Free fall

[gurdonark]

The financial markets are in tatters, the economy is much softer than I ever thought it would be now, we're on the verge of a war that all of Washington seems to want but which I'm convinced well less than half of Main Street actually wants, we're in a time when radicals of every stripe want to eliminate civil liberties, when apologists condone human rights violations without remorse, particularly if they are violations of the rights of women, when politics has been reduced to a choice between misguided corporateocracy and misguided chic warmed-over radicalism, we're in a time when one camp seems to want to ignore international cooperation on some misguided cowboy mission, and the other side seems to want to ignore international terrorism in pursuit of ostrich-ism, when our food banks and homeless shelters are exploding in short order, when nobody dreams of holding our current government responsible for any of its many economic errors, when a tax cut combined with a war effort has weakened our ability to respond, in a time when as men are led away in handcuffs, people lose their retirement, in a time when people drive the ratings up on programs that focus entirely on crime against children, yet we cannot fund enough domestic abuse programs to protect the children who are routinely abused in less new-worthy ways, when our prison population is at an all time high, yet the streets in the inner cities still don't feel safe,
when we finally see the positive effects of those environmental laws we have, and yet intense lobbying to trim them back is in full session, when everyone in Washington seems hopelessly out of touch, but the only real organized effort to deal with this stops at bashing windows out of Starbucks--it's just much more hip to wear cool outfits and listen to cool music and reject the system and marginalize oneself than it is to change anything. In my life, a lot of sea changes have happened--the shooting of Kennedy, Kennedy and King, the moon walk, the Nixon resignation, the Berlin Wall falling, Tianamen Square, the Gulf War, 9/11...but this moment in history feels very dynamic, very unpredictable. I'm not much of a gloom and doomer, and my life is happy now.
But what an odd time.

Comments

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

Odd times indeed. How does one go on living *knowing* all this???

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I think that many times have been this odd, and that in some ways all this crisis is "normal". I think the lull of complacency in this country in the 1950s up until nearly the present was the true "oddity". I think we are all called upon to live in times such as these, and try to do our bit to help find the way ahead.

[gregwest98.livejournal.com]

One goes on living by trudging forward. I've never been able to determine that there is any viable alternative. I've fantasized about retreating to the mountains like a hermit but even that seems impractical.

Perhaps another of those excellent-looking apple pies might ease the journey? Works for me anyway.

[gregwest98.livejournal.com]

You do a much better job of putting this feeling to words than I do and I'm glad you have. You have pretty much summed up my inward feelings about the world's political situation today.

Strange days indeed.

[mockinggreylock.livejournal.com]

Hrm. The end times are now? Or has the world always been horrible in a wide variety of ways, and we are merely empowered by our culture and technology to learn about it? I always wonder what there is that an individual can do...but observation and experience tell me that any efforts are merely to assuage my own conscience.

I've instead turned inward, as I'm wont to do, to try to make the best of my life. To live every moment with no regrets of things left unsaid or undone. To engage in my relationships and duties fully. The world will continue on its own path, with or without me, alas, and I try to not think of myself as being complacent.

[reneesarah.livejournal.com]

Yes, strange days indeed. I am remembering watching the escalation of the VietNam War on television, how the American people were told that the war would stop the spread of communism all across Asia, what it felt like to watch Nixon on TV and feel so distant from the President, thinking... "This is MY country?"

Now we have an unelected president whose grammar would be considered poor if spoken by an elementary school child, and who seems to WANT a war. And I cannot say much for the Democrats either. They will likely vote for a war to stabilize their positions going into elections rather than vote for a measured course of thought and action. And in California, even the Demos are sick of Gray Davis, who suggested to students at UC Berkeley that they could actually meet him in person if they coughed up a hundred dollars each for the honor.

I have written letters to legislators, but it feels like that has little impact. I have the feeling that we will have a war, that it will be horrible, and that terrifies me and makes me feel that I am on a boat that is about to fall off the edge of the world into some frothing abyss... and it is a boat that I am on, my family is on, my sons and my daughter-in-law are on, and NO... I did not sign on for this, none of us did... but here we are on this boat and we have no control over where it is going, and to me it seems that the captain just might be insane.

I realize that is a very emotional image, but it details the feeling without addressing logic or engaging in political debate. And having lived in the mountains and remote places for over eleven years, I know that such a retreat is not an answer. Because in the small, half hidden areas of our country other forms of insanity can fester out of the light and observation of a larger community, and for me there was no respite, no answer, and there was no peace.

Peace is something that I first must cultivate within my self, and I am working on that; and simultaneously working to bring more of it to the world. May compassion and rationality prevail.

[woody77.livejournal.com]

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Yes, and no matter how many times I flip the coin, it seems to land on edge.