Has anyone else had the creepy feeling that things aren't

"right" and something is going to happen? I was watching people shop today and nothing feels like it did before the election.It is almost as though there is a difference in the air, and nothing is as it appears. It is as though everyone is only going through the motions of life while waiting for something. It is just a weird feeling.

It's going around.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2753724

I think things will be pretty sedate until right after Inauguration Day.

Remember, the Iraqi vote comes up on 1/30; and if this winter is supposed to be severe as several meteorologists are predicting, there could be fuel oil supply problems as well.

--p!

it's just me. I also noticed that traffic was way down for that Saturday after Thanksgiving or any Saturday for that matter

we are taking baby steps

As to something gonna happen, there is electricity in the air, and not necesarily the good kind... but it needs focusing

We had dinner with a mix of Reps and Dems. It was really weird. It was like the Reps didn't want to talk to us because they thought we were going to lose it, and the Dems didn't want to talk because we thought we might lose it! We just walked on eggshells and as soon as some of the Dems were alone we talked about what was going on, and what we could do, etc. The Reps were just talking about the usual stupid shit. Towards the end though we were getting pretty bold with some of our comments. It was the weirdest Thanksgiving I have ever had.

and now, according to the crappy news outlets, it's better than ever? I'm heralding "10%" shopping this year when it was less than 5% last year? What's going on w/that?

We are not shopping more than last year. We are shopping minimum consumption. Just please the little ones, and even them not as much, this Christmas. We are Starving The Beast, We are Out of The Stock Market, We are conserving gasoline in an attempt to reduce our usage by 10%, and when I say "we" I mean, "many". So, the media whores have to counter with propaganda. They lie, as usual. Spending will not be up, even if they say it is. They also say our economy is recovering. You seen any new jobs lately? Me neither. They lie like rugs.

here is a link of the people who were naughty and nice. find out who to avoid and who to patronize. http://www.followthemoney.org and spread this link to everyone you know and post as many times as you can. we all have to learn who our enemies are and help our friends

I have been feeling the same way. It could be that I am all "verklempt" over the "results" of this "election". I am pretty sure that many "blue" votes did not count. I believe that everyone involved in this election fraud should be tried and hung for treason, but I also know that will never happen. There is a level of "disgruntledness" (I know that is not a word - but) among people that I have never seen before, kind of like a brewing angst. I thought I was the only one who noticed.

noticed, you wouldn't be here. Welcome, KW! :hi:

everyone except the top neocons know that things are going to get out of control this winter.

No one I speak with seems to get how bad it's going to be. They're all in denial. I feel like I'm the only one awake, which is why I love to come here. This is home.

when I talk to him about these things. Glad I can come here.

I feel like crying, too. But I refuse to.

You have to remember there are 50% of us out there who don't believe in all of this stuff - and we can grab ahold by force if we have to. And we may have to. 50% makes a pretty big crowd camped out in the streets. I did it during Viet Nam and I can do it again. But with a warmer sleeping bag.

This feels like a crying time, but I'm all dried up. I feel like somekind of emotional defective, crying is called for, but I can't release. The emotional release for myself, the tears for the world.

Now, go back to sleep before you get hurt.

but it's way, way, way too late for me to go back to sleep.

I was just kidding.

I would never seriously suggest that . Good to see the awake rise up.

Cheers!

don't we?

but you are far better off chemically unaltered enought that you can see and feel the revolution begin!
:hippie:

Oh sure, they are suspect about the election, but they too, have simply gone back to acquiring things & seem happy to wait till 2008.

I'd feel like a drop in the ocean if I didn't have DU to come to!

that we're living a lie.

Now that the drunken brawl of the election is over, we're all sobering up and realizing we're out here on the thin ice...and it's cracking.

Bad vibes. Job security/outlook out the window, war, national debt out of control, dishearting leadership. Not much of a rosy future in sight for so many people.

and we lost sight of what was being lost.

Now we are in the shit. And it stinks.

Actually, I have had this sensation of standing in the quiet eye of a horrible storm since well before the election. Now, I sense the storm will begin to move and that quiet eye along with it.

I've settled upon my sensation as simply a form of cognitive dissonance and unusually high uncertainty about the near future. Nevertheless, I know many people who suffer from such an experience as well.

it's a doozy.

I like that "drunken brawl", that is exactly what it felt like.

this country just got hijacked by a bunch of fascist gangsters who are not going to give up power unless it's pried from their cold, dead hands.

That's what you're smelling. You're smelling the death of democracy in America.

It's like what everybody said after 9/11. "EVERYTHING JUST CHANGED."

“Recent events have proved that the paper money system of this country may be used as an engine to undermine your free institutions; and that those who desire to engross all power in the hands of the few and to govern by corruption or force are aware of its power and prepared to employ it.” He then goes on to tell us, “We are not left to conjecture how the moneyed power, thus organized and with such a weapon in its hands, would be likely to use it. The distress and alarm which pervaded and agitated the whole country when the Bank of the United States waged war upon the people in order to compel them to submit to its demands cannot yet be forgotten. The ruthless and unsparing temper with which whole cities and communities were oppressed, individuals impoverished and ruined, and a scene of cheerful prosperity suddenly changed into one of gloom and despondency ought to be indelibly impressed on the memory of the people of the United States. If such was its power in a time of peace, what would it not have been in a season of war with an enemy at your doors? No nation but the freemen of the United States could have come out victorious from such a contest; yet, if you had not conquered, the Government would have passed from the hands of the many to the hands of the few; this organized money power, from its secret conclave, would have dictated the choice of your highest officers and compelled you to make peace or war as best suited their own wishes. The forms of your government might, for a time, have remained; but its living spirit would have departed from it.”
Andrew Jackson

get worse from here.

about the Ukraine results did it for me. It's just so unreal that it's hard for my head to get a full grasp on it.

Let's just say I'm very glad DU and AAR exist.

things he has said. How poignant would it be for us to just get together because we can't stand this guy? Again, it's difficult because the USA is so big, bold, disbeliving, apathetic? But the Ukraine ROCKS because their hearts lead them, and it worked! What they did would have been very difficult to do here in the US. But they rock!

i try not to listen when the chimp speaks, but please tell me, what stunning remarks did he make?

This is pretty interesting because this not the only thread where someone has noticed a difference in the "atmosphere."

Just for the helluvit, I decided to watch a little CNN yesterday morning. I haven't watched it for a long time--since the elections of 2002, to be exact. I have, however, watched the comments about it at DU.

My reason for watching was to see to what degree they would be spinning post-TG shopping. I said, "Let's see if CNN has turned into the equivalent of a suburban shopper rag."

I was actually aghast at what I saw. It was back-to-back stupid stories and smiley talk about shopping. It went on for hours! The only break was a video clip of somebody smashing through a convenience store. Other than that, it was praise the glory of shopping, shoppers are knocking each over at the stores, oh isn't that funny how Americans are streaming to the malls and the oh-so-helpful stories about online shopping.

Fellow DU-ers, I have seen some sickening things over the past four years but I have to say, this was right up at the top. The freaking dollar is sliding, we have criminals in charge of our government for another four years and we are killing anything that moves in Iraq. Yet another election was stolen and yet we have babbling fools singing the glory of mall shopping.

This is such a sick country. I just don't see how much longer we can live in this world of lies, lies, lies.


Cher

How just ..... insane, and I mean truly "insane" ... it is when you watch it again.

The reporters look insane, the "stories" are insane, the banter is insane.

I dumped cable in 1998. Haven't seen a minute of CNN since then until I flipped on the TV in a hotel room looking for a weather forcast...I was horrified by what I saw. Everything looks like a spoof of TV news..Like the Simpsons have always been one tiny step ahead of reality.

But recently I was stuck in an airport lounge, and the TV was blaring with one of those crappy cable "news" channels. I just wanted to grab a brick and throw it at the cathode image of the idiot posing as a journalist

INSANE!! I tried to watch a little bit yesterday and I almost puked. Never again...

please everyone, if we even cut our gasoline consumption just 10%, just that would hurt the chimp most painfully. Do not "Be a Good Consumer Now!". We also vote with our money. Starve The Beast in every way you can think of, please, please. Honor "Buy Nothing Day"!!! Stay out of the stock market. IRAs, SEPs and ROTHs can easily be transferred to bank savings acounts without disturbing their tax status. BushBuddies are keeping the stock market inflated for now but they will be fleecing it soon. It's easy to artificially inflate the stock market when Bush&Company together controls billions, and then sell off at the artifically inflated prices. Consume as little as possible, Christmas this year is for babies. We must all become growers of food. Get a laying hen or a duck for your backyard. Plant some food this year if you can, a vegatable garden, or an apple tree. Share tomatoes with your neighbors and take their extra apples. If you so much as grow a hanging strawberry plant above your kitchen sink, then, when you eat those strawberrys, feel victory, for you are Starving The Beast.

public transportation - done 2 years ago. My car died, and it is so much cheaper.

change my 401k - moving it all to the Euro.

Holiday Shopping - what's that? Oh, that one day After X-mas when you get the best deals for the least $.

Survival skills - bone up on apartment gardening, check out the local co-ops, stay on DU 24-7 to keep my sanity!

thanks quys :*

I'm committed to starving the beast.
Converted SEP $ to foreign bonds and gold, but didn't know it could be transferred out. Don't trust Fidelity with my retirement when the big crash hits.

Just today, thought of gift wrapping a stack of gold coins for my wife's Xmas present ... maybe a small personal present too.

I was told I would have to take a huge hit on taxes. I think 10% and will have to pay bank fees. I'm doing it anyway, but what am I missing out on?

VISA is the new god!

So much Crap,so little insentive to own said Crap

and I watched just enough of an interview by some blond airhead of Oliver Stone about his movie "Alexander."

We quickly changed channels in disgust when she asked Stone about similarities between Alexander the Great and *.

