I had an Epiphany about our government and life/DU tonight....does it make any sense to you?

[The Straight Story]

It's one of those things you know, but don't always grasp the weight of. It is grasping the weight of it that hit me.

The wife and I were watching some tv after dinner, just relaxing as the daughter is at the in-laws for the night.

My wife turned to me with a pained look and said "Do you think we will be alright?"

Sure babe I said. And I came out side to think and roll a smoke and thought about it.

The reason I am so hurt right now is that I am more scared than most any time in my life, and I am letting down those that depend on me. That tends to hurt ya.

And that's when it all hit me

My wife and I just want some basic security in life and the ability to have the things we need. She relies on me to supply some things, I on her for others. We have a relationship.

We have one with our government that is very similar. We give them money and power, and in return we (in our relationship) have some reliances we build up.

A good structure in which can thrive in, a safety net like we give them, health care, the ability to feel safe, etc and so on.

Some in government try, but not nearly enough - and they cannot accomplish their goals without our help.

I doubt they are crying every night in bed, or stressing out each day about the situation they have put us in - and that is the difference between us and some of them.

I see the same frustration I am feeling right now here on DU (especially GDP...). People are scared and worried about their future, and the future of those they love.

And they feel they cannot change it, like they are on a sinking ship and the only life rafts available are given to those with more - because the rest of us don't deserve it.

Huge companies get billions in bail outs, subsidies, contracts - and they get to meet with the people we are paying. Get a ticket like I did? If you are wealthy it is pocket change, so you weren't really being punished on the same level as someone with no money.

A guy like me has to root around every corner to find a buck when I am down from the government, yet the big people get wined and dined and bail outs.

We rely on them to do well for ALL of us, we gave up something to be in this relationship with the government. And they are letting us down.

Another sleepless night for me and more crying like I am doing right damned now - and they will go to sleep on a pillow of special interest money after a glass of champagne and not even think about all the other people out here.

I wouldn't blame my wife if she left me and found someone who could take better care of her, and I don't me for wanting to leave these government folks in the dust and vote their asses out.

Someday I will get rich, and I will use that money to help out those our government doesn't care to bother with.

Someday I will sleep well again, and god willing someday we will vote the bastards out and get good people in office who actually care about the people who put them there and pay them.

Someday is not today. But god willing it will be soon.

[Swamp Rat]

1. "watching some dinner after tv"

:D :hi:

[The Straight Story]

2. fixed it :)

Thanks, just kind of scatter brained tonight.

But I was watching dinner earlier to make sure it did not burn...

[Swamp Rat]

33. LOL!

:rofl: Good thing you didn't "watch dinner after eating some tv." :D

Brain scatter can be fun, if used in the proper dosage, and under comedic supervision. For example: George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Larry the Cable Guy, Dave Chappelle, et al.

Some unfortunate bastards don't have much to scatter:


:hi:

[LakeSamish706]

8. I'm sorry to do this here, but I have to chastise you for this... You knew what...

was meant by the poster and yet you had to chastise them for the error... Shit... I just don't know...

[The Straight Story]

15. Naw, swamp rat and I go way back :)

he was really just giving me a heads up :)

[LakeSamish706]

19. Thats cool, and I don't mean to dump on swamp rat... My Bad... sorry.. n/t

[The Straight Story]

24. No need to apologize, we are all friends here - except the people I have on ignore

:rofl:

I really do appreciate looking out for me though, I should have said that before.

[Swamp Rat]

32. Spank me!

:spank:

I'm jus' funnin' with TSS. He's a friend, and it's a great OP... I can relate, perhaps too much. x(

One of my coping mechanisms of choice is humour... which is not always understood, as it is often very odd, to say the least. :D

[DesertFlower]

3. that was a very moving post.

you speak for many people in this country.

[Stargazer99]

4. and they just can't fathom why the middleclass has increased

sucicides....duh.

[gateley]

9. When I was growing up, which even though I'm 54 wasn't all that long ago --

(and we've heard all this before) - a man could make a living delivering milk, delivering the mail, working at the hardware store. He'd be able to buy a home for his family and clothe and feed them. He'd have a TV, and be able to take them on vacation.

In return, he worked hard for his employer, paid his government their share, and life was pretty good.

That's not too much to ask. It's not as though we're not doing our part. Will we get our country back, do you think?

[The Straight Story]

14. My dad delivered milk back in the day in Ohio

And mom worked at a supermarket, and they were able to get by.

