The New Normal

October 01, 2013

By Margaret Randall

Because of our elected officials’ extreme polarization, important sectors of our nation closed down this morning. Government services not deemed to be essential have been forced to shut their doors. National parks and monuments have lines of cars stopped at their gates (many carrying visitors coming from halfway around the globe). Even some workers whose expertise guards our safety, such as a percentage of air traffic controllers, are off the job. More than 800,000 government workers have been furloughed without pay, with thousands more required to continue laboring, also without pay. Four hundred thousand civilians working for the military are being sent home. These numbers are initial and partial; they will rise as the crisis continues.

A couple months ago it was the so-called sequester. We heard about its implementation, but not that it has been lifted. Like factories that laid off tens of thousands of workers when the economic crisis hit and then, as it eased, hired a few back but replaced many more with robots, this is the new normal. As each new blow beneath the belt helps us become accustomed to fewer jobs and services, the 1% responsible for this radically altered map hopes that we—the American public—will simply accept the new scenario.

The next big crisis looms around the debt ceiling. If things continue as they have been, it is not at all impossible that the United States will default on its creditors.

In most countries, when government grows so dramatically inept and unresponsive to the needs of its citizens those citizens find a way to replace the government. They stage coups, organize effective boycotts or strikes, or otherwise bring their elected officials to their senses. It seems that here we have been conditioned to accept each new status quo with a minimum of pushback or complaint.

I blame the Tea Partiers and their ilk most of all, those crazies who are so filled with racism and hatred for Obama that they will consistently go against their constituents’ best interests to try to make the administration fail. But I blame the Democrats too, because they have been unable or unwilling to deal effectively with a crisis that is still unfolding.

If those with the power to do so, on both sides of the aisle, had been willing to demand accountability, to accuse, condemn and imprison the bankers and others responsible for a situation that has written many citizens out of their hardworking lives, we would be living another story. If the administration really had been willing to put an end to failed wars, not start new ones, and use the billions saved for infrastructure, jobs, education and other citizen needs, we wouldn’t be in the situation we are in today.

Have the powers that be brainwashed us beyond a coherent response? Have we no memory of the brilliance, creativity and organization that made it possible for us to build a nation once envied by so many?

This piece was written by:

Margaret Randall

Margaret Randall (1936) was born in New York City but grew up in Albuquerque and lived half of her adult life in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua. When she returned to the U.S. in 1984 she was ordered deported under the U.S. Immigration and Nationality's McCarran-Walter Act. The government alleged that her writings, "went against the good order and happiness of the United States." She won her case in 1989.

She is a local poet who reads nationally and internationally. Among her recent books of poetry are My Town, As If The Empty Chair / Como Si La Silla Vacia, and The Rhizome As A Field of Broken Bones, all from Wings Press, San Antonio, Texas. A feminist poet's reminiscence of Che Guevara, Che On My Mind, is just out from Duke University Press, a new collection of essays, More Than Things, is out from The University of Nebraska Press, and Daughter of Lady Jaguar Shark, a single long-poem with 15 photographs, is now available from Wings. Her most recent poetry collection is About Little Charlie Lindbergh (also from Wings Press).

Randall resides in Albuquerque with her partner, the painter Barbara Byers, and travels widely to read and lecture. You can find out more about Margaret, her writings and upcoming readings at, www.margaretrandall.org.