I just don't have the time

[Mythsaje]

Oh, screw all the cynicism and lack of hope. Screw the whole "no one can fix this" shit I hear spouted day after day. Screw the whole "the human race is doomed and deserves to be" crap. Screw the "you're looking for a messiah" crowd who just don't get it. Screw the "your candidate is just telling you want you want to hear" people too. It's not just something I WANT to hear, but something America NEEDS to hear. Because it's the truth.

Screw the people who say "Oh, politicians are all the same."

My nearly automatic response is "Well, so are assholes like you."

I'm SO tired of the doom and gloom crap from everyone who has nothing good to say about anything or anything. I mean the lefties who truly DO hate America and everything it might stand for. America has done some pretty bad things, but, you know, so has just about every other nation on Earth, particular when they held more power than their neighbors. Humans have a tendency to do some pretty fucked up things. People who are attracted to power are almost invariably assholes. Every once in a while we luck out and someone gains power who wants it not for themselves, but to help others. To do the right thing because someone needed to be there to do it.

We've had a few Presidents in our not-so-long history who've done that, after all. People like Teddy Roosevelt, who despised corruption, and hated cheats, and wanted to see people get a fair shake. People like FDR, who saw America in dire straits, and gave of himself to see America stand strong.

I am SO sick of the endless stream of negativity that pours out of some people like exorcist-induced vomit. Nothing is good enough, everything is bad, and we all deserve to die a horrible death, or sit in our own shit and piss for as long as it takes for us to die. People who think America CAN'T be something worthwhile, something decent, and stand for something other than imperial force. People who think humanity is fatally flawed and we'll never rise above our animal natures. We can, and have, and will again.

I don't have time for the fire and brimstone assholes who think most of us are going to some kind of hell. I don't have time for people who are standing on the sidelines cheering what they see as the imminent destruction of the human race. I don't have the time for those who think there's no point in hoping for something better, or fighting for what good there is in the world. I don't have time to deal with cynics, skeptics, and self-absorbed nay-sayers.

If people actually think it's futile, what the hell are they doing here? If they hate people and humanity so much, what are they working toward? Nothing worth having.

I have no time for complete luddites, or folks who think we'd be better off without many of the things we've learned in the past couple hundred years. People who truly have very little understanding or appreciation of how fucking miserable life was for all but the most affluent back then. People who don't appreciate what they have now and still claim to feel for those who have less.

If there's ANY point to all of this, this life, this existence, it's to do the best you can to make everyone's life a little better by whatever means you can. That doesn't mean dragging them down, or propping yourself up at their expense. That doesn't mean looking down one's nose at someone's perceived inferiority. It's not about being the "cock-of-the-walk" and beating one's breast.

And it's sure as hell not about deliberately stamping out hope wherever one finds it. It's sure as hell not about casting aspersions on the dreams of other people. If that's how one gets one's kicks, one is a really fucked up individual who needs to stay as far away from other people as possible. Or become a fundamentalist preacher so people will PAY for the privilege of being treated like worthless pieces of shit.

Frustrated? A little. Angry? You bet. Some people have nothing to offer but negativity. And I don't understand that at all. It seems a pointless, worthless existence.

Tolerate it? Accept it? Argue with it?


I don't have the time.

[Skittles]

1. YOU KNOW IT Mythsaje

I won't quit fighting - ever. And every day - EVERY day - I do something to try to make someone else's life a bit better.

[tom_paine]

4. Hi Skittles. I won't stop fighting either. Even though I am likely one of those

who Saje is targeting with this diatribe.

I have stood up these past three elections with my wallet and shoe leather. I have spoken out almost ceaselessly from Day One, at personal cost. But even now, in this nightmarish time, I have never forgotten that I have it better than 99% of all the people who ever lived, and I am grateful.

I will never forget that the main ideal of the Old American Republic, was that everyone should have a decent quality of life if they work hard and follow simple human decency.

I love the ideal of the Old American Republic and I will NEVER stop fighting for it. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights may well be the greatest set of political documents ever produced by human beings. No, scratch that, ARE the greatest set of political documents ever produced by human beings.

But fighting the good fight does not mean being blind to the odds. It doesn't mean closing one's eyes to the reality of the situation. That our Democratic Leadership has betrayed us, that for the vast majority of them they simply don't give a shit about the Idiot Peasants they rule. They care about their privilege and power, and not about the fact that we have become a country of deep class divisions, where superior and inferior people are now accepted as a matter of course and aristocratic privilege has gone from being deeply unAmerican to a core value.

