You guys are so positive and optimistic. How do you stay sane?

[Used and Abused]

It's been almost 5 years since our nation was hijacked by Bush and his thugs. Over 2 years since we wrongfully invaded Iraq. Republicans are destroying this country under the cloak of religion.

Bush has gotten away with EVERYTHING without so much as a peep from the media. Every now and then, some media person will throw us a bone, but that's it. The issue usually dies a quick death.

How do you do it? How do you stay so positive? How do you have the strength to take on these liars day in and day out without becoming physically ill? What's your secret? Do you really think there is a light at the end of this tunnel?

[mopaul]

1. don't include me, i'm cracking up

been insane in the brain since selection 2000

[sui generis]

3. I right behind mopaul catching the big pieces that fall off

to stick where mine are missing

[Nordmadr]

20. I'm not. I think I am going to begin looking into Canada again.

Seriously. Things are getting worse and I am not so sure I want this to be my country anymore.

Olaf

[TayTay]

2. I have kids

You do it for them. Plus, politics is cyclical. The wheels turn slowly, but they do turn.

[uppityperson]

22. It is difficult to stay optimistic.

Many times I am not. I have had to take DU breaks because I get caught up in the awfulness of everything and need to get out in the world for a while and do something positive (plant flowers, kill slugs...). Being part of DU helps also, knowing that I am not alone in my concerns, seeing that others are working towards positive change, watching others freak out more than me.

I agree we are in a cycle, a negative part of it for sure, even according to my 80 yr old relatives. Recognize that things will most likely get worse also, but continue on regardless.

Kittens help too.

[SCDem]

26. My son is the main reason why I try to find the optimism

and am so darn active in politics is because of my son.

[bryant69]

4. Hope

One chooses to hope; and to strive for the object of his hope. I'm not going to deny that things are tough now, but this is hardly the worst they've ever been (consider the Civi War or the first years of the Great Depression, for example). It will require work and effort and blood and sweat and tears to get through these times and to get America back to the correct path - but I believe we can do it.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Sugarcoated]

12. There's always hope

I think people are catching on - all of our hard work is starting to have an effect. The Bush style "are you gonna believe me or your lyin' eyes?" is starting to wear off, Air America, Galloway, Sensenbrenner gleefully abusing his power (just that putrid evil sight alone will spur me on for years), silencing regular citizens just wanting to have their say, the lame stream media isn't the only way this info is getting out there. Work, fight, truth, never give up hope. The tide is slowly turning.

[leftofthedial]

5. posters in General Discussion forum are sane?

who knew?

[Hope springs eternal]

11. Why not?

Becasue what can you do?

Seriously, don't you sit back, look at this situation and laugh?

58 million people voted for Kerry, and he wasn't the best campaginer , so what does that say?

It says many of us are not pleased. And don't you think that if we did a better job of reaching out to the Red states and conservatives, they'd see the light? That's my beef, I bet we could capture the South with a message of fiscal responsablity, economic growth and "true" chirstian values.

[leftofthedial]

23. as long as the preachers at all the God Mart superchurches

are campaigning for the fascists, it will be hard to communicate "true" Christian values to anyone.

58 million votes for Kerry (I thought it was "officially" 52 million) means the majority doesn't vote at all and that elections are close enough for repukes to steal.

[name not needed]

28. At least they can still talk about chicken.

:)

[leftofthedial]

30. LOL!

:rofl:

[SteppingRazor]

6. Positve? Ho ho! You must have meant to post elsewhere...

Or at least, you should probably not use the all-inclusive "you guys" (with apologies to the ladies, of course). Me, I'm as grim as they come. We are screwed. And so are our children and their children, and so on. I keep fighting simply because it's the right thing to do.

But I know I don't speak for a lot of the people here, who keep up the fight while holding onto optimism. Maybe it's naive. Maybe it's foolhardy. Hell, maybe it's just plain dumb.

Or maybe, it's like Studs Terkel once said -- "Hope dies last."

[Used and Abused]

21. Look at all the DSM posts

They are so full of hope. We are relying on people like Jon Stewart to get the message out. People really believe that Bush will go down over this. He has gotten away with much worse, why would the DSM bring him down?

