The country is run by 14 year old girls.

[asindreams]

The state of politics is embarrassing in a way that would make even Nero's asshole pucker.  I guarantee that were that particular emperor around today, even his fiddle finger would've hit a sour note as he wrote an evolving soundtrack for our slow and sure descent into history's long list of failed experiments

Comments

[asindreams]

Things are arranged in such a way as to prevent any individual or group of people without infinite capital to effect change.

This was different in the 1960s. Even the counterculture had a dominant voice - Rolling Stone magazine, among others. I realized the other day that in these times, literally nothing is relevant anymore. Relevance has disappeared into impossibility and dead air and YouTube. Everything is saturated and "open" to the point where nothing is allowed to gel, nothing can coagulate or matriculate and develop into a movement or clarified idea/ideal.

What really matters, I've observed, is the story - told by actions and thoughts and all that. The story is controlled by those with the power to cohere. Our generation thus far has shown itself unable to tell a story that competes with the story we're force-fed via insurmountable fear and capital debt for things we don't need or want. "America" within and outside of our country is now a word that tells a huge story, and the current act is a sad, angry, fearful one. And the Constitution, the ideals of the country, the passion (i.e. its former awesomeness) - it's not part of the story anymore. But that ridiculousness is not a story we apparently want to hear, and even if we did there's no megaphone around big or affordable enough to tell it.

[youdunnome2]

Beautifully worded, but that cynicism is the reason why you'll spend the rest of your time blogging and accepting foregone conclusions. Change is possible, Seth, maybe not the massive, upheaval, acid-laced change of the sixties (whose infighting and polarization are the reasons why our political system is in the state it's in today), but real change, person to person change, is.

Go make it so we don't have to vote for an old white person for president. Go and make it so one person (five, ten?) doesn't forget that your city is sliding into the marshes. It's possible, Seth. I can do it, you can too. Cynicism and irrelevance aren't excuses for inaction, but tools used by those in power to keep people like you, people who have information, from sharing it with the world. So, by all means, go forth, Seth, and be the change you wish to see in the world.
- Cameron

"be the change you wish to see in the world"

[asindreams]

That's a sweet fallacy, and I wish anyone could ever give me a legitimate definition of what that means. And also, I'd love to know who originally said it. So I can piss in their lemonade. I think that phrase, sickly sweet as it is, is a noble thought. But like "Give Peace a Chance," it's not powerful. It's not a specific mode of action. It gives me no more bearing on my strange little journey.

The infighting and polarization of the 60's are not the reason Free Love failed. Republicans, religion, and the rise of multinational corporations are. Those kids, those beautiful youngsters who truly did push more than any previous generation against those capital words like Stupidity and Hatred, took a beating from the grand jackboot of a million greedheads. It's the irony that only history can provide, my dear, that all those beautiful children became the fascist neo-conservatives currently raping us.

And what is person to person change anymore? I'm not going to be didactic here, because this is an area I'm still trying to understand, myself (along with a bajillion authors and thinkers and actual scholars). Most individual persons can't make an informed, intelligent decision about what to eat tonight, much less who to vote for next year! And that's not new at all, we know this. But it is different - I think it is, to be frank and generalize, worse. There is so much more information, all masquerading as "the truth" and furthermore calling itself an "option," that it seems... hell, it seems like Choice has taken a dive along with Thought. This may imply I have somewhat of a meritocratic view of the way things are, but I don't hold that. I just see an America redefined to mean the success of the individual at the expense of all others and the Earth. The America I saw in the Constitution and Federalist Papers is an ideal Democracy, the City on the Hill, and a place in which the individual seeks to profit at the benefit of the institution as a whole. States aligned for mutual benefit, not just to temper ignominy and blunt a whole bunch of tiny regional conflicts.

And I see the opposite happening on every level, from global on down to individual. Even when presented multiple reasonable alternatives, I see people intentionally choosing to do the thing that benefits only themselves and hurts everyone else. I don't think I'm particularly cynical or unrealistic when I say that. It seems like we're all TRYING to kill everyone else! I've long thought that each of us is at least somewhat sadomasochistic, but this is ridiculous.