I knew better than to turn on CNN, even for an interview with an accomplished film director about his work on a historically acclaimed General and Conquerer of the known world. But Mom wanted to see what they were talking about.

We railed about that question for hours. :mad: :puke: :eyes:

By the way, Stone artfully avoided comparing Alexander the Great and *.

but I was "forced" over the Holiday because "my bedroom" was on the sofa in front of the large flat screen television. We were in the middle of Nowhere, CT and every other room was occupied.

Anyway, I just wanted to go insane after seeing what passes for "entertainment" and "news" these days. I really couldn't believe people took this shit seriously. Between "reality" TV and the idiot news networks who were pushing the idea that if you had any sense at all, you would be lined up in front of a store at 5:00am on "Black Friday", I felt like my own personal reality had been turned upon it's head.

All of what the hypnotized know as reality is a huge, epic LIE. It's so Orwellian, it's just a shock to the system to those of us who resist the propaganda. I have spent the entire weekend just recovering from exposure to this insane bullshit.

Donovan
» Season Of The Witch

When I look out my window,
Many sights to see.
And when I look in my window,
So many different people to be
That it's strange, so strange.
You've got to pick up every stitch,
You've got to pick up every stitch,
You've got to pick up every stitch,
Mm, must be the season of the witch,
Must be the season of the witch, yeah,
Must be the season of the witch.
When I look over my shoulder,
What do you think I see ?
Some other cat looking over
His shoulder at me
And he's strange, sure he's strange.
You've got to pick up every stitch,
You've got to pick up every stitch,
Beatniks are out to make it rich,
Oh no, must be the season of the witch,
Must be the season of the witch, yeah,
Must be the season of the witch.
You've got to pick up every stitch,
The rabbits running in the ditch,
Beatniks are out to make it rich,
Oh no, must be the season of the witch,
Must be the season of the witch,
Must be the season of the witch.
When I look.
When I look out my window,
What do you think I see ?
And when I look in my window,
So many different people to be
It's strange, sure it's strange.
You've got to pick up every stitch,
You've got to pick up every stitch,
The rabbits running in the ditch,
Oh no, must be the season of the witch,
Must be the season of the witch, yeah,
Must be the season of the witch.
When I look, when I look out my window...

we are virtually all left of the left. And if it harm none, do as thou wilt.

n/t

AKA a "financial institution" and you would think that they'd be all smiles after Nov. 2nd and their Boy King's "Victory"-but I've never seen such long, glum faces in my life. The atmosphere is positively funereal. Bizzare in the extreme.

If Kerry had been elected, can you imagine the happiness of all of us who voted for him? There would be a mood shift in a positive direction, I am sure of that. So, what is up with the repug gloom? Keep in mind they voted out of fear - of terrorism, change, the unknown . . . not a happy group, in general.

I even had one or two admit to me that they thought their boy was toast, that Kerry was going to win in a landslide. And they would have been correct, except for the stealing of yet another election.

Oh, there was jubilation among the Pugs on the Morning After, but it has seemed to wear off unusually quickly. Your observation is dead on, muse: they just don't seem as happy as they should, somehow.

:freak:
dbt

even the repugs know shrub really lost. they are not dancing in the streets because they are very anxious, afraid people will notice.

in with them what we already know?

That * didn't really win the election? That is was stolen again and they realize that our democracy is gone?

I would think there are a lot of Repugs who honor and cherish our Constitution, too; and they are putting that above party loyalty. A few of them, surely.

the economy, and the currency are a mess and getting worse by the day. Frankly, these problems would have taken down Kerry's administration too, as they were too deeply rooted for him to solve, especially with a hostile Congress.

I think a lot of the Bush voters are not hardcore repugs, just ignorant, go-with-the-flow-don't-like-change idiots. I am acquainted with some people who voted for bush just because they're rednecks and that's what rednecks do, vote GOP. A lot of the people I know of who voted bush have never read a newspaper or watched the news a day in their life. If Kerry had won, they wouldn't really care or notice much, after all, NASCAR goes on.

The problem for us is that Karl Rove managed to harness the massive voting power of the ignorant. :puke:

I flipped over to CSPAN and listened to the callers while they waited for the speech. I was literally in a state of shock at that point, and something I will never forget is the callers they had on right before the concession. The stunned disbelief in the voices of the Kerry callers was very evident - they ALL sounded exactly how I felt. Many couldn't even get the words out to express themselves they were so aghast. But what REALLY sticks out in my mind were the Bush callers. Two of them were just retched, their voices dripping with hate... "I'm tired of the schools teaching that homosexuality is normal and well, Kerry just loves the gays" was a REAL call. Amazing. But the ones I will never forget were the ones that called in for Bush that sounded almost as dumbstruck as we were. It was almost like they had JUST realized what this all might mean. I remember one Bush caller immediately after the speech in particular that just sounded floored and commented that it was clear that Kerry cared deeply for America... like they had JUST DISCOVERED THIS. Call me crazy, but more than a couple of their voices dripped with regret.

I think I could draw two things from this - the hateful callers were indicative of who really wanted this, and of course they can't be too happy... their lives are based on hate. Others were finally realizing that the hateful ones held all the cards and were wondering what they got themselves into. As time has gone on and more and more people report this weird vibe, it seems widespread. It's very strange.

republicans in my orbit as well (I don't have repub friends, but various associates and family members are of that persuasion.) They were obnoxious and outspoken before the election. Now they all seem just as humbled as we do for some reason.

It's possible that they are realizing, now that they have "won the game", they will have to face the reality of the situation just like the rest of us. It was more important for them to not elect a "liberal" than it was to not elect someone who would take the entire country down with him. Idiots.

My husband the ultimate skeptic even feels it. He really wants to get the hell out of here. I'm like where are we going to go? I think I'm more nervous about the economy tanking then anything.

There is without a doubt in my mind- a HUGE shift
occuring.
Something much deeper than we see on the surface.
I have been digging out all sorts of books.
I can not recommend reading the Hopi Prophecies
enough right now- also Teilhard de Chardin's writing.
I feel that we are about to witness a chapter in the
history of the world that we can not begin to imagine.

It's funny, I have recently become calm about it rather
than upset. I also have noticed that I feel profound
love for absolute strangers lately; I feel compelled to
connect to humanity in a positive way at the most
unexpected moments.
Sort of like, I know we can not stop what is happening,
but the best way to get through it is through kindness
among ourselves.
Anyone else feeling this way?
BHN

and realizing that there is little one can do.

It's a detachment, a realization that whatever happens is gonna happen and there's not really a damn thing I can do about it.

I have to just hope that I and my loved ones don't end up victims of it.

And we can only pray that the world will ultimately be a better place after whatever catharsis occurs.

It ain't gonna be pretty, though. European unification never would have happened without World War II, and I think this is something along those lines.

We're about to enter a new age, like the late 1700's was the "age of revolution". I don't even know what this is gonna be, but it's a biggie.

I'm not flaming, I'm being honest. When I see a car with a Bush/Cheney sticker, I want to ram them into a wall. I wouldn't, I live in Jersey with the highest insurance rates imaginable. I get so angry, that's what gives me road rage.

in a parking ramp the other day.

I got out of my car, closed the door, walked to the back of my car, and there was this "W" staring at me. I only thought about it for a minute, then I pulled it off.

Sigh! Now I'm a criminal, or at least a Vandal. Darn, and I wanted to be a Goth.

that old Buffalo Springfield song:

Somethings happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear...

Yes, I agree all indications are that it's time for humans to either shit or get off the pot.

Christianity predicted the second coming of Christ, but the fundies got it all wrong. Christ is not coming back has the man from Galilee. The second coming is about all of us discovering the Christ within us. We are the second coming. That is probably why you are feeling the way you do?

The following are excerpts from a speech
delivered by Hopi Elder Thomas Banyacya-

"For many years there has been great fear and danger of
World War Three. The Hopi believe the Persian Gulf War was
the beginning of World War Three but it was stopped and
the worst weapons of destruction were not used. This is now
a time to weigh the choices for our future. We do have a
choice. If you, the nations of this Earth, create another great
war, the Hopi believe we humans will burn ourselves to
death with ashes. That's why the spiritual Elders stress
strongly that the United Nations fully open the door for
native spiritual leaders as soon as possible."

"Nature, the First People and the spirit of our ancestors are
giving you loud warnings. Today, December 10, 1992, you
see increasing floods, more damaging hurricanes, hail
storms, climate changes and earthquakes as our
prophesies said would come. Even animals and birds are
warning us with strange change in their behavior such as
the beaching of whales. Why do animals act like they know
about the earth's problems and most humans act like they
know nothing? If we humans do not wake up to the
warnings, the great purification will come to destroy this
world just as the previous worlds were destroyed."

"This rock drawing shows part of the Hopi prophecy. There
are two paths. The first with technology but separate from
natural and spiritual law leads to these jagged lines
representing chaos. The lower path is one that remains in
harmony with natural law. Here we see a line that
represents a choice like a bridge joining the paths. If we
return to spiritual harmony and live from our hearts, we can
experience a paradise in this world. If we continue only on
this upper path, we will come to destruction.

Its up to all of us, as children of Mother Earth, to clean up
this mess before it's too late."
Entire text of speech here:
http://www.welcomehome.org/rainbow/prophecy/hopi.html

Of the two paths, I think we are on the one to chaos.
I think that is what many are sensing, and thus the
unification of so many hearts and minds to find harmony.
I think people who are even mildly aware are hearing the
message to promote the qualities of the low path.