[NewJeffCT]

7. I'm always a pessimist

I'm still not over Mike Dukakis losing in '88!

The only time I was optimistic in the past 17 years was last October prior to the election & reading so many optimistic posts on DU got me caught up in it, too.... and look how that turned out!

[Taxloss]

8. The entire endeavour is one big con-trick.

If it was a genuine right-wing platform, I'd be worried, but it isn't, it's a transparent smash-and-grab, and people are increasingly noticing that. Bush would have disappeared as an utterly unnoticeable one-termer were it not for 911.

[MsAnthropy]

17. That's the best description of what's been done to our country

that I've ever seen--"smash and grab". Totally on the mark!

[northzax]

9. better to be hopeful and us

than bitter and them, no?

[leveymg]

10. Resistance - Nice Work If You Can Get It

We're just lucky, I guess.;) :bounce: :kick: :dunce:

[dogday]

13. Because I know that eventually everyone gets caught

Whatever you do wrong in life will eventually come around and bite you in the ass. I can wait, and in the meantime I keep posting how much I dislike the lies and policies of this Administration.

[kweerwolf]

14. I was going to be optimistic ...

but I figured why waste my time since it probably wouldn't work out. :cry:

[Dr.Phool]

15. It's like Hunter Thompson said

I'd never recomend drugs or alcohol to any one, but they've always worked for me.

[ixion]

16. uh, optimistic? I guess I have brief moments of optimism, but then

I remember Murphy's Law(s) and I forget about that.

[Sugarcoated]

18. Rove will fuque up eventually

[RandomKoolzip]

19. I'm not positive all the time.

I'd say I'm positive about 19% of the time, and that's being generous.

To give you an answer that I think would be most appropriate for your query, I'd have to say this: the reason why I still care about liberal politics and fighting for goodness and change and social justice even after all that's happened in the last five years is that I plan on having children.

And I do not want those children to have to live in some hoary Mad Max-ian post-meltdown doomworld, nor do I want things to be worse for them than they have been for my generation; that seems like the opposite of how the world ought to operate.

I don't want my kids, in 2020, to look up at me and ask, "So when this Bush clown was in office, you guys did nothing to stop him from fucking everything up? Were you guys too busy watching "Desperate Housewives" to actually stop him from gutting Social Security, starting religious wars, forcing religion and government to procreate, slashing public education, inviting gigantic corporations to take over our government, making healthcare too expensive for anyone but CEO's, despoiling the environment, and generally making life unliveable for me?"

Of course, I don't expect my kid to use such florid language.

[MuseRider]

24. Focus.

That is what helped me. I found a local issue that is also a national issue but was able to focus down to a level where there was a way to be heavily involved. One tiny victory at a time. We are working hard to become a state organization and I got myself on the steering committee. By doing this I have been able to learn a ton of things I did not know and I have a wonderful group of people to work with. It has really helped me. That and DU have saved me. Find something local that means a lot to you and the involvement will save your sanity when you look at the national outrage.

[GreenPartyVoter]

25. I gor thru cycles of up and down. Really, if it weren't for DU I'd lose

it altogether.

[SammyWinstonJack]

27. Positive?

I'm positive bu$hco** are greedy, murdering thugs. My strength is waning. These past five years have taken quite a toll on me.

[Village Idiot]

29. This forum helps quite a bit.

Knowing that you AREN'T the one that is insane - that you are not alone in believing that ShrubCo are the most criminally active administration in the history of the USA helps quite a bit.

Thanks, DU!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

31. Positve and opitimistic? More like cynical bemusement.

Mixed with a large dose of contempt for politicians and their paymasters.

[jzodda]

32. Its easy man

First off I have a graduate degree in history among other things so I tend to take the long view.

Politics is like history, politics is history. Everything goes in cycles and so these dark times will not last forever..

[Tommymac]

33. Because Rove wants us to Despair...

I will not give in to that tactic. They are trying to sow discontent among We The People. They use passive/aggresive means such as having people who pretend to be supporters of the opposition continually voice doubts publically to undermine our morale and weaken us. Herd behavior...If the leaders are percieved to be demoralized, the sheep will follow suit.

