I was born the day FDR died. I was raised on a farm in upstate New York that my grandparents felt was saved by Roosevelt. We did not have indoor plumbing until 1949. The house was built in 1669. I have always felt my life was some sort of continuem.
The last seven years I have felt totally disconnected from everything I was taught and once taught my kids to believe in. I was active in politics from college thru 1988. In 1988, I ran for the council of Culver City, one woman against nine men. I had participated in the National Women's Political Caucus for over ten years. They would not endorse me as being unelectable and thus, detrimental to their credibility. I left politics that year for what I thought would be forever.
I came here in 2002 relieved to find that intelligence and dialogue still existed. I learned so much here. But many of the people I enjoyed the most no longer post. I miss them. I do not post much anymore. It is because I feel hopeless and helpless.
I feel like Hunter but I no longer even have passion in my feelings. Last night on Charlie Rose it was said that this will last at least five years and maybe ten. That looks like the planned struggle for democrats and then the credit for the new rethugs of a new named theory to take credit for the new morning. I do not know if I can bare to watch all this. But then, I get into it is only the people like me who are going to really remember.
I have often wondered why no empire once it collapsed never recovered. Almost always it was not the wars, cruelty, or false ideology that brought it down by the economy. Always an overextention like tinker toys that fall from its own dead weight.
I used to think it was because during the collapse, which is never instanteous, the small powerful elite always, always kill off the intelligentsia that dares to speak against them. Thus, the educated are so cowed that they never recover in time to be effective at the most acute crisis.
I have now come to a different theory. That great empires profit and promote good for so few people that even the "citizens" within the empire never want to be the backs and foundation for the empire to arise ever again. This is the lesson the Europeans have learned many times over and it looks like it is finally ingrained in their world POV.
The US has never really learned this lesson. We thought that we had such control of peoples minds thru media propaganda that the populace would never wake up. But it has and maybe the "low information" voters have known/felt this reality more deeply than the rest. Why aggravate yourself over something you have no control over? Hate everyone that is not your kith and kin and be done with it.
Like Hunter, I would like to build my own personal fort but it violates my commitment to being part of the solution rather than the problem. I know the difference of the neighborhoods of my youth and those same neighborhoods now. The culture of the past really needs to be examined and shared.
If the only way I can do something with being depressed is to share my stories then so be it. I also need to hear more stories here not less. More listening and less bitching. I always fear being not enough. But I know I have been programed that way.
I live in a country that does not believe in a fair share. I live in a country that up front says the American lifestyle is not negotiable regardless of what it costs the entire planet.
That is the blow that decapitates us as a world power and every world power before us. I like the civilized peoples of the past will not do anything to propagate the beliefs of empire Pax Americana in any form. I am not willing to be governed by the DOW. I am not willing to respect people who buy into the DOW is everything. The DOW is not the real economy. It is all a delusion just like a corporation should have the rights of real humanoid citizens. I refuse to be a consumer. I am a citizen of a peoples' government that is the birth right I was given and FDR did not die until he knew he had passed that right on and fulfilled his duty.