I had to protect some "important people who are having a meeting" in a small house in a row of similar houses. There was a front door and a small back door, I had to stay awake; move back and forth all night. In the small kitchen there were I think five men talking very softly, by the light of a wick floating on oil in a cup. I did not want to listen to what they were talking about but could not help hearing a word now and then. Around midnight they askd me to make some coffee. I wondered where they had gotten real coffee; we had not had any for years. I sat down with them for a few minutes. They told me two of the men had come from England a few days before, dropped with a black parachute by a quiet low flying plane.
When I put together the words I could not help overhearing I realized they were talking about "day one." The first day after the end of the war. The day when we would have our own government again.
At the time I was indignant. I was giving my life to protect people who were planning a future I could not see. Why don't they plan how to win this war? Why don't they make plans to get rid of these (blank) Germans?
I survived until May. I'll spare you the details. There were what seemed endless weeks of confusion. The Allies had arranged with the Germans that they would stay in their barracks (keeping their weapons otherwise the people would have killed them) and we, the Resistance, wearing arm bands, were "in charge." Essentially we were again, as at the beginning of the war, without any government. I already knew that the absence of a government does not mean chaos. People know how to live together, and in emergencies we know what to do. I am sure of that; I have experienced it many more times.
And then, one day our government was back in charge. "Day one." In my memory it all happened in one day, but it must have been longer. Everybody got the new money, boatloads of food and other necessities arrived. Soon we had telephone again, electricity came back. Clinics and hospitals were outfitted again, actually functioning. It was a total miracle.
Yes it took years to restore a plundered country, but then I fully understood that those five men who also gave their lives had planned this to the last detail. The midnight cup of real coffee came back into my memory and I realized they too had risked their lives because they knew our suffering. I realized that those men had been passionately, intelligently planning because the core idea they worked from was that the function of government is taking care of the people in their charge.
I must repeat that thought: Government is based on the core idea that its function is to see to it that the people are taken care of: protected, fed, reasonably content, as healthy as possible.
That is why in the Netherlands and many other nations there was never a debate about universal health care (including teeth and eyes). Unemployment can be taken care of by reducing the work week to 36, 34 hours so that more people can get work. A woman giving birth gets a few months paid leave. Child care is free. All education is free, adapted to the needs and gifts of individuals. Everybody has four weeks paid vacation (in France it's six weeks). Of course everyone pays taxes but they get their money's worth. Peace with neighbor nations comes from talking with neighbors. No need for big armies.
In America we call all that "socialism," a word that means abhorrent. To me it is no "ism" it is what humans do. We have always known that we have to take care of each other. We would not have survived for a hundred and more thousand years if we hadn't taken care of each other.
In America we do not believe (any more?) that the core idea of governing is to take care of people. Americans, at least the loudest American voices, say that each of us should take care of her/himself. If I get sick and cannot afford surgery: too bad. I should have planned my own life better. And if I cannot afford to go to a hospital, I die--I remember the loud applause when Ron Paul said that in one of the debates. The American core idea is that governing means taking care of business. Money. People have to look out for themselves.
That is why we cannot change our way of life. We cannot make a green economy because that costs money and goes against the interest of oil companies, coal companies, the rich, the very rich. And that is why we cannot even slow down global warming. This year is already the hottest in US history. Future generations -- if there are any -- will blame us, the big U.S. The world is already blaming us now, today.
Speaking just for myself, I hate to think that because I and my country did not do what we easily could have done to prevent or slow down global warming all the world must suffer the worldwide apocalyptic disaster that may make this beautiful planet unfit for us to survive on/in. And we did it to ourselves.
We are now fighting "terrorism" all over the globe. To prevent another 9/11 we say. Fighting individuals with all the force of an armed nation, at a cost of billions, trillions, does not work. We should have learned that by now. By fighting terrorism we have become the Terror.
The world expected this country to lead. We ourselves think we must lead. But we lead in the wrong direction; we fight the wrong war. Instead of doing everything we can to stop burning oil and coal we fight people. Oh yes, we know how to become sustainable. It can be done in less than ten years if we wanted. But we think it more important to find and kill people suspected of having bad intentions. Every innocent child we kill, so-called collateral damage, has brothers and sisters who want revenge. By fighting terrorism with missiles shot from drones we make more terrorists and have no time, no thought, for taking care of people. Global warming is a much greater threat than terrorism. Rome is burning; the world is burning and we are fiddling, making money from wars.
Sometimes I think of the one vote from the Supreme Court that gave us a president and I fantasize what president Gore would have been able to do. That one vote changed history; it may have changed the fate of Life on this Earth. A very eerie thought.
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