Jan 15 2010

Everybody is Fucking Crazy

Why it is as if some disaster was looming….or here….and we all felt powerless to DO anything about it as it crashes down upon us.

Even those who don’t feel that feeling explicitly seem to be feeling…something. Everyone is on edge, every one has a hair trigger, everyone is lashing out and somewhat screaming in frustration at all of the many and myriad completely fucked up shit that is going on.

And no one can agree…or even cogently discuss…what it is we are feeling.

Are we teetering on the edge of a new world? Will we fall back into the old one? Is there time? Are there solutions? Or are we powerless in the face of what is unquestionably….history in the making?

And….why the hell isn’t somebody else doing something about it?

“Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities.” –

 —  Winston Churchill

Well. After a year of No Drama in what can only be expressed as an objectively dramatic time…..we have one possibility that we haven’t yet tried….

All joining together in taking personal responsibility for taking back and transforming the one tool that has at least a chance of making a difference…the United States Government.

Some of us are ready. Others, apparently, are waiting for things to get REALLY bad before figuring it out. While clinging to the last vestiges of HOPE that someone else will do it for them. After being incredibly aggressively sold that hope, only to have it vanish like every other hope…..that counts on someone else to do what WE need to do ourselves. That ONLY we can do. Yet no one, including me, has any idea how to actually do it.

Yet.

No wonder everyone is fucking crazy.

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  1. Photobucket

    • Edger on January 15, 2010 at 20:25
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    Conciousness Drives the Universe

  3. about the death of hope being a good thing because it forces people to take their own fate in their own hands.

    I don’t know about the others, but any hope that was successfully sold to me had a half life that was mercifully short — I never expected the new administration and the new Congress to be all that different and so I wasn’t terribly disappointed as much as furious as a gay man at being lied to with such wild abandon.  Furious, yes — but not with the expectation of anything different since it has never been different with respect to us.

    I think it is hard for people to process as it is hard for me to process why the rich are seemingly intent on killing the middle class that is their bread and butter in many cases.

    So they don’t credit it and don’t believe it.  Me — I think the system the way it’s been rigged is like a drug and they can’t stop themselves even if they wanted to.  The looting and draining is something that will keep going even if it’s not in the looters’ and drainers’ long term best interest.

    • Edger on January 15, 2010 at 20:55
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    A Fable for Our Time

  5. crisis; endless loops of mistakes being repeated over & over; politicians that one had counted on are waffling, contradicting themselves, and compromising principles for politics–meanwhile, many of the citizens of this democracy are facing our own personal crises.  We are facing devaluing house values or even loss of housing; we are facing loss of jobs; we are facing loss of health care or increasing costs of health care with corresponding decreasing coverage; we are facing loss of our savings; we are facing loss of income, while prices are rising, etc, etc.  

    In short–we are overwhelmed.  Yet, in order to bring order from chaos and to obtain relief from the increasing burdens and injustices, we must somehow deal with all our own personal issues.  The problem is determining how to best use our diminished/diminishing resources in order to effect the “change we can believe in”.  The problem is–remaining united, being more powerful as a group than as disorganized individuals.  Another problem is that to achieve that united front, we have to find a balance of tolerance and understanding that not every individual has the same degree of commitment to each and every issue that another individual may find vital.  Each individual has their own list of priorities.  

    So, what’s the answer?  If I knew, I’d probably be the next Nobel Peace Prize winner, and that’s not going to be happening.  But, I’d like to do what I can, when I can to make this country and this world a better place for my children and grandchildren.  

    • rossl on January 15, 2010 at 21:32
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    From the Hitchhiker’s Guide book “So Long and Thanks for All the Fish” by Douglas Adams:

    His house was certainly peculiar, and since this was the first thing that Fenchurch and Arthur had encountered it would help to know what it was like.

    It was like this:

    It was inside out.

    Actually inside out, to the extent that they had had to park on the carpet.

    All along what one would normally call the outer wall, which was decorated in a tasteful interior-deisgned pink, were bookshelves, also a couple of those odd three-legged tables with semicircular tops which stand in such a way as to suggest that someone just dropped the wall straight through them, and pictures which were clearly designed to soothe.

    Where it got really odd was the roof.

    It folded back on itself like something that M. C. Escher, had he been given to hard nights on the town, which it is no part of this narrative’s purpose to suggest was the case, though it is sometimes hard, looking at his pictures, particularly the one with all the awkward steps, not to wonder, might have dreamed up after having been on one, for the little chandeliers which should have been hanging inside were on the outside pointing up.