I think most of them, with maybe two or three dozen Democratic exceptions and Ron Paul (whatever you think about his nutty philosophies, it stems from a love of those three documents), pretty much agree with that philosophy. They ARE better than us, and we should just shut the hell up with our Idiot Peasants' love of those stupid pieces of paper and be happy when they let a benefit or two dribble down to us.

Our media is broken beyond repair. To fix it would require a massive upheaval, and even then you would have to find enough people who believed in speaking truth to power and our corer Founding Principles to refill the ranks, and that is going to be awful tough in a nation in which the Shock Doctrine has been applied to eradicate those beliefs in the vast majority of Americans, even if they don't know it.

Bushies have now fully Bushified/Nazified the Executive Agencies, and I guarantee you that "normal housecleaning" of Old America will not be sufficient to end this scourge.

And even now, with so many of the Bushie Felonies exposed, with Gonzales having multiple perjured himself on videotape, we cannot even get a single trial of these arch-criminals, and the likelihood that we will get even one is growing dim.

Bushie Protection is amazing. 9/11ani has been busted for multiple Class E felonies in Nathangate, felonies which not a year ago resulted in the conviction, resignation, and fining of Hevesi in NYC. But for Bushie Rudy, it just slides down the Memory Hole as if it never happened.

You think if Edwards or Clinton had been caught dead to rights like that misusing public funds in a felonious manner that it would be let go? You know as well as I do that their candidacies would be destroyed in an instant, and the carnival circus of their rapidly scheduled trials and convictions would be the main topic of Cable TV and Print Infoganda for MONTHS, perhaps years.

That in and of itself says it all. All of it adds up to deep structural sea changes as well as the conventional wisdom and mores of our Evil Empire, and all of it adds up to a 95% chance we are fucked, now that it is clear it will be allowed to grow and metastasize even further for at least a year. That's they way I see it.

And if Saje thinks I or anyone else points this all out for some sense of self-aggrandizement, he is sadly mistaken.

Because denial serves us nothing here, except to blind us at a time when we should be focusing our vision sharper than ever. Denial allows us to slip into the mistakes of the Democratic Leadership, who believe they are simply dealing with another political faction like themselves, instead of deeply evil totalitarians who have hated America since Grandpa Prescott tried to overthrow it and come in on the side of his good friend and ally, Adolf Hitler.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml

Now I have gone and done the very thing Saje was railing about in the OP, but I don't care. Because in the end, we will all be fighting together, whether it be in phone-banking, canvassing, GOTV efforts, general strikes, or God Forbid, something worse.

My greatest concern is that, if a man like Edwards, Dodd or Kucinich got into power, and dared threaten the Bushies' "kick", as the Mafia calls it, or even worse threatened to expose Bushies' many treasons, they would get would get Kennedied, Kinged, or Wellstone in short order, but not so short it would be obvious to the vast majority, and that is all that would be necessary. Just a little Plausible Deniability, the grease which keeps the Bushie Mafia going.

But WE would know. Just one more "unfortunate coincidence" and we will KNOW.

Avoiding the trap of denial doesn't mean buckling to those long odds, either, though. Like the Jews in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, who were doomed before they started.

They didn't have a 95% chance of being doomed, they had 100% chance of being doomed. And yet they fought, they stood and were true.

As we must, too.

So go ahead, Saje. Flame away. Call me a negative asshole or doomsayer orwhatever the hell you want to. Be as brutal and insulting as you like. Here is my response:

To you and Saje and everyone else here at DU, I clasp your hands in friendship, for at the end of the day we are all on the same side. The side of the Founding Fathers against the Bushies, Hitlers, Pinochets, Stalin, and Pol Pots of the world.

There can be no more honorable place to stand and be true.

Peace.

[glowing]

2. Thank you for that...

I say the same thing too... There is always a way to take something that seems so horribly terrible and make some positive out of it. My grandmother was always saying, "...on the bright side...". I really believe there are reasons for everything. Different paths that branch out. People who come into our lives for a brief purpose or lasting impression. We have Free Will... we need to look for what our experiences and challenges are as wisdom to gain, otherwise, why are we here and what purpose do we serve? I don't think our life paths were intrinsically meant to work to make the rich wealthier, while enslaving ourselves to work and debt. Its a cross road. Do we work for our humanity or do we work for wealth? And/ or how can we combine them, so that suffering is lessened?

