The truth is that it is just getting too hard. It takes so much energy to withstand the daily disappointment in the awful stuff my fellow human beings are doing to other human beings over money and God, in that order. I am losing the heart and strength it takes to take philosophical arms against a sea of the incomprehensibly shallow, evil crud that oozes from the pores of the politicians in power, and am losing focus on that light at the end of a seemingly endless tunnel, replacing it with a dim outlook for the future. I don’t know if I can keep drinking the unpalatable brew of angst mixed with hope that it takes to be a pro-defense, pro-labor, socialistic, atheistic, tree-hugging, pro-choice/pro-gay, anti-gun, human rights, lefty kinda guy anymore. And I’m thinking about joining the other side, because, frankly, I’m just tired of thinking about it and the enormity of it all really depresses me.
Criminal justice
For 22 years, as a deputy Colorado State Public Defender, I fought against a heartless machine that dehumanized my clients, looked the other way, when cops, prosecutors, and allegedly “expert” witnesses lied with impunity, screwed my clients, (whether they deserved it or not), and gave my kind zero respect for doing twice the work, at half the pay of my counterparts in private practice. And the news stories you hear about prosecutors being paid extra to win at any cost are true. Also true is the fact that cops and prosecutors and expert witnesses for the state lie and lie more often than you ought to feel comfortable about. I’ve seen all this up close and personal. But they are rewarded for their exercises in political expediency by being granted increasingly greater power over average citizens like you and me and, as a progressive, I just can’t stand to read about yet another cop who beat an innocent bystander into a coma or worse. As average citizens, you and I are powerless to stop this kind of thing from happening and it hurts too much to think about it anymore.
My counterparts on the right believe that all cops, prosecutors, judges are god-like and all of the accused and their attorneys are evil and inhuman. Simple jerk of the knee and I’m done. I can do that. Gimme a good lawyer joke over reality any day. If they are arrested, they must be guilty. End of story. And if a few innocent human beings are caged or killed to further a politician’s career, she now has my vote. I’ll even put her Lawn Order sign on my lawn.
Unions
My Dad was the Regional Director for the National Labor Relations Board and told me about how big business was out to discredit the unions since before Nixon was elected. And it worked. Gradually, the image of unions was transformed by the Chamber of Commerce, et. al. from an organization that represented decent pay, pensions, and working conditions for the middle class, to a mafia that represented a bunch of indolent slobs who sat around getting paid for doing nothing.. And all it took was lots of money, a few years of constant propaganda, and a few bad union apples for them to use as examples. My dad saw it coming over 40 years ago and now we have Tea/GOP elected officials who are trying to indenture us into a new and improved version of the 1920’s, robber baron era. The same Tea/GOP politicians are also attempting to completely rewrite history, so that young people will never know what unions actually did for the middle class. But thinking about this just makes my blood boil, and I get so tired when I see this kind of crap in the news every day. I mean these little sheisas aren’t even good liars and 20% of the country actually buy the snake oil they are selling.
But if I just keep telling myself that what is good for big business, must be good for me and the rest of the country, then my blood cools a bit. And when the stock market hits another record high, I can feel all fuzzy and secure, even though the middle class and I don’t have any extra money to actually invest in the market. And from there, it is just a small step to ignore that my income has flat-lined, while CEOs of companies that I bailed out with my tax dollars are raking in record bonuses. I can still buy a car on credit and my house will be paid off, maybe, in 20 years or so. If I quit stressing about how much we are getting screwed right under our noses I can spend more time playing with one of my i-things.
Socialized Medicine
Why should I care if people die so health insurance company CEOs and stockholders can make a bigger profit? If I had the money to invest (which I don’t…), I could buy that third home in the mountains, rather than worrying about how some snot-nosed kid I don’t even know is going to get his vaccinations. But first I gotta quit caring that the aforementioned kid’s parents can’t afford health insurance. If I can get over that hump, like the Tea/GOP politicians and health insurance companies already have, then it only stands to reason that I can quit caring about the kid as well. I mean, I don’t even know his name, and if he gets sick and then dies from one of those staff infections that are so common in emergency rooms, that’s one less kid for me to worry about not having enough to eat, because his family can’t pay the bills despite the three jobs that they have, or are out on the street because the unemployment checks stopped coming, so the Tea/GOP could give the money to the rich for storage in the Cayman Islands.
Just today, I had to read about The Chair of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan, who is introducing a bill which will privatize Medicare and give a stipend to those over 65, so that they can go out and try to find a private insurance company that will give them a policy. For those of us who actually think about those three words in the same sentence (privatization and insurance companies) our initial laughter is replaced by red-faced furor over that very idea. If you remember my post of January 21, 2011 , you will remember how much Rep. Paul Ryan took from the hedge fund/investment firms/financial industries. And what a return on their investment they will get if Rep. Ryan and the Tea/GOP are successful!