BHN

hope not *sigh*

I think maybe we have-
More beached whales and dolphins in Australia...
Mining company in Indonesia poisoning people and fish...
Rayethon announcing new weaponry; no humans required...
Not lokking good at all when stacked next to the
Hopi Prochecy Rock.
Seems we have taken the path to chaos and a purge.
Live from your heart, as the Hopi say.
Don't give in to the darkness even as it
surrounds us.
bhn

I am almost finished with this incredibly moving book. He discusses Young Cultures (competitive, dominating) vs Older Cultures (cooperative, sharing) & how every Young Culture evenutally always comes to an end -- & generally not in a good way. I think we are on the brink of coming to a cataclysmic end. We either change our dominating ways & start sharing & cooperating with the rest of the world or our dominating ways will be our demise.

It's been an incredible read. I highly recommend it!

One that people in America, on a ll sides, are reluctant to recognize. This country is subject to the same dynamics as any other, and our chosen path has taken us well on our way to the point of reckoning you describe.

I'm crying...and you are right. I have not been religious since I was a child, and I have been very sceptical about everything I was taught in Sunday school all through my childhood....but I had to dig deep to discover what MY values were during this election...and I, without a doubt, know what I care about and value. It's what being a Liberal is all about...LOVE

Kindness has the power to change a culture. It is a revolutionary tool.

Yes, I am noticing a shift of something, as are a few of my friends. None of us are clear about how this shift is going to manifest or work itself out, but we can all feel the change.

I don't think it's going to be pretty.

,...and, yes, my need to reach out to others has grown rather than diminished.

My description of the experience is/has been,...it's like standing in the quiet eye of a terrible storm. I suppose there is a part of me that must acknowledge the only way through such a storm,...is by surviving it, together.

everyone is waiting for someone to make a move. I mean, the protests in Ukraine seem to be having an effect over here. So, you get the standard line from BushCo about being 'concerned' about election fraud. What a line of crap! It's as if the Ukraine has become an example about what will happen. If your a Repug, where do you stand? Do you come down on the side of state repression or the exercise of free speech and democratic process? I think that secretly their afraid that the same will happen here.

I feel the same way you do. I have been extra kind to people of late - even those I know are freeps because I know they are incapable of thinking for themselves. Since the election, I have felt different - I know we won and I know that eventually, Bushco will fall. The history of civilization deems it so; the hate and fear will not last. I am calm about it too - I believe karma will happen, even if it means it will get really bad before it gets better.

That we are in the midst of a great battle-
the deceptive power of the darkness is to
perpetuate and further hate and fear between people
because the only way it can be defeated is by unity
among hearts and minds for harmony.
He told me that by succumbing to the illusion the
darkness grows more powerful; that I must strive to
recognize ALL beings as my brothers and sisters-
plants, animals, people, all of creation.
It feels right to me and does not conflict with
my spiritual path as a Christian. Makes a helluva
a lot more sense to me as a Christian than the
churches I have been to lately.
BHN

And the "great battle" has been fought over and over since the beginning of time. The pendulum will swing and order will be restored or else life as we know it will be destroyed. Change happens, things will not remain as they are. I have accepted this.

http://www.christopharnold.com/articles/jca/Forgiveness.htm

It is amazing how the same truth appears
over and over in so many sources of ancient teaching.
This is my favorite line from that link, it is timeless and true
in every set of circumstance:
“Forgiveness,” he says, “is the only route from violence to healing.
It spares you the corrosion of hatred and gives you freedom again
to be at peace inside your own skin.”

I forgive the ignorant, for they too
"know not what they have done..."
They are about to find out and therefore God help them too.
BHN

BHN,
I've been lurking on DU ever since Black Tuesday, mostly reading the threads on election fraud, but I didn't feel any desire to post until I started reading this thread. It's such a relief to know that other people not only share my feeling of foreboding (actually a feeling of suspense, like waiting for the other shoe to drop), but also sense the very strange mood of the opposition. It's not at all what you'd expect from the "winning side." On another forum where I am a regular, there was some gloating but it was superficial and quickly dissipated. What is really odd is that just under the surface of all the usual flaming and insults, they actually seem to be begging us libs for help in digging the country out of the black hole *THEY* have created for all of us.

Re >>There is without a doubt in my mind- a HUGE shift
occuring.
Something much deeper than we see on the surface.
I have been digging out all sorts of books.
I can not recommend reading the Hopi Prophecies
enough right now- also Teilhard de Chardin's writing.
I feel that we are about to witness a chapter in the
history of the world that we can not begin to imagine.<<

When I read that, I remembered a kabbalistic saying that "every ascent is preceded by a descent." The "descent" is a mood of unexplainable depression the precedes a major spiritual illumination (the "ascent"). I would LIKE to believe that this is what's happening right now on a national or even a global scale, or to put it in Christian terms (not literalist), that we are experiencing the Second Coming, or the true beginning of the Messianic Age.

Again...I would LIKE to believe this. I know perfectly well that the opposite could also be true, and we're all depressed because our democracy has been stolen from us and we're witnessing the beginning of the new Dark Ages. But dammit--it CAN'T be! Why are there so many highly evolved beings in the world right now? Is it just so we can better articulate the death of civilization? Could God possibly play that kind of a sick joke on humanity?

I know it COULD be true, but I refuse to believe it.

--Linda

Beautiful post. I think that you may be right with the relevance of that quote. We have been locked into a slow downward slide for a long time. Now many are letting go and we are bottoming out. While it is painful right now, it may release the energy, imagination and creativity that was captured and bottled up in the resistance to and the denial of the decline. There could be a new spiritual rebirth right on the horizon.

I have been feeling a profound empathy for people I dont know.....I was so angry and sad and every other feeling we all were experiencing after the election, but I feel at peace since Thanksgiving...it's sort of strange.

seemed like sept 12. there was an aura of shock. it's like this country has been pumped up and inflated like the fake plastic turkey * presented his handpicked audience of troops last thanksgiving.

i don't know what's next . . . over the cliff? a miracle? i'm hoping for the second, or if not that, i'm hoping to get started working on the next american revolution -- WE THE PEOPLE!

I told my husband the morning after the election that I felt as bad as I did after the towers fell...it was that feeling of complete horror of knowing something horrible had happened that could not be undone.

We're not the only ones that feel it. I live deep in a red state and there is no joy here. None. Nobody is happy with the election and that smells very very bad.

that's what it is: nobody is happy with the results of the election. Not the Dems, certainly--we're devastated. But the Thugs also--it's not that a lot of them wanted Bush--they were scared into voting against Kerry. That is so, so, sad. If only they knew what they are going to miss not having him as their prez.

their guy is in?

"Nobody is happy with the election and that smells very very bad." ?????

Shouldn't I be seeing all smiles and happiness around me? (Being in a red state)

But I don't. I see apprehension. Tension. Depression. Anxiety. Dread.

I think that if even the common republicans aren't feeling happy about this election that something smells very bad indeed.

with my very conservative, baptist and rural family in NC. Normally we bicker about politics after dinner. I was sick to my stomach this year in anticipation of the conversation.

What struck me as so odd was that politics wasn't broached by my fam. Not even once. I was shocked. No gloating, nothing. Normally these people would have been high fiving over a republican win. Not this year.

You're right about something strange in the air. Errie is the best word that I have to descibe it.

boy who won.

people indeed went to the polls to vote him out only to see him "win" with 51% of the "vote" and then claim a mandate, what we are seeing is the aftershock of disappointment and rage.

this is going to sound strange, but about this time of year six years ago I was standing on a street corner at about 7:30 PM. Everyone was shopping, America was prosperous, but all of a sudden I had a flash of knowledge that within ten years everything would change and nothing would be as I knew it that evening in 1998. It was one of the clearest moments of my life. I can hear the truck passing by, I can smell the Burger King across the street...it was a moment like any other, but just then and there, I knew that sometime in the not too distant future it would be a moment that I somehow looked back upon with some great sense of longing, as if I would be asking myself "why didn't you learn to appreciate how easy your life was then"? When 9/11 happened, I knew that the "change" still wasn't here. Did anyone else feel that way?

back in 1997 or 1998. I was looking out of a window in the apartment where I was living at the time and I had a vision, as clear as day, of bombs falling on the buildings accross the street (which I've sinced learned house a defense contractor).

I remember all of the sudden having a very strong sense that I was witnessing America's dark future, and feeling enveloped in tragic emotions. I've replayed those images in my head from time to time ever since, because it isn't the type of thing that happens to me often. Just like you said, as traumatic as 9/11 was, it didn't match the severity of what I had sensed several years before.

I had the same kind of vision in 1998 or so. I was driving and had crested a hill on the freeway and I suddenly saw the buildings before me (office towers and hotels) looking like they had just been bombed. Windows smashed, girders falling, the highway torn up. It was a vision as clear as day. Then all of a sudden I saw the building as they were, intact and clean.

Could it be that some people had premonitions about the ruin of this country back then? I hope we're not right.

I had a premonition of war planes attacking Washington D.C. They weren't our war planes. I don't know whose they were.

I chalked it up to an active imagination on my part. But it was weird, it just hit me, it wasn't like I was having a fantasy or something, or a daydream. It was a jolting image suddenly in my head.

But the entire '90's had a feeling of "whistling past the graveyard." It just felt like it wouldn't last.

Even as late as last night. I once dreamed that I looked out my window and a massive fiery (nuclear) blast hit in the city (NYC, I live on LI) and the fire was coming at my house. It eventually did.

I had a dream that I was on the roof of a building with a couple coworkers and I saw missiles fly past us to the city.

Last night I dreampt that I was a soldier in front of my house. I was suddenly defending against some sort of foreign criminals. It was very weird. I had a helmet, machine gun and all. I was evenually backed into a corner and I shot the first person that came around. I was ready to fight the rest because I knew I was a dead man.