[Two Americas]

3. easy

Don't write off all of the far lefties and doomsayers. You got one on board right here.

Otherwise, good post. There is definitely a virulent strain of misanthropy on the left, and it is good to point it out. Misanthropy is utterly incompatible with liberalism and with support for human rights and democracy, and is especially contradictory to fighting for the disadvantaged and oppressed. There is also an "inner circle" mentality that discourages new people from participating because they are not as informed or smart or sophisticated. That is anti-democratic and aristocratic and needs to be pointed out as well.

So good work, carry on. I have admired your posts for a long time as a lurker.

[tom_paine]

5. Please read my post #4, Saje

Originally it was intended just to say hi to skittles, but then it morphed into a message for you and all of DU.

And whatever you think of me, this is a good post and I gave it a recommend which it richly deserves.

[Mythsaje]

13. There's no doubt that we're in for a real fight...

But negativity, regardless how truthie it is, does nothing to inspire people for the fight. Quite the opposite.

We gain nothing from it. Either people know and understand what we're up against, or they don't. But they don't truly have to understand it to fight it. Hope is an incredible human weapon, and an incredible human drive.

You can't walk onto a battlefield and tell your troops "We're all going to die. But good luck anyway."

[porphyrian]

6. Merry Christmas!

:evilgrin:

[tom_paine]

7. And Happy Festivus to you, porphyrian!

Maybe Saje and I are merely kicking off Festivus with the Airing of Complaints.

Come back later, we'll be doing the Feats of Strength and dancing 'round the Festivus Pole.

:hi:

[porphyrian]

8. I like it.

;)

[Mythsaje]

9. I just don't have the time

Oh, screw all the cynicism and lack of hope. Screw the whole "no one can fix this" shit I hear spouted day after day. Screw the whole "the human race is doomed and deserves to be" crap. Screw the "you're looking for a messiah" crowd who just don't get it. Screw the "your candidate is just telling you want you want to hear" people too. It's not just something I WANT to hear, but something America NEEDS to hear. Because it's the truth.

Screw the people who say "Oh, politicians are all the same."

My nearly automatic response is "Well, so are assholes like you."

I'm SO tired of the doom and gloom crap from everyone who has nothing good to say about anything or anything. I mean the lefties who truly DO hate America and everything it might stand for. America has done some pretty bad things, but, you know, so has just about every other nation on Earth, particular when they held more power than their neighbors. Humans have a tendency to do some pretty fucked up things. People who are attracted to power are almost invariably assholes. Every once in a while we luck out and someone gains power who wants it not for themselves, but to help others. To do the right thing because someone needed to be there to do it.

We've had a few Presidents in our not-so-long history who've done that, after all. People like Teddy Roosevelt, who despised corruption, and hated cheats, and wanted to see people get a fair shake. People like FDR, who saw America in dire straits, and gave of himself to see America stand strong.

I am SO sick of the endless stream of negativity that pours out of some people like exorcist-induced vomit. Nothing is good enough, everything is bad, and we all deserve to die a horrible death, or sit in our own shit and piss for as long as it takes for us to die. People who think America CAN'T be something worthwhile, something decent, and stand for something other than imperial force. People who think humanity is fatally flawed and we'll never rise above our animal natures. We can, and have, and will again.

I don't have time for the fire and brimstone assholes who think most of us are going to some kind of hell. I don't have time for people who are standing on the sidelines cheering what they see as the imminent destruction of the human race. I don't have the time for those who think there's no point in hoping for something better, or fighting for what good there is in the world. I don't have time to deal with cynics, skeptics, and self-absorbed nay-sayers.

If people actually think it's futile, what the hell are they doing here? If they hate people and humanity so much, what are they working toward? Nothing worth having.

I have no time for complete luddites, or folks who think we'd be better off without many of the things we've learned in the past couple hundred years. People who truly have very little understanding or appreciation of how fucking miserable life was for all but the most affluent back then. People who don't appreciate what they have now and still claim to feel for those who have less.

