving back to where I belong–to Main Street, the Main Street that the loudest voices these days have been twisting and deluding into becoming partners in its own destruction. I’m moving back to the Main Street of small businesses that must double up to survive–to the Main Street that holds a hardware store and kitten shelter, an antique store and tanning salon, a beauty parlor and home decorating store, the Main Street where I know the lady who runs the sub sandwich shop, as well as her daughter, who runs the burger joint up the road. I’m moving back to Main Street because in the end, this is where my success or failure will be measured.

For those of you who have moved back to Main Street already, I’ll see you soon. For those of you with the courage and mental rigor to remain in Crazy Town a little longer, I wish you well. Take care. Good night.

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