Reply #22: I agree, but this won't be popular on DU. [View All]

[tomreedtoon]

Several people I know personally, who are very active politically (union shop steward, attender at protests, writer of editorial letters) would call oxbow's comment weakness. They live their lives perpetually angry. I've recently seen one of them driven into a rage, charging up to people and dropping the "F Bomb" several times because some lights were too bright in the room!

I don't believe progressive beliefs require anger. But that seems to be the case in a lot of posts here. Whenever I read posts about people threatening to go off to Canada because they can't stand being in a so-called "red state," I think of a kid who's upset at his parents who wants to run away to the circus. At least that's funny, compared to the people who have already consigned democracy and elections to the Republicans, and said that we are in Nazi Germany now. (By comparison, how many Jews wrote angry letters in German newspapers complaining that they were being sent to concentration camps? Don't bring up the point that any such letters wouldn't be published; how many people would actually write them, instead of taking action?)

Again, oxbow is right. We need to be strong emotionally and spiritually. And believe it or not, what we write here, and say to others, expresses our strength or weakness. Some consider those bitter, self-defeating posts "venting" and "emotional release." Maybe so, but when people post them continually, they're not only showing their troubled emotional state, they're reinforcing it.