The Issue Isn’t the Issue, or Setting Up Housekeeping in Loop City

I live in a pretty weird town. Cochiti Lake is by God beautiful, and quiet, and the night sky is breathtaking, and I swim in the lake in the summer, I watch the snow evaporate (that’s right -- it doesn’t actually melt all the way) in the winter. I love my house, and I’m very happy here in the desert; never thought I could enjoy not-ocean, but I do, for the moment, enjoy it a lot. Yesterday, I closed my eyes and I swear the wind sounded just like surf, soughing rhythmically, breathing in and out -- very soothing and just as effective as the seashore in generating positive ions, at least in my tangled soul.

This is a made-up town; it arose from an ill-advised and ultimately doomed arrangement between the Cochiti Indian Pueblo and Great Western Corp, aka The Hunt Brothers of Greedy Texas (insert gasping sounds). There was supposed to be a large town here (on the choicest mesas on the reservation) of 40,000 souls, complete with schools and recreation center, indoor pool, golf course, riding stables, etc etc etc, and I’m sure that’s the way Great Western painted the future to the Pueblo. Plus there’s this lake, generously supplied by the Army Corps of Engineers (who had dammed up the fabled Rio Grande on Cochiti Land, without hardly a by-your-leave) conveniently if mysteriously accomplished moments before Great Western came up with this Andy Hardy scheme. This all happened in the late sixties/early seventies and it wasn’t long before everything went to hell in a hand basket. There are those who think that in fact, once Great Western discovered it was not allowed to buy the land but only lease it, they lost interest and decided to declare bankruptcy, big fat Chapter 11, abandoning the project and leaving what was here to the bemused Pueblo. They never knew what hit them. What remains is a hamlet of a couple of hundred houses, a golf course, and some hard feelings between the residents of Cochiti Lake and their reluctant landlord the Cochiti Pueblo. As far as I can see, ALL the present and surviving parties were royally screwed by the Federal Government and its co-conspirator the rapacious Great Western Corporation. We are arguing over very scenic chicken bones.

And argue we do. If we can’t get a good scrap going with the Pueblo, then the local Anglos will start bickering among themselves. In this made-up town, everybody arrived from somewhere else (something like 40 different nations, for one thing, and easily two-thirds of these United States are represented in Cochiti Lake), bringing all their cultural baggage with them. This is a microcosmic melting-pot experiment, with no common cultural base, in a place where there is no political power to be had by anybody, but where the (mostly Euro-American) expectations are clear and immutable, and there was bound to be trouble. Politics here, or what passes for it, is in reality, great umbrage expressed by all parties, and never NEVER any kind of resolution. It might as well be France, for God’s sake. Or a particularly hellish community of mostly grumpy old men and the women who tolerate them.

Each of these grumps has his own issue, and he fights loudly, vigorously and relentlessly for it. He just won’t stop; it doesn’t matter that his issue has been overridden, has no other constituency, or is simply ridiculous and not going to happen. He clings to it, gets all red in the face to the point where one worries that he’s going to stroke out in the middle of his tirade (sometimes they do, being septua-, octo-, or nonegenarians and choleric besides), and will NOT be dissuaded. Issues range from how the Pueblo isn’t keeping the streets maintained, to accusations of fraud and mal/misfeasance on the part of the hapless members of the town assembly, to hysteria over town taxes.

BUT the issue is never the issue. Once I realized that, I was set free from taking any of these people seriously. They are all disembodied, free-floating outrage in search of an issue, one that will not expose nor threaten their real issues. They can god-damn around (my mother’s phrase describing one of my father’s favorite activities) and cause a lot of scurrying and side-bets on the part of their political representatives (again, the hapless assembly members), but they will not tolerate the slightest movement towards resolution. They CLING to their faux issue, as if it were life or death.

As indeed it is, at least in the psychological sense. There can be no resolution of their fake issues until the real issue is revealed, and the real issue cannot be revealed EVER because it would require great risk, exposing themselves as fraudulent entities in the extreme. The real issues are not political; the real issues have nothing to do with the community, nor even how they feel about living in the land of the Red Man (I think Indians might prefer to be called Brown these days, but what do I know). The real issues are: 1--I’m 75 years old and haven’t had an erection in 15 years; 2--I’m the youngest of 10 children and have never been listened to nor taken seriously ever in my life; 3--I came to the United States to get a little free speech for God’s sake, so speak freely I will and be damned to you; and 4--I am bat-shit wacko, jealous of the power of the elected government, want some for myself but am not willing to risk actually running for office, and so I just look for things to pick at, and be as nasty and patronizing as I possibly can in hopes of picking up a constituency that will do whatever I tell them, and voila, political power without the work.

The grumps, and even the assembly, as well as anybody who takes issue with the grumps’ issues, are trapped in a loop. As I said, the grumps themselves would never give up the loop willingly, simply because it’s much too comfortable inside it -- they’ve got a portable TV, a LazyBoy and a chamber pot right next to them. They know their script (which is the familiar tirade), they know what’s coming next (only more looping), they cannot be dislodged by reasoned debate (because the issue is UN-reasoned, and anybody that argues with them only perpetuates the loop), and they live very happily in there. Personally, I have not the slightest desire to expose the real issues specifically, nor even to break up the loops (though I feel wretched for my friends in elected office who feel it their duty to be responsive to the grumps, and who cannot seem to shake off the oobleck of the loop to effect real change). I only offer this whole thing as an example of looping, which is a very dangerous and growth-stunting way to live one’s life.

Loops are just another way of denial, and beyond that line there be dragons. I think Eric Berne, author of Games People Play and pioneer in exposing the psychological and emotional ploys of straw man or looping, described this syndrome as Uproar, or Here We Go Again. In relationships, we find ourselves feeling unloved or neglected or threatened or diminished or SOMETHING not good, and so we pick and pick at the other until we can find a good looping subject, trigger it and then, yeeHAH, a DOUBLE LOOP! Here we go again, and neither one of us has to look at anything scary. Life in the Bickerson household.

Money’s a loop. Over the years I’ve learned (and have mixed results in remembering) that money is NEVER the issue; when we fret and squeal and wail and wring our hands over the lack of enough money, we can entertain ourselves thusly for days, and never deal with the fears of personal insufficiency or impotence that is the real issue when it comes to money. Of course we need money -- the capitalist system we all slave under has made it the sine qua non, but it isn’t important; it’s only important in forcing us to attend, and examine for weaknesses, the limits of the paradigm. (Well, that and financing one more trip to Hawaii.)

What is required to break any loop is to change the subject, inject a new idea, e.g., to suck it up, take the damned risk and move on. THAT’S where the growth is. It's just that it takes more courage than most of us have, and confidence that we can do better, which is even rarer. Diogenes is still out there groping around, isn't he?