by WALTER and ROSEMARY BRASCH

In January 2009, with a new president about to be inaugurated, we wrote a column about the stories we preferred not having to write, but knew we would. Three years later, we are still writing about those problems; three years from now, we’ll still be writing about them.

We had wanted the U.S. Department of the Interior to stop the government-approved slaughter of wild horses and burros in the southwest, but were disappointed that the cattle industry used its money and influence to shelter politicians from Americans who asked for compassion and understanding of  breeds that roamed freely long before the nation’s “Manifest Destiny.”

We wanted to see the federal government protect wolves, foxes, and coyotes, none of whom attack humans, have no food or commercial value, but are major players in environmental balance. But, we knew that the hunting industry would prevail since they see these canines only as competition.

We wanted to see the Pennsylvania legislature stand up for what is right and courageously end the cruelty of pigeon shoots. But, a pack of cowards left Pennsylvania as the only state where pigeon shoots, with their illegal gambling, are actively held.

For what seems to be decades, we have written against racism and bigotry. But many politicians still believe that gays deserve few, if any, rights; that all Muslims are enemy terrorists; and publicly lie that Voter ID is a way to protect the integrity of the electoral process, while knowing it would disenfranchise thousands of poor and minority citizens.

We will continue to write about the destruction of the environment and of ways people are trying to save it. Environmental concern is greater than a decade ago, but so is the ignorant prattling of those who believe global warming is a hoax, and mistakenly believe that the benefits of natural gas fracking, with well-paying jobs in a depressed economy, far outweigh the environmental, health, and safety problems they cause.

We will continue to write against government corruption, bailouts, tax advantages for the rich and their corporations, governmental waste, and corporate greed. They will continue to exist because millionaire legislators will continue to protect those who contribute to political campaigns. Nevertheless, we will continue to speak out against politicians who have sacrificed the lower- and middle-classes in order to protect the one percent.

We will continue to write about the effects of laying off long-time employees and of outsourcing jobs to “maximize profits.” Until Americans realize that “cheaper” doesn’t necessarily mean “better,” we’ll continue to explain why exploitation knows no geographical boundaries.

The working class successfully launched major counter-attacks against seemingly-entrenched anti-labor politicians in Wisconsin, Ohio, and other states. But these battles will be as long and as bitter as the politicians who deny the rights of workers. We will continue to speak out for worker rights, better working conditions, and benefits at least equal to their managers. We don’t expect anything to change in 2012, but we are still hopeful that a minority of business owners who already respect the worker will influence the rest.

There are still those who believe education is best served by programs manacled by teaching-to-the-test mentality, and are more than willing to sacrifice quality for numbers. We will continue to write about problems in the nation’s educational system, especially the failure to encourage intellectual curiosity and respect for the tenets of academic integrity.

Against great opposition, the President and Congress passed sweeping health care reform. But, certain members of Congress, all of whom have better health care than most Americans, have proclaimed they will dismantle the program they derisively call “Obamacare.”

During this new year, we will still be writing about the unemployed, the homeless, those without adequate health coverage—and against the political lunatics who continue to deny Americans the basics of human life, essentials that most civilized countries already give their citizens.

We had written forcefully against the previous president and vice-president when they strapped on their six-shooters and sent the nation into war in a country that posed no threat to us, while failing to adequately attack a country that housed the core of the al-Qaeda movement. We wrote about the Administration’s failure to provide adequate protection for the soldiers they sent into war or adequate and sustained mental and medical care when they returned home. The War in Iraq is now over, but the war in Afghanistan continues. The reminder of these wars will last as long as there are hospitals and cemeteries.

We had written dozens of stories against the Bush–Cheney Administration’s belief in the use of torture and why it thought it was necessary to shred parts of the Constitution. We had hoped that a new president, a professor of Constitutional law, would stop the attack upon our freedoms and rights. But the PATRIOT Act was extended, and new legislation was enacted that reduces the rights and freedoms of all citizens. At all levels of government, Constitutional violations still exist, and a new year won’t change our determination to bring to light these violations wherever and whenever they occur.

The hope we and this nation had for change we could believe in, and which we still hope will not die, has been minced by the reality of petty politics, with the “Party of No” and its raucous Teabagger mutation blocking social change for America’s improvement. We can hope that the man we elected will realize that compromise works only when the opposition isn’t entrenched in a never-ending priority not of improving the country, but of keeping him from a second term. Perhaps now, three years after his inauguration, President Obama will disregard the disloyal opposition and unleash the fire and truth we saw in the year before his election, and will speak out even more forcefully for the principles we believed when we, as a nation, gave him the largest vote total of any president in history.

We really want to be able to write columns about Americans who take care of each other, about leaders who concentrate upon fixing the social problems. But we know that’s only an ethereal ideal.  So, we’ll just have to hope that the waters of social justice wear down, however slowly, the jagged rocks of haughty resistance.

[Dr. Walter Brasch is an award-winning social issues columnist, former newspaper investigative reporter and editor, and journalism professor. His latest book is Before the First Snow, a social issues mystery novel. Rosemary Brasch is a former secretary, Red Cross national disaster family services specialist, labor activist, and university instructor of labor studies.]

It is the Winter Solstice at precisely 9:30 PM PST (or 12:30 AM EST, 3:30 AM GMT). And, on the darkest day of the year, we manage to come to one of the darkest moments of the political year, coincidentally.

I’ve never trusted neatness …

Which brings me to a point I’ve wanted to make for some time: the “crisis” that the Tea Party screams out is not actually a crisis. It is an outcome. It is, perhaps, an inevitable crisis down the road, but it’s NOT A CRISIS.

What? you ask?

Starting on Thanksgiving Day, 1983 to July 1993, I spent a big chunk of time being homeless. (And no, Ted Nugent, it wasn’t from a lack of employment or trying, but, rather a series of bad runs of luck that had me clawing my way just to the rim of the cliff from which I was continually falling, only to have Fate stomp on my fingers. Lather, rinse and repeat.)

There is something clarifying about being homeless, however. First, it is a REAL crisis. You HAVE to find food, a place to “BE” and a place to sleep every day, and the days I knew in the morning where I was going to park my carcass that night were few and far between. And you have to find a place to pee. A place to perform ablutions. A place to do your laundry — clean clothes are MUCH warmer than dirty clothes, and I spent winters in Boulder, Colorado and Santa Fe, New Mexico homeless, so this ain’t no hang out on Venice Beach and crash in a Santa Monica park I’m talking about.

And the most important skill that you learn is this: DEAL WITH WHAT’S IN FRONT OF YOU.

When you’re homeless, the quaint notion of what you’re going to “do for the weekend” is utter hogwash. You have to deal with TODAY, babies. You have to secure the Big Four in the order of urgency: Offload Waste. Find Food. Find a Place to Be. Find a Place to Sleep.

In my case, it was also, Find a pack of Cigarettes. But the urgency of that last always helped get me off my duff in search of the other four when the Black Dog bit.

You learn: Take care of today, today. Take care of tomorrow, tomorrow.

Cigarettes reminded me, every day, that I was a junkie for the Big Four, and I had to get my daily fix.

You learn a flexibility of thinking and a focus. You need these things, and you continually keep those immediate goals in mind. Many was the day that I didn’t find that place to sleep (and, in winter, it better be warm, or you don’t wake up, or, worse, you wake up sick.) You CANNOT afford to get sick. You cannot afford to get injured. Once you get on the downside of the equation, the slide becomes parabolic, not to be hyperbolic. I saw homeless people that I knew dead a week later from some minor catastrophe.  These are not “my freedom under the Constitution is being theoretically impinged” issues. These are inescapable daily verities.

You learn to focus on the necessary. On the day. In the NOW.

You also learn that, while you can plan and plot and scheme, plans rarely work out as devised, and you have to constantly keep the goal in mind. Do you need matches or a lighter, OR DO YOU JUST NEED A LIGHT FOR THIS CIGARETTE? 

Anti-anti-smoking poster found on the web

Do you need glasses or do you just need to know what THIS sign says?

We don’t usually see life in these terms, of course. We see it as an endless parade, and we dream about cruising the Mediterranean with our Retirement Nest egg and how proud our grandkids will make us. We dream of moving up the corporate ladder. We dream of creating the perfect confluence between the Pie In The Sky Constitution guarantees of freedom of speech and call in to talk radio shows when Huckleberry Finn has been banned, yet again, for offending some current sentiment, as it has for a century and more.

That’s a luxury we can engage in because we pee’d in our own bathroom, after arising from our own bed, ate in our own kitchen, drove our own car to our own job, and slapped another nicotine patch on our deltoid. Another EXPENSIVE patch, that is.

This world is not NEAT and tidy for any grand philosophy or religious scheme. It is messy and ofttimes contradictory and Grand Answers don’t solve immediate needs with any consistency. We can engage in them only when we have the luxury of NOT being in the middle of a flood. We can theorize about the cause and economic losses of the flood when we are back on dry land with our own bed, and bathroom and kitchen, car, job and philosophy for fixing all the problems of the world.

But those are luxuries.

As is the luxury of fixing the long-term theoretical problems with Medicare and Social Security.

As is the luxury of holding out for grand ideological principles.

Let me tell you a story about a farmer. It’s an old an well known one, and I’ll let Michael Clark tell it to you:

A farmer is in Iowa during a flood. The river is overflowing, with water surrounding the farmer’s home up to his front porch. As he is standing there, a boat comes up. The man in the boat says “Jump in, I’ll take you to safety.”

The farmer crosses his arms and says stubbornly, “Nope, I put my trust in God.”

The boat goes away. The water rises to the second floor. Another boat comes up, the man says to the farmer who is now in the second story window, “Jump in, I’ll save you.”

The farmer again says, “Nope, I put my trust in God.”

The boat goes away. Now the water is up to the roof. As The farmer stands on the roof, a helicopter comes over, and drops a ladder. The pilot yells down to the farmer “I’ll save you, climb the ladder.”

The farmer says “Nope, I put my trust in God.”

The helicopter goes away. The water continues to rise and sweeps the farmer off the roof. He drowns.

The farmer goes to heaven. God sees him and says “What are you doing here?”

The farmer says “I put my trust in you and you let me down.”

God says, “What do you mean, ‘let you down’? I sent you two boats and a helicopter!!!”

My point (which has nothing to do with your religion, since it works for all of them) is that the man’s IDEA of reality trumped his ACTUAL reality. Rather than fix the immediate problem, he put his faith in his belief system to “save” him, and he drowned.

We are in a flood right now, friends.

Europe threatens to collapse economically, and we’re not far behind.

But, rather than the homeless approach of dealing with what’s immediate and necessary, the House Republicans have chosen to play the farmer, with their ideological notions of what will “save” us trumping even their perception that there IS a crisis.

This has been going on ever since the economic collapse of September 2008.

Which is exactly how NOT to handle a crisis.

General Ulysses S. Grant (IIRC) was asked what the biggest thing he’d learned in the war was, and he replied, approximately: The most important thing I learned was never to make decisions until I had to.

Because things change in a crisis, and when you approach a crisis with a grand battle plan, that thing that looked so good on the map turns out to be impossible, and those who can adapt and decide in the immediacy of the moment succeed.

Those who can’t either die, are wounded or are elected to congress.

Daniel Sickles

Courage.

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A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.