I think I know from whence cometh this malaise.

[ysobelle]

Every morning, when I listen to the news, I feel like I'm stuck on a trahs-littered four-lane street, waiting for the light to change, without so much as a scrap, a single leaf, of anything green and growing to be seen. Of course, yes, that's usually exactly where I am, but it's more the metaphor of the thing. I listen to what's going on in Iraq and with our government and how more and more rights are being stripped from us and how it's becoming even more socially acceptable to be stupid, and I just feel so helpless.

This morning, I listened to a report on more execution-style slayings and mosque bombings in Iraq, and a loud voice in my head screamed, "We have destroyed their country."

Then I head about Condoleeza Rice advising the government of Afghanistan to stop prosecuting a Muslin man who's converted to Christianity by trotting out that well-worn and increasingly hollow statement about how our country was founded on the idea of religious freedom and how it's our most cherished liberty, and we revel in religious freedom here. Sure. If you're a radical fundamentalist Christian.

Maybe I need to start listening to my iPod in the car.

Comments

[emalia.livejournal.com]

I think that I am going to start doing that as soon as I have one... ;)

But I also feel that we have more and more taken from us and that the only way to be is a Christian Fundie.. It is horrible, that we preach and preach about being religiously tolerant, but yet I have the same rights and privledges as a Christian Fundie...

[nytcrie.livejournal.com]

We may have started out religiously free (research the theological beliefs of the various founding fathers and Framers), but somewhere along the line our people lost sight of that and let the Christians get a stranglehold on our government. Sadly, with all that has transpired over the past 100+ years there is no easy way to get things back on track short of a massive revolution...which may only compound the problem.

Speaking of revolution, isn't it interesting that when framing the Constitution, many of the rights (including the Right to bear arms) that we were given had the pretense that if the government ever became corrupt, deviated from it's purpose of serving the people, or in any way turned into something more than it was supposed to be that the people were expected to rebell and seize control? My how things have changed, and our fat, lazy attitudes have allowed it to go on and on until one day we collectively woke up and said "What the hell?"

I often wonder if it's too late or if there is some way to press the reset button.

[smileitsme.livejournal.com]

I think I need to watch 'Foot Loose' again.

[deathwardegg.livejournal.com]

I am SO sorry to point this out, but "whence" already means "from where." [braces for kick to delicate area]

Signed, Can't See The Forest For The Trees

But seriously, I know things are bad, but what can a normal citizen do? We are both of the age where you may remember, as a child, seeing Cronkite, B-52s, and body bags every night on CBS... to paraphrase a famous Vietnam-era comment, perhaps "we have to destroy the country in order to save it"!! (Where's the modern equivalent of that footage? Oh yeah, it was banned, in direct contravention of the First Amendment!)

In any case, I didn't vote for President Incompetent (see: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=271).

Aside from always voting correctly in every election; writing frequent letters to my representatives and senators (both state and federal); and going to the near-weekly anti-war protests here in the Capitol, there's not much more I can do. And since I dislike being needlessly dysphoric, and I subscribe to the philosopher/critic and author Umberto Eco's notion of "news chatter", I don't watch or listen to the "news".

Obviously, I don't advocate apathy or non-participation, but I don't keep up with the news, and I feel better for it. Trust in George (the iPod, not the Bush)!!!