Chickens and Government II

 

Finally on Monday the senseless combativeness in Washington has settled down to a new slightly more rational cooperation.

 

That's what I gathered while watching, with surprise and fascination, as our chickens began working together for their common good. 

 

In my last column, Big Horn County News July 20, I explained how they were banned from our fenced garden.  I didn't expect this cooperation.

 

They gathered into a gang and began running all together in the same direction. At first I saw no useful purpose. As I watched closer, I saw their mob-like stamping chicken feet stir up a wave of grasshoppers and bugs in front of them.  Insects were eaten at the moment of landing, no time to get hopping feet folded to spring and fly again, because other chicks behind had kicked them up. As their flight range was exhausted, down they came, into a gizzard.  Every chick got a fair chop at the economy of the pasture's protein.  My forage got a break from the bugs and hoppers.  My chickens are getting fatter. 

 

More to the point, I'm watching an avian illustration of what now could and should be happening for the good of our nation, now that we finally have some congressional compromise to move in the same direction.  And this all in spite of the snide remarks and arrogant character degradation by Fox Radio Right Wing Fair and Balanced Talk Shows, and The Sky-Is-Falling Analyses of Democrats and Liberal Pundits.

 

Yes, we really can move in the same direction; congress folk can compromise their promises and get elected on reality instead of simplicity. We can preserve our union, return to our basics as a nation, and value what gave us the right start back in our revolution against the conservative British Crown royalists. 

 

Are you paying attention? I hope the words of George Lakeoff, in a recent oped, might help us see again our nation's values to which we just might be returning:

 

We Americans care about our fellow citizens; we act on that care and build trust and we do our best not just for ourselves, our families and our friends and neighbors, but for our country, for each other, for people we have never seen and never will see.

 

That's what our capitalist economy should be about, as Adam Smith wrote when he held up the common good as the basic bottom line of capitalism in America.

 

It's time to tear apart the modern experimental nest of pundits, politicians, media moguls and billionaires who place personal power and profit above the public good.  They laugh up their sleeves to their foreign banks, and it echoes across the back 40, as they manipulate the masses of American citizenry into hysteria about government takeovers, raising taxes, the terrible Taliban in Iran, and a host of other side issues. While truly harmful, these really are symptoms to which paying too much attention has become a dangerous diversion from restoration of our real historical values. They have done an astounding job of smearing and discrediting foundational public enterprises: public schools, government agencies that support family businesses and farms where children labor, non-profit medical care, public funded elder care, and even now social security, Medicare and Medicaid.

 

In our nation this experimental nest wants to feed us chicks the equivalent of ground "protein" that's really horsemeat by-products unfit for human consumption.  We are then told to feel happy we can sit around being lazy recipients of the largess of the elite's welfare system, and don't have to leave our fence boundaries to join in with others in pursuit of a livelihood.  Most conspicuously, we chicks get addicted to the protein pellets from the outside so there is no need to tread that grass in step with others for the good of all. We are supposed to enjoy confinement, and to think life consists of being lucky not to be left outside the fence, not abandoned to survive in the low life of pursuit of protein for survival. 

 

More than any other agenda, our founding fathers were adamant that unregulated private wealth concentration was anathema to our fledgling democracy.

It's possible the decision of the Republicans in the House to stand with Boehner and back Obama's negotiated plan will lead to some new valuing of our public enterprise system, especially government's function to open the big sky so we can see each other and get coordinated for the common sustenance of all. I saw it happening with my chicks here on the back 40.  Maybe, congressmen will be booted from their fenced garden too, or learn to think beyond pushing for more government deregulation of private wealth concentration, and instead join us all supporting public enterprises for the good of all of us.

 

David Graber

Hardin, MT

 

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David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org