Still have a pic around my hard drive of dad as a young man in his milk man outfit - he looked pretty darned happy too.

If I dig it up will post it, it's a riot :)

[gateley]

26. I still remember our Milkman -- Jack. Nice guy! nt

[The Straight Story]

29. How nice

:rofl:

[gateley]

5. ...

:hug:

And you're right - we just want to be able to feel safe and provide for ourselves and our loved ones. This country has let us down. YOU haven't let anyone down, and those of us going through the same thing haven't let anybody down. We have to remember that.

I hope your dreams are peaceful tonight.

[lonestarnot]

6. Life is a bitch and then you die.

But we got to make the best of it for some long overdue change. It's coming. Hang on. :hug:

[The Straight Story]

7. My dear friend

Always nice to see you about.

Change will happen, but hope only gets ya so far - unless it is a campaign slogan ;)

[lonestarnot]

17. That's why you're going to see that lawyer next week!

Hope only gets you so far. :P And you might win the lottery next week too! One never knows what's around door number 3.

[The Straight Story]

22. Indeed. And I may have another interview early next week

Not sure how I will get there :)

The problem with the attorney is they will want money, and I can't pull that out of my ass like I can a reply to you :rofl:

[lonestarnot]

28. You WILL get there! I can see it in your eyes!

:wow:

[The Straight Story]

30. Hey, those are my wifes eyes you are looking at

:rofl:

[lonestarnot]

31. Not those eyes! Your eyes!

:rofl:

[FirstLight]

10. I am right there with ya!

My kids look to me for safety and security and I have been going through the motions feeling like we are sinking and there is nothing I can do but try and grow some food in the backyard when the snow melts...

How do I encourage my teen to succeed in school and think about college when I doubt of the world will survive as we know it to his graduation in 2010...

I think by the end of this year, more than just our civil liberties could be gone, so could our very way of life due to global changes that are well beyond anyone's control.

...and I am single and alone, and have noone o lean on for support, no one to hold me and tell me it is going to be alight.
What do you do when you are scared and can't unload it?
I am grateful for you guys here because I have nowhere else to put this...

[The Straight Story]

12. You can always call me or I could call you - really helps to talk to someone

It's the least I can do, and I know how good it feels to talk with someone.

PM me if ya ever want to call, tonight, tomorrow, whenever.

[mac2]

A hug for you and all you do for your family

[mac2]

11. There has been a lot of tears in this country since Reagan.

They have "theirs" but don't want you to have yours.

If it is any comfort...you are not alone in your fears and ability to plan ahead. Life just won't do that.

Your wife might just love you.

I'm willing to bet a lot of divorces and early death has occurred since Bush stole power. I believe rampant Diabeties II is from stress and bad drugs. So are other auto-immune diseases. So try to be good to yourself and get more sleep.

Our ancestors had stress and sleepless nights too with the two world wars, Vietnam, and the Great Depression (caused by the same power elite).

[Rosemary2205]

25. There was a lot of tears before Reagan too.

but at least for a little while lower and middle class whites could achieve just a little bit of that dream of their kids being better off than they were. A lot of non-whites never really got to that point yet........

[mac2]

35. I hear you.

The turn of the century gave us great hope since minorities had made great strides. Bush stole power and that hope was down the drain since everyone was to fight over the crumbs left.

Democracy and equality still has many miles to go.

[thunder rising]

13. We cannot afford to wait. The country is like in a marathon between doom and change...can we get to

next Jan before the $hit really hits the fan.

[lonestarnot]

23. That is the question.

[mac2]

36. And that we did speak up and try to challenge them

[Mnemosyne]

16. Just

:hug:

[LakeSamish706]

18. I have always liked reading your posts Straight and at almost 60, I can identify...

with you. For me is just seems that we have been living through one war after another.... In all honesty it seems just like the Vietnam days all over again, multiplied by about 50. I just can't fathom how we, as a people can sit there and let a band of lunatics take our country over, as has happened these past 7 plus years. I seriously wake up every morning wondering what we are going to be faced with, or whether we are under some sort of military rule or what. I only hope that we can get to November and get these elections underway and that might give us some sort of a compass to where we are headed...

[The Straight Story]

21. I really appreciate that more than you can know, cause I worry sometimes

People get sick of my rants here :)

I am just me, whether I am here on DU or in person.

I am open here because I don't have many people to talk to in real life, and I just need to get things out and have someone to bounce things off of - plus I love to write, and just like with my poetry I write based on what I live.