(Note, I AM NOT implying you are a plant, just explaining the tactic.)

It is a tried and true method that has been used for a long time...sow the seeds of discontent and reap the harvest of a demoralized opponent.

This kid don't play that game homey. :headbang:

I keep my doubts to myself or voice them in private with trusted friends or loved ones...not that I have any doubts; we are going to kick neocon ass in the long run.

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20030519&s=wolin
Excerpted from from The Nation:
While the Nazi totalitarianism strove to give the masses a sense of collective power and strength, Kraft durch Freude ("Strength through joy"), inverted totalitarianism promotes a sense of weakness, of collective futility. While the Nazis wanted a continuously mobilized society that would not only support the regime without complaint and enthusiastically vote "yes" at the periodic plebiscites, inverted totalitarianism wants a politically demobilized society that hardly votes at all. Recall the President's words immediately after the horrendous events of September 11: "Unite, consume and fly," he told the anxious citizenry. Having assimilated terrorism to a "war," he avoided doing what democratic leaders customarily do during wartime: mobilize the citizenry, warn it of impending sacrifices and exhort all citizens to join the "war effort." Instead, inverted totalitarianism has its own means of promoting generalized fear; not only by sudden "alerts" and periodic announcements about recently discovered terrorist cells or the arrest of shadowy figures or the publicized heavy-handed treatment of aliens and the Devil's Island that is Guantánamo Bay or the sudden fascination with interrogation methods that employ or border on torture, but by a pervasive atmosphere of fear abetted by a corporate economy of ruthless downsizing, withdrawal or reduction of pension and health benefits; a corporate political system that relentlessly threatens to privatize Social Security and the modest health benefits available, especially to the poor. With such instrumentalities for promoting uncertainty and dependence, it is almost overkill for inverted totalitarianism to employ a system of criminal justice that is punitive in the extreme, relishes the death penalty and is consistently biased against the powerless.

Thus the elements are in place: a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both compliant and repressive, a party system in which one party, whether in opposition or in the majority, is bent upon reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favor a ruling class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens with a sense of helplessness and political despair, and, at the same time, keeping the middle classes dangling between fear of unemployment and expectations of fantastic rewards once the new economy recovers. That scheme is abetted by a sycophantic and increasingly concentrated media; by the integration of universities with their corporate benefactors; by a propaganda machine institutionalized in well-funded think tanks and conservative foundations; by the increasingly closer cooperation between local police and national law enforcement agencies aimed at identifying terrorists, suspicious aliens and domestic dissidents.

[NMMNG]

34. I have a multi-pronged approach

I didn't survive 12 years of physical and mental abuse at the hands of my school peers, a dysfunctional family, and heaps of other crap only to be taken down by the likes of Commander Cuckoobananas and his gang of Fundie wingnuts.

But then there are many levels of sanity and I'm not always at the top...:silly:

[bloom]

35. I don't think I'm all that

positive and optimistic.

I figure it's interesting to watch. Living in "interesting times" and all that - the curse.



(I did a google and apparently it's not really a Chinese curse...)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/hub/A807374


Oh well - ain't the internet great. That's one thing.

[Tweed]

36. Are you confusing General Discussion for the Lounge?

Are you sure you meant to post this here?

:shrug:

[smurfygirl]

37. look at it this way

they feed off of negative thoughts and deeds

So think positive and do good and they can't take your energy from you

It's okay to be angry, just stay positive.

[flyarm]

38. its called love of country!!!!!!!

and its not taking your eye off the ball...if we stop fighting..well i don't want to even think about it..but i wonder at times, i wonder what the results would have been if the people of germany had had the internet..would the results have been the same for 6 million??
i just wonder some days...what will it take for "we the people" to take to the streets and stop this fascism??

i hope we don't wait too much longer...i fear for my nation , and i fear for my children, and i fear for future generations...and i will not shut up until these bastards are taken down and charged with war crimes, and the crimes of 9/11! obstruction at the least!!!