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I didn't want to feel hypocritical and I didn't want to praise this country or be critical of this country without being a part of this country. I also wanted to vote. -Nash on getting his American citizenship in 1978 |
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Photo: Graham Nash self portrait
"I think that Neil Young did a brilliant, brilliant job of opening up more doors for discussion of a very tender subject. I think we are having a small effect," said Nash. "The momentum of this planet is such that it takes an awful lot to move it even a small degree but we've got to start somewhere."
Nash has chosen several places to start and one of them is helping to change the leadership paradigm that the country has been under for the last eight years. His involvement at the DNC shows that he is hopeful about the future of this country and sees Obama as the candidate to support. "I donated to his campaign a year and a half ago or more," said Nash. "I believe that he has a great heart. I believe that he is enormously sensible and I think he has the right spirit and will be a breath of fresh air and hope."
 Graham Nash |
However, Nash is still in touch with the realities of our political system and understands that, despite the best intentions, Obama is not perfect. "I feel very hopeful for this man but he is a politician. He has to make deals he has to compromise simply to get the job that he wants," observed Nash. "I believe that once he gets that job, and I am very hopeful that he does, that he'll be the most sensible choice."
Nash went on to cite the enormous turnout of more than 100,000 people in Berlin for Obama's speech there in July as a sign the rest of the world is pulling for change in the United States. It only takes a couple of minutes on www.sorryeverybody.com to see how regular people around the world reacted when Bush was re-elected in 2004, and this is our time to redeem ourselves. As Nash said, "I know that he is going to improve America's image in the rest of the world, which is going to go a long way to make us feel better about ourselves and not worse."
Many people in this country share the feeling that a main focus of the Bush administration has been to simply terrify Americans into believing that the government has an intimate place in the everyday life and happenings of the citizen's of this country. From detention without charges for any "terror suspects" to the domestic call monitoring program, the administration has managed to convince people that somehow these kinds of programs will protect us as citizens despite sacrificing basic civil rights protected by the constitution. In an effort to explain this kind of psychological manipulation Nash referred to a posting by Ariana Huffington on her blog, The Huffington Post.
"I learned something from Ariana Huffington that is very important to me," he said. "She said in her blog one week, 'I can't believe that with what they've done with the Constitution and the Pfizer Bill and everything else that the George W. Bush administration is still there.' She got an answer from a friend of hers, who I think is the head of Psychiatry at Harvard, and he said, 'Here's what's going on, Ariana. In the brain there is a tiny organ that is about the size of a peanut. It's called the amygdala and that is responsible for the fight or flight response. It's an ancient organ and it's an ancient emotion. When the amygdala is engaged all other concepts are diminished and all the person needs is a glass of warm milk and their jammys. The Bush administration has been brilliant at triggering the amygdala in the minds of many many Americans through fear and controlling them.' I thought that was a fascinating piece of information."
From the Huffington Post Article:
"Deep in the brain lies the amygdala, an almond-sized region that generates fear. When this fear state is activated, the amygdala springs into action. Before you are even consciously aware that you are afraid, your lizard brain responds by clicking into survival mode. No time to assess the situation, no time to look at the facts, just fight, flight or freeze. Fear paralyzes our reasoning and literally makes it impossible to think straight. Instead, we search for emotional, nonverbal cues from others that will make us feel safe and secure."
Read the whole article here.
 Graham Nash |
Though fear is a natural and primal human emotion critical to our survival as a species, it is not a comfortable feeling and should not be a tool used in a functioning democracy in an effort to retain and expand power. In fact, it seems more like a tool used by a schoolyard bully, a dictator or other oppressive regimes that is afraid to be open to the thoughts and ideas of others. It's a frightening abuse of power and it gets even scarier when the concept of detaining and confining dissenters starts to rear its ugly head. While he was passionate throughout the conversation, Nash really got fired up when he began to relate information about the construction of internment camps around the country
"There was a secret meeting of congress in May of this year called COG Meeting [Continuance of Government Meeting]," he said. In that meeting they came up with the statement that they thought the economy would be so bad at the end of 2008 that people would start to revolt," said Nash. "They had already identified people that may cause trouble, that may be ringleaders, and they have already built the internment camps to put them in. The latest one that is being built just outside of Fort Worth is for 300,000 people and there is fucking video on YouTube to prove it!"
Here we are nearing the end of 2008 and at least part of that speculation has come true. With banks failing around the world, the credit market frozen and the stock market continuing its radical up and down swings, the economy is in one of the worst situations it has been in since The Great Depression. It's simply mind-boggling that the government could have known this was coming and not done more to prevent it or minimize the impact rather than formulate a strategy to incarcerate the people who expressed their displeasure with the situation. While there has been no mass uprising, and thankfully there are measures being put in place to correct our economic situation, it took nearly cataclysmic events to prompt a public reaction from the administration.
Nash broke it down to the basics when he told me, "I'd like to not live in fear. Why should we live in fear? Isn't life difficult enough?"
A simple enough sentiment, it's clear, to the point and beyond any doubt, true.
We can change the world
Rearrange the world
It's dying - to get better.
-Graham Nash - "Chicago"
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