A ‘sort of response’ to breathingstill’s excellent essay
I hate inertia.
If anyone ever seriously asks me “why do you hate America?” I must remember to say….It’s the inertia, stupid.
Right now…everything doesn’t work. Nothing in America is working and I am tired of writing lists of all the things that aren’t working. So even my list making ability is not working. And. When somebody in America says everything is not working, somebody will say …well what is your solution? If they receive an answer, they will immediately say….well that won’t work. And they are probably right.
Because for something to work, people have to agree that it might work and put some effort and brains into it to MAKE it work. And we can’t do that because of the inertia we are stuck being stuck in. The inertia, of course comes from stupidity.
The stupidity, of course, comes from the Republicants. In huge and meaningful ways….stupidity is the Republicant strategy. From bad education to voter suppression to control of the media, the Republicants electoral, social, and strategic policy is to reduce absolutely everything to the lowest common denominator and then label anyone who attempts to rise above that an intellectual elite in an ivory tower trying to tell real Amurkans what to do…….as if they are smarter than you.
This ….combined with the smear and slime tactics used against anyone who steps forward to say that the emperor has no clothes….or even worse, provide an actual idea or policy or solution that might work, has had the worst possible effect…..it has made being smart a bad thing.
Anyone who is smart or comes up with a new idea or a solution to a problem or a new policy to fight the inertia and stupidity is instantly renditioned to the world of Harrison Bergeron and draped in the chains of inertia and mediocrity though the means of personal attack. This development, perfected by Fox News, is not limited to the Right or to Republicants anymore, it has been adopted by the left now as well.
We see it on the blogs all the time….when someones loses an argument, they do not admit defeat, they engage in personal attack. If they can’t kill the idea, they kill the messenger. Of course on the blogs it is MOSTLY just an annoyance, but it does help to explain why nothing ever gets done on the blogs. Not only is every new idea greeted with attack, but…and this is the really damaging part….enough people buy into the attack to kill the idea itself. Usually by making the progenitor of the idea either too pissed off to defend the idea or making them give up on working in the blogosphere.
The alleged ideal of “peer review” and “criticism” has been largely lost, both on the blogs and in ‘real life’….and what is left is people attacking any idea put forward not on its merits….but in order to win the argument. In order to defeat an opponent. Thus, nothing new is tried, nothing new is rallied round, embraced and initiated ….inertia and ignorance stop all motion forward. Without motion forward a vacuum is created where the future is supposed to be…where change is supposed to be. In this vacuum of no new choices, no consensus, no movement, all decisions are once again left to inertia. When inertia makes the decision, it is ALWAYS the least controversial solution that is implemented….the lowest common denominator, once again.
The last line of defense for ignorance and inertia is always pragmatism.
“We can’t do that, it has never been tried before or has not worked in the past and so we must accept that it will never work.”
It is this form of pragmatism as despair that leads to inertia, it is inertia that leads to acceptance. It is acceptance that leads to people not standing up to those in power. It is people not standing up to those in power that creates a safe place for whatever stupidity comes down the pike. Like attacking Iran.
And it is the combination of inertia, stupidity and smears that creates the fear that we now see in our politicians, pundits and journalists….and it is the fear of being destroyed by a culture built on stupidity that leads to the slow spiral down into mediocrity ….and below, that we now see in America.
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To break the inertia….
not that I like the guy but Rupert Murdoch will not hire a senior executive that has not been fired twice….why?
If you don’t get fired once in your career – you’ve taken the easy way out and never broken any rules
If you don’t get fired twice its because getting fired the first time made you too scared to break the rules again
Here’s to breaking some rules!
or you’re gonna hurt yourself.
OK, America (whatever or whoever that is) has a few problems. Relax. Breathe.
A situation like this is what makes life interesting. Who wants to solve small time problems, anyway? Bring on the big ones, help start the “solution” process, get written up in the history books, and then say, “Shit, that was fun! Next!”
So, let’s get to work. Beats feeling crappy about stuff.
As we all know, that is the very opposite of pragmatism. It was once the idea that you should try to find out what works to solve the problem, and not be so blinded by theory that you don’t look at things in different ways. How it came to connote rigidity in thinking I don’t know, and I’m not even sure that it does.
The second sentence is just the argument some neo-cons made in invading Iraq. When , those few, said: that’s crazy, it’ll never work.
you have to remember, this country came with bad karma…we tortured & massacred hundreds of thousands of souls…to claim it as ours…we were never “one-with-nature” here. Of course things won’t work…sheesh! It’s this country’s curse! Plain and simple…
How’s that for a bad mood…it’s ugly over here! growllll.
at least I think its wierd. Now I may go in to a Jon Stewart impression but so be it:
So we are in Iraq see, and here’s the thing we are probably stupid enough to bomb Iran. We are still torturing people from that part of the world like it’s a contest and there’s a prize at the end.
What strikes me as very peculiar is that we (the world) has been here before – seriously. About 300BC there were these Romans who thought that the death penalty and other forms of punishment were a good idea. Others did not and they fought for something called democracy – of course they were comquering at the same time.But they prevailed and the death penalty was outlawed. Meanwhile over in the Mesopotania they were these other folks who were really into wierd forms of torture. They were ultimately defeated by followers Cyrus the Great who was secular. He (and then after his followers) outlawed all forms of torture and slavery. He created a bill of rights – the world’s first. He united Persia into what we consider modern day Iran. And here’s the thing. Young people in Iran, now Muslim, still see Cyruss as their role model. In fact, that is one of the reasons there is a prodemocracy movement in Iran our administration is about to crush.
