I don't feel hopeless, but I certainly feel helpless,

Ever since * stole office, I personally have been paralyzed, unable to function creatively, spontaneously with just pure joy. I am by nature an optimist, and believe in being as informed as possible. But it does not do any good, since the positive I may accomplish today will be unceremoniously wiped out tomorrow with nary a ripple. I have a very nice, comfortable life, but I can't enjoy it while watching this administration tear everything that is decent from its roots and stomp it into the earth under the heel of unchecked power, greed and arrogance & getting away with it & continue to get REWARDED for it. I cannot stand it. But there is not a damned thing to be done about it. I hope, hope, hope that once * is out of power, we will have replaced this travesty with someone who can put it all back on track, but I am scared that it will be business as usual. The juggernaut has gained too much momentum. Did I tell you I'm an optimist? Carry on.

After all, we march, we work for Democratic candidates, we give money...but it's spitting in the wind. The problem is that we've been made irrelevant.

Our votes don't count. Public opinion doesn't count. We're in the total grip of a violent junta and they'll trod over our lifeless bodies to gain what they want.

As you can see, I'm an optimist, too :)

If we don't turn this around in 2008, we're so, so, so screwed. That's why the bitching and moaning and candidate-bashing around here gets so tiresome.

Even if the Dems in congress are a bunch of mules for the establishment, a strong leader in the WH could show them the way.

way of putting this sense of utter impotence I am feeling. It sadly has come to the point of virtually throwing rocks in frustration.

It's unhealthy and these assholes are so...not...worth...it.

Strike back in small ways. Carry 'war chimp' stickers in your purse and stick one up in every public restroom you visit. Yes, it's pointless, but it's so silly it'll make you laugh - and that's what you need to get through this nightmare. Maybe someone who feels alone and helpless will see it and feel reassured. Just a small act like this will remind you that you're a decent human being making a small mark against the monsters and criminals pulling the strings.

year old daughter - she just came to me and asked to see her baby book - how could I resist? So we were looking at some of her old drawings of our family and one she did at 4 was so goofy, we just literally collapsed on the floor laughing. This is the kind of thing that helps me get up to face the day. Then I came back and read your post, Neecy, and it made me laugh again! Being silly in between all the "stuff" may just be the salvation I need - thanks for that!

Quite frankly, I'd like to see it get to that point, the sooner the better. I'll even gladly let my body be one of the first - as long as We The People get off our brain-dead asses and take it to them!

as they keep closing any routes for us to peacefully petition... there has to be a breaking point somewhere

it's going to take a total revamping of the election process. Election finance reform is the only way to stop this....

We have been terrorized by our own government!

I get bummed and angry too. It used to help to yell at the TV, but I can't stand to watch anyone but Keith on MSNBC, the Daily Show, Colbert, Bill Moyer and Bill Maher anymore. And now with the Writers Strike that is cut down to just Kieth.

I am constantly amazed at the apathy in my extended family. They do not want to hear it. More important to them, is American Idol and Football Games. Meanwhile our country has been overthrown. Astounding. This election will be telling.

I plan to be a hermit if it does not go LEFT!

We have to keep positive, best we can and keep informed, even if the news is HORRIBLE.

Gardening, seed saving and buying Blue has become my sanity. We also attend Peace Rallys and Anti War Marches, sign petitions till we are blue in the face, and call Congress Critters.

making me parched for relief from the wasteland that is TV programming. It seems many have to find some outlet to offset some of this horrible reality that is *'s war on everything.

Our younger son is giving piano lesson to two of our grandsons. I am overseeing and lucky to hear the results.

We have been readying our lot, to subdivide and build 3 Green-built, eco-friendly cottages. Hope to be able to find some land in the country and get out of the rat race. Our little Mom and Pops business keeps us elbow deep in clay, and it (our studio) can go anywhere.

The more I focus on doing the less time I have to worry about those idiots that stole our country. However, now when I do check in here on DU I am constantly shocked that not much GOOD has occurred. I keep thinking I will log on and see, "CHENEY ARRESTED" at the top of the Greatest Page with 899 recommends. I will be 900 and hoot and holler!

Some may say I'm a dreamer.....

That is our TV lineup too.
Love Friday nights with Bill Moyers and Bill Maher back to back.
KO is a breath of sanity.
We tune in to Jon Stewart for the hard news.
Everything Else is just transparent CorpoState propaganda..

In 2006 Starkraven and myself read the Writing on the Wall.
We sold everything, left the City, moved to the wilderness, and planted a garden.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x5729


A sun warmed, vine ripened, heirloom organic tomato is a great perscription for sanity in an insane World.

Peace!

I can literally feel peace while looking at the photos.

Thank you *~Wise One~*.... I will take your prescription way down deep in my heart. I sent your link to my sweetie. We have been discussing raised beds and French intensive gardening. As soon as we sell this 1 acre in town, and get back to where we once belonged, the seeds are ready!

Bees! I love that!

Your photography is superb!

PEACE GARDEN!

We are restoring a 77 VW Campmobile. She runs like a top and just got new curtains. She will take back to the GARDEN.

Kick!

:(

I believe you'r right. :banghead:

:kick:

Don't worry. 8 / 16 years of neo-con rule will push the sheeple towards socialism. The world can wait, imho.

It's uncanny. I've lurked here for years, and long since abandoned the corporate media, but I've reached some kinda breaking point. My own personal life is good, like yours, but always lingering in the back of my mind is an enormous sense of dread, that we've moved into tyranny, and that my family or friends might be the next ones taken away.

