Steve and I talked about political blogging when he was starting up EatOurBrains, and he was able to gently steer me away from posting my pessimistic outlook at that time.I believed that the Dems would be allowed to take maybe 10 to 12 seats in Congress, maybe three Senate positions. The rest would be bluntly stolen, via blackboxes, voter suppression, and apathy. I thought the US was over with.
Yep, I'm a paranoid idiot. Ain't it terrible? The Dems have taken the House and, likely, the Senate. I'm soooo embarrassed that I was wrong.
That said, I keep checking to see if there's a cloud inside the silver lining. I do NOT believe that the authoritarian criminal assholes that have wrecked my beloved country for so long have given up the fight and things will now be flowers and bunnies in the meadow.
We still have to deal with a broken media, a Supreme Court that's a hair away from being dominated by theocrats, and monstrous corporations that care for nothing but profits, no matter who gets hurt or killed in the process.
I feel good today, because I'd thought that our system was so broken that elections had become the kind of phony shows that the USSR used to have. Today, that's not the case, especially if the Dems have the balls to force changes in the election system, so that complete and easy theft of national elections is simply not possible.
I feel good today, because I'd thought that the American population had become too uneducated, too propagandized, too inert, too blinded by fear, to practice democracy anymore. You get the government you deserve.
Maybe we we only get two years to do something lasting, but you can do a lot in two years. Especially if you own a lot of Governorships and State legislatures. Which the Dems now do.
Hell, maybe we can even stop a senseless, meaningless war if we put our minds to it.
I'd thought that this war, and the ones to follow, would likely grind on for a generation, with the draft, of necessity, reinstated to feed new bodies to the ever-growing war machine .
I feel good today because I'd thought the battle was completely over and we were just pretending that we aren't owned. Now, I think we still are in terrible danger, and that it can go bad again vey quickly. But, right now, this year, we have a chance to make something good. I have hope, where only despair existed before.
....Everything changes so fast these days; the curve of technological change is going asymptotic, and maybe cultural change, too, so anything I say here today will be woefully obsolete almost immediately.
But, I feel good today.
Because, today, for the first time in three years, I'm not trying to figure out how to get my daughter safely out of the country before the war machine kills her.
Love to you All,
Rory
5 comments:
I recall I said something like, "OHMIGHOD, Rory, let's wait a little before invoking the black helicopters, eh?"
Okay--not really. Just wanted to establish the blog off with some "less dark" marterial.
Thank gnu, then that you entertained us with your fluffy sit-com posts about Bradley torturing you.
I must admit, I await Bradley's first post (Thursday's Child Has Far To Go) with some trepidation.
Nah, Bradley will take the HIGH ground.
But, for those who are interested: Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America. (via Boing Boing.)
Bradley and I just exchanged e-mails a few minutes ago. He's not gonna be a big fan of Blogger, either.
And it was never the black helicopters that made me paranoid. Just the brain control rays being beamed through my CRT by the NSA....
Hey, Patrick! Good to see you here!
Anyhow, I simultaneously agree with you, while leaping to Stevie Chuck's defense. (This may be an indication that I enjoy multiple personality issues, as well as the paranoia.)
I interpreted this as Stevie joshing me for being wrong, which is legit. However, he's always expressed suppport for my growing grumpy paranoia about political issues.
Like you, I don't think we're even near the edge of the woods, much less out of them. I've always thought that the 'conspiracy' was and is extremely real and powerful. But not because there are Secret Masters pulling the strings.
There are just a lot of greedy, unheeding, controlling people out there who want their way, and whose attitude is 'fuck anybody who interferes'.
A lot of their interests are enough aligned that they enter into alliances of convenience, sometimes not even consciously, reinforcing each other's agendas.
My great hope is that those alliances *may* be starting to crack.
All of these nebulously-defined folks have one thing in common. They despise the peasants. If they could grab control of the voting machinery, they would do so without a single qualm, because they know what's best for us.
Patrick and I (and many, many others) were pretty sure that they had managed that, because there was a lot of evidence that goes that way. There still is that potential, as long as we have black boxes, no paper trail, and lax enforcement of laws against voter suppression. We can still lose our country; it's not over yet.
For me, the strength of America is that the pendulum swings. When we get too far out of balance, left or right, we start moving in the other direction.
I thought that the Thugs had managed to seize the pendulum. I feel an amazing sense of lightness, after a VERY bad six years, that it appears that they haven't yet.
But we still need to stay alert, because they'll keep trying.
If that's paranoid, or even crazy, I'm down with it. If us paranoids are wrong, we get laughed at, and annoy and bore some loved ones. If we're right, and people ignore the signs, the US dies.
Evolutionarily speaking, paranoia is your buddy.
And, to tell you the truth, Patrick, after Bush signed into law his little thing about being able to call out the National Guard without going through the governors, I have this little scenario in my head involving martial law before January 1rst. I don't give it a very high probability, but it's a very, very sad thing that I cannot completely eliminate it as impossible.
I'm actually with Caroline (and Rory) on this. As Caroline put it, "People do not steal elections to do good deeds."
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