I Feel EXACTLY the same, what ever horror that I feel is coming has not happened yet. :(
I have felt this since 2000.

and to all those who have accepted the mark of this beast. it will not be the Rapture they invisioned, it will not be the fiery holocaust 'going out in a blaze of glory' that they wanted. afterwards it will be a sad upheavel rendering a once proud nation to the bitterest depths and left to wallow in its own putresence. it will be a stagnation of cataclysmic proportions rendering the 'fireworks' of the 'avenging Rapture Death Cult' to mere lonely flashes of fireflies, unable to attract even the most distracted attentions. we will become a marsh of internal rot, an air poisonous and still, a land corrupted and soft. we will become what the vainglorious who sided with the insane deride the most, pathetic and pitiable. the contempt they weilded as a weapon shall fall upon themselves for they shall be what they most despised. it is a fitting punishment -- for all the power weilded by the great proud nation, all the noise and flashing lights in the end would be ignored as irrelevant, the scene a lamentable warning in sad gatherings of still pools, the kingdom of cess. the whimpering aftermath of their folly will bring shame upon their memories for generations to come, that is why they react so depressed -- they are the living condemned, condemned with the knowledge of their actions, the coming injustice and warped transition is their robe and crown, to be 'great lords' of the worthless.

if it could be possible, one might be able to dredge up pity for the lost who ushered in this age of events.

between "Rapture Theory" and Jim Jones, and the people who thought aliens would come for them. Is this war our "kool-aid"?

And (a note for any passing Thumpers & Rapture Reptiles), there will be absolutely nothing cinematic or uplifting about it.

There won't be bright light and golden clouds and divine music. Instead, there will be closed health clinics and shortages of vaccines and spikes in deaths from preventable childhood illnesses. There will be abandoned cars on the roads, and burned shells of tractor-trailers, and corpses covered with flies that no one bothers to collect. There will be torn sheet metal, and flaring busted gas pipes and all the broken glass in the world.

No one is going to be vacuumed to heaven when God turns on the Holy Hoover. Instead, there will simply be come a day when the SS or pension check doesn't arrive, when the mail stops being delivered, when the car dealer can't get that part you need, and doesn't know when they can, and when the corner gas station goes from gas four days a week to gas two or three times a month. It will be a steady and irrevocable rise in police and fire response times, and a permanent shortage of all but seasonal vegetables and fruits at the nearest supermarket.

There will be no Anti-Christ leading the Legions of Darkness for the Final Battle against the invincible Legions of God. Instead, there will be legions of desperate, hungry and seriously pissed-off people from both inner cities and suburbs, armed, angry and not all that worried if you or everybody you know gets badly hurt in their search for food, drugs, medical supplies and gasoline.

It'll begin with potholes that no longer get fixed, sewer and water main breaks that run for days and weeks before being repaired, instead of hours. Then will come blackouts that take down substantial regions of the United States for days at a time. It will include official instructions and emergency laws and special legislative overrides as sweaty, greedy politicians try and flog their slow, saurian creation out of their self-created tar pit of corruption and sheer helplessness.

And above the smells and the screaming and the buzzing of the flies, CNN and MSNBC will broadcast endless tape loops of happy consumers flocking to the malls to enjoy their Christmas shopping and their consumer paradise, before discussing celebrity breakups and movie stars' drug rehab plans.

King Pyrrhos fought two or three battles against the Romans in southern Italy, winning each of them but losing so many soldiers each time that after the last one he famously said: "One more victory and I will lose the war." He withdrew back to Greece.

I think that's the Republican feeling right now: they prevailed one more time but all sense of having a future got lost in the process. They have all the official power but feel hopelessly vulnerable and out of excuses and almost out of political capital. So it's a wierd bravado going on that not many are buying and a struggle to distract themselves from the mire the country is in and they created.

In short, despite or because of the outcome of November 2: our side is exhausted but their side is ground down. We fell short in one more battle but are about to resume the war; they're considering whether to ask for an armistice and what terms are negotiable.

Explains the general malaise people feel.

'weird bravado' -- Yes! that's exactly it! and I would add its made weirder because there is so much paranoiaalong with it

The reason the repugs seem so glum is they are realizing that they have just been hosed by the neo-cons. I've felt for a long time that as soon as the neo-cons get a bigger grasp of this country they'll throw the republicans to the wayside like they have done with us. I also feel that a depression is coming and if you have any money in stocks I'd think about pulling out and parking the money on the side lines.

I spoke with my best friend tonight. He voted for Bush and we talked for 6 hours after the election and I was depressed ever since because I felt like I would never reach him.It is odd because he is very bright and compassionate and we see everything the same way except for this business of interpreting our faith to mean voting for Bush. We had the ultimate left wing Christian versus right wing Christian discussion ever in history I think, very intense, hour after hour. I made no headway with any of my points about the administration. We didn't argue, just talked and both of us were committed to reaching an understanding, but we never did that night - not even close.

Tonight I decided to call him. He said he had been doing some research on some of the points I had made (!!??) and was convinced now that the Bush administration had conned the Christian community and stolen the election and was seizing control of our government and would destroy the country if not the world. I was stunned, because there was no hint from our earlier conversation that he was giving anything I said any credence whatsoever.

I should feel wonderful about that, and while I am relieved that we reached an understanding, the truth of the situation really hit home as we were comparing notes from the two different political perspectives and arriving at the same conclusions. I think as long as he was taking the opposite point of view, it allowed me to hope a little bit that he was right, without realizing I was.

So I went to sleep, but had a dream, woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. I kept thinking about how odd everything seems now, and remembering back to when I first "saw" this all coming, in a sudden flash back in 1998 after hearing Bush speaking on the radio for the first time.

So I get up, turn the computer on, and here is the first thread I stumble on to.

Back in '99 I argued and argued with Dem friends that there was a big threat on the horizon, and that if the Dems ran the standard campaign it would be irrelevant and woefully inadequate to meet the challenge. They were convinced that it was politics as usual, just get out and work for Gore, and things would be fine. Something is different, I told them, I can't put my finger on it, but this is not your usual campaign and there is something much bigger afoot. Like what? they asked. I said "I dunno, think stolen elections, think war in the middle east, think police state, think violence here, think theocracy - something is up and anything can happen. Forces are gathering. This man is somehow the catalyst or the missing ingredient somehow to some dark scenario." So I think I know what Lorien and others felt back then.

I share practically everything others have said on this thread. I, too, have started feeling calm, BeHereNow, as you described. And saracat, I agree, nothing seems to be as it appears.

Something big is happening. Somehow my conversation with my friend was so much bigger than merely converting a Republican. I wasn't even trying to convert him, just reach him if I could, and I had no hopes that I would succeed. So while I feel satisfaction and relief, I don't feel joyful or triumphant as I would have I think a few weeks ago. I sort of wish that no one had to face this, and almost wished that he could go back to happy oblivion, know what I mean? He isn't doing any shopping or celebrating this holiday, and he said to me "the Ukrainians are in the streets fighting for their freedom. The Americans are in the malls looking for bargains. May God have mercy on us."

Because that was when I first saw him on TV on a Sunday morning show and I got that same feeling. I've noticed how others have mentioned 1998 also. When I saw him I knew this was a dark soul who would bring death and worse to our country.

There is definetly something going on that we can't see and yet I think it will bring us into a new era or beginning that will end this reign of terror.

And to all you freepers out there, it is not the rapture that is going to take place, so don't go and twist my words around. The story of the rapture is nothing but mythology at it's best. Get over it, it ain't gonna happen.

Dr_eldritch wrote a great post about the rapture mindset yesterday -

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2756660&mesg_id=2756675&page=

"the Ukrainians are in the streets fighting for their freedom. The Americans are in the malls looking for bargains. May God have mercy on us."

Or maybe disconnect is not the right word.

My nephew is in Iraq trying to stay alive. We wait for some word from him every day just to know he is still breathing.

Everything happening in my little world seems so meaningless compared to this. I feel helpless. It's like nobody cares that we have young people fighting a war they don't believe in...scared and just trying to stay alive. Noooooo, it's off to the mall to get that GREAT deal before someone else does. *sigh*

I think there is some sort of disconnection. It seems much broader and deeper than just as regards this election, or even to politics.

My prayers and best wishes are with you, your nephew, and your family.

Let's hope your friend gets the message out to others in his community.
It is never too late to wake people up.

He is very influential and active in the church and the community. And he will speak out. He is much calmer and more persuasive than I ever am. :-)

Another interesting thing he said - "I am almost hoping for the draft to start, because that might jar people into awareness. That might get them into the streets to protest. It will get me into the streets, that is for certain."

He is such an archetype conservative, cautious, meticulous and slow to change opinions on anything. I have to believe that if he can change, many, many can and will. I have sensed this for a while now. Certainly there are some people supporting Bush who are just over the top, and we see them the most. But I do think that there are a lot of decent, if naive and ill-informed or misled people over there who can be reached. That is why I hate to see the "fundie" and "repuke" talk.

at my place on Friday. My wife had the TV on one of the news channels and it was showing how all these shoppers trammeled over one another to 'get those bargains.' A lot of family were there and as we watched this stuff I stated mooing like all those people were cattle. Now, normally, this would bring a laugh from my otherwise comedic family, but, it just got really quiet. Too close to the awful truth, I suppose, or just a bad joke.

However, I thought it was really just me, because as a stay-at-home mom with maybe 1 friend that I talk to, I feel pretty isolated (long story). I'm waiting for the sword to fall (and take off someone's head). It just feels like we're waiting on something..and yes, I can't stand to watch the news.I really think that it is because, to repeat the obvious, many more people voted for Kerry than for Bush,and no one can believe the election was stolen. Ah, well. I alternate between depression and efforts to distract myself with fantasy novels. Go fig.

Welcome to DU. Perhaps you have been "brought" here for a very good reason?

Lately, I get a feeling right out of King's "The Stand;" the early part in which people begin having the same dream. I reckon bu$h is the Walking Man, myself.

