Complete political despair, despite being very comfortable otherwise

http://www.santissimo.com/images/timor/x_g/IMG_4911.jpg

(maybe)

I wouldn't say I was actually depressed about it, like you my life is pretty good these days. But it's not nice to feel so hopeless about the world's political direction.

xpost yeah, who is that?

The last politician I trusted was killed in a plane crash.

mainly i guess the current "climate" is not a problem to me because i can't imagine feeling this: Whether I knew better or not at the time, I've always had someone "up there" in the higher echelons of the U.S. government that would give me hope that maybe a better time is coming. i don't even know what that would be like and that's fine with me!

Nothing personal, caitlin, but you have answered your own question? The despair is much easier to understand when you've been voting for more than 3 years, although i wonder whether the people who have been voting for 30 years think the same thing about people with say, only 15 years of perspective.

i don't even know what that would be like and that's fine with me!

People get the government they deserve, and revolutions only bring a new set of masters. We're all better off focusing less on "hating both equally" and more on trying to support something postive. If you can find anything.

as for those seeking and end to the 2-party system - do you think this would shift the political climate/government leftward? on what basis?

Doesn't mean I'm doing everything I could be, but I'm trying to not stress over the things that I'm not going to change. (Still, it all really pisses me the fuck OFF!)

(God grant me the serenity, etc... + Think globally, act locally... )

i don't think ending the 2-party system would necessarily shift anything leftward. i don't really believe in parties but i wish we could at least have more than this pseudo-binary thing, nobody can see outside of it and people think they have to pick one and of course it's going to be disappointing because they will never, ever be able to provide what's needed.

also, mitya, it's true that i have only been able to vote for 3 years but there's a lot more to politics than parties and voting, for me anyway. i will never be a democrat, so i don't think i'm ever going to be in despair about the same kind of stuff, i guess. different political things put me in despair. i also don't think it's true at all that just because i hate democrats and republicans that i'm being unproductive. (maybe hate is too negative a word, it's more of an indifference than anything). i think believing in either one of them is pretty damn unproductive, actually.

I think the Western world's political climate is just going to become more exclusionary as little terrorist incidents cycle around the world.

This is the problem. I'm not unhappy living in the U.S., and sure, it would be so much easier if there were other places that were considered much better places for opportunities, liberties, relative safety, etc., but there aren't, period, and there probably never will be. Each of these cities in each country end up averaging out to be more of the same at the end... and this average is just getting worse and worse. Hence the despair.

If I do ever leave the U.S. for good, I'm sure I won't be allowed back in with ease. This may not matter when I become old enough to not have immediate parents/family in the U.S. around anymore (which isn't really that far away -- I have no siblings.), but I still do. I'm hedging my bets that Western countries are not going to kick out Americans just because they're Americans (given a clean record, blah blah blah...).

I just slowly see a Western world of police/puritanical states forming one by one at a snail's pace. The whole left/right thing is just a distraction to that.

Seeing Democrats embracing homophobia and pro-fundamentalist legislation to gain votes outright was an eye-opener, which I admit I was naive to think would not happen. This is one of many things that brought me to this state of mind..

Hopefully we'll survive that long.

Spent decades fighting for Timor's independence from Indonesia, is now president. Very popular in Portugal due to his symbolising/highlighting the courage of the rsistance. Main reason I think of him whenever ppl talk about not being able to come up with any worthy role models in politics tho is a few years ago when I saw a report about riots in Dili, with footage of him actually walking the streets trying to calm ppl down. Yeah, cynics can say it was a photo op, and yeah, these things are easier/more necessary for a leader to do when we're talking about a miniscule, underdevloped country, but there was still a level of courage and integrity present in that image, stuck with me.

I'm sure there's all sorts of dirt one could dig up on him, but I haven't heard of any yet.

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanana_Gusmao

Is the middle class currently better or worse off than during WWII or Vietnam?