I've drawn some consolation lately from a couple of new rock albums--Springsteen's and Fogerty's. These are best-selling disks, some millions are listening to them. Here's a coupla lines from Fogerty's new song "I Can't Take It No More":

I can't take it no more,
I can't take it no more,
Sick and tired of your dirty little war,
I can't take it no more.
...
I bet you never saw the old school yard,
I bet you never saw the National Guard,
Your daddy wrote a check and there you are,
Another fortunate son.

His song sounds a lot like the original "Fortunate Son" that I drew strength from back in the Vietnam days. What helps is that MANY OTHER PEOPLE are listening to this song, whose message one can't ignore.

Anyway, thought it might help. Peace.

My art work has suffered terrible. my family gets frustrated that I am so angry and they don't want to hear anymore rants of mine. I am slowly getting better nowing that * will be gone soon and that just maybe we can get back on track to the once great country we were! I hope I will once again feel the joy of painting and my heart will be clear of the anger. I know my students will see the difference.

He attacked me personally. It's only recently that Americans have finally felt their personal lives at risk. But when Bush got into office, I began to have headaches. I began to finally lose hair. I began to be much less positive.

Now go watch the video in the thread on Hugo Chavez that was posted here last night. It's both postive and negative. Hopeful and hopeless.

What I mean, with all respect, is welcome to life. And I am saying that for me as well. The truth is, there are lousy people on this planet. Lousy is a subjective term. But these are greedy people who will stop at nothing to get their way. They yanked Hugo out of office. But the people restored him with help of a loyal military. It's a story of anger and hope. Kind of the way life is. It sucks sometimes.

It's no different here. Except for one big difference. The people aren't suffering enough to get off their asses and do something about it. That's my take on it. That's not necessarily the way it really is. But had we ushered out those goons in the recount room, pumping their stupid little fists in the air, we might have kept a sense of decency to that supposed election. Something like that. At least doing something. But we haven't. And now we have the same media that Venezuela had. The Wizard of Oz of media. And people believe the lies. Like good photoshopping.

Here's how I see it. Go back to a simple time, and look at things. Like the jungle. You hunt. You eat. But then someone comes along and hunts for you. That's fine, until they claim that they own the animals. Now you can't hunt even if you wanted to. You're now a prisoner of their making. They own you too. So it is in this world of petroleum. Our number one black gold standard. And we have oilmen in our White House.

So they'll always be with us. You can't outlaw greed, just like you can't eliminate terrorism. But you can have a Constitution. And that's where we're ahead of this game. That's the little optimism we have.

I think there is a lot of optimism in this group of candidates we have. But it's up to the people to make this democracy work. If the people believe the Wizard of Fox, if the people will roll over after another false election, then we have more suffering ahead. And believe me, this is only political we're talking about. In the background looms something far greater. Our planet is in peril. But let's just ignore that since it exists, and well, it exists. The only thing that frightens me about Americans, and many people in general, is their willingness to suffer unnecessarily. Let's hope we can work together. It's all about working together.

but- if the comeuppance ever comes(although i doubt it will in my lifetime) it's going to be all that much more sweeter.

Wishing us all better times in the future...

Whether it was in music or art or some other form I felt like expressing myself with , now that all seems pointless . My wife and I have never had a nice comfortable life living from paycheck to paycheck but we found time to walk and get out doing simple things such as going very early to the beach just to watch the sun rise .

Somehow none of this does the job anylonger , we just exist , it has become a bland bore , all it does it bring back into memory the days that were simpler and better which now only brings a feeling of loss and sadness .

I can't find hope that elections alone will get this train back on the rails , I can't feel certain about anything .

For all that has been done at this point I feel it is not such a longshot that there will be no elections in 2008 or that this group of madmen won't start an attack on Iran .

I know there are many here who think this is far from possible but when you consider what they have done so far and done it right out in the open , when you consider how they left the victims on New Orleans and the Miss Gulf to suffer to this day or how they to this day fight and ignore the people suffering from 9/11 then what else can one feel or find hope in .

even planning these things may save our individual sanity.

Our youngest son is a musician and he says MUSIC will save the world. I keep watching and just read an article about the youth in Iran getting into Rap Music (what I call "beat" poetry :-) and this gives me hope. Our politicians ....do not!

http://beatles.ncf.ca/dave_lafontana.html

snip>
In an article titled “You Say You Want a Revolution” published in the August 2003 issue of History Today, Mikhail Safonov (senior researcher at the Institute of Russian History at St Petersburg) gives another first-hand account of the Beatle’s influence on his generation. He writes “The name of Chapman has become linked with that of Lennon, as other murderers are connected to their victims: Brutus and Caesar, Charlotte Corday and Jean-Paul Marat. Paradoxically, Lennon himself can be linked with the name of the Soviet Union in just the same manner. It was Lennon who murdered the Soviet Union.”



“He did not live to see its collapse, and could not have predicted that the Beatles would cultivate a generation of freedom-loving people throughout this country that covers one-sixth of the Earth. But without that love of freedom, the fall of totalitarianism would have been impossible, however bankrupt economically the communist regime may have been…the music came to us from an unknown, incomprehensible world, and it bewitched us.37”



As Reuters reported on May 24, 2003, while Paul McCartney was touring Russia, he heard a similar story from the current Russian president: The story reads “President Vladimir Putin has told Paul McCartney the Beatles, hugely popular in Soviet times despite being frowned on as propagandists for an alien ideology, had been a breath of fresh air for Russians.” “‘It was very popular, more than popular,’ Putin said when asked
...
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