People ask, why do so many people not vote?
I can watch my own reactions and see the process happening.
First comes not being able to listen. Not hearing or even seeing things right. And tuning out people who just keep blah-blah-blah the same things. There's a certain irony as you see they are doing the same thing to you, and they think it's you that is the problem. It's always the other side that is the problem. Both sides think the other side that is the problem. And I do too. (If I could say one thing and be heard, it's that it's not the other side. It's the process. We're ignoring and neglecting what we know to be right about the right way to do things.)
But that just means I, like everyone else, have one more opinion nobody else wants to hear. (It's not the process. It's not that people don't listen. It's those damned Republican thugs. It's those damned stupid apathetic voters. Blah blah blah blah blah.)
It's the Sarah Palin thing that broke me. I could almost feel the snap as it happened.
People who say they care so much about issues, about what's real and what's important - why are such people focused on the evils of the people who are fixated on Sarah Palin's baby? Don't they see that's just the same, "only backwards and in high heels"? Arguments about what's wrong with the idea of attacking Sarah Palin's teenaged daughter are as futile and as brain-numbing and as distracting as arguments attacking the daughter. Either way, you're feeding the wrong wolf*
I find I can't listen. I literally can't read, can't hear - comprehension stops functioning. I just check messages to see, is there anything relevant to me in this, and when there isn't - I get angry. I am impatient, frustrated, impotent. I find my own unlistened-to fury more interesting than the official talking points being handed down.
I am sick of Democrats and especially disgusted with liberals, who say they want to change the world but they want to do it from their armchair. I really almost want to see the Democratic party go down in flames. Nothing else will get the point home: the Democratic party needs to attend to its own errors and flaws. It isn't a matter of how discredited the Republicans are. It's a matter of simply offering something better. The Democrats will ride to victory as soon as they start responding to feedback - but what is it going to take to make the party stop attacking the people who are trying to talk to them?
Apathy is the only form of feedback you can give a system that isn't accepting feedback. When everyone stops trying to talk to you, you know you have a communication issue on your hands.
I know that Republicans are manipulating perceptions - and the goal is to alienate people from the Democratic party - but I can't make myself care. I want to - I want to be strategic, but my brain feels like it is shutting down. And ultimately I don't know that this is my fault. I suspect it's the party's fault. Dammit, when is the Democratic party going to stand up and take responsibility for its own outcome?
I can't listen to the latest round of gossip about something that is, in the end, totally and breathtakingly irrelevant. Of course, most is everything else that this election has been irrelevant. And yet, the funny thing is, this election is more about issues than any election in recent memory. After this election is over, I fully expect that the worst, least workable Democratic issues will be discredited and open for a real discussion - and the Democratic party will either purge its whiners and get can-do types, or it will die.
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*from the anecdote about an old man and a boy watching two wolves fighting - we are supposed to understand that one represents hate and the other hope (or insert any two characteristics you like) - and the boy asks the old man, which one will win? and the old man says the one you feed.
Which is a stupid story because you don't feed wolves while they are fighting. Not unless you want to lose a hand. But everyone gets the idea.
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My sympathies. I'm having a hard time with people, many of them women, who are so offended by the sexism directed against Hillary and her supporters and now directed at the Palin soap opera that they are looking forward to electing the "reformers" McCain/Palin. They see Palin as a breath of fresh air, a gutsy fighter taking on corruption in her own party.
I spent the day over at mudflats.wordpress.com, an Alaska blog, reading up on her. She’s an awful person — born again and pushy about it (approved by a committee of the Christian Far Right), ruthless, secretive, corrupt, vindictive, a practitioner of government by crony. A real Republican. And provincial to boot. (Not a slur against small towns -- she thinks if the Pledge of Allegiance was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it's good enough for her.)
If you try to warn people not to fall in love with her, you get called an Obamacan. I was accused of trying to tell people how they should vote.
It will be interesting to see if, starting next week, the media cover the Obama bombshells-in-waiting. If the media stay mum, the powers that be will install Obama and use all the dirt to keep him in line.
How will Obama accommodate his coalition of leftists, speculators, and profiteers? Oh irony -- the leftists took the conservative lesson to heart and over decades organized to take over the Democratic party. Yet there's big money supporting Obama, and an influx of homeless Republicans and libertarians. Is this like big money financing the Russian Communists or Hitler? I guess he'll pay off the leftists and obey the money men. Maybe the leftists will shoot it out with the libertarians?
It's fascinating how much is coming out into the open. We actually got to see the roll call vote shut down because Hillary could have won it. That means at least half the party isn't on board with the new regime.
"But that just means I, like everyone else, have one more opinion nobody else wants to hear." No, I want to hear it -- very much.
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