This place has become dominated with the "glass half empty"

Seriously, this place has become quite depressing lately.

Even the most innocuous of positive posts gets snarked at with negativity. Mind you, the comments are not wrong. They are indeed looking at a half-full glass and saying "It's half empty". You can't refute such a factual statement. Obama makes the largest investment in history into medical research for curing diseases and one of the responses is "$5 billion is all we could put in?". I ask, how much would be enough?

But that's just one example of attitudes around here lately and I am fearful that it is indeed infectious. I could point to several other examples, but I'll let you all find them on your own. I know there will be response to this saying "you only cite one example". To that, yes, that's all I feel like citing for now, and you know why? Because it's too depressing to go dig them all up.

And just to be clear, I'm not saying people should stop it or telling people how to think here. I'm just letting everyone know that it's simply depressing to post what in all intents and purposes looks like positive news to have it simply attacked with a barrage of negativity. Just an observation. This place is what we make it. I think it could be better, but, hey, I'm a hopeless optimist. But maybe I'm just a little lest optimistic today than usual. You see why?

That's what someone labeled them. During the Bush years, some of us were genuinely outraged by what Bush was doing. Now that Obama has been elected we realize that some of the people who seemed genuinely outraged like us, were actually just outraged in general. Obama, the administration and the Democrats have simply taken the place of Bush in their fixed dystopian world view. It's an emotional predisposition, not an analytic conclusion.

:)

:)

Just askin'.

noun 1. an excessively or blindly optimistic person.

–adjective 2. (often lowercase) Also, Pol⋅ly⋅an⋅na⋅ish. unreasonably or illogically optimistic: some pollyanna notions about world peace.

:)

edited to add the attribution.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pollyanna

How about an amount equal to what we spend on weapons to kill people? I think that would be a fair amount, don't you?

I don't think spending 3 trillion on research over 5 years is wise. It would never get spent (there aren't that many researchers in the US). Yes, I think we should spend more, but $5 billion will go a very long way to curing many diseases, is a great start and should not be discredited in this way.

:thumbsup:

Any good story is either a trick by the CIA to create a Fascist state, or is created by Freepers, a group of people with absolutely no power that everybody laughs at.

(In all seriousness, everybody overreacts on the internet. It's nothing new.)

I think you're overreacting.

I went to everybody's house that uses the internet in the world, and they're all drama queens.

Including myself. I'm personally afraid of the impending zombie apocalypse.

OK, so it's a cheap replica with a pine shaft, but all I have to do is fit it with an oak handle and I'm good to go. Bring on the zombies!

What I'm seeing is people claiming there is NO glass and NO water at all. The criticism is never the whole truth and a solution is never offered. It's just pure, unadulterated pessimism for pessimism's sake.

Quitters can blow me.

What you need to know, is there is no glass. Or spoon.

So how am I wrong?

to say there is no glass is to say there are no confining limits. It is refusing to accept the current paradigm dependent upon the glass. Half-full, half-empty, it is all meaningless. Refusing to accept the existence of the glass opens you to unlimited possibilities.

You don't bend the spoon. There is no spoon. Think outside the cube.

The health care situation has me depressed beyond belief. I'm getting to the point where my mobility is at risk and I'll need to make a decision. Divorce and become impoverished so I can get help from Medicaid, don't divorce and bankrupt us and end up living on the street, emigrate to Canada (husband is Canadian/American). But as long as our lawmakers get their big, fat checks from the health insurance industry, all is right with the world.

Mr. Obama will ride in on his magic charger and start to deliver - you just wait!

Pessimism for pessimism's sake.

Congratulations, quitter.

to march in and spew does it?

I can't decide if the negativity is from infiltration of the moderates and right winger or if there are just some who feel the need to complain about what ever is in front of them.


It is contagious though and I have found myself stepping back from DU a couple of times this year.

I'm talking about the people here spreading negativity for the sake of negativity.

Yes, when times are bad, those who see it coming ease the blow by saying everything will be ok. But when there is true progress and it gets reported, those who dump all over it have nothing else better to do than ruin everyone's day.

Seems to be a common thread throughout all "Liberals" sites and blogs. Obama can't win, no matter what he'll do.

