In all of my 56 (and counting) years on this planet, I have never felt

this kind of despair over what my country has become. Even in the midst of the 'Cuban Missile Crisis', I remember having faith in my President and Government. Even after the assassination of President Kennedy and all of the sadness that this country endured, I felt a glimmer of hope that we would survive as a nation. Even during the 1960's struggle with Civil Rights, I knew that we would begin that march toward freedom! Even after the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King (with the ensuing riots) I still felt like we would turn the corner and begin to heal again as a nation.
Even during the protest marches of the late 60's against the Viet Nam war, I knew that we were watching democracy in action and the 'will of the people' was being heard.
Even during the darkest days of 'Watergate' - somehow I knew that justice would prevail.


I no longer know this.

I thought that I had seen the faces of evil during the Civil Rights struggles in the South.
I thought that I was looking at sinister, twisted faces during Watergate.

I was wrong - little did I know what lay in waiting for this country!
I can only hope that justice will somehow be lifted up and shine again on this land.

But, for my daughter's sake, I will keep on fighting to restore the good qualities I remember. Until my last breath.

no kids, though. Well, none of my own, but I find myself thinking a lot about the future of my confirmands and other church kids. Makes me that much more committed to teaching them to live ethical lives.

selfishness by our politicians and the utter abdication of responsibility by by the MSM.

has to do with the internet?

We are so divided today. You go to one website and all you hear all day is how Republican politicians are criminals, traitors and Nazis. You go to another website and all you hear are how Democratic poliicians are criminals, traitors and Nazis.

Back 30 years ago we all shared the same news. Each side didn't have their own.

Back 30 years ago did the MSM cover all the scandals and outrages? I bet they didn't because they only had half an hour a day.

Anyway, I wonder how much this division is leading to the cynicism about how the world's never been in worse shape and we'll never be able to come back from it. Back then when we hid under desks waiting for the Russians to nuke us it didn't seem so peachy either.

I don't thing it's lack of time, I think it's lack of real investigative reporting due to ratings fears and pressure-from-the-WH fears. Things have changed. Can you imagine Cronkite accepting WH spin and just letting these things go?

all the time. What has he become some kind of white knight all of the sudden?

And in 1960 there was lots of talk of election fraud in Texas and Illinois. I bet the nightly news didn't spend two minutes total on it.

JFK was having trysts in the White House and he was seriously ill. The news didn't touch it.

How many lies did LBJ get away with about Vietnam before journalists started to question him? How many American deaths there? 50,000?

And then you get to Nixon...

The United States of America is truly the best country on earth. It's wonderful, unique--and we are among those that are most blessed to be able to live our lives here.

I will always love it!:patriot: :patriot: :patriot:

on the world.

As my sigline indicates, I too, am going to keep struggling to restore freedom to America.

But you are as correct in your feelings as any Jew in Germany in 1933.

i can`t believe this shit either..i guess we underestimated those guys like karl and his kind.
but i do think justice will prevail someday, i just hope i live long enough to see it. after a heart attack things that are important are much clearer now. life is to dam short not to live every moment of it...

Only people that have never been to another country think it's so super duper here. Even Asian medical systems kick ass on our decrepit system. Only the top echelon of it is excellent. The rest is a relic. But fear not, WalMart is sprouting in-store clinics. No shit! It's the company store redux!

He's made so many mistakes. He's not the genius he's made out to be. It's the complicity of the corporate-owned media. After a recent BinLaden tape, Schieffer remarked, "Gee, it sounds as if BinLaden didn't like Saddam any more than we did." What do you do when the current Walter Cronkite spreads such unbelievable ignorance every night? Where's the outcry about stolen elections?

one of my political science profs, after nixon's stint--that if we could survive him, we could survive anything--I wonder what he would be thinking now.

however, I fought then, and I continue to fight now. I will NOT surrender my country to the hate-and-fear mongers who worship death and destruction. this is MY home--NOT theirs, and they cannot have it.

Something has to be done to wake up the people before it is too late, if it isn't already. HELP ! Somebody ! I am 63 and it is beginning to look like my husband and I will not be having any grandchildren and lately I have been thinking it is for the best. Now that is real despair.

It would have been nice, but what a world to bring babies into.

and have the same thoughts.

