I'm Becoming A Cynical Liberal

[Yavin4]

I am losing all hope for the American people. I just think that they are too lazy, too uneducated, too ignorant, and too arrogant to fight for any more, and even if we win and their lives improve, they will go right back to voting Republican because "it's their money and they should keep it" or "cut my taxes so that I can spend more on crap at the mall".

I'm sort of glad that people are losing their reproductive rights. They should. Although a good many Liberals, myself included, will suffer, this is what has to happen in order to teach fools about their privacy rights.

For the past 5 years, I've been getting an ear full from ITers who demand to know why their government has sold out their jobs to outsourcing. Well, where were these fools five years ago? Why didn't they form unions to protect their jobs when they had the power to do so? Why aren't more people forming unions to fight for better benefits and a fairer workplace. Oh that's right. They were at the mall.

I'm glad that oil companies are posting multi-billion dollar profits in one quarter while Americans are paying $3 a gallon. They should pay more. They didn't want public transportation because they didn't want poor people to spoil their idyllic suburban enclaves. Well, shut up and pay for it at the pump. Just sign over your paycheck to ExxonMobileAmocoGulf.


If you don't actively fight and vote for your freedoms, you will lose them. It's that damn simple, and the only way some idiots will learn is to go through the pain.

[gpandas]

1. welcome to the real world...

being cynical in america is the one true path

[afdip]

2. cynicism and sarcasm have always been the fortresses

of liberals; unfortunately, cynicism and sarcasm are lost of the great unwashed masses, who are incapable of understanding complex thought.

[bryant69]

8. Actually

Liberals used to champion the great unwashed masses; rather than despising them.

Course one could argue that real Liberals are still the champions of the unwashed masses.

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

[afdip]

9. by this rationale combined with political correctness, we should

love them and champion their cause(s) despite the fact that they have prostrated themselves before dubya the demigod. i am not that forgiving.

[bryant69]

13. Then leave them to their fate I suppose

How do you feel about women who stay with a man who abuses them (or vice versa)?

[Protagoras]

16. Sometimes it's possible to do both.

Because while you are poisoned by reality, you cling to the illusion that your efforts might be that .000001% that occur at the right place and the right time.

And sometimes it just doesn't sit well to give up...even if you truly believe there is no hope. So you go down swinging even though you know you are going down because the alternative is to go down like a lemming and that just isn't how some of us are built.

[Debs]

3. Reminds me

Of the great Lily Tomlin quote: No matter how cynical I get its impossible to keep up

[cassiepriam]

10. I love this. And it fits me to a tee. Can I use the line??

Might even make it my sig line.

[politicaholic]

4. Yup, it takes more and more to make an American be active...

A war didn't do it. Record high deficits didn't do it. Conservative judge nominees that may take away the civil liberties of women and minorites won't do it. Hell, not even a catastrophic hurricane can change things.

You know what happens? Years down the road extremism will seep into the system and saturate it so thoroughly that the only way to reverse it is with an extreme and abrupt swing the other way. Usually caused by a person or event.

Sort of like when a Mormon child rebels. They come from an extremist religion and thus when they rebel they really go off the deep end.

You're right to be skeptical. People aren't that smart, even when they have a piece of paper saying that they are or at least should be. I certainly am not. At least I'm smart enough to see a problem and try to do something about it other than just vote. I can't vote, I'm not Merkin, so all I have is activity.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. H.L. Mencken said it best:

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

Now if you really want to become cynical try studying history. You will soon discover that it's the same story over and over again. Just the cast of characters change.

[afdip]

11. a terrific mencken quote . . . nice

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. Alas. He was proven right..at least twice.

Reagan and Bush certainly meet the criteria he laid down. Morons, beloved of the people, both. The worst part being they are loved BECAUSE they are morons.

[serryjw]

14. God......Isn't that the truth!

The more I read about the past the more I lose my mind.......It's the same thing over and over..and NO ONE learns, it is disheartening. Unfortunately, it's human nature to get complacent. We took the FDR's "New Deal" for granted, We took the "Warren Court" for granted, we took a quality public education for granted, we took affordable/quality health care for granted, if you are under 50 you took a good economy for granted..........YOU TOOK CHEAP OIL for granted!