Your post, as have many others here, brought me joy in a dark time. It all started to go to hell in Nov 2004, and has been crazy since then.

Someday maybe I can look back at it all and laugh just a little.

Folks like you and others here on Du help me laugh just a bit each day.

[angrycarpenter]

20. I was directly hurt by Jeb Bush and the state of fla.

They changed a law to protect the big builders and the insurance companies from law suits. It basically said that every one on a construction site had to be covered by workman's comp. Insurance companies would not write a policy on fewer than 3 employees. We had been working without it in an effort to keep more of our money. About $24 an hour after taxes, pretty sweet.

The law required every single self employed construction sub. to become a LLC with stock certificates and CEO's with board meetings and recorded meetings. We were given about 5 weeks to comply.

I could not afford all that crap because come Jan 1 2004 I was out of a job so I had no choice but to give up and go get a regular job. The damage that a $1200 a month pay cut did to my life is too tragic and long to go into here.

I know your pain, and your fury. Sometimes the anger I felt over the whole thing would just about consume me. The only advice I can give is don't drink when angry. That one screwed me up for a whole year.

[mac2]

37. Same thing happened to me in NY State

I went from a well paying job to a lower one with more stress and little vacation.

Even when I went back to the university at night to get another degree and career the good jobs just weren't there. I had experience. I had good marks and and education. I had good references, etc. The excuse was I made too much in my old job. Buffalo, NY lost half their population since the 70s. I being one of them. I know I was not alone.

I miss my old home where I was born, raised, and educated. I miss the people and the lake, trees, etc.

When people say they don't care about politics I remind them that your daily life relies on good leadership from your government. I worked with professionals who had to flee their country when oppressed, etc. by their government. Their homes gone, their savings pillaged, their careers in shambles. The young could start over. It was harder for the older ones.

[EFerrari]

27. These are scary times for a lot of us, my friend.

I went through a similar car debacle. It passes. Hug you wife -- that's what matters. Everything else, not so much. :hug:

[lostnfound]

34. You can't count on the government for much

Whatever good, well-meaning ideas get adopted, the bad guys co-opt them, distort, deplete, complicate, turn inside out, and use them for their own purposes.

Want a program to help poor women support their kids? They turn it into an excuse to allow the police to rummage through dresser drawers looking for drugs and boyfriend's clothing.

Want free education for all? They turn it into a tool of indoctrination and authoritarianism -- a way to instill fear, to homogenize the consumers, and to develop a ranked, hopeless futility in the many or a sense of elitist entitlement in the few. To kill the confidence or ability of any children who might be inclined towards an "independent livelihood".

Want federal funding for schools in poor states? They turn it into a useful tool for blackmailing all states -- i.e., forcing them to open the doors for military recruiters etc.

Anything the government DOES give you the individual will be at a cost to you of jumping through hoops, suffering the indignity of bureaucrats questioning your integrity, lifestyle, work ethic, etc.

At this point in our history, possibly it is true that everything that grows the federal government is growing the empire.
It may have started as a symbiotic relationship, but it is now akin to a cancer, funneling most of our money into wars for profit and into better tools for controlling and mining the citizenry. Bureaucracies set up for good purposes -- like the FDA -- become tools to dole out the nation's resources to the chosen few and to complicate the regulations JUST enough to make small businesses pay a heavy price for existence while large or favored businesses can often use them as a means to tilt the playing field.

Nearly all big government programs get turned into favors for specific companies -- who decides who gets the contracts? -- and therefore a means to build more power for those in power. Power flows to power, and large corporations are inevitably favored, and they buttress a pyramidal system where those on the bottom layer aren't seen as individuals but as replaceable lumps of rock. There is still a symbiotic relationship between those corporate owners and the political winners in government. They make each other powerful, and they don't need ordinary people except as docile sheep and consumers.

The "ordinary people" used to run their own groceries, bookstores, carpenter services, diners -- and work for themselves. Many of the skills that people have today are only useable in the context of a large corporation; and most of the old skills and services -- like hairdresser, grocer, shoe salesman -- have been subsumed into multinational corporations.

"A guy like you" is probably resourceful and talented, but you are having to "root around for every buck" because the new economy has become akin to a rigid, centrally-planned economy with no plan for the individuals who get squeezed out of their assigned place in the pyramid, just a plan to make sure that money and power keeps moving upward. Cash is liquid, but human beings aren't.