So what the fuck (sorry) are we doing or what is this test really about? Is this some form of grand design to see if humans actually have the guts to reject violence? And in this case the humans are not the Romans, or the Spanish or the Nazi’s. They are us. You and me. Right here. Right now.
I think it just might be. Seriously. And that means we have to find a way to make it stop or the cycle will continue or worse.
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When humans finally rise above killing each other as a solution to there problems…we get to graduate and join the next class.
If we don’t kill ourselves first, of course.
We are sort of in finals week right now.
but I’ve always loved the saying:
When the student is ready, a teacher will appear
I actually think we’re all being a bit impatient these days. Whenever I feel inertia, I think its because I need to slow down and let the teacher (or wisdom) appear.
The problems we want to tackle involve some very powerful and deadly people. They WILL NOT change or give up that power easily. We’re going to need to be smart and patient to see the change we seek.
I read a book a while ago title “Earth Song” by Suzette Haden Elgin. Its futuristic science fiction and builds on a time similar to “The Handmaid’s Tale.” At the beginning a group of women learn a way to use music as a substitute for food. So they now hold in their hands a way to end hunger.
But they also know that if they go public with this knowledge that the power elite will enslave music towards their ends, just as they have food.
So instead, the women keep their secret and go out into the world as music teachers. By the time the rulers find out what they know – its too late – everyone has the tool of music.
Beautiful story to me and speaks to the kind of wisdom and patience we are going to need.
no depth. That is the description of America today and most Americans.
We have come to believe that the spirit of America is embodied in the beliefs, values and actions of two dimensional characters that project from our television screens. We allow the Punditry to do our thinking; the Stars to live our lives.
We are satisfied with a society in which a thirty second campaign advertisement or a one liner on a bumper sticker provide the depth of our education in selecting our national leaders.
We have the attention span of a flat rock. We are lazy. We are easily herded. We allow the best efforts of our founding fathers in establishing a just, prosperous and free society to sink into the depths. What are Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt and others to think?
A society so well founded; nurtured through its youth; subjected to the trials of slavery, civil and world wars, the era of mutual assured destruction, Vietnam, Iraq and George W. Bush; yet America continues to be a beacon for the world. Its luster may be somewhat tarnished, but I am one who believes that enough people continue to exist [in the USA] to put our country right. So what if 20,000,000 of them are illegal aliens? Many of the illegals show more knowledge, love and respect for our country than do an overwhelming slice of our remaining 280,000,000 souls.
American needs a swift kick in the ass. Unfortunately, I haven’t come across anyone with a big enough shoe, the strength of leg and the motivation to swing the sucker.
Yes, we are slow starters. But once motivated, we [in the past] have done some marvelous things. Hopefully, we will translate our past experience into future actions and get this big ol’ aircraft carrier turned in the right direction.
I think it our job [the bloggers] to motivate and not to denigrate; to take charge, seek the truth, set in place a strategy for the future and initiate the actions that make America work again. Impossible, you think? Maybe so. But it is time that we all get off our asses and do more than transcribe other peoples work into our blockquotes while pontificating on the problems of the day, and shirking any personal responsibility to do anything about our current situation.
I see it as the fleeting nature of blogs, they are more conversational and not meant to be a workstation for groups, they can become workstations with a hell of a lot of work, but I don’t think it is worth it. Instead consider using wiki or some other html pages linked into the blog. When something of import, true import, is said, understood, created, realized. It can then be placed onto a more permanent structure such as an html page or Wiki page for later edification.
Things don’t get done on blogs, they get talked about on blogs.
you give words to the angst i feel. i told someone tonight that i think we are essentially parasites on this earth. not looking for a pep talk, but these days i have very little hope for humanity. it doesn’t mean that i won’t continue doing what i can to try to make a difference, but i don’t hold much hope that there will be sweeping change, that people will wake up and starting thinking again or anew about how they impact each other and the world around them. we are our own demise.
it feels worse than inertia.
It feels like a movement downward into an abyss never imagined.
“stupidity that leads to the slow spiral down into mediocrity”
Maybe I’m just extrapolating from my own sorry mental state.
I’m hoping the Wellbutrin kicks in soon.
We did the list. Hubby likes to number things (musician – counts), and we became so overwhelmed a few months back we made a list of all the things that have gone fubar since 2000. I hardly need to tell you how long the list was.
Meanwhile we tried like fiends to think of one good thing done by the crew. We are still scratching our heads in earnest. The things that appear to be “good” are of course always some kind of poison pill deal, like “no child left behind” has turned edjamacation into a test marathon instead of a learning quest.
Just curious if you’ve tried on this one… I believe it can be proven that the top wealthy 300 +/- families of the R’cants are primarily a genuine line of succession from the Tories (remember 200 years ago, US founders flipping out that such crown loyalists should not be in power), who actually sequestered assets from the US to put in Great Britain banks… who BTW were the same people who brought China the opium experience and became very rich at it, are the same basic cluster of families who have ever excelled at weapons production… just everything.
And don’t anyone reading this put “illuminati” into my words. When you own the banks, you don’t need a conspiracy.
Needless to say they don’t marry into blacks, Jews, Irish and so on. They are literally a spin-off of the royal crown line. Same folks. For that matter I could argue that they’ve been reincarnating since the advent of the first true militarist slave-catching city-states of Mesopotamia, but that’s another spin.
Same killers every time. Reptile brainers. And the trouble is, they’ve got the country into a Pavlovian relationship with fear and “terra.”
If one could only lure the US sheeple to absolutely almost anywhere abroad – mostly throw a dart at the globe – that the Merkuns could see that life doesn’t have to be a fearful suburbanized debt-mania ratrace…