After WWII and the holocaust people cried

NEVER AGAIN!

How many 'holocausts' have we seen since then? We are living thru one in Darfur and the world is doing NOTHING about it.

Yes, history repeats itself..and always will!:cry:

[DiverDave]

6. What took you so long?

been for awhile now...

[Armstead]

7. T'was ever thus

The American people are no worse than ever. It's just that there are fewer excuses to be ignorant and self-centered now.

It's easy to get cynical. But when IU get to feeling that way I always look at myself and try to remember "he who is without sin cast the first stone" and admit that I am often more myopic and selfish and lazy than I should be too. But overall I'm still a good peson who tries to do the right thing....I think a lot of people are that way.

I also think about the people I know who seem apathetic. It's not that they don;t care. But i think the system gives them the message that there's nothing they can do about it.

Unfortunately I blame us for that partially. My brother, for example, is a guy who is middle of the road, but has basically liberal instincts. He's pissed as hell, but he sees both politicalparties as so corrupt and out of touch that he has basically tuned out the whole process.

The source of that apathy can be changed. But only if the people with power and good intentions actually stand up again and make people believe there is something that can be done.

I guess i'd sum it up by saying that cynicism is necessary for self-protection, but WE ALSO HAVE TO HAVE HOPE AND ENDURANCE to provide a support system for people's better instincts too.

[tx_dem41]

15. If that's your attitude towards the American people...

no wonder we've done poorly lately. Who would vote for a politician that has such disdain for them?

[Cactus44]

17. Uhhhhhhh.........

Does the name George Bush ring a bell?

Seems people will quite eagerly vote for someone who has great disdain for them.

But- I see where you're coming from.

[tx_dem41]

18. Surely, you aren't suggesting that we want to be like George Bush?

And, yes...I'm sorry for calling you Shirley. ;)

[Lexingtonian]

19. Stupidity is an addiction

It takes a while and a lot of pain for people to give it up, and then there's a high relapse rate. The major cure happens to be death, unfortunately.

But you're somehow expecting people to be liberals, i.e. live with a wide set of concerns and a serious effort at foresight and to deny their appetites a lot of the time. You expect them to deal honestly and seriously with their own traumas and pathologies and needs, and then to deal with those of other people on an equal or higher level.

I find it sort of curious that so many peoples' effort and motivation here is flagging now, after five disgusting years. You don't swim for days after the ship wrecks in order to give up as you're washed onto the beach. There has to be a motivation greater than merely surviving the worst.

If and when you accept that the society will never be liberal in a proper sense (or ever conservative, either), it's just that at times it tolerates liberal rule when that is the only way to solve the problems at had, you/we have to decide what is most important to achieve with what time and power is ours. Collective comfort and remaking the society in our own image are not really options. Setting the foundations for a better society than what we have is about the extent of it. Good government is obviously the start.

I'm sorta an activist on gay marriage because I think that is the settling issue in gender rights. When victory comes at that far fortress the war for women's rights closer to the average person is over, the opponents have to fall back a long way. In minority and criminal rights the most crucial issue to my analysis is disenfranchisement of people no longer imprisoned.

Once we've decided who is and isn't fully a citizen and get over the discriminations involving incidental biological factors or raising, that's when civil behavior improves dramatically- resentments and entitlements decline, though there will surely be another burst of them in the public arena- and enough social peace exists for the economic rights picture to become easy enough to deal with and take priority.

This is sort of stupidly basic stuff. But it's the foundations. What's going with the middle class...I think good government won't solve the problems, but it will greatly diminish the pain by disabling the worst abusers. Look at how rapidly the economic abuse of the average American fell off when Clinton came into office and how rapidly the abuses grew once Bush was in office and took the DoJ and IRS and FTC off their white collar crime beats. When everyone feels increasingly vulnerable to economic predation the amount of defensive economic behavior becomes enormous and itself a source of abuse. Working as I have in the health care system, that's what is going on there on an enormous economic scale, for example.

But I can't emphasize enough that the basic social issue settlement in gender and criminal rights is fundamental to the resolving of the economic rights and predation problems overall.