sense of foreboding.

Last night, I dreamed a Christian fundamentalist regime had overtaken America, one considerably more fascist and successful than the current one. Everyone I knew - all those intellectuals, artists, dissenters, queers, Jews, etc. - was rounded up and herded into camps. I can still clearly see the high barbed-wire fences and feel my sense of despair when Ari was separated from me. I knew he offended said regime even more than most of us, and that I would not see him again. But after a time, I joined with a few others, and then a few more, and then a few more, to overtake the camp and liberate our people and, in the process, freedom and independent thought. I was, quite uncharacteristically, the co-leader of the revolution, along with a brunette woman I can still clearly see in my head, but who doesn't resemble anyone I know.
Our struggle was, sadly, a bloody one, but I didn't so much participate as watch myself do so through a lens of conventional Hollywood flashiness. There were explosions and gore, and probably a rousing soundtrack. It was all quite glamorous, and upon our victory, those of us who remained walked free from the camp amid drifting smoke.
The dream then flashed forward a few years - maybe five? - and I was back in college, and knew somehow that all my former compatriots were, too. I must have been a graduate student, because I was asked to lecture to a classroom full of younger people. I arrived at said classroom - a cramped, flourescent-lit space, and whoever brought me there started explaining that I could use the sheet they proffered to cover myself as I undressed. I met this with confusion, but it slowly dawned on me that the lecture was next week, and here, I'd been asked to pose nude for a drawing class.
The nude as a basis for artmaking and artistic apprenticeship had been thoroughly suppressed during the days of the repressive Christian regime, as had all forms of sexual expression and anything else deemed immoral by our leaders, who we had at first elected but had gotten wildly out of hand, steadfastly refusing to relinquish power when the time came. The rights of women to police their own bodies had, predictably, disappeared during that time, and society was still recovering from this mental damage. The people in this class - freshman and sophomores - had lived childhoods permeated by this conservatism, and I and my former revolutionaries were doing whatever we could to free them from the repressive ideologies on which the former state was based. So, after thinking for a moment, I cheerfully agreed to strip down and celebrate the freedom for which we had all struggled, and to serve as an example to these younger individuals, to let them know that art was ok and beautiful, and thought was ok and beautiful, and, ultimately, no one could take those things away from us.
Then the dream did one of those dream-morph things, and I found myself not only in a tightly-packed classroom but also on a dimly-lit stage, all at once. The students stared up at me from red velour theatre seats, and the wood planks of the stage were cold beneath my feet. There were three or four other models onstage, also nude, and the professor was dictating our poses to a high degree of specificity. It slowly dawned on me that he was a former leader in the regime, and I thought it strange that he would even engage in such a profession. He was a squat, balding man wearing a tight jacket, sort of a turn-of-the-century Wall Street baron type, an old-fashioned fat cat. Only when he handed me a rough wooden railroad tie, settled it upon my shoulders and ordered me to draped my arms over each end, did I realize that we models were being compelled to act out scenes from the life of Christ. Somehow, this meant that the rumors about the former dictators re-organizing themselves and regaining power were true. I did know that even though we had regained a great level of freedom, certain forms of protest were becoming dangerous once more. But I wouldn't have it; I wouldn't participate in the indoctrinization of these students - 0ne of which, sadly, was my former co-leader from the camps. So, as the stage shrunk back down to the classroom, I set my wooden burden down and walked out, totally naked.
****
I'm not posting this totally whacked-out dream for any specific reason (least of all to share the rather embarrassing glorification therein of my own character), but I do think that the fact that I even had it is telling. I am, by nature, totally jaded about politics. George Bush has been president for the entirety of my adult life, and although I support Obama, I find it difficult to truly HOPE that things can get better. We elected Bush - twice! - and it is hard to get over the discouragementand disappointment I have felt about that. I'm not so staunchly anti-religion as my dream would imply (and hope I haven't offended any Christian or otherwise spiritual friends). I try to respect that people need religion, I try to remember that it is truly important to many, that it is a of deep significance to them - I don't presume to understand what that is all about. But a repressive regime based upon misuses and exaggerations of Christian doctrine is exactly what I fear we may end up with if McCain/Palin win this election. If they don't accomplish said nightmare during their tenure, they can certainly lay the foundation. I do not think this country has the capacity to devolve into the kind of post-apocalyptic/anachronistic state in my dream - we as a people are, despite the apparently pervasive ignorance of the last eight years, ultimately too kind, too generous, too accepting of each other as individuals to allow the return of such things as labor camps for dissenters and "fringe" populations (although the relatively recent Japanese internment camps do come to mind). But I do fear that we could lose traction on so many things that have, in the past fifty years or so, helped this country move closer to its great potential as a land where so many people can live in harmony. (Look how patriotic this whole freakshow of an election is making me!) As just one example, I submit the very real possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned, something that, ten years ago, we could not have dreamed possible. But, maybe there were those who dreamed it - maybe I've always been trapped in a elitist liberal bubble.
I don't presume, honestly, to be an educated follower of politics, or of social and financial and racial issues in America - I had plugged my jaded ears to all of it for so long, I'm having a hell of a time catching up. And I admit the doomsday quality of my dream, combined with the flat, grey, dreary sky, is infusing my day and making everything seem a bit more dramatic and abstract than usual. But now, I do want to get fired up - I want to rescind my former lack of engagement and try to support those who would bring much-needed change to this country. Part of the problem, I think, is that said involvement lacks the glamour of the rebel struggle, particularly in a flamingly red state such as ours. Ari reported that the two people who organize for Obama in Baton Rouge - young, direct dispatches from Chicago - were, as of a month ago, already resigned to the hopelessness of their task. But I'm considering helping them out, regardless. For my own sense of dignity.
I'll conclude my ramble here, and will update on any political involvement I manage to propel myself into.