A former girlfriend accused me, with some frequency, of "ranting" and"talking from a soapbox." The presumed insult never had the intended effect. In more than one way, I was and still am proud of my "rants" and "soapbox speeches." The alternative is what most people do these days: becoming indoctrinated, mechanically repeating what they are told to say, reading from scripts, often without knowledge of facts or context to back their scripted statements. This pervasive form of speech, structured to serve ambitious agendas and self-proclaimed leaders, is not alien to my upbringing (before I rose to the soapbox).
In my younger years, I flirted with the ideals of left-wing parties, some of which, more than thirty years ago, saw "violent revolution" as the only pathway to social change. Thirty years later, examples of such attempts are discouraging. Thirty years later, I understand that the "R" placed in front of evolution does not justify the shedding of blood, most often the blood of the innocent - as the self-proclaimed leaders avoid the frontlines and, in the long-run, re-emerge with new slogans and new scripts. In fact, no revolution is worth one single human life.
I am also not given to the complacency of observing the world around me with passive indifference. More importantly, false prophets and false defenders of the poor and under-privileged must be denounced. Most organizations and individuals that proclaim to be the defenders of the poor mob have never engaged the poor and under-privileged in their own defense. They use the poor and the under-privileged to push through agendas of their own, to create career opportunities for themselves, doing very little or nothing to remedy the systemic causes of poverty and under-privilege.
I did not abandon my leftist ideals. Quite the contrary: they are, now, more solid than they have ever been. There is good reason for it: an ideal is only as good as the purpose it serves. I realize, for instance, that what today is called "organizing the grassroots" is little more than a group of political hacks making phone calls to target-audiences. It matters little whether the caller knows who s/he is calling, as long as some sort of support (financial or other) is the end result. It doesn't matter, for the solicitor, whether the person at the other end is unemployed, or poor, or sick, or has a relative in jail, or is a single mother. The success of this "grassroots" activity is measured by how many respond positively to the phone call, and not by whether they can be helped in any way, as through real door-to-door organizing. Matters are getting worse: soon, texting and "twittering" (read: follow the leader) will be the norm, while millions of faceless people will remain faceless and ignored, courtshipped when it's time to brand another self-proclaimed leader.
Not that this forum is Hyde Park, but I take pride in sharing my desire to rant with such "ranters" as Orwell or Marx. And I, too, stand on my soapbox with the certainty that organized party structures are no less harmful or evil than organized religions, organized armies, or other organized institutions -- ultimately, one has to pay the price; one has to make a choice between one's identity, or the identity that someone else determined one should have. Ranting seems, to me, to be a good alternative. And although my former girlfriend will disagree, here's, yet, another rant. Luckily, this blog will be mostly about poetry, and my "rants" will be few.
JOSE VALDUAR
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