I have been involved in lots of groups. In all of these groups there have been people who insist that just about whatever we are trying to get done….simply cannot be done.
Among these people there are a subset who actually get angry at the idea that we are going to do something. Some are so adamant that this thing cannot be done that they actually start to attack the people who say it can be done, who have worked hard to plan this thing, prepared for this thing, and are asking/telling (in a work venue) other people to help do this thing.
They do this…in some if not most cases….because they feel hopeless and powerless.
And asking someone to do something that they feel helpless to do or powerless to do is VERY upsetting to most people. They have been told all of theor lives that they are hopeless, powerless and in many cases, worthless. To challenge them to go beyond that conditioning is running right into a wall of belief that has been built since the earliest days of childhood.
Which brings us to politics …and blogging.
Nowhere…nowhere in our lives do we as a People feel as hopeless or as powerless as we do when we address the political realm. We have had that helplessness and powerlessness hammered into our consciousness since birth. “You can’t fight City Hall” is just one of the powerful and obvious rhetorical bludgeons used to keep people from participating…and particularly participating Loudly…in politics.
Bad education, (hell they don’t even teach civics in High School anymore) various forms of voter suppression, a comfortingly dishonest news media and a slew of cultural messages from the movies and particularly the teevee shows that make up the circus side of the ages old bread and circuses strategy of politics that USED TO allow those in power to do what they wish without the spotlight of their pesky citizens/consumers being shined upon them all have produced a feeling of apathy and hopelessness and powerlessness that is precisely what allows our political system to be indemnified from the scrutiny participation by We, The People.
We have been told repeatedly, resoundingly and continuously throughout our lives that we are powerless, and we believe it.
And so we settle into our specifically engineered little lives, going to work everyday to produce the tax revenue that allows our government to kill and torture our Brothers and Sisters, pick up some unhealthy prepackaged Corporate food product on the way home to our little ticky tacky boxes, to sit in front of the teevee and let the very Corporations that are using us as revenue generating units program our minds some more….
Into thinking we are powerless to change their world.