But, to paraphrase The Gipper, “there I go thinking again!” It is so much more doable, if I regard health care as a privilege for the few, rather than a human right for all. I could still win the lottery, and so have a better chance than anyone else in the middle class of getting decent health care when needed. Don’t think about that the fact that the Tea/GOP platitudes against universal health care are absolute rubbish, and that health care is a complicated issue which requires government intervention. The Tea/GOP mantra is really so much easier to remember than the actual truth and, as long as you say it really loud without thinking about the words, there is almost, kind of a certain Zen to it.
Deathpanelsforgrannyrationingjobkillingsocialistcommunistkeepyourgovernmenthandsoffofmymedicare! Just one long string of tripe I have to memorize, instead of all that painful caring about my fellow human being stuff. Then my headache over the unconscionable actions of the whole unholy health insurance/Tea/GOP alliance begins to fade into oblivion along with my morals and sense of decency. No aspirin required!
God
I have tried to live my life by following what I thought was the path of Jesus and damn, it’s hard! He got crucified and I am begging to see why. Jesus allegedly hated the wealthy and powerful because they picked on the poor and the meek, but money and power are now worshipped over everything else. Jesus was said to have hated intolerance but we’ve got Christians like the Reverend Jim Jones packing heat and burning the Koran down in Gainesville
I always thought that Jesus said the hand-waving, loud-mouthed, sanctimonious, church-goers were all a bunch of phonies, but churches have grown into big thriving mega-businesses now, despite the lawsuits against the Vatican
But there is so much…safety and security when you suspend your disbelief and just accept whatever mumbo-jumbo the guy in the $1,600 suit is bullying from his pulpit. Does it really matter if the text is garbage? The masses don’t need actual sense. What they need is the opiate part to feel good and I am beginning to see their point.
The Environment
This one’s easy. I just have to switch from an “all for one and one for all” mentality to one of “survival of the fittest.” It is more simple and natural, and requires no tiresome sense of common decency or altruism whatsoever. Why should I waste time fretting over radioactivity in the water, mercury in fish, or pesticides in milk, when it is almost guaranteed that a certain small percentage of the population will probably prove able to tolerate those substances? They will probably survive, and our race will continue in one form or another. And I just have to take it on faith (after copious doses of the opium that I will buy at cost from my new only true religion) that the free market business-people will stop poisoning the air, water, and food, when there are no people left to buy their stuff. This a low-to-no-stress, win-win, kinda way of looking at it, I think…if I could just stop thinking about what the world will look like in 100 years. Hell, I won’t be around, so why should I care. Let my grandkids deal.
Abortion/The Gay
It is hard not to think about all of the MEN who insist on telling other men and women who they don’t even know what they can do in the privacy of their own lives. It seems grossly unfair that these men, like Newt Gingrich, screw around on their wives, get a divorce, and then repeat as needed, but it’s against the sanctity of marriage, for two guys to faithfully commit to each other for life.
If I keep thinking about it, these MEN strike me as a bunch of perverts, like voyeurs, or weenie-danglers, or those churchy guys in the 17th Century, who used to get off on burning women at the stake. And, again, it is only when I use up my ebbing supply of disposable energy to think, that it also strikes me as perverse, when these Christians (again, mostly men) preach that it is okay to shoot someone in the head for aborting a fetus that was placed in a woman’s body by a rapist.. These are usually the same Christians who think it’s okay for the government to kill people for killing people.
I am not sure if there is enough opium in Afghanistan Afghanistan
Guns
I have written on this subject before and will not bore you again, Suffice it to say that I am growing too tired to fret over the fact that here is one gun for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. and that tens of thousands of human beings are killed by hot flying lead in this country every year, just so Wayne La Pierre can sing Happiness is a Warm Gun, before he goes to bed in his bunker in Bertesgarten. I look good in a brown shirt as well as the next guy. If I can just learn to aim with something bigger than a girly, 9mm, I’ll be all set. After lots of target practice, I can just replace my knowledge about the obvious connection between hand guns and hand-gun deaths, with irrational fears of unseen, colored, illegal immigrants, invading my castle and raping my cattle or chattel, or something, I believe that I will be in the right frame of mind to join the NRA. Then can I stop kvetching and begin a love affair with my own personal penis-extender.
Human Rights?
I think I may have unintentionally covered this area already. If I no longer believe that human beings have the right to a decent wage, privacy, clean air, water, food, health, protection from gun violence and rule by theocracy, doesn’t that just about cover human rights? Human rights, human schmites! With my new found sense of…not thinking, feeling, or caring about anyone except those exactly like me, the words human rights, will begin to sound vaguely threatening, like communismsocialismathiesmrealism. Like the idea of unions, human rights is just an idea created by tree-hugging liberals who think too damned much and, as I say, I am about done thinking, because it’s too damned hard.
The ignorant, stupid, mean-spirited people seem to be the happiest, at least when they are around other ignorant, stupid, mean-spirited people, and I’ll bet that there are lots of these folks around that I can hang with, if I can just chuck the progressive albatross and become ignorant, stupid, and mean-spirited. Then I can close my eyes, completely clear my mind, and picture myself content with what is happening to my country.
J. Brandeis Sperandeo
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