Broken

So, awhile back I came across Collapse of Industrial Civilization -- a theme with which I can identify.  The link refers to another post by Josh Ellis called "Everyone I Know Is Brokenhearted". Apparently, Josh lives in the same city I do.

He's got a long rant.  It touches on various aspects of modern life in the United States.  It reminded me of a snippet of conversation the other day:  "Anything exciting going on in the world?"  "Oh, there's excitement, but it's not necessarily good news."  And he nods.

So you’re haunted, and you’re outraged, and you go on Twitter and you go on Facebook and you change your avatar or your profile picture to a slogan somebody thoughtfully made for you, so that you can show the world that you’re watching, that you care, that it matters. But if you’re at all observant, you begin to realize after a while that it doesn’t matter; that your opinion matters for very little in the world.

I don't care about Twitter or Facebook.  An old friend complained it took him years to find me because I'm not on Facebook.  I use this blog to talk to myself -- with occasional flurries of activity like 20 pageviews from Turkey a couple days ago.  It seems like sometimes I just need any kind of outlet to stay sane.

And when you speak up about that — when you write to your Congressperson to say that you believe in, say, stricter control on the purchase of assault weapons, or limiting the rights of corporations to do astonishing environmental damage, or not sending billions of dollars to the kind of people who think it’s funny to launch missiles filled with flechette rounds into the middle of schools where children huddle together — you’re told that, no, you’re the fascist: that people have the right to defend themselves and make money, and that those rights trump your right to not be killed by some fucking lunatic when you’re waiting in line at Chipotle to grab a chicken burrito, and your right to not be able to light your tapwater on fire with a Zippo because of the chemicals in it, or not to end up in a grainy YouTube video while some demented religious fanatic hacks your head off with a rusty bayonet because your country — not you, but who’s counting — is the Great Satan.

And just now I read that my choice for Congress this fall is between a run-of-the-mill Republican and an asshole teabagger Republican.  It seems the best we can hope for is more gridlock just so things won't get worse.

I think like minds need to pull together and pool our resources and rage against the dying of the light. And I do think rage is a component that’s necessary here: a final fundamental fed-up-ness with the bullshit and an unwillingness to give any more ground to the things that are doing us in. To stop being reasonable. To stop being well-behaved. Not to hate those who are hurting us with their greed and psychopathic self-interest, but to simply stop letting them do it. The best way to defeat an enemy is not to destroy them, but to make them irrelevant.

It's tough.   It feels overwhelming.  But I'll bet Josh would be an interesting guy to talk to.