:hi:
dbt

Yes, I think I was "guided" here;)SO good to find like-minded ppl. I like your analogy;)

That S. King feeling. I, like others here had that spooky feeling around the end of 98...couldn't put my finger on it though. That feeling morphed into the "up is down black is white" thing after 2000 that eventually led me here. Everything these criminals do is opposite of what they say...what is the opposite of the rapture?

He seemed so happy in a suppressed sort of way. His smirkls were evident daily.

Then, after 3 days and people saying "why hasn't he shown any emotion?", a craefully staged, crocodile tears photo op in whihc you could smell the onions.

A Stalinist moment if every I saw.

Greg Stillson in The Dead Zone.

After the election I kept thinking I was just out of touch with how Americans really are and that I was overestimating *'s ability to damage the US. Then I got a load of his first few weeks. Oy. I have also tried to distract myself with reading, exercise etc. but my mind always heads back to the politics. Thankfully my friend has the same views I do so I can at least vent with her.

I have been thinking about doing some volunteer work at the local early childhood center. When I drive by the front steps are always covered with teens with little munchkins and I would feel like I was doing some good encouraging good parenting and maybe effecting their future political views.

I am also sure their funding must have taken a hit with that budget bill that got passed so maybe they need some volunteers. I might *feel* a little better.

What part of the country are you in?

Greensboro area. My hubby is very supportive, but one cannot live by hubby alone;) I'm trying to get out more..thought about volunteering at the local soup kitchen this winter. How about you? Where are you?

which has likely saved my sanity. Unfortunately I haven't located a close/active democratic party group. I would have loved to have been involved locally in the Kerry campaign but the closest thing was 45 min away. That will also likely be a focus for me.. finding like minded people in the community. A challenge since I tend to be a hermit : )

My kids are both in school now so I do have some time to volunteer. How old are your munchkins? It is a challenge when you are the primary care giver to get out for these kinds of projects. I like your soup kitchen idea. The majority of non religious charities will be hurting these next years.

I'm glad your dh is supportive.. mine is a debater. This has led to some uncomfortable moments running up to the election. He has since shut up ;-) Might be because I am involved in the food prep and he has no tester..... joking!

I wish there was some active group out here too.
Too quiet. Thank Goodness for DU

I found Amherst is active but I wish something was closer to me. It is a relief to be able to come to DU daily!

"have also tried to distract myself with reading, exercise etc. but my mind always heads back to the politics."

What happened on 11/2 and that eerie feeling about the future is always there. Nothing I do to divert my attention works. The TV stays off, classical music fills the house which I am trying to de-clutter (another distraction), I take long walks enjoying nature (what remains of it), but a sadness, an inertia (paralyzing fear) about this nation bubbles up to the surface no matter what.

Didn't take a genius to figure out what was going to happen next after those buildings came down. Now they've got another four years to plunder the World. Nothing this regime does surprises me....

Anyone remember this huge event broadcast on Cspan? For a press secretary? Nah...they were laughing and carrying on. Dressed and all the Bushes there.....

Even the news had seemed to have slowed down. Something is in the air and I just can't quite put my finger on it. Sometimes I feel like the movie ground hog day.

I also feel disconnected from it all and very worried about my future and particularly my son's future.

I find myself looking at places, people & events and wondering how these things will look in a few years-I can't even imagine. I'm trying also to live for just today and not worry about the future much.

I really think the problem is here-perhaps we feel like there's no future? At least one we know.

For most of my life I have consistently heard a voice(not actual)to "PREPARE." For what I never knew. My life choices and circumstances have consistently ventured into areas that deal with rebellion and revolution. For those who are astrologically aware; Mars/Aquarius 5th, Uranus/Leo 11th opposed to Mars. I was even in the process of writing a novel about a central character that became popular at the grassroots level in this country spanning across all lines of party affiliation. He spoke plainly, honestly, admitted his faults fearlessly and publicly when they were being used to try and smear him and constantly kept those who would oppose him off balance. This made him hugely popular with common Americans and a power to be reckoned with. Predictably, the status-quo eliminates him and this becomes the spark for revolution and civil war. This novel was in three parts on an the overall theme called, "DAWN OF THE THIRD BROTHER, taken from a dream I had about the struggle for the scepter of worldly power between the descendants of the sons of Noah.
I know, just a dream, but such is how books are written. All my research went into the best way to carry out such a revolution. I had no idea that that voice of preparation was readying me for what is beginning to transpire around us today. So, the central slogan for this revolution? WHAT IF THEY HAD A SALE A NOBODY CAME?

I have never actually cried after my candidate lost an election until this year. I cried for days. It wasn't just one good cry to get it out of my system, it was much more than that. I think the people on this board are very perceptive, and can see through all the bullshit that many others don't. We know what's coming, and it isn't going to be good.

sorry they made you cry, QTPie, it is very sad. It wasn't really the loss of your candidate, was it? It was more like, the loss of your democracy. They made my little girl cry too, and she is pregnant, pregos shouldn't cry.

I think it's more the loss of the America I grew up with, and the America that I love. It saddens me to think of all the soldiers, including my father, who have fought for the freedom of this country over the years, only to have these fascists in power try to take it all away. They are a despicable group.

this is NOT the country I grew up in

She is in her sixties...

I said,this is not the country I took allegiance to.

her eight year old grand son just seemed surprised at the words from the adults...

Something's gonna give... and the other shoe WILL drop (is droping, slowly, but it is droping), It is like all is happening in SLOW MOTION

that's what I feel. I pray that I know when to get out.

(and even more so the people who don't have a community) will be targeted. They're preaching intolerance and hate in schools, in church... reading rise and fall of third reich - trying to get a grasp on "learning from history so we don't repeat it" ... a few years ago a man walked into the front of the coffee shop we were in (in West Hollywood) and was being harrassed by some bigots in the back. And he said, "you're in West Hollywood man, home of the 'f***ots'. Everyone here will get my back. (To us) Isn't that right?" and I remember we all looked up. Some of us said "fuck yeah". And others just looked down. Quietly three men got up and walked outside with the man who was being harrassed (they had his back)... I don't know why I'm saying all this and I don't know what happened in the parking lot. Just pissed me off that bigots came into my neighborhood and threatened someone. IN OUR FUCKING NEIGHBORHOOD! It's just been on my mind... The intolerance and hatred our government is spewing to the people. When is it time to fight and when is it time to leave. We are thinking the same thing... I have been in tears the last few days over this...

"Cass wants a U.S. Supreme Court that will outlaw abortion and gay marriage. "Do you want to take your children to a National League baseball game for instance and have homosexuals showing affection to one another? I don't want my kids to see that," he said."

full story

http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=280881&page=1

My question is how does a marriage ban translate to gays not showing affection in public?

these people want to go back to the very least, the repressed good ol days of the 1950s...

show affection in public. Its possible. That's sort of how its done in Iran.

so many of us sensed the handwriting on the wall--and when we lost the election, it was like our last escape was lost. When people said, "the most important election of our lifetimes", everyone knew instinctively what it meant.
I too cried for days. Now I'm like a condemned prisoner with a weird sense of calm waiting for the inevitable, whatever it happens to be. At first I just thought it was the emptiness left after the excitement of the campaign was gone, but it's more. It's truly a sense of doom--of something winding down, out of control.
I don't feel like celebrating Christmas at all this year, although I will probably make a feeble effort for the sake of the family.
Sorry if this depresses anyone--it's just the truth.

I feel for you. The truth is sometimes quite depressing, so don't worry about depressing us. It's more important that you share and I thank you for doing this.

I understand the "waiting for the inevitable". I share your sense of doom.

Because I disowned my family after the election. The disowning was a long time coming and they still don't think I'm serious. I want to leave the anger behind and go on, but I'm not doing a very good job of it.

I have been estranged from my siblings for years, but close to my parents (although the election took care of this too.) The deal was sealed when my siblings excluded me from the Power of Attorney for my parents in Oct., which I fought, and was included. However, going through this I realized they are permanently history. Someday I will hire a lawyer to deal with them. The election made things worse, as all of them voted for *. I guess I have to realize I have no immediate family, and just move forward. I won't be having Christmas, but it's ok. I am actually relieved I have a justifiable reason not to, this year. I think I have had one Christmas in the past ten years, so I am used to it.

My dad is not speaking to me (I'm middle aged, and he is a senior). We had a few nasty exchanges about the election, and he thinks I'm mentally incompetent or something. I blame right-wing talk radio for poisoning his mind into thinking that any Democrat is evil and insane. It's sad, but I've extended my olive branch, and if he won't respond there isn't much I can do.

Sorry to hear about your similar troubles. We really all want the same things, but have very different ideas about how to get them. It has a lot to do with staying faithful to your base--if you have been voting Republican for decades it's hard to switch, even if the candidate is the worst. And they did a good job lying about Kerry too. That is partly the Dem party's fault.

So yeah, I'm estranged with my radical religious right family right now, anyway. But I'm lucky to still have my husband's family who are sane--my 80 year old sweetie of a mother-in-law was for Kerry even before I was!

"Because I disowned my family after the election."

I feel like I can't stay sane and at the same time be spending a lot of people who are continually dismissing (my) reality, or be in situations where I can't tell what is going on. People are doing and saying the weirdest things, and they are acting sort of robotic.

I think that there is a real challenge here - many people, to one extent or another, suspect that there are "pod people" among us, but aren't sure who is and who isn't. Then they get the idea that someone might be from the most superficial clue, and start acting like a pod person themselves toward them, which causes the cycle of fear and mistrust to escalate. Does that make sense?

I am really struggling with this. I got very active and visible in Democratic politics in a very conservative area. Back last winter things went really haywire, with hate mail, calls and email. Many customers went sour on me. Looking back I realize that it was the Republican customers that suddenly went bonkers. I am so naive that it didn't occur to me at the time. Now I am reassessing all of my friendships, family relationships and business relationships. I finally disconnected completely, closed everything down and left.

