If it's truly hopeless, if it's incontrovertibly over

why bother doing anything? Why write letters? Why march? Why bug my Congressional representatives?

If it's done, kaput, dead as the proverbial doorknob, why not just withdraw from the fray?

It's not all over. I won't stop.

I will continue to fight against the dying of the light.

You can call that denial till you're blue in the face, but I'm

Not. Giving. Up.

Somethings require starting over. When the nation decides to do that, we'll be on a good course.

And that means we're responsible for doing that. Waiting for the nation to do that, is as fruitless as anything I can imagine.

to hide under until the season changes. In the latitudes I live in bowing my head and letting go with the season is understood as being smart, not defeatist. I'll save my fight in the corm and be waiting when the season turns.

There are countless investigations going on. Healthcare is on the table. The internet is safe for now. Our wounded vets are no longer lying around in their own urine. The Senate Ethics Committee is back in action. Many 9/11 Commission recommendations are being passed. A bill to increase financial aid for colleges has passed--the single largest increase in college aid since the GI bill. The President's signing statements are being investigated. Legislation to restore haberus corpus has been approved. The Senate Armed Services Commitee has passed legislation "that would grant new rights to terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay. The unions have a voice in the government now—as do gays, women, and minorities. The environment has a fighting chance. The House passed the Taxpayer Protection Act, to protect taxpayers against "identity theft, deceptive Web sites and loan sharks." It also makes it "easier for taxpayers to retrieve property lost as a result of a wrongful Internal Revenue Service levy and directs the IRS to notify lower-income people that they qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit." The House approved a bill spending $1.7 billion over five years for cleaner water. There's a new House committee devoted solely to addressing the issue of global warming. And so on.

"President Bush's success rating in the Democratic-controlled House has fallen this year to a half-century low, and he prevailed on only 14 percent of the 76 roll call votes on which he took a clear position.

"So far this year, Democrats have backed the majority position of their caucus 91 percent of the time on average on such votes. That marks the highest Democratic unity score in 51 years."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1728952&mesg_id=1728952
http://public.cq.com/docs/cqt/news110-000002576765.html

Don't let the media rhetoric fool you. The Democrats have acquitted themselves quite well--especially given their bare majority in both houses, and a relentlessly obstructionist Republican minority.

this 110th Congress has had more roll call votes this year than any
other Congress in history, almost doubling the number under the previous Congress overseen by Boehner
and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL):
The House last week held its 943rd roll call vote of the year, breaking the previous
record of 942 votes, a mark set in 1978. The vote was on a procedural motion related to a
mortgage foreclosure bill. When the House adjourned on Oct. 4 for the long weekend, the
chamber had reached 948 roll call votes, putting Democrats on pace to easily eclipse 1,000
votes on the House floor in 2007.
Last year, the Republican controlled House held 543 votes, and for historical comparison,
the last time there was a shift in power in Congress, Republicans held 885 roll call votes in
1995. The Senate, which has held 363 votes this year, isn’t on pace to break any
records, but has already surpassed the 2006 Senate mark of 279 votes.
Much of the lack of progress can be traced back to obstructionism by conservatives. Approximately “1 in
6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes,” noted a JulyMcClatchy report. “If this
pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous
record number of cloture votes.”
It’s interesting that Boehner is criticizing the 110th Congress as doing nothing. After all, the House, under
his leadership, met for just 101 days during the second session of the 109th Congress, setting the record
“for the fewest days in session in one year since the end ofWorld War II.”

We won't be giving up on this side of the pond, either.

We are attacking the problem from the wrong end and have been for over five years.

And it's clear to me that we can't accomplish that by contempt or hate.

Fires that once were vibrant and bright ....now stifled/subdued.....

If Schumer and DIFI want to destroy the DEM Party...I am going to help them...

Fuck it all already... I am Pissed...I gonna voice shit to wake the rest of them Dems up and if that don't do something, then its all over but the shouting....

To the rest of the DEMs...if ya wanna see daylight again...ya better go convince them 2 asholes to change their fucking minds asap

thats #1.....

I'll keep plodding along. And I don't need either hope or despair as my companions.

I'm not giving up if Mukasey is concerned. I won't turn away from reality and I certainly won't become a

secular apocalyptist- something I have no use for.

WE need to lead them...

Get to work...I've called them have you?

Just askin'...

regularly. Luckily, they most often do the right thing. I actually don't believe I'm ahead of my elected officials, and I don't believe I could do the job that Bernie, Pat and Peter are doing, anywhere as well.

"I built it one piece at a time"

States and municipalities are so much more progressive and farther along than the national leadership; California and soon my state of NM will have universal health care proposals in the works...all the cities that have decided to follow the Kyoto protocols...

If they won't lead then we will...we apparently have NO CHOICE.

