Show of hands: Who feels old, soiled and tired?

After all of the news of the week, and with the sure and certain promise that while we have seen the iceberg, we ain't hit it yet, I feel like I've been shot at and missed, shit at and hit. Just beat up and tired beyond the Powers of Coffee.

Oh, Dear Lord, when will you stay your hand of retribution? When will it end?

What really wears me out is the knowledge is that has all just begun. We ain't even scratched the surface. That when it all finally does come out, we may have to change the name of this mess from "America". Hot Rails to Hell.

Oh yes: It WILL all come out. We have passed The Tipping Point. It's all downhill from here, for the maladministration.

*sigh*. I'm beat.

I just read this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x541242

in LBN. It's heartbreaking.

Hell. Every hour, lately. More revelations about how far we have fallen as a country.

*sigh*

The other thing is that in other forums in which I participate, I have lost all decorum and propriety with the Freepishly-inclined. I just let it fly with them. Grab them by the back of their necks and rub their noses in it. That is not something I have previously been good at. But I am learning.

For decades. And now this.

God help us all if that is the case.

When I read of suicide bombers yelling "Allahu akbar!" right before they blow up some innocent women and children I weep too.

I don't understand the relevance of suicide bombers praising their god to the utter loss of U.S. honor that has culminated in this weekend's news.

this morning talking to a neighbor about this. My personal life has been one big loss after another for the last 10 years and just as I was pulling myself out of it Bush* happened. I turned 50, feel real good about it and my personal life could not be better now but these guys are wearing me out. I am worried, often sleepless, at times very frightened (I have two draft age sons) and exhausted because I will not give up and will fight this until I am dead. Yup, I am with you till the end but it just seems so very far away now.

Think about it. The retribution which will surely come our way hasn't even started yet.

As this country gets further and further into Smirk quagmires and our economy goes off the precipice because of gargantuan deficits, all those countries who we have slandered, ignored, bombed, and insulted will be bringing out the long sharp knives. There are soooo many ways they can fuck with us.

The retribution is coming, and by God, Smirk has laid us open for a heaping of it.

<EOM>

That has long been worrying me, too.

We have a generation or two of contrition and pariah status ahead of us, I fear.

here before...WHY AM I HERE! WHY NOW!

Yep...if I wasn't a total "idealist" I would be on a beach somewhere just spending time looking at the "tide of polluted waters"...rolling in...and rolling out..with some great old beach music or maybe a symphony on a CD to sooth my spirit.

Yes.. this "Big Tent" of "herding Cats" does kind of wear on one's psyche...:-(

Dems need to keep at it though..or do we??? that's the question..

"Treasure Island" anyone??? Simpler times...or were they?

Yep. Round 'bout '75, I reckon. Yeah, 'bout 75.

Twice in my life. Shit.

Why? Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we breed people like this, then sniff our armpits and scream "AMBROSIA!!!" ?

Maybe I wasn't as engaged-- Maybe because I was young and enjoyed a hightened sense of possiblity. Maybe I wasn't paying as much attention.

Back then, we were rioting in the streets, going nuts, engaging in civil disobedience, and we were on FIRE with the opposition to the war.

Before the invasion of Iraq there was really great protest which was remarkable to me because it was BEFORE the invasion started. Now, its like people are just walking around in a fricking daze, alternatively ignoring/justifying/denouncing the horror of this idiotic mistake, but there is no grass roots upwelling of active noisy dissent.

I think that's why we all feel tired. Because there may be no end in sight. Bummer

It's lacking today. No matter how many folks say "You Sold Out!" It was very different. Today one feels alone out there, except for the keyboard out here on the "ethernet." One feels very alone...still.

When I tuck my son in to bed and he asks me if Bush is going to nuke North Korea or when he asked me if the Iraqi children are safe when their moms tuck them in, that really kills my spirit.

