Advanced Citizenship

New resolve has realigned my priorities (again), and I’m back to my morning two-mile walks. These are treadmill walks – my nod to efficiency – that double as “movie time” in my day. I have a dandy little TV hanging with one of those wall mounts and noise-reduction headphones that make every other sound disappear (well, almost), and I can sink into the screen for 37 minutes, give or take depending on how much sleep I was able to get last night. Sleep refuses to be prioritized when school’s in session. Pardon me … I’m drifting. The conclusion to American President was playing for this morning’s walk, and one phrase from the big Michael Douglas inspirational speech near the end of that movie grabbed my attention today. “America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship.”

“Advanced citizenship” … advanced citizenship. The idea speaks to the confusion I continue to wrestle when I try to think about the war in Iraq, the Terri Schiavo situation in Florida, or the conditions contributing to the devastation that took place for the Red Lake Nation this past week – topics defining only the headlines on my mind today. There are others, of course.

One of the greatest difficulties I face when trying to think through these issues is the sound of so many voices around me seeming able to arrive at a solid understanding long before I do – they seem able to conclude, to be certain, and to develop answers - to arrive at a location in the universe of possibilities that continues to elude me. The phrase from the movie helped. The difficulty I experience is less about my inability to arrive at an answer or understanding; it’s about the complexity of “advanced citizenship” and the challenge inherent in resolving an understanding or advocated course of action with points of view equally cogent with mine yet diametrically opposed. “America isn’t easy.”

Bring the troops home? It isn’t that easy, but “Go, Team, Go” and “the U.S. occupation of Iraq is making life better for Iraqis” doesn’t cut a straight line of the subject either. $4.7 billion a month can do a lot of talking to “make life better” no matter where it’s spent. Let Terri die? It’s in her best interest? What? Have we thought this through? Who decides? If the spouse of the impaired person is the government sanctioned deciding agent, how can we then deny the civil office of “spouse” to thousands of citizens faithfully partnered in same-sex unions? Who holds the government sanction then? Doesn’t the Florida case (among others) demand a revaluation of the term “spouse” in light of the civil liberties being there attached? It gets complicated, doesn’t it? I can want to draw lines with the idea of “our nation’s beginnings” and anchor my answers there, recite the intentions of our forbearers as foundation for my conservative preferences today, thinking that makes some sense of how the recent losses to the Red Lake Nation could pass with so little of a nation’s attention being given. Social security? National health care? Gun control? The frightening shift of the cost of “progress” from the coffers of corporate America to the backs of its workers? Give me answers, oh yeah! But get dirty in the work of digging them up. Advanced citizenship takes hard work.

In the meantime, I’m all for noise. Noise generates effective citizenship, and while I’m in the process of excavating a substantive understanding on one or another of the topics most mattering to me right now, I am celebrating the noise that is being made on all manner of issues still coming to light for me. Read as much as you can and as widely as you can; listen, discuss, read more, but, one way or the other, get in the conversation! If noise is all you can do in the beginning, that’s ok. You, me, and Anchorman’s Brick Tamland can begin with “LOUD NOISES” and make it grow from there.