    Confusing.

    The sign above the front door read “Come Outside,” and so, nervously, they had.

    Inside, of course, was where the Outside was. Rough brickwork, nicely done pointing, gutters in good repair, a garden path, a couple of small trees, some rooms leading off.

    And the inner walls stretched down, folded curiously, and opened at the end as if, by and optical illusion which would have had M. C. Escher frowning and wondering how it was done, to enclose the Pacific Ocean itself.

    “Hello,” said John Watson, Wonko the Sane.

    Good, they thought to themselves, “hello” is something we can cope with.

    “Hello,” they said, and all, surprisingly, was smiles.

    . . . “Your wife,” said Arthur, looking around, “mentioned some toothpicks.” He said it with a hunted look, as if he was worried that she might suddenly leap out from behind a door and mention them again.

    Wonko the Sane laughed. It was a light easy laugh, and sounded like one he had used a lot before and was happy with.

    “Ah yes,” he said, “that’s to do with the day I finally realized that the world had gone totally mad and built the Asylum to put it in, poor thing, and hoped it would get better.”

    This was the point at which Arthur began to feel a little nervous again.

    “Here,” said Wonko the Sane, “we are outside the Asylum.” He pointed again at the rough brickwork, the pointing, and the gutters. “Go through that door” — he pointed at the first door through which they had originally entered — “and you go into the Asylum. I’ve tried to decorate it nicely to keep the inmates happy, but there’s very little one can do. I never go in there myself. If I ever am tempted, which these days I rarely am, I simply look at the sign written over the door and I shy away.”

    “That one?” said Fenchurch, pointing, rather puzzled, at a blue plaque with some instructions written on it.

    “Yes. They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what I had to do.”

    The sign read:

    “Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion.”

    “It seemed to me,” said Wonko the Sane, “that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.”

    He gazed out at the Pacific again, as if daring it to rave and gibber at him, but it lay there calmly and played with the sandpipers.

    http://www.terindell.com/asylu…

  7. I hold little “hope” that the United States Government can address the HUGE problems facing us as long as the HOUSE of LORDS, the US Senate, can so easily thwart the will of the people. One LORD or a handful of LORDS from the least populated states can achieve “anything” their corporate John’s demand, thus blunting the will of the majority at the expense of We the People.

    The US Senate in the age of CORPORATE EMPIRE is one endless democratic devouring FUCK YOU to the people.

    How can WE get rid of this democratic black hole?  

    • robodd on January 15, 2010 at 22:26
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    I believe the compelling force for change will come from the outside politics, in some form of people united, perhaps unions.

  9. … don’t mean to be.  But part of the problem is that we aren’t good at building on each other.  You ask good questions.  You are demanding that we go beyond “lashing out and somewhat screaming in frustration at all of the many and myriad completely fucked up shit that is going on.”  

    So I’ve written two essays on METHOD:

    part 1 and part 2, a practicum

    which try at some great length to discuss exactly the issues you are raising.  

    They could be built upon.  They could be disagreed with.  They could be improved.  They give you a way to get a handle on the frustrations you so eloquently express.  If part 1 (how the left got to the sad state it’s in today) is too long, part 2 is much shorter.  It provides a short easy-to-use checklist for taking some of the issues that get raised on the blogosphere, and challenges the reader a way to start analyzing issues so that someone could actually get from bold battle-cry to concrete action.

    The pieces on method are specific to the left in general.  Let me be a little more pointed about Docudharma in particular.

    I must ask, who are you writing for?  If you are writing for the masses, I would assert that the masses are by-and-large not reading us.  If you are writing for the Docudharma regulars, what exactly is the point?  Is it to help us in arguing with committed Obamacrats?  Does that make us feel better?  So many pieces here are sharp, intuitive, even inspirational.  But I fear that the net result is for readers to feel ever more strongly that SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE.  But I don’t think anyone here would assert that NOTHING HAS TO BE DONE.  The question is WHAT is to be done.  The committed Obamacrats have an answer to that, even if it is a bad answer.  But if we don’t have a better answer, more than a general cry to battle, then they win.

    As I said, you ask good questions.  But I have to ask why you aren’t building on what we already have.

    You rightly state, “The problem is….that involves sacrifice. But no one is willing to be the first to sacrifice because we have all been screwed….again.”

    I would surmise that most of us have sacrificed over the years.  Quite a lot.  If people are now unwilling to sacrifice, perhaps it is because after all these years we are insisting that that sacrifice be meaningful.  I am too old for gestures.  I pursue the Full Court Press because I think it meets my minimum standards for effectiveness.  I think there is a vast array of tactics that could also be effective.  But they have to be developed.  Heroism will follow in their wake, but heroism will not generate them.

    So how about building on the tools I’m giving you?  Come up with better ones.  But come up with goddam tools!  

    I am provoked by your assertion, “no one, including me, has any idea how to actually do it.”  I have an idea, I have all sorts of ideas.  Maybe they’re bad ideas.  I think other people have all sorts of ideas.  The practicum would help in fine-tuning them.  But you can’t say no one has any idea how to actually do it.

    Let me re-phrase “no one is willing to be the first to sacrifice.”  No, rather, people are not willing to SACRIFICE ALONE.  If we were able to develop effective tactics and strategy.  No one would have to.

    • Edger on January 15, 2010 at 23:16
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    May 1968, referring to the period when the events occurred in France, saw the largest general strike that ever stopped the economy of an advanced industrial country, the first wildcat general strike in history, and a series of student occupation protests. The prolonged strike involved eleven million workers for two weeks in a row, and its impact was such that it almost caused the collapse of the government of President Charles de Gaulle. Such explosion was provoked by groups in revolt against modern consumer and technical society, embracing left-wing positions that were even more critical of Stalinist totalitarianism than of Western capitalism. The movement contrasted with the labor unions and the French Communist Party (Parti Communiste Français, PCF), which started to side with the de Gaulle government in the goal of containing the revolt.

    Many saw the events as an opportunity to shake up the “old society” and traditional morality, focusing especially on the education system and employment. It began as a long series of student strikes that broke out at a number of universities and lycées in Paris, following confrontations with university administrators and the police. The de Gaulle administration’s attempts to quash those strikes by police action only inflamed the situation further, leading to street battles with the police in the Latin Quarter, followed by a general strike by students and strikes throughout France by eleven million French workers, roughly two-thirds of the French workforce. The protests reached such a point that de Gaulle created a military operations headquarters to deal with the unrest, dissolved the National Assembly and called for new parliamentary elections for 23 June 1968.

    The government was close to collapse at that point (de Gaulle had even taken temporary refuge at an air force base in Germany), but violence evaporated almost as quickly as it arose. Workers went back to their jobs, after a series of deceptions by the Confédération Générale du Travail (the leftist union federation) and the PCF. When the elections were finally held in June, the Gaullist party emerged even stronger than before.

    May 1968 was a political failure for the protesters, but it had an enormous social impact. In France, it is considered to be the watershed moment when a conservative moral ideal (religion, patriotism, respect for authority) shifted towards a more liberal moral ideal (equality, sexual liberation, human rights) that today better describes French society, in theory if not in practice. Although this change did not take place solely in this one month, the term mai 68 is used to refer to this general shift in principles, especially when referring to its most idealistic aspects.

    Obama Should Heed Labor Leader Trumka on Economic Woes

    Tuesday, January 12, 2010

                                         

    Labor leader Richard Trumka delivered the most important, and most common sense, political speech in many months yesterday at the National Press Club when he addressed the financial woes of the middle-class and working class.

    To me, Mr. Trumka’s speech was neither liberal nor conservative, but boldly spoke for beleaguered Americans across the country with such statements as:

    • “…it is bad economics and suicidal politics not to aggressively address the job crisis at a time of double-digit unemployment.

    • “Too many people in Washington seem to think that now that we have bailed out the banks, everything will be okay.”

    • “A generation ago, our nation’s policymakers embarked on a campaign of radical deregulation and corporate empowerment – one that celebrated private greed over public service.”

    • “These policies culminated in the worst economic decade in living memory–we suffered a net loss of jobs, the housing market collapsed, real wages fell and more children fell into poverty…”

    In his speech, Mr. Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, chided that “… we need the boldness and the clarity we saw in our president during the campaign in 2008” and warned the Democratic-led Congress that “we need leadership action that matches the urgency that is felt so deeply by working people.”

    And he slammed the Senate health care reform bill as “a policy designed to benefit elites–in this case, insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and irresponsible employers, at the expense of the broader public.”