Since 9-11 he's been pretty eager to watch the news and keep abreast of current events and we try to sway him from seeing the horrible crap that is going on in the world, while at the same time, I don't want to lie to my son and make everything look rosy when it isn't.

When Bush declared this rediculous war, and during the "shock and awe" my son was terrified. I kept turning off the tv but at the age of 11 he begged us to keep it on because he wanted to know what was going on. So, we weigh the options and decide to leave it on because at least then, we can explain that everything is happening in a different part of the world. The night after "shock and awe" started, he tells me that he can't sleep. I assumed he would not be able to digest everything so I sat down to talk to him and reassure him that he's going to be just fine here in Good Old America. He proceeds to tell me that he isn't worried for himself. He was saddened for the people of Iraq and that our president is attacking them. An 11 year old tells me that it just isn't realistic for us to attack people in order to free them from Saddam Insane (my son calls him that) and that he can't sleep because he is terrified for the children over there listening to bombs go off when their moms should be tucking them in.

How the f*ck do you convey a sense of hope for the future of our world to your children when you don't even believe it? It is very tiring, indeed.

and I know exactly what you mean. The first time around, he was 7. We had the TV on all the time too. He worried that the bombs were coming to our little town we lived in and wondered if we'd be okay. He didn't want us to turn it off. He wanted to know when it was ended so he could feel safe.

This time he doesn't want to see any of it. He's now almost 20, one of his friends decided to join up and left just a few weeks ago for training, he knows he's of draft age, he's learned about peak oil, and he happened to come out of his room and catch me crying when I saw the Fallujah onslaught.

The difference? He knows in his heart that this isn't going to end for a very, very, very, very, very long time.

It's hard. But I'm pretty sure he finally got registered to vote. :)

No wonder you're tired. I admire you for handling it so well with your son. He sounds like a great kid. You've been a very good parent. And, that in itself is tiring.

Happy Mother's Day to you........ you've done well, and deserve to bask in that for just a bit.

Damned Bushwa! Damn him all to hell!

Kanary

when you have to explain this stuff to your kids and you know that part of you is telling "comfort lies" just so they can sleep at night, when you know you can't tell the truth and and this stuff is "eating away into your spirit."

It helps to hear folks talk about this... The reality of this hitting home in American families. How do you tell them? How do you walk the line between "safety assurances" and telling them the "reality." It was so hard years ago. It's even harder today.

These stories are tearing me apart...... I can only imagine. How strong we mothers are, and how sad and ugly that our strength is being wasted in this way!!

Happy Mother's Day to you, too!

And, yes, I very much agree that this is much more of what we need to be talking about... I'm so sick of all the attacking here, andn all the slams for being "too leftist". Sick unto death.

Kanary

...give you a lethal sting. Bushitler and his neo-con operatives still are in power and can cause irreversible damage to this country and the world. The whole bunch of them need to be removed from power as soon as possible. Our military needs to be reigned in and our troops need to be brought home. This has been the Great Stupid War. It was fought for Bushitler's rich friends, for the big banks and financiers, for big oil and in the case of Afghanistan the drug cartel involved in heron trade. I don't believe that there is a decent person in this country that doesn't feel un-clean because of this. No decent American or living human being could feel comfortable to be the the presence of the pure evil and hypocrisy of George Bush or any member of his administration.

<< Bushitler and his neo-con operatives still are in power and can cause irreversible damage to this country and the world. >>

You are so right. I've heard some very ugly rumors already. I can only pray to God that they are rumors and nothing more.

Fear has set in. That is bad.

When do I need to buy a gun? That is my next question and I have never owned one. :grr:

The events of the past week don't help.

can remove the dirt from this mess. And what happens if they do get another 4 years? Will there be a world left for any of us? How long will it take before it literally all blows up?

to deal with the crap of this administration! I worry about my children and I too, am very concerned about the retribution we will get after this--and I have no doubt we will get it. My mother, who is 84 and a Army nurse veteran of WWII even said that she has never seen the "stain" on America this bad.

