instruments of change or of doom and gloom

there are two very good essays on the front page examining the ways in which your mortgages or home equity loans can explode in your face. what can be done about this? do we unleash this info and get our state legistlators enacting some kind of laws, even temporary, that prevent such a thing from happening?

there are so many great commentaries at this and other blogs about the tough and dire straits in which we find ourselves.

but i find myself shrinking away from reading anything more. i can barely open a blog for fear of what i might read next.

and here’s the thing. i ONLY feel beaten over the head every day.

what can we do about what is being done to us?

i mean, why should the powers that be shut down the blogs? they see us writhing in psychic pain everyday. they see us continuing to rely on conventional politicians and politics to solve our problems. they see we have not yet begun to understand politicians will not solve these problems. WE are the ones who need to figure a way out. WE need to start to exert control over the pols.

i am not smart enough to figure a way out. i am only smart enough to tell all of you this:

we need to come up with collective and organized action to stop this runaway train. we need to pick one BIG thing that all of us can do in the routine of our everyday… and it needs to be doable, attainable, and measureable.

if we can hobble, let’s say exxon mobil, and people can hear about it and see it work, then we can move on the next thing… and have a few options, depending on the first action.

and then when cosmic debris writes about ways in which we can reuse water, people will see how individuals can exert power and how flexing that power will pay off.

of course, this message, right now, will be picked up by the choir. while we are doing this collective action thing, we need to work on giving information that breaks down barriers to people who

a. may be politically like-minded but hostile to us in other ways
b. totally confused and believing no one
c. completely opposing views

but all, and i’ve not covered everybody, facing the same shit storm.

we need to be able to agree on the problems, magnitude of those problems, and the priorities in dealing with them. health care is NOT the most pressing, imo, for example. stability is and restoring a governmental infrastructure that actually is useful in solving our global and local problems.

anyway, that’s how i’m feeling about it.