    Read Richard Trumka’s brilliant speech carefully, as his is the voice of the angry, rising American electorate… the voice of voters who will decide the 2010 and 2012 elections.  Trumka’s advice at the article’s end are not-to-be-missed pearls of heartfelt wisdom for Democrats in Congress.

    I pray that President Obama and Congressional Democrats listen and take heed. They will deeply regret it this November if they don’t.

    Read here for the full text of Labor Leader Trumka’s Speech on Financial Woes of Americans.

    (Photo of Richard Trumka taken on Jan 11, 2010: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

    Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO Pres. Nat. Press Club

    January 11 speech – (Parts 1,2,3, & 4)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o020Zc94EQU

    • ANKOSS on January 16, 2010 at 01:04
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    People will get so fed up with the sterile, masturbatory nature of blogging that they will form action-oriented collaboratives on the Internet, where they exchange goods and services, make their own rules, and elect their own leaders. When enough of these collaboratives link up in federations, we will have reformed world government. Whether that happens peacefully or not is an open question.

  12. this is my 5th year teaching – august to dec. break is go, go go gogogogogogo … go. period. then you collapse.

    I have the same four 3*5 cards of things-to-do in my shirt pocket that I had on 19 Dec –

    now, I did drive from Seattle (on tues the 21st) to Bakersfield to Vegas (meet wife) to Cottonwood AZ (see ma in assisted living) to Phoenix to Anaheim (see friends & new twins for 4 hours) to San Fran (aunt’s 70th b-day at the ritz! new years eve in san fran) to Eugene to Seattle (on sat the 2nd at noon) and kind of unpacked and kind of got ready for 139 math students on monday the 4th

    then I had my FIFTY (50) birthday …

    there is no passion for the fight!

    anyone read that secret chapter of “What Color is Your Parachute?” – it is viewable to people with the same genetic defect I have, I despise those who:

    1. impact my life negatively,

    2. are paid more than me.

    I grew up on welfare in Holyoke Ma. in the 70’s – I cooked in fine dining hotels in Boston for a few years, and few have any REAL clue how good those high rolling fuckers live – and I have no delusions that elitist scum like dukakis, gore, kerry, now the Big Zero, clinton, … give a fuck about people like me for anything other than ATMs and grassroots to chomp on, to pee on, and to shit on.

    I like figuring out how to throw sand in the gears (and not end up in jail or living under a goddam bridge… but what to do that isn’t more pissing in the wind?

    I’m not disillusioned … but … what’s gonna amount to more than a pisshole in snow?

    rmm.    

  13. that the righties must be high-fiving each other every day.

    Somehow, we must find a way to identify our commonalities, if this is possible, and begin by attempting to promote our common agenda.  This is akin to herding cats, however, is there any better alternative?

    We gain little by preaching to the choir, but we all must know those who are sitting on the fence, and simply don’t realize the risks we (and they) invite by continued inaction.  We would all do well to do something each and every day to reach those who are not yet among the “converted.”  We must remember that what is common knowledge on DD may seem quite foreign to those who have dined on a steady diet of tabloid television, as promulgated by the corporate-controlled MSM.

    Once we’ve crossed that invisible line with those who are teetering, and convinced them that we are off the wall, we’ve lost them.  We must start out slowly, only gradually introducing more difficult subjects as they adjust.  You may recoil from this as a form of mind control, however, those who are plugged into the MSM are fed a steady diet of the corporate line every day, oftentimes in the complete absence of any countervailing line.

    An extended scene from the 1999 film, “The Straight Story”, Richard Farnsworth’s final movie, and one which earned him an Oscar nomination, only a year before his death, includes some simple lessons along these lines.  If you haven’t yet seen the film, consider that this is a Disney movie, directed by David Lynch, a decidedly unlikely combination.  But it works.

    While Alvin Straight is enroute to Wisconsin on his garden tractor (he can no longer drive) to see his estranged, but ailing brother, he meets up with a young, runaway female hitchhiker. The low key, but effective exchange between the two provides some valuable lessons in reaching out to others who may think much differently than we do.

    Note:  You need to watch both segments to view the complete exchange between the two.

  14. …somebody else is definitely fucking crazy.  But I have had 2 indications just today that the times they are-a-changin’.

    Someone who punched me in the goiter, adams area of my neck 16 months ago, asked me if I would accept a bottle of very good wine.  Peace offering?  I asked.  And 16 months were amazingly erased.

  15. C’mon 🙂 It’s [email protected]  

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