Has the situation gone from Energizingly Awful to Numbingly Dreary?

[Armstead]

Looking at events of recent days, brings that question to mind.

I've temporarily stopped watching the news and following politics very closely lately. It just seems like a record that stuck in one groove, the same old people repeating the same old, same old over and over again.

In many ways the situation is much better than it was during the worst of the post-2000 period. Most of the public now realizes that the Emperor had no clothes, and have rejected him and the right-wing Republicans. The Democrats now hold a majority in Congress and are actually in a position to do something. Some of the Democratic politicians are showing a spine. The media is no longer afraid to be critical of the administration or Republicans. We are finally seeing a glimmer of the light at the end of the tunnel with 2009 approaching into view.

This should be a great time. But it currently just seems dreary. The same old shit is happening in the Senate. The shoe is now on the other foot, but the GOP has shown that they can and will use the weapons they still have as a minority party to block any real action by Democrats...And the Democrats, instead of being an ineffectual opposition minority, and now an ineffectual majority.

The administration is still doing the same awful stuff. But rather than being outraged, the public response is largely, "Oh well, let's just ride out the next two years, and hope the country survives it."...I must admit I share that attitude at this point.

American troops and Iraqis are still killing or being killed at an escalating rate. But the worse the carnage gets, the more removed it seems. Instead, it's buried beneath parliamentary hogwash of Senate debates over whether to debate the possibility of non-binding resolutions to express mild displeasure over the "surge."..........Meanwhile, Backbone Democrats like Russ Feingold are still being dismissed as the "far left."

08? I can't think of anything less inspiring than a race between Clinton and McCain/Rudy/Romney....A choice between bad and worse. If that happens, we'll just have a choice between a "kinder and gentler" wishy-washy corporate sellout and a Rethuglican.

I compare this to the darkest days of a few years ago. It was Awful. But at least in the awfulness, there was a point to opposition. THere was an energizing effect. And it brought people together to push for change.

Now it's just like we seem stuck in a Tarpit. The whole world of politics and issues seems irrelevant. We now know most of the public agrees with us on a basic level. But so what?

I remember, for example, hoping for MSM coverage of anti-war demonstrations, desperate for the public to see that not everyone was on the Iraq War Bandwagon. It sucked, but at least there was a goal....Now it's like "Another demonstration? Ho hum we already know the public is against the war. But a fat lot of good that does us."

I hope this is just one of those temporary downspots. Hopefully once the 08 campaigns heat up, the "inevitability" of a bland centrist corporate candidate will be replaced by a real contest...Perhaps Congress will realize that it doesn't have to weenie out, and will actually stand up and do something. But right now it doesn;t seem like much is going to change for the better.

How do you feel about all this?

[Taverner]

1. How do I feel?

You've summed up my opionion perfectly.

Once again the Dems have proven themselves to be without spine....

[Bonobo]

2. This might make you see things differently.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x15717

[Armstead]

3. He is inspiring

However, I've always known there is a movement of inspiring progressives and reformers and people of conscience.

My problem at the moment is that -- even after an election and obvious public frustration with the status quo -- the levers of power at all levels are still held by people whose idea of change is wearing a different colored pair of socks.

But you're right. There are a lot of sources of inspiration to counter it.

[Bonobo]

4. Boy, do I hear you, brother. Do I ever.

I have gone through so many stages of sick that I don't know what to do.

But this speech is incredible I tell you. You REALLY should watch it. Really.

[Jacobin]

5. One trick that can be used in mass mind control

I'll describe as 'mirroring'. The media did the 'denial' thing, the 'making fun of people who loved Saddam' thing, and various other measures that actually worked quite well for several years.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, and 67% disapprove of Bush and a higher percentage disapprove of the Iraq war, the next media manipulation is, taadaa! "Mirroring".

And so, we see a number of talking heads, like Tweety (sometimes), Scarborough, et al, doing this "Oh man, Bush is nuts!. This war is LOST. What'll we ever do?? This sucks!! It's AWful"...thus mirroring the feelings of the majority of americans, letting them think that by watching some talking head doofus, that somehow, their feelings are being validated, and that somehow, they've been heard and that now 'somebody's gonna do something about it."

Guess what?

Its all a fucking media manipulation game. Viz: Senate not even willing to fucking DISCUSS IraqNam

Sorry. I'm a confirmed cynic. We are being manipulated. The PNACers and neocons are in charge and their handmaiden is the media.

[The2ndWheel]

6. You hope too much, that's what I think

We all do. I find this article to sum things up nicely.

http://www.orionsociety.org/pages/om/06-3om/Jensen.html

The more I understand hope, the more I realize that all along it deserved to be in the box with the plagues, sorrow, and mischief; that it serves the needs of those in power as surely as belief in a distant heaven; that hope is really nothing more than a secular way of keeping us in line.

Hope is, in fact, a curse, a bane. I say this not only because of the lovely Buddhist saying "Hope and fear chase each other's tails," not only because hope leads us away from the present, away from who and where we are right now and toward some imaginary future state. I say this because of what hope is.

More or less all of us yammer on more or less endlessly about hope. You wouldn't believe—or maybe you would—how many magazine editors have asked me to write about the apocalypse, then enjoined me to leave readers with a sense of hope. But what, precisely, is hope? At a talk I gave last spring, someone asked me to define it. I turned the question back on the audience, and here's the definition we all came up with: hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.

[Armstead]

7. I've been through that cycle many times

Sometime in the 1970's I stopped hoping for some future major change. I've wrestled with the ongoing struggle to find the right mix between blind hope, realistic optimism, realistic pessimism, fatalism and Zen freedom....Rather than a straighht line -- or an AHA Moment -- I've come to realize that it's a series of cycles. One hopes that the cycles move in a positive direction, but one shouldn;t expect that.

I'm not, by nature, the fighter that Jensen is so I never totally gave up on the notion of hope as he described it. But I did realize that it's a crutch, and determined to do as he recommends, which is to work for positive change in your own sphere, and realize that the system is not going to bail us out.

Nevertheless, I do disagree with him that it is unhealthy to hope for positive change on a macro level. No one is an island, and it is healthy to hope for changes in the system that at least move things in a better direction. It's also necessary, because the healthier the society is, the more we all as individuals can be productive in a positive sense.

In terms of the present, my frustration is not based on the notion that the November election would change everything. Merely that it would result in a greater push for change and a real contest...Instead, it is currently in a state of grey that seems to resiste even incremental change.