An Odd Thing Happened Last Night

We had one of our “summer parties” – usually it’s a one or two blocks of neighbors who are invited to an evening party outside.  Lots of kids – and a big screen with plenty of entertainment for them.  Last night it was a pixar film.  It was cool, so the kids were cuddled up in blankets on the grass watching the screen – many of them were laying on blankets as well as watching, and sitting next to their parents also wrapped up.  This neighborhood has large, rolling yards so parties can easily accommodate plenty of families.

We all bring food and drink – and there is always more than enough food. It is truly a groaning table.  Plenty of good cooks around here.  It was a great party as usual.  There are usually 4 or 5 in this neighborhood thru summer, early fall.

Here’s the thing:  no one talked politics.  I wandered around to the tables and sat in the grass with the kids and some parents.  And did not hear one word about politics.  I missed last summer but in 2008 a truck driver told me he had continuing dreams about bush.  Mostly he was hanging around in his truck and the driver was trying to figure out what he was doing there.  Sometimes he woke him up and asked him if he wanted a beer.  Really silly stuff but the guy was going nuts.  No one liked bush or Republican policies at these parties and there was always plenty of grumbling – and though it took awhile, the grumbling finally got around to the constant wars.

But last night – nada.  Nothing.  Talk of school, families, money tightening – but no word about Obama and others.  We are a Democratic suburb, though I have to admit I’m more to the left than most.  So it was surprising since there is so much going on that will be affecting us.  Moreover, even the teas weren’t mentioned.  And since finding out that a deal was about to be cut between Clinton and Newt – well – there it is.  Probably plenty going on behind our backs and it ain’t good.  Wars, torture, constant propaganda from the teas (as they are called) – though we know who’s pulling their strings.  The puppet masters may well lose control.  They can leave the country easily so what does it matter to them.  

Have you ever noticed among your friends, acquaintances that it is the crazy ones that have the energy. And, of course, they always know they are right.  What is it like never to have second thoughts, to mull over what may be the right move?  People I know like that do not have high blood pressure like wussy Xanthe.  That seems to be going on now on a macro scale.

I think my neighbors are turning inward and trying to figure out how to survive with a government that is not much interested in them, except when voting time comes around.  Since there seems to be no anger, only a kind of lassitude – it may be a lull while most of us are trying to figure out what to do.  Maybe there is nothing to do.  Maybe we have to turn away in order to survive and keep sane.

For my part, I have to stop blogging for awhile – Truly, I’m getting physically ill.  I want to write an entertainment diary and then leave off for a bit.  What’s the point?  I have to stay healthy – no one out there really seems to care about Medicare for instance.  And my son is now unemployed – so I am terrified about him getting sick.  

I am in a lousy, foggy funk.  I want to survive but can I do it alone.  Does it matter what I want.  Or do the tyrants win out as usual. We have no leader(s) – think about it – we really have no leaders in Washington at any rate.  It has occured to me lately that the only reason we had some “good times” is because the elites needed us and we had leaders who were in the past emphathetic to working class Americans  – but now with outsourcing and the media giving a free hand to the crazies with no discernable politicians in Washington that understand our needs –  it may be time to let go.  They are living in their own world – cosseted and blind.

Lull before the storm or we’re only being sensible by taking care of ourselves and each other in small groups?  I dunno – all I know is we are tired.  

49 comments

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    • Edger on September 26, 2010 at 21:33

  1. seem so tight-lipped about what’s going on these days.

    At least there was some “togetherness” and that’s nice, but, I suppose, makes one feel a little isolated at the same time, when people act as though there’s nothing going on, at least outwardly.

    Every single one of us gets to that “funk” point, Xanthe.  I appreciate what you’re going through and I’m pretty close myself.  In fact, I’ve been there several times, but then I come back — some dogged sense of responsibility or some such!  I suppose it has more to do with children than myself!

  2. Im not one to “do it alone”. Just my nature.

    I am in a lousy, foggy funk.  I want to survive but can I do it alone.  Does it matter what I want.  Or do the tyrants win out as usual. We have no leader(s) – think about it – we really have no leaders in Washington at any rate.  It has occured to me lately that the only reason we had some “good times” is because the elites needed us and we had leaders who were in the past emphathetic to working class Americans  – but now with outsourcing and the media giving a free hand to the crazies with no discernable politicians in Washington that understand our needs –  it may be time to let go.  They are living in their own world – cosseted and blind.

    I was at the laundromat, Im still reading Zinn, and just got to this part where he…. after discussing at length the the  (colonial times, 1600’s – 1770 or so) TPTB played the Indians off the blacks off the poor whites…. quite deliberately, he gets to a point now where he starts talking about the middle class. Wow, I said, almost out loud, wow, nailed it. Maybe Ill essay about all that this week.

    Anyway, sorry about your son’s situation. Sounds like you have a nice neighborhood thing there.

  3. My daughter has sever depression and can’t work.  She’s 26.  Working on trying to get her social security but so far two denials.

    We have been totally supporting her for the last year and had to pay for ten days of hospitalization.

    It just sucks.

  4. to the fact that disempowement of the public is in its final stages in this great constitutional democratic republic of ours.  The Obama Administration is turning into one long endzone dance tqaunt by hegemony, Ha ha ha, you thought you could vote us out but we still run everything!  And meanwhile we’re going to paint even Democratic-Party-style pretending to care about you as too extreme.  You are all so toast!”  And the message is getting through.