You are not alone- not at all.
The Hopi shaman told me this is a time of profound choice.
You and I are both Christians; does this not sound familar
to another teaching found in Christian scripture?

I too, am separating the wheat from the chaff at the moment.
In this monumental time of our humanity, LOVE is the only way
to rise above the PROFOUND darkness that has gripped the planet.
The shaman told me there is no time to waste; that you must not
look behind only at what is true; that we are all part of
divine creation, brothers and sisters with all of the earth.
Very strange that you would mention the "robotic" and pod
people factor...my ex-sister-in-law, whom I had not spoken
to in years mentioned the very same.
I called her on Thanksgiving, my whole family shunned her
after she went nuts; (I believe now, that she suffered from
gulf war syndrome) spirit told me to call her.
Sure enough, she was alone and so very lonely.
so happy to hear from me.
Any way, she relayed her story, the one I had not
heard, about how the military tried to shut her up and how
she had fled in fear for her life...she kept referring to people
speaking, behaving robotically...so strange that you
would mention that. It was a long story, that at another
time I would have dismissed; not any more.
bhn

Really, I would love to call my mother and say, "Will you forgive me?" I did that last year around Christmas and here we are again. She hasn't changed, nor can I make her change. I know I have to be the one to change. Forgiving her over and over hasn't worked and I'm tired of dancing the middle line between fighting and acquiescing.

So, I just won't talk to her anymore. I have to make it clear to my brother, too. How do you tell your own family that you find their world view EVIL? Because I do. My mother and brother are real Republicans with a capital "R." They are greedy and selfish when it doesn't concern family. Neither of them are trustworthy even within the family when it comes to feelings.

My brother is an Ayn Rand-loving atheist and won't tell my mother.

My mother harbored a fugitive and didn't tell my brother. She made me swear to secrecy. The idiot--a real LA Crip--went back to LA and got himself shot 7 times. He lived through it and during the course of his recovery, my mother spent all of her time in LA. The criminal even lived with us for awhile and later, my mother tried to buy me off by taking me to DisneyLand and Universal Studios. With the Crip in the car, she drove past the spot where he was shot! I didn't want to be there!!!!

Also, my mother is religiously insane. Last October she called my counselor, hysterical. She had snooped into my life, found a poem I had written and concluded I must be demon-possessed. Really, that was the last straw until the December "kiss-and-make-up" fest.

God, I am so lonely. But being with them was so poisonous.

for many people who have divisions like the ones you describe with family members. There are no good answers, quite often, and so people do best by picking the "least bad" choices. There is an interesting book that I sometimes quote from on DU, called "Earth House Hold." It has a section about people who realized they had nothing in common with their families, and choose to get together with friends for holidays. It's sad that as many people have this issue as do.

have done the calling and apologizing even when I am not wrong. But it is just because I want to be part of a family so badly. But the price that I have paid is not worth it. I create a phony little world that doesn't last. The last altercation I had with my Aunt came as a result of trying to reach out to her. Sometimes it just isn't going to work. Sigh. I hope we both can find a way to survive the holidays! You keep your chin up, and remember you have more of an obligation to yourself and your sanity and peace of mind than you do to anyone else!

but for my sister is repuke, and delusionally so. oh they're so excited to finally have a MAN in the white house -- they fail to note that we've had 43 'men' before . . . some of them add to this irrational fanaticism the gasolina of x-tian fundamentalism.

yeah, i live in NC (red state) and usually travel to RI (blue state) to be with these fruitcakes. i've told 'em that i "just don't have it in me to make it" this year. fuck 'em (with love of course).

Ever since they stole it (again) and got away with it (again) and there was hardly a peep in the way of protest (again).

I used to be married to an abuser so this is a familiar feeling. Although on the surface I'm doing everything "right" there is a certainty that the axe is going to fall, and soon. The very air is thick with it. The whole country is like an abused spouse, controlled and abused by a sociopath and blamed for the damage he was "forced" to inflict on us to "help" us, and at the same time demanding unquestioning loyalty.

I think we're about to find out what the rest of the world has known for a long time.

Stockholm Syndrome on a societal scale.

"I think we're about to find out what the rest of the world has known for a long time."

where the little boy SCREAMS . . .

'THE EMPERIOR HAS NO CLOTHS!!!!!!'

a spell is broken, the whole crowd realizes the truth and a moment of silence is experienced where all present share a gasp for air . . .

am i remembering this correctly?

either way is it ugly . . . the realizaton that things a more fugged up then you realized . . . let's face it --- "W" is naked and we need to keep reminding ourselves and everybody that we see his naughty bits . . .

STOP AND AUDIT !!!!

The emperor's new clothes is my theme of the Chimp. I cannot believe that he hasn't been found out yet...

There's a pug that may have way more information and insight than we're accustomed to. His name is Matthew Simmons - his speeches are here: http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=msspeeches

He's an energy investment banker, and is saying in no uncertain terms that peak oil is very close, or maybe already here. He's briefed * twice (Perhaps remedial training. But I digress.). He is, in every sense, an insider.

But if Peak Oil is here, we're going to see a future that will scare the whatever out of us. Think a series of wars that will make Iraq look like small potatoes. Think of the death of billions due to starvation. Think of a depression that will make 1929 look like boom times.

And if Simmons is right, and Peak is here...well, things will really start to bite by 2008.

Google Peak Oil.

I'm a stay at home cripple, I get out maybe four times per month, I've given up on cable news, I'll watch the networks and local, but, it does seem awfully damn quiet.
One would expect to hear rejoicing reptiles dancing in the street, but I don't.
I still am having a hard time understanding how the democrats lost here, just down the road is a small city that has been raped to say the least since the first theft.
It's always been a solid democratic city, this year it went red, after losing 1000 jobs and much of it's manufacturing base, and a large decline in it's lifestyle, it has me scratching my head and wondering how.
I live next door to our middle school, and I've been wondering as I watch the kids go past how many of them are going to be drafted and aren't going to be around in just a few years.
I'm wondering also why is the democratic party being so damn quiet what the hell is going on, something is in the air.

since I'm generally a logical person, and what I'm feeling is hard to describe in logical terms. If I had access to the deep dark corners of my mind, it might be easier to put all the pieces together and make a compelling argument. But all I have is the sensation that I'm watching the country slide into insanity and ruin, and a sense of amazement that most of the people around me don't see it.

"I'm watching the country slide into insanity and ruin, and a sense of amazement that most of the people around me don't see it."

Massachusetts. It makes me very sad, cause this is our home - has been forever, but we can't recover from my husband being out of work for over a year and a half. My brothers are trying to talk us into continuing our financial struggle, because they believe Massachusetts is the best place to live and educate our kids. While I love it here (except for the cold), I'm very frightened about the situation we've found ourselves in these past few years. We went through all our savings, including 401k, and we are living literally paycheck to paycheck, with nothing leftover. And I know for a fact we're not the only ones. If I go elsewhere in the country, I can live debt free. Something makes me feel very frightened about having a lot of debt in the next few years. I feel like the you-know-what is going to hit the fan, and I don't want to lose everything. This administration scares me. If Kerry had been elected, I would have had hope for a future here, but now, I'm feeling a little desperate, frankly. And based on things he said during the campaign, I don't think this administration is going to work too hard for the recovery of the Massachusetts (evil gay marriage state) economy.
I hope I'm wrong, but like all of you, I'm feeling things and thinking in ways that 5 years ago I never would have dreamed of.
On a more positive note, my idea is to bring at least 2 more registered Democrats to Virginia! How's that for a plan!

Just mentioned it to my partner yesterday.

And it's not a good feeling.

What a distant memory of the hope that we all felt at the end of Clinton's last term, before that fateful December.

It's that syndrome. I notice that people are trying to convince themselves that things will be ok - but they have this "nagging" feeling that something horrible is going to happen. A sense of dread.

It's like how you sense that the phone is going to ring or you sense that a particular person is going to call you. Some people have greater levels of that sixth sense than others.

I'm numb! There is no way that * has a mojority. As a dem, you need to be even more underground. The people that hold the strings of power are not nice. I feel duped by the democratic party. How can Kerry have 45 million left and not put up a fight for the votes? The other minor parties and citizens are putting up a little fight.

It would be nice to just be able to open our eyes and see all of the darkness disappear.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/060804_coup_detat.html

There may be a massive battle going on behind the scenes with GWB the loser.

it started well before DCI and DDO resigned...

It has been ongoing since before Plame was exposed

Why do you think Goss is cleaning house wiht a political night of the long knives?

That said this is not over, and why I think Kerry has said zip, nada, et al, and why the small parties have taken the promiment role they have taken...

But things are stuck... I tell you stuck

And people NEED to learn to read the tea leaves, as Soviet Citizens knew how to

Oh and one more thing... just like the USSR and the East Block YOU are the media now

the powers that be waiting for the election, knowing that the election could change the dynamics of everything.

But now that it's over with (since Bush stole it), the whole thing is going down really fast.

I think that's what we're all sensing.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are some major revelations in the works before the coronation --oops I mean "inaugural"

I just hope the good guys win.

They have to.

Are there not any follow-ups? The site hasn't been updated. Now you've REALLY peaked my curiosity!

"It is as though everyone is only going through the motions of life while waiting for something." I was so sure that "Help was on the way." :-(

exploded on DU, overspent, and ate tons of junk food. (I'd be promiscuous but fortunately most people find me to be an intimidating freak of nature, so no problem there.)

Just be happy until the end comes, there is nothing we can do.

turmoil. I didn't think he could possibly win -- he was so dumb, and so unqualified. Yet... he did (not legitimately, but he took office). Then 9-11, and the investigation was so full of holes and so lacking that it was so clear that we weren't getting the whole story. Then the Iraq war -- we knew there were no WMD, we knew it would be a bloodbath, and no one listened.

