Sam Patton: Van Jones is a symbol. Defeat for all.

I am disgusted to learn that Van Jones resigned from his position of Green Jobs czar for the Obama Administration.  I do not know what to think about our country.

I am a Southern Man, born in North Carolina, raised in Mississippi.  My history is slavery, is grits, is catfish and racial distrust, confederate flags and soulful music that hits you in your guts.  I am not an anarchist, and I dare you to come inside the ‘conservative stronghold’ of Mississippi and call me one.  I am no radical, I am a lover of freedom and truth, of intelligence and change meaning growth, meaning the desire to do what is right even in the face of incalculable danger.

I was not born loving America, but it grew on me.  I was born like all organisms, outside of identity, inheriting the genes and attitudes of my forefathers and for that I thank my parents, two beautiful, wonderful Mississippi natives who grew up in a time when family, when community, meant everything.

Sound familiar?  That’s the America we all love, right?  The America that has been co-opted by certain individuals, people who hide behind some cloak of political party, hide behind the walls of commercial entities that, increasingly, appear to me to be the threats and dangers to Truth, to Justice, that we are so afraid of.

America, what have we become?  Honestly, honestly, does anyone think Glenn Beck is the answer?  He sits behind his desk.  His interns – unpaid, low paid, low wage sycophants – develop our news and Glenn Beck adds the fire.  But he is no pastor, this is no religion and this is nothing we can believe in.  His language is the language of oppression, of fear, and I refuse, I absolutely refuse, to be afraid.

I am America.  I am some small and burning part of it, and I am flawed, I am self centered but I try to uphold the greatest tradition, the most beautiful idea of which humanity ever conceived: the belief in Honor.
It’s just a word, and unfortunately, sadly, rarely heard today.  Honor in my mind is as archaic as woven battle tapestries and the Edge of the World and we have pushed them both aside to embrace a superficial, artificial cult of manipulated truth.

What use is honor when a man who stood up truly is cast aside by his own leaders?  This is supposed to be Van Jones, and I have gotten distracted.  I am so sad.  I do not understand where we went wrong, why we can’t change, but know – I know this personally, from all my years of being – that shame, gut wrenched embarrassment, is often my most effective tutor.  And so I write this now, a nothing call out to the anti-void which is the Internet (the point where having everything, horrifically, means nothing) and to my ancestors, to all the Pattons and Furrs who made me, to my brothers and cousins, to my loved ones and friends, to those who hate me, who laugh at me, who do not know me and do not care: please stop.

We have to stop what we are doing.  What we are doing is disgraceful.  Glenn Beck is not my enemy, but he is a banner man for all the lies, for all the manipulations that sprout the weeds in our eternal garden.

Two years ago the name Van Jones meant nothing to me.  I was a democrat, a liberal thinker, and I knew humanity was pillaging our world and that was wrong.  That was dishonorable, a curse on our own family, a shameful and disgraceful act that would, in time, reveal to any thinking creature – plant, animal, alien or future human if we’re lucky – that, for some sad span of years, my people lost their way and became brutes, became unchecked predators in what was/will be our Earth’s night.

I knew these things because they felt true to me.  The debate about ideology often forgets that each child born is a tabula rasa, free to develop some sense of rightness with the guidance of his or her surrounding.  What the world showed me is its landscape, torn by our hands and tools; its elements, ripped and changed by our pursuit of power; its balance, the delicate eternal cycle of Life disrupted, undone.  I saw and see those things and know my part, know my own thirst for power and see it as an alcoholic man watches his whiskey: savior and satan inside the same package.

Any man who wishes to can, in the company of his compatriots, cast my image as a freak, as the Other, and we have truly shown our hatred of the Other.  I do not write to change you.  I write to ask you, where is your own Honor?

There was a time – for most of time, indeed, outside of time and before our conception of its ticking – when Honor didn’t have to be a word.  The duty to protect ones family, to love ones neighbors, to create shelter from the storm, that all was honor.  The instinctive defense of the young, protection of the old, relation to the Just, that all was honor.  There was a time when men who looked for answers, felt the peoples’ suffering, were held up as heroes.

In this, our modern day and age, we think ourselves above it all.  We are taking this world for granted, and I am shamed.  I am shamed and stricken.  Van Jones is a symbol and a focus for my realization that we are brushing aside our heroes.

President Obama, shame on you.  Your victory is not the idle play of poll numbers and thinktanks; the only real victory now will be humanity’s conquest of our shameful lust for conquest.  We have come full circle and now confront Life’s abyss. No man can call himself a man who will not stare, with wide stretched eyes, into the time of lies that we are living.

The world is failing.  No, we are killing the world.  Honor did not depart us; we have cast out honor, in favor of political punditry, biased accusations.  We are shaming ourselves, we should all grow out our hair, refuse to bathe, as it is mockery of our inner sickness that we’ve progressed and can cosmetically paint ourselves beatific.

If Glenn Beck feels he is right, he is mistaken.  I know that as an honorable man. Glenn Beck will never save us, but Van Jones might have.  And if he is the man of honor I believe him to be, he will keep fighting, indeed, has said he will not stop, and I believe him.

I hope that I will fight as well.  Sometimes a man must feel the wall at his back; must look around and see no friend, feel no warm admiration, and must dare all for that which he thinks right.

I do not know if I have it inside me.  I do not feel fated; I am the blank slate, the Southern man who felt the sunshine of true love cast by parents and grew in it.  I have been lucky, I feel that I can see both sides of our true story, and I know the future is unwritten, but the lines that I lay down – be they significant or paltry – I will write with honor, because I know that the world needs us, that humans are nothing if not of earth, that we came from it and will die in it, fertilize the soil with purity or be cast as trash on trash.

I am not afraid, but I am sad.

Oh well, our spirit lives.

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Sam Patton