If anyone bring the GOP back, both in 2010 and 2012, is the Left. Just a stunning display of self destruction.

While the president has fumbled, the water of his popularity and support has evaporated, as the opposition kept the heat on.

I have to agree with the post. I do a progressive talk show and have for 2 1/2 years now. The biggest problem I have found is that too many wants Obama to do everything yesterday and of course this is unfair and not being real. It took decades for the Corporations and their Congress people to gain the power they have and it will take a long time to reverse it. The big problem on our side is we just fall short of doing things to help speed it up because we want to sit and gripe too much. I see networks like Head On Radio Network, Jeff Farias Show and others that just can't get the funding to keep their broadcast going even though much effort has been put into getting money Democrats in their areas and nationally to support them. I know on my own personal show that no matter how much the Democrats here in Arizona say they support our efforts, they don't help much. If not for a few loyal listeners who gives until they can't give anymore, we would have to shut down and still might have to. Head On is having the same results.

I also have gotten discouraged because if I support Obama on something I agree with then someone gets mad and brings up something they and sometimes I agree with them, and then uses this to point to why they don't support him. How does anyone expect him to do things when he can't count on us?

I believe in our ideals and that we have a better way, but until we put together a strong support and act like we got power we can't expect Obama or anyone to be able to do what we want. We should disagree with Obama where it is needed, but we still need to give support and support our own ways of helping offset the right wing media power.

there you are. To complain about reactions is complaining about that good old glass again.

If I said it once, I've said it a zillion times, stop exaggerating!

This is all human nature and a by-product of our civilization and culture. To me it is akin to the squeeky wheel gets the grease principal. See how Acorn has been trashed? Why not Blackwater too? Apparently we haven't yelled loud enough yet. We need more yelling to stop some of the insanity I believe, not less.

I first found DU and lurked for many years when earlier boards that I had been reading while waiting for assignments or doing lunch at work either were abolished or became something other than cutting edge political discussion. There was Salon's Table Talk or whatever it is called that seemed to become an insiders' club of snarkathons amongst the posters.

The other one that is interesting to note from back then in the pre-DU era was the community board at CNN. When the Chandra Levy story was in full bloom, that place was chock-a-block with the entrenched elements fighting back and forth over the facts and rumors and such, mostly a wasteful exercise in speculation. Nonetheless, it was serving a community purpose I suppose, all that venting about something that in the end really did not have an impact on our society as a whole, like maybe the 9/11 event or the subsequent invasions and occupations really do. I thought to myself, why are these people so obsessed about the Levy case and not the direction of our foreign policy? The tit for tat gossip fest was almost intolerable.

Then there sprang up on those CNN message boards a long thread/discussion involving drugs, their legalization, history, effects, etc. of same. That discussion began to tilt heavily in favor of folks outraged at all the misuse of resources by the War on Some Drugs and the misguided attempts to quash marijuana use in the face of its obvious viability as a valid part of earth's pharmacoepia, etc. CNN shut down the entire shebang when that thread and increasingly that message board complex, became more populist, with everyone really turning it into a freewheeling dialogue that I am sure was distressing to the then-newly minted Bush regime. It was clear that the majority there were against our invasions in response, to the waste of time and resources and lives in the War on Some Drugs, and the general realization that such institutions Americans had traditionally trusted, like our alleged represented government, our military, and our political parties were found to be oppressing us, not serving us. One day that CNN community message board complex simply disappeared.

That is when I gravitated here. Someone had linked something to DU on that CNN board and after reading a few days here, I never turned back. DU was the only refuge for the curious mind. Finding kindred spirits expressing their thoughts and more importantly, important sources of factual information that could be relied on was a dogsend. Since those seminal days the blogosphere has arisen. I can remember discussing that phenomena with an IT professional friend of mine and his opinion that it wouldn't amount to much. I reminded him they had said the same thing about rock-n-roll when Elvis first rose to his popularity. Then came the Beatles. Thank dog we have had the advent of this technology of the internet to keep hope of free discussion and dissemination of facts alive.

