Great Depression | BIG GREEN

Well, we don’t have any more guitar strings. Used the last set in early April. And those used ones on the bureau are from 1997, so they may be a little dull. How about some electrical wire? I’ve got some decent coax in the cupboard.

Oh, hello. Welcome to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York, adopted home of Big Green and burgeoning center of innovation. And by innovation, I mean making do with what you have at hand. Which, I know, is not the same thing, but hey …. “innovation” sounds more, uh … innovative. In any case, provisions are running a little low around here, there being a Great Depression under way. I suppose you could argue that we’ve been experiencing a kind of Great Depression for a good many years, just within the rubric of our commercially failed alt-pop group project. That said, the tumbleweeds are blowing down the dusty street in front of the hammer mill. In the distance, you can hear a banjo playing. Somewhere a dog was barking.

Okay, so … we’re out of milk. That’s one thing. Fortunately, we don’t drink milk, so the fact that we haven’t had any for six or seven years hasn’t significantly impacted our quality of life. Pork chops, same deal. (Actually, Mitch Macaphee claims to have invented some kind of faux pork substance, but I can’t vouch for its authenticity.) The real pinch, though, comes from lack of instrument accessories and supplies. We were discussing guitar strings earlier. That’s not the only thing that’s missing around this dump. Patch cords. Stomp boxes. Tubes. Other tubes. Speaker cables. Batteries. And keys, damn it … replacement keys for my dumb-ass Roland A90EX, which has missing teeth right in the freaking middle of the board.

We were thinking about starting a GoFundMe, but given our reputation, we just assumed it would have quickly transitioned to a GoFuckYourself. Besides, passing the hat has never been a big winner for us. I remember back in our busking days, sitting around random street corners with an open guitar case set on the sidewalk, waiting for coins. Mind you, we weren’t playing any music. Fact was, we were even poorer then, so we didn’t have guitars, just guitar cases. So we would sit there and wait for people to drop some cash in the hole. In a way, we’re sitting there still. (Sometimes I get on Google Street View and wander through our old neighborhood in downtown Albany, NY just to make certain we’re not still there. That would be freaky, but not beyond the realm of possibility.)

Oh well. Little we can do for the time being, except strum rusty guitar strings, plunk on broken keys, and watch inspirational corporate TV ads that start with reverb-y piano notes and solemn voices.

Senate Republicans tried-on their comedy shoes this week, “debating” something they were breezily referring to as the Green New Deal but which was actually just a straw horse resolution they whacked like a pinata to show how proudly retrograde they are. In the wake of the Typhoon in Mozambique and other recent climate-fueled disasters, this was a pretty remarkable exercise in ignorance and tone-deafness. No, I don’t expect anything better from what Noam Chomsky has accurately described as the most dangerous organization in human history. The Republicans literally stand alone in the world as the only major party that rejects the science of climate change. Quite a distinction.

Not that there isn’t some value in such a spectacle. It certainly focuses the mind on how much work we have to do. My hope is that all of my leftist and progressive friends and colleagues fully understand just how difficult this climate fight will be. This is not just about developing and advocating for big ideas. We can only move this process forward by mounting an effective inside/outside strategy – organizing a large, broad mobilization out in the communities and electing the most progressive politicians we can possibly elect. We need to do more than just win power, which will be hard enough. We have to hold and sustain power over the next decade and a half particularly, as that is pretty much all the time we have left to turn this ship around. That will take an enormous effort and, really, a new kind of politics that makes a material difference in the lives of ordinary people.

Note to rookie comedian Mike Lee: don't quit your day job.

How are we going to convince millions upon millions of Americans to go with this Green New Deal framework? Well, part of the challenge is that climate change is what may be called a genuinely hard problem. There’s the tendency to compare climate change to the Great Depression, but that’s kind of misleading. Yes, the Depression affected almost everyone in the country, but its worst effects could be mitigated by some money in your pocket. Massive collective effort in the 1930s had the potential to provide relief relatively rapidly – relief that would be felt by a large segment of society. Climate change is more complicated. We can’t tell people that, if you do this important work, the climate will be noticeably better – that’s just not likely. We’re asking people to save the world for future generations … and it’s just possible that our best efforts might not even accomplish that. So in addition to emphasizing that concern for future generations, we need to flesh out the “new deal” component of the plan … the part that will deliver some level of equity and prosperity to ordinary Americans.

Don’t get me wrong – I am 100% in favor of a Green New Deal. But let’s proceed with our eyes open. This won’t be a cake walk.

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Tag Archives: Great Depression

Make good.

The hard problem.

Official site of the band Big Green