Darkest Before the Dawn

[Mythsaje]

You know, it's been seeming pretty hopeless down here in the trenches for quite some time now. The last election gave us a brief flash of something that felt a lot like a light in the darkness, but since then that candle has wavered and has come remarkably close to being snuffed out by the sheer weight of the cloaking shadows that surround us.

We're not only still in Iraq, we've seen the conflict escalate to no good purpose. The lies and misdirection from the White House have grown in both proportion and frequency. We've been told in no uncertain terms that NOTHING we do, or our representatives in the House or Senate do means a damn thing to the President or his lackeys.

Millions of us are still without healthcare. Good paying jobs are still draining away to other lands, replaced by others that barely pay enough to survive--if we're lucky. Any attempt to raise the minimum wage has been met with intense and, frankly, ridiculous hostility and obstinacy on the part of the Republicans.

Our destruction of our environment continues unabated, despite the fact that most Americans grow more concerned about it.

The media continues to act as though countering truth with a lie is "fair and balanced." It continues to look for any way to attack our prospective Presidential candidates, while working frantically to prop up the Killer Klowns the Republican Party has hauled up from the depths of Krazy Town.

Impeachment is "off the table," though none of us are really sure why that is. Maybe because they don't expect any cooperation from this administration in collecting the kind of data it'll take to leverage the Republicans into taking it seriously. Or maybe it's because they're afraid of what the Corporate Media will make of the attempt. Or maybe because the whole damned system is so corrupted by now that any attempt to dredge the pool will bring up a host of skeletons to march arm and arm over the ranks of Republicans and Democrats alike.

Hell if I know.

Yep. Pretty sad, all in all. Nothing is really working as it should. It's like we've entered a political Twilight Zone, where everything that can possibly go wrong not only goes wrong, but finds the worst possible way to do so.

But maybe we really need a lot of this, as a nation. Maybe we need this long national nightmare to finally wake up to how close to the precipice we're allowing ourselves to wander. Maybe only through wandering this dark valley of despair it'll actually sink in with the apathetic or jaded that politics isn't just something other people worry about and obsess over. Maybe politics matters. Maybe it DOES make a difference who sits in the White House.

I myself have some sympathy for those who feel under-represented, who think that too many of our politicians represent something or someone other than We The People. That campaign promises are too easily made, and too difficult to keep.

But maybe, just maybe, this will begin to drive home the fact that none of that matters in the face of what happens when we don't participate in the system, when we allow ideological fanatics to make the choices for us.

I'm a hopeful kind of guy. As I've said before. Even when the monster's bearing down on me, slime running down its chin from its razor-edged teeth, its maw like a gaping cavern as it moves to swallow me whole, I'm going to be considering ways to escape, or ways to pound its ugly head into so much monster mash.

Anything else would be tantamount to surrender. And I'd no more surrender to this than I'd turn my back on the cries of my own children.

If all we have left to do is stand firm in our conviction, and refuse to allow their vicious lies and constant misdirection to weaken us, then that's what we'll do.

If we can't be an irresistible force, we can damn sure be an immovable object.

edited for spelling errors. I'm tired and ready to go to bed.

[izzie]

1. I think things go in waves and it is time this one with all the sewer

stuff in it makes the crest and turns over.