If there's ANY point to all of this, this life, this existence, it's to do the best you can to make everyone's life a little better by whatever means you can. That doesn't mean dragging them down, or propping yourself up at their expense. That doesn't mean looking down one's nose at someone's perceived inferiority. It's not about being the "cock-of-the-walk" and beating one's breast.

And it's sure as hell not about deliberately stamping out hope wherever one finds it. It's sure as hell not about casting aspersions on the dreams of other people. If that's how one gets one's kicks, one is a really fucked up individual who needs to stay as far away from other people as possible. Or become a fundamentalist preacher so people will PAY for the privilege of being treated like worthless pieces of shit.

Frustrated? A little. Angry? You bet. Some people have nothing to offer but negativity. And I don't understand that at all. It seems a pointless, worthless existence.

Tolerate it? Accept it? Argue with it?


I don't have the time.

[Perry Logan]

10. Avoid the U.S. media news and you'll feel better. It exists to depress the left.

[tom_paine]

11. Well, at least you and I agree on SOMETHING, Perry.

:toast:

[GliderGuider]

12. Don't mistake truth-telling for defeatism

Like tom_paine I've "occasionally" been accused of being a defeatist doomer, and it's true that I spend a lot more effort on identifying problems than on proposing solutions. I explain why I feel this is important in these four points:

1. You can only solve a problem if you know it exists.
2. You can only choose the correct solution if you fully understand the nature of the problem.
3. You can only know how hard to work on a solution if you know how big the problem is.
4. You can only know how fast to work on the solution if you know when the problem is going to hit.

There are a lot of people around with better minds than mine, who are all beavering away on solutions. I think it would help if they were sure they were working on the right problems.

I'm not American, so for me your political difficulties are just part of the tapestry of problems the world is facing today. I read DU every day, though, and I'm constantly impressed by the level of awareness and commitment I see from the members. If the problems you are facing are fixable you folks are on the front line of fixers.

[Mythsaje]

14. There is one true problem, everything else is a symptom.

The Class War.

[GliderGuider]

16. Actually, even the Class War is a symptom.

The root problem is that there are too many people, consuming too much, and facing the diminishing returns of a depleted global resource base while being unwilling to relinquish their belief in perpetual growth.

That is the piece of cord that has been bent into the Gordian Knot we are facing. Our political and economic systems are simply responses to that situation. The Class War you perceive is but one manifestation of a species-wide dysfunctional response analogous to the General Adaptation Syndrome originally described by Dr. Hans Selye.

[Mythsaje]

17. I don't buy that.

This problem existed long before all that was even an issue.

[GliderGuider]

20. In that case you need to go back to Evolutionary Psychology

It has always seemed to me that class wars, or more generally the maintenance of hierarchies by force is such a universal feature of human societies that it must have a very strong genetic component. Truly egalitarian cultures are relatively rare and short-lived, usually due to the effects described by Andrew Schmookler in his book "The Parable of the Tribes". The same dynamic applies to individuals. The money quote from the book is this:

Imagine a group of tribes living within reach of one another. If all choose the way of peace, then all may live in peace. But what if all but one choose peace, and that one is ambitious for expansion and conquest? What can happen to the others when confronted by an ambitious and potent neighbor? Perhaps one tribe is attacked and defeated, its people destroyed and its lands seized for the use of the victors. Another is defeated, but this one is not exterminated; rather, it is subjugated and transformed to serve the conqueror. A third seeking to avoid such disaster flees from the area into some inaccessible (and undesirable) place, and its former homeland becomes part of the growing empire of the power-seeking tribe. Let us suppose that others observing these developments decide to defend themselves in order to preserve themselves and their autonomy. But the irony is that successful defense against a power-maximizing aggressor requires a society to become more like the society that threatens it. Power can be stopped only by power, and if the threatening society has discovered ways to magnify its power through innovations in organization or technology (or whatever), the defensive society will have to transform itself into something more like its foe in order to resist the external force.

I have just outlined four possible outcomes for the threatened tribes: destruction, absorption and transformation, withdrawal, and imitation. In every one of these outcomes the ways of power are spread throughout the system. This is the parable of the tribes.

[tom_paine]

23. I had never heard that one, "The Parable of the Tribes"

Very interesting and also smacks of a deep human truth.

