Another go

Sorry for the frequent disappearances. I feel like an absentee landlord. I can make excuses all day long about why I have been gone, like these: a death in the family, along with my sister visiting for two weeks, followed by nearly two weeks of sickness, but that would only be part of the reason. I could have written something at some point in there, but I didn't. I come here to the blog and stare at it at least twice a day if not more. However, I am always unable to start typing. I usually get frustrated and put it off for another day. I have lost my mojo.

I have been trying for a while to get back into the swing of things but have found it difficult. It seems that since the Democrats took back Congress a lot of people have fallen asleep and I find it frustrating. I have also been doing some depressing reading lately. For example, this from Gore Vidal:

By 1800 there were two political parties, each controlled by a faction of the regnant oligarchy. Today, despite close to two centuries of insurrections and foreign wars, of depressions and the usurpations by this or that branch of powers not accorded, there are still two political parties, each controlled by a faction of the regnant oligarchy. The fact that the country is so much larger than it was makes for an appearance of variety. But the substance of the two-party system or non-system is unchanged. Those with large amounts of property control the parties which control the state which takes through taxes the people's money and gives a certain amount of it back in order to keep docile the populace while reserving a sizable part of tax revenue for the oligarchy's use in the form of "purchases" for the defense department, which is the unnumbered, as it were, bank account of the rulers. (Gore Vidal, The Second American Revolution and Other Essays (1976-1982) pp. 266-267)

It seems that nothing has changed. The essays in this book were written before I was even born, but you can apply most of it to the political environment today. Thirty years later and we have the same complaints, the same problems and nothing has been done to rectify any of them (instead, more problems have been added). Is there any way to fundamentally change what our government has evolved into? Is it even possible? How?

Don't get me wrong, I am not a person that sits back and says, "there's no difference in the parties, so I am not going to vote or get involved because there is no point, blah, blah, blah". I know that this kind of thinking is partly why we are in this mess in the first place. While I am an absentee landlord of this blog most of the time, most of the citizens of this country are absentee landlords of their country (though they are perfectly capable of voting for the next American Idol).

I am going to try to write more often. I may not be analyzing the newest scandals that have come out of the political world very often, but I will be political. Everything these days is political. I am just hoping to go a little deeper than the most recent headlines. I will end this with an excerpt from the Tao Teh Ching:

If I had even the tiniest grain of insight,
I should live in accordance with
the subtle way of the universe;
my only fear would be to stray from it.
The Integral Way of the universe
is very smooth and straight,
yet people's minds prefer devious bypaths.

The courts are polished and decorated.
while the fields are untilled,
and the granaries are empty.
People wear fine clothes
to adorn their external appearance.
They carry sharp swords at their sides
and worship might rather than righteousness.
They know only to make merry
by indulging in food and drink.
They crave to possess more riches
than they could ever use.

This is the committing of robbery
and is not the Universal Integral Way of natural life.