I had pledged money to the DNC but I recently said no, and am now working in my state more effectively.

One way to get the message across! :patriot:

not given up.
but i'm mentally exhausted by all the crap we're seeing from establishment politicians. most of them are so useless it hurts...

But I would be hypocritical to suggest I have been much more than paralyzed with frustration over the past four years. Sure, I write my letters to the editor and emails, but I am simply overwhelmed by the obstacles humanity faces, not simply political but environmental, geological, geographical, ethical and so on and so forth.

I know it does no good to suffer moral paralysis, but how do you escape it??

start where you are. and don't indulge in negativity, work with it. Don't let it control you. Control it. You know all this stuff.

Sometimes we need to a take a few days off from it, even weeks.
It is draining. There are millions of us so a few of us can take a
break once in a while. I know how it is.

I took months off in the spring and most of the summer. I didn't read the papers or get into anything political. And I'll probably do the same thing for a while this winter.

I always feel guilty not keeping up with politics and events of the world, but I become sort of obsessed and depressed, and this impacts my personal life and brings back my depression symptoms.

But this year feels different. I'm excited about the coming election. There's not one Dem running that I would be ashamed of. They all seem to be good human beings.

Thanks for your glimmer of hope. I still feel it myself sometimes. It's just more difficult to sustain as a personal philosophy than it used to be. Also, I wish my creative drive would come back, because being creative totally neutralizes frustration about the outside condition of the world.

:)

a local peace & justice group that sponsors talks and other activities. This summer I worked with AFSC on a benefit, so that they can continue their activities against the war. I write letters to the editor. I write and call my congressional reps.

What do YOU do?

... unless we let it be so.

Sometimes it is difficult to remember one overwhelming fact: WE are the Democratic Party - the citizens who believe in the party's ideals, and the voters who support those who promote those ideals.

The Democrats who (allegedly) represent us may be the public 'face' of the party, and may have the decision-making powers - but they are all but temporary personnel in the great scheme of things.

The internet is a great weapon - use it. Email your politicians constantly; it only takes a few minutes. One angry missive may not get anyone's attention - a million such letters WILL.

Why? Because every politician has to face re-election sometime. That's why.

On the other hand, WE the People don't. We're here to stay - and don't hesitate to remind them of that fact every chance you get.

there's a real difference between recognizing challenges (however huge)and the losses we've suffered, and declaring that 'America is over!'.

... as long as those of us who believe in her draw breath.

F'in A Brother! :)

It's hard for me to distinguish between political loss of hope and general depression. Could the two be related?

I think so. I think that people tend to project their own psyches into the political.

related to the idea of an internal vs external locus of control, group dynamics, and/or individuals getting tired from time to time.

As ingenious as we humans supposedly are, we have a tendency to invent systems, networks and organized entities that are more complex than we can handle. When they grow beyond our capacity to understand, shape or control, we also lose our own sense of control or of having control over our destiny.

Is that part of what is happening?

As Bar-Yam suggests, have we created a world that is more complex than our ability to shape, control and understand it?

part of all that is information overload. it fries are poor synapses.

when you turned Repug.
You don't do anything but slam those who attempt to inform.

Please quit.

view point. I can't do anything about that. You have to deal with it yourself.

It's says a lot that you can make such a comment. And it's sad.

makes people think you label it a conspiracy theory. A very freeperish style.

They are not anti-anything. They are honest and from the heart, and they are anything but Republican.

The posts, I think, stretch our thinking ability by introducing slightly different ways of viewing our own emotions regarding what is going on now in the United States as well as what is going on here at DU, where everyone is so certain of his or her viewpoint. We are lucky to have some posters who dare to do this, when there are so many imbeciles posting lately.

I am to the left of most Democrats (Europaean Socialists tend to be!), and I've never noticed anything remotely 'Republican' about Cali's posts.

itself, for which so many have fought and died, and so many have suffered in efforts to perfect it--those who fought slavery, those who fought and died for labor rights, for women's rights, for black civil rights, those who fought and defeated the robber barons of the Great Depression, and those who fought and defeated Nazism, and created the United Nations in the hope of never seeing world war again.

I just read a recent history book called "1776," about George Washington's worst year as the general of the ragtag revolutionary army. Really, it's a surprise that Washington didn't commit suicide by the end of that year, he was such a failure.

But he didn't.

Whatever you think of our revolutionary founders--who lived with the hypocrisy of slavery--and the democracy they constructed, absolutely unique at the time, but full of flaws that favored the rich, they were bold and brave in what they did, and they were driven not by greed, nor by the desire for power, not by mean and petty goals, but were truly visionary, and laid themselves on the line, with everything to lose, for an IDEAL of human organization, that permitted change, and growth, and progress, and ultimately included the rights and dignity of all Americans. They went up against the most powerful nation on earth, at the time, and could easily have lost. "1776" tells how easily they could have lost, and how quickly their heads would have rolled, if they had lost. And they fought for an idea--the idea that we would still be here, two centuries later, still believing in democracy, and still fighting for it, no matter the odds.

