This feeling of Powerlessness: Is it real, or some bizarre Illusion?

Just ask anyone, we can't stop the neocons, don't even bother, they have the power and they have the guns and they have the voting machines, admit defeat and go back to work.

Is this feeling real, or is it induced by an outside force, and re-inforced by us without even realizing it?

Between not feeling that your votes count, not seeing your protests on TV, and the general tendency not to want to jeopordize one's career in an ever-more-politicized workforce, one can get very discouraged.

Thanks for the thought-provoking post. I'm very interested to see what DUers have to say on this.

so it's possible everywhere.

There are cases grinding through the courts in most states that should give us all hope that the elections will eventually be legal ones. We don't know about them unless we search blogs very carefully because the corrupt major media won't report on them. It's contrary to their interests.

Your feeling of powerlessness mainly comes from the major media, obsessed with celebrity babies and missing blondes and failing to report on the news that really concerns the American public. Feeling powerless in the face of this massive congnitive dissonance is normal. One of the cures is to turn the bastards off, have an untroubled formal dinner hour with friends or family, don't watch the bullshit, don't deliver their corporate sponsors any warm bodies. Trust me, it takes a while, but you'll soon feel a whole lot les disconnected.

Another way to assert your power is to talk to strangers. Make subtle digs at the administration and its corrupt party whenever you can. If you're confronted with hostility, walk away. Some people still want to be fooled. More often than not, you will be validating someone else who has been feeling alone and powerless.

We have gotten our country back from criminals before and we can do it again. Our system is largely self reparing, and totalitarians always get crushed under their own weight.

No matter how hopeless you feel, you can't, CAN'T act on those feelings, because then you'll create a situation of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Because I believe the republicans WANT us to feel that they, for instance, have a lock on the fall elections -- that way we won't even bother to vote. And yes, I may feel kind of hopeless... but the feeling of hopelessness is actually our WORST enemy.

It is ABSOLUTELY induced by an outside force: the corporate-held media.

Yes,
because they have the power and they have the guns and they have the voting machines. And as long as they do, the powerless feeling is understandable. It's difficult for us, as we watch our democracy slip away, to feel otherwise. But also because it is induced by an outside force - they have the media. And as long as they do, the powerless feeling is understandable.
and no,
because the growing discontent, even among those once faithful to the bush regime, shows these things can change. The bizarre Illusion accepted by the Kool-Aid drinkers is just that - an illusion. We can continue to expose it, continue fighting, using what power we do still have to reverse this fascist course we are on. If we don't, then FEELING powerless morphs to BEING powerless. The coming elections will be, of course, the real indicator of where we are. I have to keep hoping and believing things can turn around.

I don't know if anybody could deny that. Every day we see world weary "realists," here at Demcoratic Underground, encouraging us to either give up, or, at the very least, give up on working within the system.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

strength to go out and vote. You may boycott the vote. Then they win. See how it works?

We should all be vary of the 49 other ways votes can be stolen too. Many mentioned in the Rolling Stone article.

An experiment, if you're willing, is to not behave like an animal, and not run away from
the negative feeling. Embrace it. When you feel the totality of your powerlessness,
the ultimate failure of your life, it makes you humble; it makes you real.

The solution to a problem is never found in the state of mind that created the problem.
Fighting powerlessness, like a chained prisoner banging on the cage bars, doing
the old king kong.

If one accepts that one is powerless, and you give up trying to stir the pot, and just
accept life for what it is, without any mental modifications, like you ultimately
will when you die, what feeling is there if you dont' run away enslaved to emotion
and the body's flight impulse.

There are no outside forces. There is your willingness, now, to be nothing, to
drop it and be open. That willingness can only ever be now.

The group hypnosis of people betraying the spark of live awakeness now, deviating
in to conceptual retreats, buried in televised entertainment to avoid the feelings
of pain and suffering of daily life, and locked in this cycle of avoidance, a
world denied.

We can change everything by waking up. You are already free if you stop and see that
there are no chains except attachments.