It's been bizarro world, and I haven't relaxed in four years.

After 11-2, I couldn't believe we chose MORE of the SAME. Either they stole it and Democracy is over, or people chose to keep a criminal administration and a nose-diving economy. Which is worse??

The atmosphere is ELECTRIC wherever I go. It's obvious.

Something's going to happen.

my city (NYC - so much of it has to do w/ fear of what the election fallout will bring.) It's palpable, and my reaction has been to hole up inside my apartment to limit my exposure, as I am very sensitive to picking up the moods and vibes of others.

I talk on the phone w/ my friends who have noticed the same thing too. Everyone is edgy, abrasive, stressed and it's not just the holidays. Much worse than I have ever seen it. It's like there is this permanent black cloud hanging overhead that just won't go away, even when the sun is shining.

It's been this way since December 2000, but especially since a few weeks before 9-11.

So many of us saw something happening in 1998. For me, I was living in Atlanta with our second daughter on the way. 97 was an El Niño year with rain all autumn & through the winter. In April, the rain turned to tornados (!!!) which ripped through Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia including a huge one that took out my place of work in Norcross and another within 1/2 mile of my sister's house in Peachtree City. By mid May it turned into the hot, hot dog days of summer, the hottest of my 10 years down there.

Then me & the family enacted my plan to move back to New Jersey. We drove all day & slept in Shenandoah, arriving in New Jersey on the second day. Rented a house, started a new job, our daughter was born in November & we've been doing great ever since.

... except for two stolen elections, the terrorist attack, me turning to radically sensible protests in the streets, and turning into a born again hippie.

Now Georgia is in another world; no way I visit there anymore. Time to get out of remaining stocks & US dollars, buy gold & think about moving to Europe. Radical changes are afoot & now is not the time to sit still waiting for the ax to fall.

I call it my New World Order gun although it still has not been purchased.

I think it's just the knowledge of what a great many of the non-Bush voters think of them and their boy and hoping it's not true and they won't be proven wrong.

posted and the media changed and there was no real discourse anymore. That's when I started the World Media Watch. Over the last 3+ years I have been commenting to the Buzzies and others that something is going on worldwide. I try to group these stories together when they seem to surface together: the plight of journalists, the media crackdowns, the Putin-Bush parallel, and on and on.

After 3 years of doing this I am convinced (and have been convinced nearly the whole time) that there is some huge planetary karmic thing being played out all over the globe.

I cried over this election and am at ill at ease. It's relatively quiet now because the 2nd term hasn't started. But we are all getting the signals that all hell is about to break loose. The polls, for what they're worth, show the splits in the country and the sense that Bush will further divide us.

The country is very sick. It may very well have to die. So after the initial shock, I've become more calm but carry this great sense of anxiety beneath the surface. A cloudy day plunges me into a deep, dark place. I feel alienated. Enough to have begun once again dreaming of exiting this land somehow. It may be impossible, but my emotions are already trying to leave this place. It's the only way to survive. This feels like the same situation I felt when Reagan was in office, only now it's really coming back with far more of a vengeance. I was unhappy and nervous for all his 8 years in office. He started it....Bush 2 is ready to finish it.

There is a feeling of deep malaise here in The Netherlands too about the state of the world, the New Europe, the state of the country, the Islam in the West issue, etc....

I can only deduce that there is what you call some planetary karma thing playing out....I heard on a talk show tonight the proposition that this is pay-back time for all of the West's Emperialism and enslavement of the rest of the world in the last centuries....

And the Rightwing governments in the West who seem to be skirting Democracy to hold power are doing ALL that they can to hold on to this privileged position worldwide.

It won't work.

DemEx

If anything, the Left here feels energised, busy, buoyant. It's organising around cutting the Bush-Blair cord by ditching Mr Tony. The gloves are off. We know what we can expect from the US over the next few years, so we've refocused on home.

depressed (depends on the day) since 11/3. I think something will happen, either another terror strike, the economy falling apart like crazy, another war (Iran), that something very bad will happen.

Thank you for starting this thread- I would have started it myself except I am too new here.

Everything has changed- but so few people realize it.

I am planning to become a hippie. Get out of debt, consume as little as`I can. I love this beautiful blue-green planet we call home. I want to leave it intact for all the creatures that are here now and will be here in the future... if we don't destroy the planet first....

know what I mean?

If you know what I mean.

I'm glad that you started this thread. It's good to know I'm not alone. As a 'gay', I've been waking up with night terrors and panic attacks. Right now I don't want to go outside. I haven't for days. I don't want to meet with friends. I only want to stay with my partner.

I'm reponding to this new America with PSTD hypervigilance. Most of those around me are dissociating and denying, so it makes me a-- shall we say-- undesireable dinner guest.

I live in NYC, so I really should make the most of my resources and go interact with blue-city people who are active and trying to make a change. But I'm having a hard time leaving my apartment to get food, so...


Anyway, here's a little about UNHEIMLICH

****

http://courses.albion.edu/Archived_Fall2001/eng337diedr...

<snip>

"The German word "unheimlich" is considered untranslatable; our rough English equivalent, "uncanny," is itself difficult to define. Literally, it means "un-home-like," or unfamiliar; significantly, though, this word also contains the word "home-like" within it. Significant, because the uncanny is an experience whereby that which had or has been familiar becomes suddenly and inexplicably strange and alien.

"This indescribable quality is actually an integral part of our understanding of the uncanny experience, which is terrifying precisely because it can not be adequately explained. Rather than attempting a definition, most critics resort to describing the uncanny experience, usually by way of the dream-like visions of doubling and death that invariably seem to accompany it. These recurrent themes, which trigger our most primitive desires and fears, are the very hallmarks of Gothic fiction."

<snip>

The next ten years are going to be horrible. I've known that since 9-11. None of us may live through the coming storm. But let's start to think about what comes after. All the horrible "end of the world" scenarios that are flying around on DU won't truly end the world. Between Peak Oil, American Fascism, and Global Warning, you'd think the world was officially done for.

Nature doesn't work that way. No matter how hard we try, we are all a part of nature. We will learn to overcome these problems. After all, we as species that produced Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Ghandi, and Duke Ellington. In the most turbulent times, great sages come forth and leave quiet legacies that future generations look back on as reasons to go on. We must always remember this in the worst of times.

Quiet your mind, you will need it in the coming days. If you need help, go find some Buckminster Fuller. He'll show you the way out of this mess.

I think that one of the greatest tragedies of humankind is that we possess the capability to envision our potential, but sadly do not act upon it. We can conceive the idea of a society that prospers while meeting the basic needs of its most vulnerable, enact laws to ensure justice, and utilize reason instead of weapons to settle disputes. We are capable of seeking ways of being good stewards of our planet. And, it is possible to allow one another to live freely.
Instead, war rages, religious fundamentalism thrives (and will dominate the social agenda in our country for years to come), humans starve and die from lack of medical treatment, and our environment is in peril.
I had hope that a Kerry presidency would help keep the momentum in a forward direction. Instead, we are moving backwards.
One symptom of depression is lacking hope that things will get better. I have concluded that things will NOT get better. To get out of my depression over this, I'll have to accept this as being part of the reality of life. It is sad to lack hope for the future of one's country.

am mindful to know that when people I love and they have this year are dropping dead, that I will have the sense to get some reality to what exactly is happening and we can leave ! But go where? This thing is global and not only that, but what are we facing? It is a terrible thing to not even be sure who the enemy is from inside or outside.....We know there are terrorists but who is really behind all the terror? I am already wanting to do something...Like their is an evilness all around us and I pray but the answers are obscure and I am a believer. I just don't know what the morning light or the midnight hours bring here lately. Never did but could make it without so much isolation and depression. There seems to be no joy anywhere. It is eerie..Zombie like.

I took the family to Barnes and Noble today. We are not spending money this year for X-mas. I had previously mentioned boycotting corporate greed by not spending this X-mas to my kids but thought I'd take the coffee break time to really get their feelings on it. We all agreed it was the route to take this year. I was sitting next to another family, who was obviously listening to our conversation. The father noticed the two books I had sitting in front of me "American Dynasty" and "Bush Lies". He leaned over and whispered something in his wifes ear (all I caught was Bush) and then he looked right at me and winked! I was going to post this, but it works just fine here!

I live in a red state, but at least this time I felt like i wasn't the only one in the room that was anti-Bush.

And on Nov. 2nd we all saw the walls move in at us. No question. It wasn't paranoia or an optical illusion. The walls really moved.

WE ALL REALIZED THAT WE ARE ON A BULLSEYE FOR FASCISTS WITHOUT A PLAN.

He kept saying it but Kerry did NOT have the plan that we need to fight back against fascism.

We need that plan and NOW.

It was NOT about Armageddon or the End Times, etc. This is not one of those fundamentalist Christan churches, it's just a regular Christian church in Virginia.

His sermon was about how things can look so bad and so horrible and so chaotic but how you have to keep hope and keep working through it. He said he had talked to a WWII vet who said that times were bad during WWII but now times are worse than then. How will it end? How will things turn out?

Dread

I had a dream in July, 1999. It was the most vivid, terrifying dream I ever had.

I dreamt I was on a huge ship, like a cruise ship. The ship was filled with people, and it was nighttime, so they were all inside the ship having parties and doing all the fun stuff people do on vacation. I was outside, leaning over the rail, looking out over the dark water. It was almost like I was a ghost - I wasn't really a passenger on the ship, it was more like I was a watcher or an observer or something. I wasn't part of those people.

All of a sudden, I was stricken with this intense feeling of dread (akin to what I have been feeling lately), and I looked around to see what was happening, and I noticed a man standing on the deck of the ship with me. He was looking at the people inside. When I turned to look at him, he turned to look at me. He had no face. He was just all dark. Like he did have a human face, but I couldn't look at it or something. He was like the dark man in Stephen King novels - just exactly like that. I think I even thought that in the dream: "It's the dark man."