It saddens me to think what her generation went through to make sure we have kept our "freedoms" only to have it pissed away by this administration's irresponsible cavalier behavior.

Images of torture and suffering have surely burned my brain but I'm incandescent with rage.

I warned people about this but they would not listen.

Now I watch them writhe with discomfort and try to dismiss it.

I plan to pound them with every snippet of filth I can lay my hands on.

The Iraqis that had this shit done to them deserve nothing less.

I have no illusions. There are people that couldn't care less about those Iraqis and will vote for Bush again. They had better be careful at the moment because I'm just angry enough to make them eat a knuckle sandwich.

I have never been so angry in my life.

lived thru this in the 60s and we won

this time the right waited to have all 3 branches of govt and the media

this time they intend to 'win' domestically if no where else

BTW - I always thot a major reason for the unending anti-Clinton campaign was to 'get even' for the right's domestic losses of the 60s
-civil rights for minorities, rights for women, rights to question govt authority even in 'time of war'

Phoenix! I always said if Ford hadn't pardoned Nixon, and he had been fully "IMPEACHED" it would have shamed them all into oblivion. But, Nixon just like Ken Lay was allowed a "time out" to go into the shadows but to "behind the scenes" be the beacon for the damned Repug Machine which is now running our country.

What's amazing is that these folks don't even get sick like the rest of us...even though many look like they need "treadmills" (lol's I could use a little more exercise myself these days), but Look at the People who seem to live on even with some "heart events": Kissinger, Armitage, Buchanan,Rumsfeld,Greenspan, Volker, Bush I, Abrams, Rummy, Wolfowitz, Pearl, Negroponte and all the "underlings" who still support the powers at the top, which are holdovers from Nixon, Ford and Reagan! AND.. (not quite in their league, but still), and the assorted media folks like Novak, Will, Fallows,Friedman, Will, Safire, etc.

They have little "stress" it seems. While they cause the rest of us MEGA STRESS and hardship with their misguided and corrupt policies that they refuse to let die.

and now I know I'm not alone.


It really has just begun...and that is the thought that makes me the most tired.

I've never known quite why, but even as a kid in the late 50's, I had the feeling that we were becoming the bad guys and that it would eventually catch up with us. When I read Mary Renault's "The Last of the Wine" about 1960, I was struck by the similarity of the United States to ancient Athens -- another culturally vibrant democracy that abused its power very badly -- and devastated by the description of the Athenians' despair when their fleet was destroyed and they realized they had lost the Peloponessian War and would soon be at the mercy of those they had abused.

I encountered the original of that description when I took Greek in college in 1967 and had to translate the relevant passage from Xenophon -- and in the context of Vietnam, it bothered me even more than it had the first time. In a very real sense, I've spent the last 45 years wondering whether the United States can avoid the fate of Athens -- cheering when we seemed to pull away from that path, despairing when we turned back to embrace it.

In a perverse way, this prison scandal actually makes me feel better, because it seems to offer the last chance for us Americans to wake up to what we have become and put our own house in order before others take over and do it for us.


http://www.bookrags.com/books/hllnc/PART9.htm

"It was night when the 'Paralus' reached Athens with her evil tidings, on receipt of which a bitter wail of woe broke forth. From Piraeus, following the line of the long walls up to the heart of the city, it swept and swelled, as each man to his neighbour passed on the news. On that night no man slept. There was mourning and sorrow for those that were lost, but the lamentation for the dead was merged in even deeper sorrow for themselves, as they pictured the evils they were about to suffer, the like of which they themselves had inflicted upon the men of Melos, who were colonists of the Lacedaemonians, when they mastered them by siege. Or on the men of Histiaea; on Scione and Torone; on the Aeginetans, and many another Hellene city."

missed this one.

That I feel I've lived too long and I'm only 37. Seeing so many make excuses for torture and violence do that too you.

I feel like I should have died 3 years ago.