This Part of the United States: A Reminder

[JFN1]

It is easy to forget, the actual nature of a Democracy - any Democracy.

A Democracy, by it's very nature, requires that parts of it are unhappy, discontented, and unrepresented.

Majority rules means that the minority is going to be left feeling disaffected.

Period.

I don't know about the rest of you, but in 2004, I was so certain we were going to defeat George W. Bush and his viceroy of evil, Dick Cheney. Air America was touted as being hugely indicative of the mood of the country, and even if our nominee was a bit stiff and predictable, he was a much better choice than Bush.

Remember that crushing feeling we all got when we found out we had lost? Remember the dispair? Remember feeling disaffected, discontented, and definitely unrepresented?

Being a progressive liberal should require a level of empathy and compassion so often absent from our mainstream politics and politicians. After all, it is only through the conscious effort of walking a mile in another's shoes that we gain any real understanding for others, or as David Brin described it, for Otherness.

We are either, by design, or by our own stubbornness, arrogance, or purposeful ignorance - or perhaps all of these - isolated islands of consciousness. I cannot truly know you, for I cannot share your perceptions, your consciousness, your soul.

Sure, I can offer you mine, and you can offer me yours, but the gulf that separates us, makes us truly alien, to each other.

The best tool we have in our considerable arsenal, is empathy. In other words, I can know you only - and I mean only - by knowing myself.

There is a lot of unhappiness out there - you feel it to, dear reader, I know you do.

Despair runs rampant, shadowed by greed, and unhealthy lust, and an overpowering desire to be in control - of ourselves, of those around us, of anyone and everything that will make us feel safe from those in our midst, our own friends, neighbors, and even relatives, who hunt each other and the rest of us.

I want you all to consider your own empathy right now. How's it doing? is it suffering, for the sake of survival, for emotional and physical security? Do you feel as able to give of yourself, as you did even five years ago? Or ten?

My bet is, you don't.

My bet is, you cannot even locate within you when you hardened. Oh, you know it happened, you felt it happening. But survival demanded you ignore this change, press on, and hope for a better day.

My friends, I am, believe it or not, an optimist.

And as an optimist, just let me say:

A BETTER DAY, IS NOT COMING.

Nope. Not a chance. It is only going to get worse. I promise.

Want proof? Okay.

What happened to tolerance? Remember when 'road rage' didn't exist? Road rage was born on the dying heels of tolerance.

An tolerance is completely, and utterly, dependent upon - you guessed it - empathy.

If you doubt this, look deep inside, and feel something for someone else, someone you know. Then tell me tolerance isn't built on the foundation of empathy.

The individual souls we put in charge of this country, who we entrusted with power and responsibility, are not in this for Us, anymore. I don't care what party they are in - every single one of these folks is chest deep in a struggle for power that has nothing whatsoever to do with the average American. We are merely factors in the equation - pieces on the game board.

And it will continue like this, and I simply don't believe you and I can do anything at all about it.

Our current crop of politicians are stuck in grade school, or maybe high school, and are acting like spoiled rotten, entitled brats. There is no sense of responsibility in them beyond responsibility to self (which we all share), and thus they are unable to empathize with sufficient capacity to effectively do the job we hired them to do.

Our Democracy is not broken, despite how we all feel. It is working just fine.

And so is our Constitution.

The problem is not alone our laws or our system, but the quality and character of those seeking and gaining political office.

This part of America, that is running the show right now, is doing so, I remind you, at our behest. We are powerless to do anything about this, for this part of America which is running the show right now, have worked very, very hard, for forty or more years, to set things up this way. To change the system in such a manner that the stage woulds be set for them to play their game for power. The rest of us simply don't factor in the outcome of the game.

And remember - WE DID THIS. Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. We continue to support this system, and therefore we cannot bitch when it screw us. We vote in the same crowd every two and four years, so what room have we to bitch?

WE DID THIS. Not them. US.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. I have to agree with you

I once heard Studs Terkel say that Ronald Reagan "made it okay to be stupid."

In his era, it also became okay to be crude, rude, mean, callous, and mindlessly materialistic.

[Colorado Progressive]

2. Empathy is what separates a liberal from a repug. A liberal can have a PhD and be wealthy,

and have no problem giving their money to those in need. They FEEL. They know that the uninsured kid in the newspaper could have been their kid, or their neighbors kid. There are no "weak" poor people, only people who need a little help to become self-sufficient.

I like your post, but I don't think WE did this. THEY did this, the cowards who hate gays and poor people and hold their bibles in front of them like dark age crucifixes. It takes a lot more guts to be a liberal than it does to be a Repug. It takes an open mind, intelligence, and, of course, empathy.