Yes, negative nancys do have a bully pulpit on such open and free discussion boards, and yes human nature in the form of purient interests in other peoples' private lives and the enchantment that celebrity status has on many folks leads to massive wastes of time about things like Michael Jackson and Roman Polanski dominating what is usually a civic affairs/political discussion board. Like the primaries every four years, these things eventually fade from the spotlight. At least there is some place to do it all, good and bad. One needs to be selective and not get bent over the waves of news and reactions to them. This is freedom in a sense and is the lifeblood of our civic life. To use yet another overused but apt metaphor, we cannot afford to throw out this baby with the bathwater.

What hasn't changed or left the spotlight in the 8 or so years I have read DU are the illegal wars our national resources are spent on, killing people in far off lands in our name and our fast dwindling economic resources, apparently with no recourse. If only we could more effectively mobilize to end those disasters and not worry so much about things that really aren't global in their impact.

That is my half-empty glass and it has not changed in all that time. I will not stop complaining on that level.

Just my dos centavos

robdogbucky

But the differences among the progressives and liberals are surfacing more. We have a variety of expectations and ways of achieving goals. I think Obama is doing a fine job in very difficult circumstances. As liberals our approach is more for building consensus and compromise. The right is authoritarian with a view that things are right or wrong. What is interesting is the authoritarianism that sometimes creeps into our conversations here. We are all working for a change of direction, a change of philosophy that can foster better outcomes. I think some people here, though, were hoping for very concrete, very black and white results. Time will tell how far we can go.

Having said all that, I do believe health care in this country will take a turn for the better, much, much better. And when that happens the right will be dragged back more to the left as they try to reconcile their rigid, reality defying ideology with current events and the expectations of the American people. They need to embrace the word "moribund", learn it and own it.

Some civics classes and development of critical thinking skills would be timely for all of us. A book I recommend is "The Death of Conservatism" by Sam Tanenhaus. It's a short read, but very informative and has a quite good perspective on American politics in the past century or so. Interestingly he believes that Eisenhower and Clinton were our two best conservative presidents thus far. Obama seems to be in that line, philosophically.

we're pouring that into the sand.

Increasing medical research grants (or whatever you referred to) is great, however $5B is a tiny crumb framed and hung up on the "Wall-O-Victory", to be used in re-election campaigns while being used as funding for even more corporate welfare projects.

Don't ruin it for them - at least let them have a day or two!

And then we'll get back to work (without them, of course), with the playing field not substantially changed from what it was.

I always appreciate your posts and your support.

:rofl:

The conservadems and the progressives have little common interest any longer. With no common enemy to rally around, the fundamental differences are laid bare.

You must be hearing from a bunch of optimists. No true DUer settles for half empty when they can claim all empty, or a glass full of bile.

Whether empty, full, or half-whatever, don't you realize that it's bad for the environment? ;-)

Seems to me that we should pressure and blame folks like Baucus, Lincoln, etc. And we should pressure Harry Reid, too.

Remember right after Obama was inaugurated, Reid said that he doesn't follow Obama's orders. That he will do things HIS way. Yet somehow everyone here blames Obama for the Senate debacle. Why is that? Obama said he wanted a bill before August. Reid said no. In August, Obama went out there on the stump, facing guns and secessionists along the way. Since then he has been on TV constantly, fighting for reform WITH a public option. Yet folks here say he hasn't done enough.

The media focused on the Baucus bill as "the" bill. It's horrendous. He and other dems in the committee voted along with the republicans on amendments that would have made it better. Yet, there is thread after thread blaming Obama. Obama even went to Baucus' state to pressure him. And folks here just whine endlessly.

Obama, Schumer, Rockefeller, Pelosi and many others are trying to do GOOD things. How about some praise for them on occasion? Instead of complaining constantly, how about organizing calls and emails to the real culprits? Let's take constructive action for a change.

...this thread is currently at less than 0 recommendations. How dare someone point this out! Whining is good! All is wrong! We may as well haev voted for McCain! We're all screwed!

It's not the volume of omplaining that's the problem, it's the sheer number of complainers. Oh, but they're not complainers - they're "realists", they're "not sheep", whatever self-made term they have to make themselves feel better about trying to ruin everything.

I've got a term for them: BACKSTABBERS.