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Whoopie Doo, Pacifica Has A New Board

An opinion piece, belatedly copied in from http://www.ominous-valve.com/pacific.html

I just noticed two things today.

First is that WBAI picked its PNB representatives. Second is that I am so underwhelmed by Pacifica and its factions that I can no longer justify taking the time to write about them.

I wish the new board well, but I suspect we'll see nothing but the same old same old. The key word here is OLD. That's what Pacifica's gotten, and I hope the people with thicker skins than mine who remain there having to endure this endless torture will enjoy the little corner of Sartre Hell they have constructed for themselves.

I would like to say that I learned something in my brief, unhappy involvement with Pacifica, but I didn't. I learned absolutely nothing, unless you count a realization that my personality type, distaste for correctness and doctrinal purity, and tendency to call things the way I see them, is remarkably ill-suited to organizations with such Messianic pretentions and rigid standards for speech and behavior.

I would like to say that I made some good friends, but I didn't. I thought I did, but given the lack of e-mail in the last year, I apparently thought incorrectly. Too bad, because I developed a tremendous respect for many of you, and would have liked to stay in touch.

I would like to say that the three or so years I wasted on this wretched little foundation made any contribution whatsoever toward my life's goal of leaving this dying planet considerably better than I found it, but they didn't. No way, unless you count providing a convenient target for public crucifixion, with its inherent entertainment value, as a constructive role in anything.

Mostly, I'm just kind of sorry Pacifica didn't work out better for me. I wish I could say it's been real, the way Patty Heffley did, in her dignified exit that proved she's worth 100 of Pacifica's lesser players, but it hasn't been real at all. It's actually been rather unreal. I just didn't encounter a lot of reality on Planet Pacifica. As an uninvolved person (I started calling them "civilians") once said upon their first reading of the Blue Board, "What color IS the sky in there?"

See you in the street, I hope. I harbor no permanent ill feelings toward any of you, and I hope we can find less insane places where we can work together for the real change this universe so badly needs.

I leave one parting thought for the League Of Justice, or the New Jedi Order, or whatever they're calling Pacifica's dominant faction this year: No one is going to empower your downtrodden neighborhoods of color if all of us don't cease and desist from the circular firing squad long enough to stop Bush from turning them into radioactive holes in the ground. No one will be left ALIVE to care. Priorities, people, priorities.

Goodbye.

% curl --head http://www.ominous-valve.com/pacific.html
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:05:30 GMT
Server: Rapidsite/Apa/1.3.33 (Unix) FrontPage/5.0.2.2510 mod_ssl/2.8.22 OpenSSL/0.9.8d
Last-Modified: Fri, 12 Jan 2007 23:35:29 GMT

Yep, apparently cured.

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