I think the problem of despair among leftists and democrats with a small d, in the U.S. right now, is a problem of having incorrectly analyzed our situation, and having underestimated the fascist/corporate forces that are determined to loot us further, and to destroy our Constitution and our sovereign power as a people. How we exercise our sovereignty--our right to control our government--is through voting. And when you look at the what has been done to our vote counting system, you begin to understand how they have managed to rob us of our power as a people, and how and why most of our representatives are deaf to us--and even to a whopping 70% majority of the people, who oppose the war on Iraq and want it ended.

To put it most simply, beginning in October 2002, with the passage of the so-called "Help America Vote Act"--in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution, and closely related to it--our voting system was quickly converted to electronic voting machines, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations. Virtually all of the Democrats in the U.S. voted FOR this fascist coup in our voting system.

If someone, ten years ago, had told me that such a thing could happen--that our own party leaders would support such a thing, and could betray us so profoundly--I would have laughed at them, and maybe called them "conspiracy theorists." But that is exactly what happened.

So, it has been no surprise to me at all what this so-called Democratic Congress has done, by way of further betrayals. Almost none of them can prove that they were actually elected, and I believe that many of them were not. No one who has been placed in power by these extremely insecure and insider riggable voting machines can claim legitimate power. Some of the Democrats would have been elected anyway. Most of the Republicans would not have been. And the middle group--which includes the "Blue Dog" Democrats (who want to cut everything in the budget except war spending)--who are the deciders, gained power by a combination of corrupt, war profiteer money, and rigged voting machines. Thus a Congress was designed, to have a "D" in front of its name, and to thwart the will of the American people at every turn, and to give Bush and Cheney billions MORE of our tax dollars, to keep killing Iraqis until they sign over their oil rights, and to continue shredding the Constitution, and to prevent all reform, including reform of the election system.

If you have looked closely at our vote counting system, and understand what has happened, you are not so vulnerable to despair and demoralization. You know what to expect. And you know what some of the highest priorities should be, for turning things around. First among them, is to restore transparent vote counting--vote counting that everyone can see and understand. This is still possible at the state/local level, where ordinary people still have some influence. It's not glamorous work on a national stage, but it is the key to the future of our country. Without transparent vote counting, we cannot even begin to address other problems. We MUST restore our ability to send REAL representatives of the people to Congress, and into other offices including president.

We need to develop patience and persistence, and learn to look beyond the next election. The fascists who have taken over our country have us on a wild roll-coaster ride, where we can only see up the next hill. They also have control of the news media, and inflict us with ceaseless propaganda, not aimed at convincing anyone, but aimed at making the great, peace-minded, justice-minded, progressive American majority feel like we are the minority. Their goal is to demoralize and disempower us. If we yield to despair, we are serving their most important aim--to shut us up, to make us accept their rule and their lies and their stolen elections; to make us give up.

I'm glad George Washington didn't give up--and all the great heroes, in our country, and in other countries, who have since fought for those principles of democracy--the equality of each individual, human rights, civil rights, the consent of the people, justice for all, and world peace. We owe them. And we owe the future. And we must never give up, no matter how hard it gets.

But it's easy to say that. That is the way it should be. And I guess healthy minded Americans would feel the same way.

Do you have any advice for those who are losing hope in almost a neurological level, where depression overcomes our old impulses to hope or care anymore, and our energy levels are so low that it's hard to even do anything anymore. I know more people like this than people who are vigorous and well equipped to combat the corruption we are now seeing.

No one person can save it. We must all do our parts, and seize our moments when they come. And you're no good to anybody if you're burnt out. Really. Do something different, something relaxing. Gain perspective. It doesn't mean you've given up. It just means you have some wisdom. Giving up is not the same thing as retreating, to fight another day. Re-grouping. Renewing your energies. Maybe you're not doing the right work for you, and need to approach this matter of saving our democracy in a different way. Let yourself dream a bit. You can't save this country by yourself. Others have to rally. Maybe your temporary retreat will draw them forth. And above all, keep the long view in mind. We WILL get our country back. We need to learn patience and persistence.

Let's think of Mandela and his supporters who did not give up - and in the end apartheid ended in South Africa. Let's think of those Latin American countries that were under right-wing dictatorships 20 years ago, and are now under far better, if not always perfect, governments. Let's think of Spain, under Franco's dictatorship from the 1930s to the 1970s, and now a thriving democracy with a good left-of-centre government.

Let's think of EVERYWHERE, where democracy did not exist until (at best) 200 years ago, and was denied to poor men and all women until far more recently.

People do make a difference.