I am always talking about the "psychological a-bombs" which modern advertising, marketing, and PR have placed in the hands of our leaders, including the biggest a-bomb ofthem all: psychologically, the BIGGER the group of people the easier they are to manipulate to a pretedetrmined outcome/conclusion.

Before the media technological increases of the early 20th Century, this rule, understood instinctively by tyrants the world over, could not be applied easily, if at all. In the mid-20th Century, the tools existed but the underlying science didn't, and even then we saw that tyrannies, with the technological tools but not the underlying predictive science, had the capacity to create fresh horrors unimaginable. Our original FCC created the media rules the Bushies work so assiduously to eradicate BECAUSE they saw what Hitler and Stalin were capable of doing, with just the technolgy and the totalitarian's instinct.

Now the Tyrants have the tools, now much more sophisticated and prevalent, and they know EXACTLY how to use them. In this way it is almost an amplification of The Parable of the Tribes. Combined with the various forms of the Shock Doctrine to move things along even more rapidly towards the tyrants' desired outcome, and like the Parable of the Tribes, spread it's "infection" to all, even those who are striving against it.

The problems are indeed huge, but not insurmountable. It starts, as always, with one person saying, "No."

[lonestarnot]

15. K& fucking R (for the fight)

:hug: and Merry Christmas!

[OneGrassRoot]

18. You speak for me so well...

I just had this conversation with my 14 y/o last night.

Her father (my ex) is a Bushie who has become extremely disillusioned and thinks all politicians suck.

I am extremely skeptical, yet rail against the apathy that dominates our culture across all age groups. My skepticism is largely due to the corporate control that has taken over our country. It is this issue that leads me to wholeheartedly support John Edwards.

For 30 years or so I railed against my family, who were of the mindset "it's the way it's always been and it's not going to change."

One of the last visits with my father led to me yelling, "I don't care of it's the way it's always been, I doesn't make it right and it doesn't HAVE to continue this way!"

He knew I wasn't yelling AT him, but at the defeatist mindset. We actually came to an understanding, which is good, as he passed very unexpectedly a couple of months later.

I've often wanted to post the same question here at DU: if you think everything is so futile, why are you here??? What a sad commentary that others work so hard to take away one's hope (not a delusional "rapture-like" hope, but a reasoned, well-thought-out hope).


Anyway, you said what I feel. Thank you.

kick and recommend!!!

[Marrah_G]

19. One of the best posts I've seen in a long time. BRAVO!

[Subdivisions]

21. For the first time in two years as a member here and

one who has great respect for you and who enjoys you essays very much, I have to respectfully disagree with you on this one, Mythsaje.

GliderGuider makes the point above and there is little I can add to it except that, in order to know the reality of the world we live in, we must be aware of that which lurks in the shadows. To remain blisfully unaware of the dangers we face can only accelerate the very doom you seek to avoid. Facing reality means having to face the bad as well as the good.

We face some very serious challenges. And there ARE challenges we WILL NOT be able to meet. Climate change, oil depletion, recession or depression, war. I think we better keep one eye on those negative things because ignoring them could be a very serious mistake indeed. Keeping a good general attitude while casting an eye over your shoulder would be my advice.

Keep up the good work, Mythsaje.

[Hydra]

22. Sorry to see you so pissed off Mythsaje

but I have to say, this is me right now:

:popcorn:

I am on the sidelines, pointing out that as we stand, we're toast.

Why?

Because I had a an epiphany, a revelation...

All of those people without a voice, marginalized, blacklisted, ground into the dirt, called conspiracy theorists...

They were right.

That is where the battle is. On the ground. In the dirt.

The battle isn't in the WH, or Congress, or the Judicial branch...those are already lost to us.

The battle is on the ground, among the people that were left behind as many benefited from the "prosperity" of the last 400 years.

"A Government by the people, for the people."

If that is the ideal, then let's go find the people.

[Raejeanowl]

24. May I APPLAUD You?

Because I needed to hear someone else fighting back and daring to hope. Thank you.

:applause:

[burrowowl]

25. I recommend Tom Hartmann's

Breaking the Code, it has some really good things about turning things around and how negativity doesn't get one anywhere.

[Mythsaje]

27. It really doesn't...

Few people here, of all places, are unaware of the obstacles we face. Yet, for some reason, there are people who, again and again, have to remind us of what we already know.

[NuttyFluffers]

26. i can see why you don't have the time... with screwing all those people and all.

:hide: