Tag Archives: democracy
A Side of Feelings
SMH…
When it comes to feelings (nothing more than feelings), there are two strongly reactive — yet very separate — feelings clubs on my mind these days. The one that surprises me is personal and seems to have only myself as a member. The unsurprising one, the angry, depressed, shocked one, contains nearly all the liberals these days.
A more on-the-nose term might be ‘city folk.’ (Or my personal favorite: “polis people.”) Some see this — I fully agree — as a divide between rural and city sensibilities, between local old-fashioned and global modern tech, between yesterday and tomorrow.
One side is stunned the other won, while the winners are holding their breath wondering what they’ve won…
Cast Your Vote!
As I was downloading my sample ballot and poking around the web for information about local issues and candidates (because that’s what good citizens do), I was struck by the profound sense of pain, fear, and sorrow I felt.
The feelings were so overwhelming I found myself, once again this election cycle, silently weeping. And praying that God would touch people’s hearts and minds with a measure of grace and decency.
How have we come to this? How have we gotten so far from our ideals and founding beliefs? How have we gotten so evil?
The Penis Election
What a sad and pathetic group of ape-descendants we turned out to be. After the Dark Ages, the human race had high and lofty aspirations. We saw ourselves so vastly evolved from our animal origins. We had the power of nuanced communicative language, of higher thought and rationality, of powerful evocative art, music, and literature.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the human experiment is a failure. The answer to the Fermi Paradox is that “intelligent” species actually aren’t intelligent enough. All our technical toys turn out to be exactly like giving an ape dynamite and a lighter.
And after several thousand years thinking we’re better than animals, we prove we’re not by making this election cycle about penises.
Sick At Heart
What do you do when you realize that society is an insane asylum, and the inmates are the keepers? If reasonable people were running the place, maybe there would be some hope, but as it is we seem to be gleefully accelerating straight towards a cliff. One maniac in particular seems to be stomping on the gas pedal and no one seems able to grab the wheel.
How do we navigate a world so out of touch with the rational (let alone the truthful)? Our collective heads are so far up the collective asses of our brand loyalties that all conversation is muffled by all the shit in our mouths. There is no real dialog, let alone a dialectic.
And I can’t stop running that line from Hamlet in my head.
Final Straws
When you elect for the highest office in the land a feces-flinging “damned dirty ape” (as Charlton Heston famously said), you really can’t be all that surprised when he shits all over your political process. What did you expect would happen?
What depresses, nauseates, and outrages me is what it seems to have taken (and who knows if even this is enough). As final straws go, the business of the Orange Goblin claiming (and, indeed, very possibly truthfully) that he cops feels and steals kisses with impunity pales in comparison to the sheer evil he embodies.
Once again we demonstrate that the big picture is beyond us; it’s the little things that capture our attention.
Good vs. Evil
When it comes to doctors (or nurses), lawyers, airplane pilots, the people who prepare and serve us food, the people who design and build our houses, the people who design and build our TV, cars, or cell phones, we naturally expect them to be well-trained and very good at what they do.
Of course we do. We avail ourselves to these things because we trust the experience and ability of those workers to do their job reliably, accurately, and correctly.
So why is it that, when it comes to politics, so many are so unwilling to listen to those who clearly know what they’re talking about?
Schadenfreude
Loser! … Winner!
Recently I wrote about Weltschmerz, a German word that translates, essentially, as “world hurt.” Although that word has been around a while and describes a general feeling, it seems especially appropriate in this election cycle. Many, for their own reasons, feel a sharp dissonance between ought and is these days.
This past week, since Monday night, a different, perhaps more well-known, German word has been running through my mind: Schadenfreude. It describes the pleasure one can feel over the misery of another — a feeling that isn’t very nice. Decent people reserve it for people who aren’t nice having a bad day.
People like The Donald having a bad day for a whole week!
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