And even though I couldn't see his face, I knew he smiled at me. He wasn't there for me - he was there for the other people on the boat, but he wanted me to know about him. It was the most terrifying dream experience I ever had in my life. When he looked at me, it was like seeing something worse than death. Like death would have been preferable to him.

It scared the everliving shit out of me (forgive my French, but it's true). When I woke up, I was sitting up in bed, facing the wall behind me, and clawing at it in an attempt to get away. I frightened my SO at the time so badly that he couldn't go back to sleep the rest of the night. Neither of us could sleep after - we just stayed up smoking cigarettes until dawn. It was so emotionally taxing that I was literally ill the whole next day like I was hungover.

Five years later, I still remember it like it was yesterday. And I keep thinking about that dream since Nov 3 - several of my insomniac moments in the last few weeks have had me waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning with that dream kind of in the back of my mind again. I keep thinking about that dream and wondering if it was some kind of horrible premonition.

the economy -- China and Japan finance around 80 percent of our debt (I think)and if they stop buying -- what then?? also retail space in the U.S. seems significantly overbuilt to me, housing prices in most major cities mean that the majority of Americans who buy homes are only servicing interest and a significant portion of them have adjustable rate mortgages, a significant majority of Americans have little to no health care, a significant majority of Americans live from paycheck to paycheck and we are not talking luxury buying here...and then we have a 158 billion dollar war going on with little end in sight. I mean if anyone can balance a bank account it seems pretty clear to me. Add to that a majority of the worlds biological and natural resources are non-existent or degraded beyond comeback ... Not trying to sound like a doomsayer or something but anyone with any real sense can see there are real problems here no premonitions needed!

because today I was thinking the very same thing. I have this feeling that all hell will break loose after the first of the year. For some reason today I was dreading the thought of the spring. It makes me want to keep my kids inside-next to me--as well as my cats.

The really scarey part of all of this is I get the feeling that whatever happens will be out of Bush's hands too. I don't just feel that it will be his policies that run us in the ground, but the greed from them. It's almost like a supernatural purge is the works and no one can stop it now.

The environment needs to fight back. There are too many people and too much damage.

The economy is ready for a massive correction. It has been intentionally mismanaged for too long. It will right itself sooner or later. It appears as sooner, but we'll see.

PEAK OIL!!! The key to it all. The consequences range from hurt markets and inflation to over 3 billion dead in the die off.

GET OUT AND GET THE MESSAGE OUT LIKE MADSEN SAYS.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? WE NEED A KIEV!!!!

GET IN THE STREETS...PASS OUT FLYERS.

FOR GOD'S SAKE THERE ARE TONS OF CARS IN PARKING LOTS AROUND MALLS YOU CAN STICK FLYERS ON.

THERE ARE REPRESENTATIVES ON BREAK. CONTACT THEM AND GET PRESSURE ON CONGRESS TO ACT.

MADSEN SAYS WE HAVE TO STOP THE CERTIFICATION NEXT FRIDAY SO THAT A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION CAN GO FORWARD.

PRESSURE THE MEDIA, THE GOVERNMENT, GET INFORMATION OUT...WORK, ORGANIZE, DAMN IT!

WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR TEARS AND SELF-PITY.

WE HAVE TO ACT RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!

maybe the storm is the bringing down of Snatch. The whole world is against him. When he stole the first time there was a calander from an astrologer that did his chart - her take on it was his adm. would have a worse falling out than Nixon. This was before 9/11 and before his first year. Also, all of you that know what you're doing here at this point in history - it's not a mistake. You came here to fight. It's not an accident, you're supposed to be here now. Now be here...

Nov. 29, 2004 0:08 | Updated Nov. 29, 2004 0:40
Terror expert: Qaida WMD attack on US likely soon
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

An al-Qaida attack on the US with non-conventional weapons is virtually "inevitable," and the organization is likely "tying up the knots" for such an attack, Yosef Bodansky, former director of the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

"All of the warnings we have today indicate that a major strike – something more horrible than anything we've seen before – is all but inevitable," he said.

Bodansky, here for the second annual Jerusalem Summit, an international gathering of conservative thinkers, added that "the primary option" for the next al-Qaida attack on US soil would be one that would use weapons of mass destruction.

"I do not have a crystal ball, but this is what all the available evidence tells us, we will have a bang," Bodansky said.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/J...

Your message

is that people just do NOT seem to realize that we are in the middle of a war, that Americans and Iraqis are butchering each other daily in Iraq, that Sudan is in the middle of a genocide heading towards the scope and horror of Rwanda (not like we did anything then, not like we'll do anything now)... No, all is well, go about your business, America, life is swell. Go to WalMart! Buy! Consume! Stuff those cheaply made Malaysian sweatshop goods down your hungry gullets!

Yeah, living in the shopping Mecca of the San Francisco East Bay (Walnut Creek) where H2s and Lincoln Navigators seem to outnumber people, I may have sowered a bit to the holiday cheer of orgious, rampant, unconstrained consumerism... God bless us, every one.

Give it a little more time, for they cannot sustain the façade very much longer. All will be revealed very soon. Everyone that voted for Bush will regret it just like the rest of us.

I am in a red area. On Nov 3, I was despondant but I had to work. That day was a hell of repugnant gloating. I was in shock at the wave of threat I felt in those gloats. I left early that day.

Now its an eggshell thing. I witnessed shoppers on Black Friday in Branson and surprisingly they were well behaved when they came out to eat. Previous years I saw major crankiness. This year they were kind and pleasant and they tipped higher than normal. But it was a false bravado, I felt. I did not feel antagonistic. It was like an air of the last Christmas of normalcy.

I woke this morning with a question in my head that I was going to ask here at DU. It will fit in this thread nicely. Do you see the Repugs showing any evidence they are paying attention to the votefraud issues? Or is it just gonna hit them broadsided?

I can't tell. Most of the ones I see are unaware.

As far as dreams go, I used to have nuclear war dreams all the time. Early 80's give or take a few years. One, I was in a high rise, when a distant blast went off. Standing looking out the window, I watched fallout drift down and noticed how it looked like snow. The despair was gutwrenching knowing the world was over as we knew it.

Other dreams included wandering through broken streets with people searching and rows of gutted city buildings like a blast or a war zone.

I feel very uneasy. I look at my possessions and I view it in terms of going mobile. What would I need if I had to move quickly with just my vehicle. I'm downsizing.

Living in a rural area, I look at my home on the land that belonged to my grandfather, and I want to stay and fight. I want to activate but I feel I am alone. It doesn't take long to shut up one person.

I don't get out around people except when I have to at work, etc. I come to this website because you all are real to me. You are my floatation device. I want to thank you for being here.

just me...


This whole country is scared of failure.
My head keeps trying to sell me ambition.
But in my heart, I want self-respect.
There's a conflict.

Boy, I feel so outgunned today
But I'll get up and fight back, anyway
You and I are not huge mainstream stars
But unlike them, we're really what we are

We got Main Street eyes
Watchin' as the big boys roll by
Under rotten television skies
We got Main Street eyes

I saw a kitten squashed in the street
I read about a plastic surgeon and his art collection.

We are played for suckers all the time
Phony rock and roll
It's a crime
I don't want to dip myself in trash
I don't want to give myself for cash

We got Main Street eyes
Tryin' to do what's decent with our lives
Under funny television skies
We got Main Street eyes

Walkin' around sometimes
I see a tension under the surface
People are just about ready to explode.

So hold me, and trust me
I love you, don't worry.

I know what y'all speak of.

Their low-key reaction, and the sense of anticipation, unease, remind me of something else ... remember that feeling you got (you must have, at some point) when at some occasion or another you, as a child, realized your parents were truly scared of something ? Before that all rhe little fears had been overcome-able, Mom & Dad always made you feel better and you could see the calm, the comfort, the bemusement in their eyes... then something else happened, and you saw fear in their eyes for the first time.

Thats how I think some of the Pubbies feel.. they see the shock, the psychological crisis, the fear and depression in our eyes.. the are beginning to relaize we weren't just being partisan, we werent just playing a game and our team lost. Some of them went from having a fun time horsing around with the parents, arguing over petty issues and inconsequential topics to an "Oh no, Mom's REALLY scared !"

"We're not going to recognize this country in a few more years."

I feel like I'm in the freakin' Matrix...and I'm the only one that took the red pill if you get my drift.

This is a wonderful thread and has me very teary right now.
I'm mourning the exposure of a lie this season. All I've believed in as an American during my lifetime is a big sham. I'm looking at growing up during the 60's very differently now.
I was raised to be politically conscious by liberal parents and am feeling very thankful that they passed on before the "rise of shrub". This has been an incredibly difficult time to watch for me. (I find myself really missing them, too.)
I also have had dreams and visions of our future(from childhood). When I turned on the TV to see the WTC in flames and crumbling-the words "Greed and arrogance caused this" came out of my mouth and since that moment I "knew" that the people in power within US govt had everything to do with it. People I know questioned my sanity-but not now!
I too felt something "prophetic" when reading Stephen King's "The Stand" (4 times). I so hope it stays fictional!
I'm sending out good thoughts and prayers to all my DU friends here for a not terrible/healing/good holiday season. As you can see, we are not alone!

and right after the election I felt sick. Now I feel as if I'm walking on pins and needles...like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I've felt - the only word I can describe it as is weird. Sort of like I'm off balance.

After Thanksgiving dinner, my brother, his wife and I sat and talked about what we felt was coming down the road. My sister-n-law said she was scared of *shrub and what he was going to do. I said that I was too.

I hate feeling this way and I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who does. I thought I was going crazy.

:argh: