( – promoted by buhdydharma )
Any more the bad news comes like the steady downpour of the tropical monsoon.
There is no time to catch one’s breath.
There is no pause to absorb the outrages of the day, no interlude to break the tragedies into digestible chunks, no relief for the overwhelmed between the vicious punches to the gut, the finger jabs to the eyes, the thunder kicks to the groin.
All the bad news seems merely an aperitif to the madness of our ‘leaders’, if only we had to cope with the bad news alone, if only we had real leadership to provide a sane response to regrettable circumstances and events. If only…
It seems that gradually over time more and more of our ‘leaders’ have abandoned all but the merest pretense of public service, even as events have eroded their carefully crafted veneers, leaving their naked greed and unabashed self-interest writhing obscenely on the pubic stage. Please, no one mention the disgusting spectacle and we can all just pretend it’s not happening.
Words like integrity and honor have been reduced to props and disguises for people who have neither to hide behind disingenuously as if they were so many lapel pins in the form of the American flag.
Those things we hold most dear, our freedom, our democracy and our claim to be a nation of laws have been stolen, sullied, abridged or rendered moot.
We have foolishly allowed unethical politicians to steal elections outright – we even tolerated the Supreme Court getting in on the act. There has been no democracy in the USA since Bush v. Gore in 2000. There may never be again.
With record low approval ratings for the Bush/Cheney regime and the albatross of an unpopular war hanging from the GOP’s neck, do you think that a Democratic presidential candidate will win the White House, get us out of Iraq, and end our long national nightmare?
Think again – the mighty election theft machine Karl Rove used to steal the US presidency in 2000 and 2004 may be under attack, but it is still in place for the upcoming 2008 election.
How did we ever become so depraved as to tolerate what has been done in our names? And if anyone is bitter – so fucking what? How are we supposed to react to the dismantling of America? The shipping of our jobs overseas? The open predation of Big Business on the American people? The deteriorating condition of our cities, bridges, and national infrastructure? The growing number of unemployed, uninsured, and homeless Americans?
How deliriously happy and hopeful are we supposed to be about the trashing of the Geneva Conventions, the shameful abandonment of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, extraordinary renditions, the first official US torture program in history, aggressive war, the rape of the middle class, the looting of the treasury, war profiteering, war crimes and government officials who smugly smile as they blatantly lie to us all with utter impunity?
Bitter? No. More like nuclear fucking outrage! What’s wrong with anyone who doesn’t get that? Huh Hillary? What the fuck is wrong with YOU?
If we don’t have the right to be bitter, then our last right has been taken away…not that I’m surprised.
Heh, I guess I’m just bitter.
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angry, sad, frustrated, betrayed, etc. The list could go on forever. I kind of think if you aren’t feeling this way, then you aren’t paying attention.
I so wish we could find ways to get your powerful media out to the masses OPOL. It might wake a few people up.
One half of my brain is saying to the other, “Well, WTF did you expect anyway? An election based on the issues? The End of the War in Iraq? Economic justice? Peace? Universal Health care? Fair treatment of immigrants? Preservation of the Constitution? Candidates on the left who would act in your interest?”
And the other says, “M*****f*cker. M*****f*cker. M*****f*cker. M*****f*cker.”
And the first says, “You talkin to me? You talkin to me?”
And the other says, “You know, you already knew it was this f*cked up, right? I mean: it’s not a surprise if you’ve been paying any attention at all for the past 40 years. And you have been paying attention, yes?”
Has it come down to this? I am so beyond bitter.
Now THIS… is powerful OPOL!
Very “kestrel-esqe!” Ha!
by going to church. Be sure to take your gun with you.
and outraged:
I was sitting there, so not into listening to him and his John Birch Society crap, when my mother elbows me in the ribs. With an intensity I rarely saw in her she asked if I was paying attention, I shrugged and said “Why, this guy is really stupid”. Firmly, and I do mean firmly, she said, “These are the people you have to be afraid of”. Mid 50’s she was the state chair of the Democratic party for one term and she really knew what she was talking about.
But it took me all the time up until the idiot left Crawford to realize what she was talking about (there was a discussion after the speech), and the importance of what was said then didn’t sink in.
Bitter? Outrage? Depressed? Confused? All those emotions are my heritage now. But the big one, the strongest emotion I feel these days is guilt, plain and simple. I didn’t do as much as I could have from ’64 up to the present to keep the present circumstances from happening. Instead of just voting, I could have been an active volunteer, but I never did, I just lived out my life in my personal little reality not really paying attention to the world around me.
I can’t beat my self up over it I know, but, “I wish’a, I could’a” is going to be a part of my life now. Along with a whole lot more activism.
Yes we are all in fact Katrina victims.
Things should start breaking down soon and we might do well with a paradigm shift towards pure unadulterated survivalism.
Get off the electronic surveillance grid. Pay for more stuff in cash, real cash money. All of that data mining money used to check if I bought a 60 inch TV tax free in New Hampshire will then have been wasted simply because it won’t be on my American Distress Card.
I don’t, and will never own a device creating brain tumors commonly known as a cell phone unless there is some strategic anti-government reason to do so.
Convert stocks and paper only assets to liquid assets. You are voting no confidence in the economy and making a point that Wall Street is only investing in things that would terminate the continuation of your family name.
Stock up, food, tools, gardening, homeopathics, alternative and 12 volt systems, water filtration and decontamination. It could be the new American industry.
We did nothing. We kept quiet and waited for it to pass, and in this decision we lost our dignity and our honor. We cannot un-plunder Iraq and restore the lost lives. We cannot un-torture the victims of Bush’s monstrous regime. We cannot un-spend the vast sums that have been squandered.
But, worst of all, we cannot undo our capitulation to evil. All we can do is apologize, again and again, to future generations.
but have to take this off-topic a bit
you definitely have a contingent of female DD fans… and if your ears were burning last night, it’s because the gals were talking about how great we think you are
keep on it OPOL… we hear you YELLING LOUDER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’ve even given consideration to becoming a “martyr.” I don’t think I could be within 2 feet of any of these people without losing it and then, I would be shot dead.
The anger and frustration of doing all that we can “legally” and still having not enough impact perpetuates our anger and frustration.
I sometimes view the whole of it as totally surreal — it’s not really happening — but, it is and we view it with a kind of disbelief that this has all happened in our country. It has happened because it wasn’t stopped in the beginning, the beginning of illegal aggression, thus, the aggressions have continued and still, no stoppage. Partly, because of the “fear” factor that has become so engrained in many and mostly, because of the fact that Americans have been so long to catch on to what has been going on, i.e., TV news.
I agree with those above that your collages should be displayed. But, displaying them means one of two things: one displaying them to engage and wake people up, or two, displaying them for artistic quality. I know the “message” is stronger to you and it is to me, as well, despite the artistry, which was your point for creating them in the first place.
I can offer, as an idea, the Metropolitan Art Museum of Chicago, as a place that may have some interest. I’ve been there and have seen photographic works, etc. If you were to present a collection of collages, a series, so to speak, who knows, it may work. Another alternative may be small art galleries, who do take on unusual and different forms of art. Wish I could be more helpful in this light.
P.S. I have sorely missed being here for a number of weeks. Mainly, the computer broke down — permanently. Taxes, and a general need to take care of other serious matters, thus, my contribution will be somewhat sparce, but certainly, my heart is here with you and all of the rest who put their hearts out in this most dreadful period of our history.
We have shake-the-head disorder too.
In 2004 my husband (11 bravo ‘Nam bronze star) wanted a newspaper just to see what was happening in Iraq. It was early April, right before Sy Hersch broke the Abu Ghraib story. That Sunday, April 4, we could not find the word Iraq on the front page of a single national newspaper.
What was going on, we debated for hours. Were journalists gagged? My husband sourly remarked that he hadn’t heard if indeed they had “won” the “war.”
Until Abu Ghraib, it was distinctly uncool in the US to be political for most people. There are still family members who won’t “talk politics,” totally unaware that it’s all politics.
Meanwhile a 10 trillion national debt (close) cha-chinged its way (from around 5 trillion in 2000) onto the US taxpayers’ tab. No one asked, no one debated, and evidently scant few cared. Or thought about the consequences.
Here we are in 2008, collectively discovering that the hull’s been ripped out. People still regard it as too complex, that the entire mortgage industry served as collateral to “finance” the national debt (in huge measure the price of wars over the past century).
In light of all this I can but say, what are you to do with a people who refuse to pay attention to the wars its nation wreaks on others? Can one feel that sorry for a people who refuse to pay attention until it hits them in the pocketbook?
I’m not saying I regard this with mirth, not for a moment. Because everything’s wildly spooling out of control now due to the decimation of the US currency, with all the “players” on Wall Street mostly abandoning collapsing cash for commodities and hoarding, thus provoking food scarcities and riots all over the world.
All that is the price of people who couldn’t be bothered to question what their government did overseas, who maybe thought life in other countries was cheaper/less worthy in God’s sight. Now the wrath of the world is focusing on the US due to the collapsing dollar (due to debt/the phony hypothecation of real estate values).
I don’t think anyone’s going to get it until foreign troops arrive to fight. And every empire crumbles one day. But how can we deny that most citizens refused to pay attention until the war literally cost them their mortgage? If they even comprehend the connection now?
I pity the US people, I do. But only to a point.
And now the inevitable is here… bankruptcy. Such is the cost of ceaseless war since WWII.
Non-Borrowed reserves of US depository institutions (1950 – 02/2008) – Source Federal reserve of Saint Louis
turned out to be the media. Rove matered divide and conquor, but the media found out that fear sells.
When I went to have my gall bladder removed, I jokingly asked a nurse how many anthrax cases they had lately. She thought I was serious and said only a few walk-ins, but hundreds of calls complaining of symptoms.
Why should the media point out the need for oversight and investigations when they can have Lou Dobbs fill up the time with insinuations that illegal immigrants carry leprosy.
It looks like Obama will get the nod for the Democratic candidate. I like his manner of speaking, and I like a lot of the vacuous stuff he says. The problem is when I hold up his actions against his words. Or the things he doesn’t say about investigations and accountability. He should be shouting at the podium about Congress abdicating their powers, and how many in Congress have chosen to uphold loyalty over the Constitution.
Clinton certainly isn’t any better.
They know anything they say will be shredded by the media. They will be made to look like America-hating, elitist communists who are in league with Islamofacists intent on putting a terrorist on every block.
I look at Haiti recently and they have been storming the palace. Do you know why I think we don’t do the same? Because we think we have something to lose. We’ll get in trouble and they might take our stuff away and make us go to rehabilitation classes and fine us. I guess it’s only when you are hungry or you have seen half your family killed by the government that things look a little different and realize that you really don’t have anything to lose.
As long as we have food and fear hanging over our heads, the politicians will do whatever they want.