If it isn't mediocrity it is mendacity. If it isn't incompetance it is megalomania. Sometimes it is all of them together in a total cringeworthy package - like our current Bubblehead-In-Chief. The sort of people who elbow their way to the top are only rarely of a noble character. I have steadily recalibrated my expectations of politicians to a very low threshold. I mostly hope they won't facilitate too much hatred, greed and destruction along the way.

Be glad your life is so good now. Try not to cringe too much at the sight of your "leaders". It helps a bit to mock them ferociously at every opportunity.

It also helps to have read Henry Adams.

Yes. Certainly. Many, many thousands of them. On the other side of the coin are the top percentile of power: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Frist, Hastert, DeLay and company. It's a progressive winnowing out process as you rise nearer to the top, and conscience is ballast that's tossed over the side.

I'm with the OP on this one. My life is going pretty wonderfully, but I have a real sense of despair and panic about the direction of the world (which has become more material as I just found out my wife is having twins). I used to get by on the general sense that over time, people become more progressive, but I think that that sense was pretty naive, and even if it IS true in the big picture, there can be some pretty scary "localized" downturns as we move towards something better.

Is the answer, as Rushkoff recently said in Arthur, to just disengage? I don't know. Maybe. Somehow that feels like giving up. But on the other hand, giving up on a system that seems irreparable might be better than trying to "fix it from the inside."

it's good that he's aware of what an anomaly he is -- he's really taking advantage of his little window of opportunity to get shit done for his city. at least he's trying and he's not all talk, no action.

Hey now, I didn't say white!

http://www.hcjic.org/images/Photos/obama-clinton2.jpg
http://www.law.washington.edu/LCT/Pubs/News/Images/cantwell.jpg
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/08/11/sanchez.playboy/story.sanchez.kabc.jpg
http://img.thehill.com/img/news/072705/Gene%20Taylor%20copy.gif
http://www.sfsu.edu/~news/2004/spring/78a.jpg
http://207.44.246.82/~michroni/news/images/stories/2005.10.10/Front%20PAGE,%20granholm.jpg
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/images/daily/rahm_012598ap.jpg
http://www.newyorkbusiness.com/images/gallery/SC_sheekey.jpg
http://www.house.gov/schultz/photogallery/ph_group.jpg

i dunno how likely this is, aside from possibly swaying moderates who think going into iraq was a shitty idea. a lot of the republicans who've turned on bush have done so because they think he's not tough enough on immigration issues -- that certainly isn't gonna make them start voting democrat though, they'll just support some other conservative who agrees with them.

Actually, all snark aside, I think we have a lot of good young blood in the Democratic party, and I think it's going to continue to improve.

Meaningless until November 2006.

I think so too, but I'm not convinced that it will translate into votes. Every major election cycle has been labelled "the year of [insert trendy demographic here]" but each time that hasn't translated into actual numbers.

"GRAVY FRIES?"

LOL

How has this not been bumped in 14 years

Currently oscillating between thread title and 'complete political indifference, despite (because) not being very comfortable otherwise'.

Somehow the mask divide makes me despair even more than racism. I know it shouldn’t, but it’s just the fact that something so obviously *beneficial* to society with no real drawbacks can still set off virulent political division. I mean I really, really hope the anti-mask thing is overplayed by twitter bots and sensational media. But it’s so fucking disillusioning. I just want to stay in my northeast liberal bubble forever.

OTOH
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-voters-say-yes-to-face-masks-no-to-rallies.amp

Guess that’s sort of encouraging?

this is me. my job has kept going, I work from home, I have good savings, I'm in good health, I have 30 weeks of severance on deck if I get laid off.

but the ugliness of the world has really done a number on my emotions. on the other hand, days tend to fly back quicker cos nothing really happens, so it's making what I thought would be a long excruciating election year move faster.

what I thought would be a long excruciating election year move faster.

get back to us on Oct 1st with an update. ;-)

oh for the days when things merely completely sucked

oh I'm sure Oct 1 from Nov 3 will feel like 3 years

Guess that’s sort of encouraging?

There's a performativity about the mask divide which makes me think its not quite as pronounced as might appear

Glad not to have to have that argument here in England, where the mask divide is between the 1% of the population that wear them and everyone else, who is like “what’s a mask”