Blog by Eric Francis | Planet Waves

March 4 | Re: Victim Stuff

I SPENT the day thinking about Anne's letter (see below). Be careful what you send me because I just might mull it over for a while. I have decided that she has a point, but on two accounts got it backwards.

When I got in tonight, Anatoly, our web guy in the Ukraine, sent me an Instant Message. Planet Waves is kind of like full immersion English class for him and I happen to love hearing the perceptions and language of non-native English speakers. Here is what he asked me:

"mmm...wot this woman means...Planet Waves Blog is full of victim ideology...victim is subject of criminal, accident etc..?"

Exactly. Sticking to the most basic dictionary definition of victim (not the ambiguous 'spiritual' one we are growing accustomed to), Anatoly hit the nail on the head. My sense is that a crime is being committed on the grandest scale in the United States. That something is being taken from us, as a society, and as individuals; that the social contract is being breached and in effect, destroyed. And, I address those issues regularly. But there is a difference between pointing out a criminal act and having "victim mentality."

In my response to Anne, I made these points:

I struggle over what to write, myself, and for how to present it. But I have a very serious concern that in looking away from the issues we face, to present "good news," I am just feeding the same denial trip that built up Auschwitz and let the CIA-trained death squads go on and on for 10 years in Nicaragua. And I do know what I am talking about regarding that.

Every single day, I read about more federal budget cuts from social services -- articles in the mainstream media such as AP and Washington Post.

Between 1983 and 1994, I covered higher education and state government in New York State and in those 11 years, financial aid was cut, tuition was raised and the university budgets were systematically cut. Now I meet recent grads walking around with $50,000 or $100,000 in undergraduate debt.

Every day, $475 million more goes to Iraq (I used to gasp at $1 million a day going to Nicaragua in the 80s). Every day the trade deficit grows, which is stripping employment out of the United States.

I concede that not everyplace is a disaster zone. But what is replacing the social services funds, and the jobs in the United States?

And are we not IN ACTUAL FACT being victimized by the agenda of the administration and the lax attitude of Congress, which seems to rubber stamp everything? Is there not graft going on on an astonishing and astronomical scale? When was the last time you read the word "graft" in a newspaper?

Graft is Dick Cheney's company profiting wildly on all the contracts it's getting from his own office. Graft is the Carlyle Group, the actual BushCo and its military contractor holdings, profiting wildly from all the contracts they are getting, as we slide down the stream of what some hope will be eternal war.

So, I am not really sure what she was on about. Every day I wake up and take action (writing and media organizing are my chosen primary forms of action at this point). And I encourage people to do something similar, which is to get involved and try to not feel like it's all so overwhelming that you just don't matter. The truth is, I do feel overwhelmed. I am very concerned at at times pretty scared about the direction things are moving in, and I wish I would not have to hear anything else about the proposals to use nuclear weapons on Iran. But as Melanie Reinhart once said to me, that is not despair. Despair is what happens when you look away.

I think what I am saying is that we're only victims until we wake up. So let's wake up to the fact that we are being victimized and deal with it.