It is terrible how the faceless bureaucracy is making life so complicated -- your car registration has expired? what would that even mean in a sane world?? -- which can be either a mild annoyance or a major trauma, depending on whether one has money. I hope you find a way out of your current situation. You will. Believe in tomorrow and in yourself and in the love of your wife and child, who are real flesh-and-blood people that you CAN count on. We need ideas on how to build safety nets again from the bottom up, like the way some are doing in Latin America -- and ideas on how to re-create an economy that is locally based and more open to resourceful human beings.

[mac2]

38. Monopolist corporations destroy competition and innovation.

These corporations are criminal organizations and full of fraud, murder,robbery, treason, war mongering, etc. We made corporate laws against this but our government allows the huge international corporations to rule. Our government is run by corporations and secret groups.

Time for a real Progressive movement (again). They are the same Robber Barons of the last century. Instead of being just American, they are now international to avoid taxes and over sight.

[Psyop Samurai]

43. Excellent post... thanks...

Ya know, between this thread, and the one arguing about Clinton & Obama's "mandates" for health insurance, and considering what's happened to The Straight Story, and many others of us here and the nightmarish fear that we're living under, and the endless talk of this incentive and that penalty in "policy circles", I'm going to state what I've felt for a while now:

They can take every carrot and every stick ever devised and shove it up their ass.

How are we supposed to be motivated by carrots and sticks, when there's no underlying legitimacy? I know that I no longer can. And I wonder if others have felt this way as well.

on edit:

The social contract has been declared null and void by our overlords. Why, then, should we feel any obligation whatsoever to uphold our end of the deal? I know I certainly don't. And even if I did, the grotesque nightmare of the preceding years has alienated me beyond any hope of return to the "flock".

[radfringe]

39. the "F" word, and I'm talking about F***k

It's FEAR

and not in the sense that the terrorists are coming or another 9-11, although that is a small factor

bush and the GOPers have destroyed everything they have touched, and torched everything we hold dear

the economy is in a bush-recession, the worse might be staved off long enough for bush to skedaddle back to crawford, but after january many fear it will become a full-blown depression

oil prices are being artificially inflated, taking a huge chunk of money out of everyone's pocket

domestic and foreign issues and the disastrous policies stand over us like a great hulking monster...it's overwhelming

all this adds up to a great foreboding and fear. it's very evident in the primary turnout (dems vs repubs), and in a microcosmic way the shrill and vicious tone of the GD :p threads

there are no aliens landing in a corn field to save us from ourselves, there are no political messiahs to flock around.

pandora's box has been opened and all we have left to cling to is hope.

[L. Coyote]

40. EXCELLENT comments. I find one disagreement and it is significant

in perspective.

I try to epiphanize a bit every Epiphany (Jan. 6), and got carried away a few years ago--Epiphanies were still flowing in Feb! :rofl:

One was that there is no government, just people doing jobs. Everything is
"just people" doing jobs, and with the same motives driving them, their
family security, etc. What we call "government" is really "just people" and their impact.

This led to another epiphany. Someone said, "Their schools ... their children..."
Even if you have a sub-culture identity or no kids, they are still "our schools"
and "our kids" and "our future." In essense, the "us and them" dichotomy is false.
We cannot solve problems in schools or with caring for children by disassociating
from the problem. In fact, that is the way to allow the problem to get worse.

This epiphany--one way to allow a problem to get worse is to call it someone else's
problem--applies to government. We take ownership of government and what government
does to the degree we get involved. The solution is to become part of the government,
to be one of "the people" who makes the decisions, take the actions, infuences policy,
decides on candidates, etc. The solution is not to change the government, but to change
who works in government, who is in charge, who is a decider.

I had one other epiphany recently. I got out of politics in the late 60s,
after my candidate was killed, and thought I had made a wise call, staying out of
"that mess." Then Bush became Prez and royally messed up the whole world.
And I realized for the first time that my decision may have been wrong.
I realized that if Bush could be Prez, I could have been a GREAT Prez! :rofl:
I told you I epihanize for too long some years!

[Steven_S]

41. Violation of the Social Contract...

has become so rampant and pervasive that I wonder if we will ever recover from what is and has been going on for several decades.

Probably not in my lifetime, anyway.

[BuyingThyme]

42. Fabulous post, SS.

kcik

:hi:

[Psyop Samurai]

44. All very sad, and ironically, for most of us here...

...it wouldn't take that much to be happy.

But no, that's asking too much. Better to be kept in constant insecurity, so that we will comply in their terms. That's how their wonderful "Babylon System" works.

I hear you, SS. I hear you.