I'm losing any optimism I had. Anyone else in the same boat?

[mmonk]

I think our country will have to undergo much more death in the battlefield and debt before the public changes its outlook on the direction of this country. They been sold on the idea we must topple and control nation states in order to defeat terrorism. I think most Americans blame middle eastern states and their people collectively for terrorism. I just don't see a smart foreign policy dealing with this issue anytime soon.

[freetobegay]

1. If you see someone withput a smile

give them yours.

here :)

[mmonk]

2. thanks

[ugarte]

3. I still believe that Kerry can win, but it will be close

...so close that unlike other election years the choice of vice-president can make or break him. If he chooses wisely, it will put him over the top.

[Wapsie B]

4. You're right.

What's the use of even showing up at the polls?

Oh jeezus h frigging christ! Another downer thread. Boys from Ft. Bragg at work again.

[mmonk]

15. I don't believe I advocated not voting

I said I wasn't optimistic about the country's direction.

[demnan]

5. Yes, I've lost it

I'm just plugging along now doing my best. Going out for the Women's protest on Sunday.

I like John Kerry but where is he on the issues at hand? Is he just not being covered in the media or is he not saying memorable stuff right now?

[redqueen]

10. He's not being covered

Many are complaining that he's not hitting the bush maladministration, but he is. Unfortunately, the whore media donates THREE TIMES the coverage to the criminal currently occupying our White House as they do to his respectable and successful challenger.

*sigh*

[SquireJons]

18. Absolutely Right

Kerry has come out with 3 major position statements in the last two weeks and the popular media isn't covering it. While the republicans are getting all kinds of free air. Just the other day, I was watching the cable channel listing station and they were also providing news blips. One said (in text) that 'Kerry attacks bush on Iraq', then a second later it showed a recorded stump speech in which Chenney attacked Kerry's commitment to military defense. Two seconds of text for Kerry and 30 seconds of live footage for Chenney. That's fair and balanced for ya...

It does worry me, but I'll say this: The conservatives are worried too and they may be in for a big surprise come November. Unlike 1984 and 1988, now there is the internet, and anyone who wants to get accurate information can, unlike previous elections. I wonder if there will be a huge group of voters who are not being considered. Or perhaps a 'Spanish Surprise.'

[H2O Man]

6. I worked as a

psychiatric social worker for many years. I found that co-workers who set high expectations for an individual or family system to "change" tended to burn out. A person (or system) often needs to "hit bottom" before change occures. Yet many others do not. I have found that smart people learn from other peoples' mistakes; most of us have to learn from our own; and stupid people never learn. We are in a big family system in the USA. Just like in a regular family, change is only going to occure on an individual level. No larger than life father figure in Washington DC can ever change the course we are on --that can only be done by individuals like you. Be patient! It took a long time to get into this terrible state of affairs. It'll take a long time to reconcile the damage done. But it's happening. Now.

[Mari333]

20. Yesterday, the parrot in my house was angry,

the dog was angry, I was angry and in despair, it rained, my husband cried all day, I cried, my son in Hawaii was having panic attacks, my other son was having them too, and we all knew about Michael being under mortar fire in Iraq. we were all angry, sad, and in despair..I sometimes believe in the collective unconcious, and yesterday felt like a horrible despairing day, where there was no hope, no way of ever healing, and no way out. I want to believe there will be a light at the end of this tunnel.

[redqueen]

7. I am

I thought we learned something from Vietnam. Obviously, we didn't. I should have learned this from the 1st Gulf War, which was sold on a bunch of lies just like this one was.

When this embarassingly pitiful excuse for a 'president' started beating the war drums, setting the stage for his illegal war with the lies his co-conspirators had been working on for so long, I was encouraged by the amount of people who stood up and said, "NOT IN OUR NAME!" I was optimistic, thinking of all the parents who I knew would not want their children sacrificed for such a pointless and stupid 'war'.

Now here we are, with our treasury trillions lighter and with thousands of lives lost or changed forever, and no end in sight.

Some days I wish I had no hope.

[tabasco]

8. Don't give up hope.

Someone has to fight for our troops and our country. Kerry will win - and he WILL get us the hell out of there. The international community wants NOTHING TO DO with the criminal Bush cabal. If we install competent leadership, our friends WILL HELP. The UN will take over this mission after Kerry is elected. Our troop levels will be reduced. If the UN decides to bail, we'll go with them.
I too am sickened by the armchair warmongers among us. They don't give a damn about the troops! They just like a good war to WATCH ON TV!!!!!

[shrike]

14. I just spoke with a Canadian woman from Toronto

who says her countrymen are terrified of Bush. Yet her American friends, she says, love him. She was so glad to meet my husband and me, and know that not all Americans feel as her friends do. She says she fears what will happen if he sticks around another four years. I said, "You're not as frightened as we are."

[callous taoboy]

21. I hope to hell

Kerry wins big. But if not, I really feel that Congress will be majority Democrat in November. My brother, a republican, will be voting bush again, but will vote Democratic for the Senate race because he doesn't like the fact that the pubs have it all sewn up now. It was difficult for him to tell me that he would vote Democrat.

Reason for him voting bush: We shouldn't change presidents in the middle of the Iraq war. I didn't bother.

[bloom]

9. I think it would take one or more charismatic leaders

to get this thing going. Inspiring people to feel like there is something we can do collectively and motivating people to do it.

I don't see that there is anyone doing that now, but I haven't given up hope that someone(s) could do that and that many would participate.


_______________

P.S. I don't see Kerry as that person. I think we need someone outside of the system.

[shrike]

11. I was in New Orleans this weekend and spoke with a man who

feels as we do about Bush. I told him that I, too, am losing hope. He remarked that he lost all hope when Nixon was elected, but the country went on just the same. Perhaps he is right. Maybe the country will survive this as it has survived so many other things (and people.)

[PATRICK]

23. This is NOT Nixon

These times are oddly more critical and dangerously quiescent at the same time. Things never really just go on. Change accumulates and speeds up faster than ever. Many things are mortally out of control as it is and we put idiot tyrants on top.

You can't keep driving toward a cliff forever, especially while grinning and pressing you foot on the accelerator. Nor can people just "adapt" to starvation, plague and death. Nor are we our own collective "Lone Ranger" with silver bullets in the nick of time. At some point we or our children will look stupidly around and wonder how it all went wrong.

Maybe we will blame Bush or ourselves, but it will be too late. The time to change the future is now while we still have a democratic chance, a progressive way to meet a progressive inevitable future.

The dinosaurs would tell you "Don't do what we did." Which was nothing. They however, did not choose to be stupid.

[GregW]

12. No - I think it's just you.

Sorry :eyes:

[jonnyblitz]

13. yes. me.

I will leave it at that, I am not up for getting slimed by Kerry supporters today. of course he still has my vote in November, but I don't expect much change if he gets elected.

[Snellius]

16. I am disappointed with Kerry's position on Iraq

Even when it's perfectly obvious that the reasons for going to war were bogus, that we are not fighting but fostering terrorism in the Islamic world, that we have basically lost an unwinable war, to persist in stubbornly supporting the occupation is part of the same "peace with honor", "we're not quitters", "my country right or wrong", "love it or leave" insanity that kept us in Vietnam long after everyone knew it was a futile dead end. Kerry, as much as Bush, is so afraid of not being seen as a super-patriot that they can't admit any mistake.

[PATRICK]

24. Lacking a superhuman god

who can't be crucified and never says anything disagreeable, I will stand by Kerry's decency intelligence and courage(all of which all of the WH lacks) on behalf of future generations. It will get better if we elect better people.

For those who DON'T think Kerry is an indisputable and incredible leap forward in the right direction, I say you are certifiable. The other side isn't worried about the madness of the inarticulate and murderous King George. Here we quibble about Senate speeches rendered irrelevant by frauds and tyrants?

IMHO Kerry is one of the best and most progressive choices and finest in character the party has ever fielded and most of what is wrong with his campaign is what is wrong with America or rather the amoral Minority that overlords us. As long as they define the "contest" away from their crimes and lies America is totally incapable of judging Kerry. Although they do it anyway.

[DeepModem Mom]

17. I was in that boat yesterday; I'm some better today --

Sometimes just given a little time, a hopeless funk lifts. Oddly, HamdemRice's thread, "Does Bush's Walk Bother Anyone Else?" helped -- what a cathartic GD outpouring! And talking to my Gen Y daughter almost always helps. She says even if the worst happens, and Bush wins, it helps her already to know, from being involved in primary meet-ups and as the campaign gets started, that there are so many people on our side -- people she has met, plus the Jon Stewarts and Al Frankens who entertain us with truth. And she hasn't read "The Emerging Democratic Majority," but she sees a better time coming as her generation emerges and grows up. She says, "We skew young, we skew Hispanic, and we are the future." She says even many conservatives her age have a liberal mindset on issues of tolerance, and think more globally than their elders.

I also have a quotation from "Harry Potter" posted above my desk. I think our "Voldemort" is already in power, but all is not yet lost, and the idea that there is value in keeping on fighting even if delay is the only accomplishment gives me strength:

Dumbledore to Harry -- "Harry, while you may only have delayed (the return to power of the evil Voldemort), it will merely take someone else who is prepared to fight what seems a losing battle next time -- and if he is delayed again and again, why, he may never return to power."

If good people keep working, if only to delay the complete loss of what our country has been, and leave something of it to our kids, the wheel, I hope, will eventually turn.

[mmonk]

19. good post

I feel a little better. I've got hope if not immediate optimism.

[markus]

22. I lost my optimism almost 30 years ago

when Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize.

That was a large part of Dean's appeal for older (well, let's say older than 30) voters. There was a certain RFK fire in the belly about him, that Wellstone had in spades, that we lost with Paul.

I am very pessimistic now because our own side (and I fault both the left and the centrists on this) has allowed the right-wing to dominate the play field.

The end result is we have a news media that accepts the right-of-center as the center of American politics, 20 million die-hard AM radio listeners who are so intellectually corrupted I'm not sure they should be allowed to continue as citizens without some sort of de-Nazification, corporations in firm control of our government at the expense of workers and consumers.

And now we have a lot of millanerian whackoes running our nation and the world, and a bloddy war they have started for reason that still haven't been revealed.

Things pretty much suck all over.

[PATRICK]

25. Optimism always flew

in the face of the history books. I always suspected we had not come all that "far". Nor have we, although many advances are immutably part of human progress as are the flaws we carry and bury in blindness which recur like malaria.

Most people, especially when communally supportive of decent ideology and behavior are very very good, but only a few or a slice are ready to face and fight abuse, poisoned ideology and the challenges or responsibility and leadership when the support dissolves like a ghost. Most are good because they need to believe life is good, immutable, a paradise on earth with set and stressless rules with a lot of elbow room. Knowledge of the universe as a likely paradigm of our existence is to stressful to shape one life, pad one's niche. We talk about human weakness, deny sainthood, wink at flaws, believe that things will just go on like the seasons and walk dumbly into the next slaughterhouse. Seeing decently people descend into brutalization and cycles of violence is even worse but is the vulnerability of the common.

Waiting around, delegating our responsibilities, and enjoying peace, progress and prosperity is the surest way to lose all three to ruthless misfits.

Optimism needs people who make things better, not people who trust to fate and presumption.

[Malva Zebrina]

26. Yes--since Dean and Kucinich have dropped out, the energy and the hope

I had has diminished.

Kerry is addressing the safe and the wrong issues.

the ISSUE is the illegal war--and the lies told to, virtually drop murderous bombs on an ancient city, and kill at least ten thousand--that is TEN THOUSAND--can anyone imaging ten thousand human beings lumped togethe?

That is the ISSUE--as far as I am concerned.

We may be able to reverse Bush's stances on stem cell, woman's reproductive health and other things, if

if we get ahead in the congressinal races.

What has me thoroughly depressed is that Kerry went along with it,and now is backed into the corner and cannot take an honorable stand against the slaughter that is and has gone on. I do not know what he was thinking, or what any of those who voted to give an evil stupid man a blank check, but my intuition tells me that any who did go along with the war, were saying, almost: well let Bush take the first plunge and be on the hot seat--then I can blame him for what went wrong, but secretely I want what Iraq has also.

I just cannot accept that my country has done this,has done it in this barbaric manner, and further, may be planning to do it again.

[redqueen]

27. Kucinich hasn't dropped out.

He's still out there working 18 hours a day to spread the word that there is hope.

Fat lot of good it's doing, with centrists fouling everything up and setting the stage for the right wing corporate fascists to finish taking over this country.

[Malva Zebrina]

28. sorry for the error--I just assumed he had dropped out--nt

[Jacobin]

29. something ghastly and catastrophic

will need to happen to change the way this nation acts.

Treating Israel like just another nation would be a good start.

Re-joining the civilized world, honoring treaties, and supporting the UN would be another.

What the calamity will be that brings us to our senses, I don't know, but it appears it will take that to happen for changes to take place.