    As you suggest, maybe there is nothing that can be done.  At least within the system as it exists.  And one part of the system that hasn’t failed is its autoimmune system that quickly and completely suppresses any challenge, so trying to go outside the system to change it, also more difficult to begin with, may now be as impossible as reforming from within the system.  SO of course people tune out.  BUt there’s no escape, the system is totalizing, there is no individual escape, it will find you and it will bring you back into its net, technological pervasiveness guarantees it if nothing else.  We will be the subjects of the Corporate State whether we like it or not, and we will like it if we know what’s good for us.

    Or not.

  5. in my community also. It a liberal and diverse neighborhood, and a vocal one at that but there is an eerie silence these days. No lawn signs this election season either. We have a summer block party every year and no one mentioned Obama or politics. At the beginning of thei administration because I was so active in my local party I heard grumbling, what’s up with Obama or the Dems they asked. No more they all know what’s going on no need to ask. They did talk of jobs lost and some lucky ones hired but mostly we talked home repair, children, gardens, chickens and the guitars came out and we sang songs.

    Maybe this is a good thing maybe people will have to rely on themselves and their communities as our politics have reached a point where they are worse then useless they are a  by-partisan malevolent force that is working hard to destroy our economy and our system of governance. Locally politically I see good things starting, Ed Schultz came to our local theater and the crowd was large so was the line to sign up for a third party. We have a ballot measure in November that would fund state election publicly. I will vote because I do care. I will not however support the lie that says Democrat’s are for the people.            

  6. ‘One Long Struggle for Justice’ worth reading.

    Overcoming Discouragement

    Bigelow: Here’s a question that comes up frequently in different forms. This is from Helen Duffy. Helen is a 6th-grade teacher in Oakland, Calif. She writes, “I’m afraid that when my 6th graders see all the overwhelming problems, especially global warming, and how little the adults in charge care to do about them, that they will become discouraged before they have gotten involved themselves. Any advice on that?”

    Zinn: That’s a really important question because we all know about discouragement, because we all have become discouraged. It’s easy to become discouraged because you look around at the world, you look at the wars going on, you look at what’s happening to the environment, and you look at how little is being done to stop war, how little is being done to help poor people. You look at the situation in Haiti and you see how not enough has been done to help the people of Haiti and you look at all of that and, yes, you become discouraged.

    The reason I don’t stay discouraged is I think about other times in history when people have been very discouraged about a certain social phenomenon, but they didn’t just sit and do nothing as a result of their discouragement. They acted, even though they weren’t sure their actions would bring any results. They acted and acted and acted, but still nothing happened and it was very easy to give up.

    At certain points in history, they did not give up even though they had been discouraged. And if they didn’t give up, if they stayed at what they were doing, if they got together with other people, if they built a movement, then things changed. And there are so many instances in history where this has happened and that’s where history comes into importance. Because if you don’t look at history, if you only look at where the situation is right now, well, you can be very discouraged. But if you go back in the history and look at all the other times when people had been discouraged and realized that very often these people, if they did not allow their discouragement to make them passive, to stop them from doing anything, very often they succeeded in doing things they never thought they would succeed at.

    I do think it is key to have an undercurrent understanding that… its a long slog. Not int he way that the apologist/incrementalists cheer about, but…. in a different way.

    Of course, the problem now is….. with the climate situation, we really no longer have that luxury.

    I think that may be why the whole BP Gulf Disaster took the wind out of our sails so … violently, it was a violent retching rip in the cosmic curtain…. for me at least…. when EPA told BP to knock it off with the COrexit and BP said fvck you and then BHO just shrugged. lol, in a nutshell.

  7. in general “know” or “can feel” that something is “rotten in Denmark” and along with that comes a sense of uneasiness. So wth the economy sputtering along and wanting to stall, criminals and shysters running around with tacit approval to extort and cheat, all the while others are getting singled out and charged unfairly, IMO people going into survival mode. Talking about politics can be domestically risky. (ie put you on the “next in line” for personnel cutbacks at work list).

    Throw in operation cloverleaf, general fatigue from stress and low morale from a seemingly endless political fight without any moral victories to point towards has people focused inwards. Something they can affect and achieve some sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.  

    • melvin on September 27, 2010 at 12:54

    When the “fierce advocate” carefully times his latest rejection of any advancement of gay rights for the day when the courts finally offer some hope?

    When Obama amps up the extrajudicial murders? Now he wants Facebook to fall in line and join the security apparatus as a full member.

    When in the summer of BP the dem senate abandons even its lame halfassed discussion about maybe, someday, addressing climate change and fossil fuel depencency and every single GOP senate candidate that the media is relentless cheerleading on dismisses global warming as some dark devious conspiracy of the intellectuals? And the media just continue to steep an already butt ignorant public in ever more ignorance?

    When in the Year of Biodiversity the two dollar whore Salazar presides over the same old same old “warranted but precluded” and categorical exemptions? When the tar sands atrocity is about to metastasize into the US?

    When just a very few members of our ruling oligarchy have succeeded in whipping up out of thin air a fascist ascendancy that now waits in the wings – and there isn’t any crypto- or proto- about it, the book bannings and defenestrations are just around the corner.

    And the dem party’s only response is to hoist its skirts and run, and the ignoramus pom pom girls at dk carry on with their insanity that if we just gave Jim Webb or whatever their favorite Judas is today, everything will be roses and coconuts tomorrow.

  8. I rarely listen to him for more than a minute, why subject myself to simple propaganda.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

    Obama was brought in to do a certain job by the conglomeration of corporatist forces, and he will continue to faithfully execute it until the very end (even if it means a single term for him). Unfortunately, unlike classic corporatist regimes (like Italy in the Mussolini period, or Britain before Thatcher), labor interests are vastly underrepresented, so that any “reform” legislation is brutally weighted toward business pow

    er.  

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