I feel as though we walked into a nightmare in 2000 and can't find our way out.



It is threads like this that give me hope: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=570557&mesg_id=570557

I had always felt so blessed and so fortunate to have been born in this country, and I always, always felt very hopeful even during the darkest days.

My husband still does. He has said for years that the American people know when something is "not quite right" even if they are not able to describe just what "that" might be. In the past he has been right.

I'm hoping that this latest thing, the port deal, will awaken more Americans.

have never felt this way. I cry daily. I will tell you if I had children I would leave the country. I wish there was a glimmer of hope I could see. I honestly do not think 2006/08 is going to change anything. I said to a grilfriend yesterday that I'll be the 2nd in line during the revolution but you need to find me our leader first..Any ideas?

I was reflecting back to how happy I was on this day 29 years ago - never, ever imagining what we would be up against now. My daughter is just as adamant as myself to get these people out of office.
I'm very proud of her - and very worried for her at the same time.

I was that way yesterday. The political phone calls started at 7AM and it only got worse. Maybe it is toolate for you to leave but has your daughter considered it?

unmarried so far. i would love her to get married and have children, but would fear for them, also.

...although I suspect some ground will be given to the Democrats to maintain the illusion of Democracy (a few seats will be gained but we remain in minority). I also don't fear GWB in 2008, as he will go, but our ruling elites will run us through a charade of an election until, through black box voting and a multitude of more traditional disenfranchisement technique, will bequeath the Presidency onto a suitable Republicrat who will continue forward with anti-democratic momemtum toward overt, oppressive fascism until we are just a dry husk of a nation, bled of all vitality, reduced to two tiers, a rich owning class and a thin sliver of managers and magistrates that serve them, and all the rest of us, mere serfs and cannon fodder and hordes of useless eaters.

But even with that bleak picture I'm inspired to action.

We're not going to "reform" or "elect" our way out of our current situation; this is not 5 years in the making, more fundamental changes even within us need to take place before the phoenix of progress rises again from the coming ashes.

We are a society in gut-wrenching transition. Faced with an age of limits (just around the corner), reactionary global forces have ruthlessly steeled their financial fortresses while successfully paralyzing the rest of us into inaction, the "to be left behind" (we the unwashed masses, the rascal multitudes). They paralyze us with fear, confound our better angels with incessant appeal to our baser natures, breed ignorance and apathy and despair, until convinced there's nothing that we can do we resign ourself to a couch, TV set on, while they rule.

Their biggest fear is not Al Qaeda or Islamist militant nationalism, but us, every one of "us" who are not "them" and might come club and pitchfork in hand to take their advantage away from them. So they aim to disarm us (why, I ask, would arch fiend John Negroponte be put in charge of "national intelligence" except to exercise the Salvadorean solution in the continental United States, perhaps ressurect a few Battalion 3-16's and engineer a few El Mozotes and continental Abu Ghraibs?).

Our best chance to rise up refreshed and anew, with chains of fascism and kleptocracy shaken off, is right here, in this beautiful thing called the internet. More of us connect faster to new and vitalizing ideas via the internet than any other means ever available. Each of us steps away from places like DU more firm in our values and thus closer to right action than if we stood truly alone, reduced to handing out mimeographs on city streetcorners as in days of old. Like mirror neurons beating together it won't be long before we're all unknowingly acting in unity -- and in that is power, hugely transforming power.

I found the words from this 1981 work inspirational; maybe DU-land will as well (from Duane Elgin's Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life that is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich, pp 192-194) -- the bolded passage is especially for you serryjw:

... We are not alone in this time of change. Everyone we meet is in some way involved with his or her own personal struggle to respond to our time of challenge. Whatever our other differences may be, we are all participants in this historical rite of passage.

As individuals we are not powerless in the face of this monumental change. Opportunities for meaningful and important action are everywhere...the list is endless, since the stuff of social transformation is identical with the stuff from which our daily lives are constructed.

We are each responsible for the conduct of our lives -- and we are each unique. Therefore we are each uniquely responsible for our actions and choices in this pivotal time in human evolution. There is no one who can take our place. We each weave a singular strand in life. No one else can weave that strand for us. What we each contribute is distinct, and what we each withold is uniquely irreplaceable.

More than anything else, the outcome from this time of planetary transition will depend on the choices that we make as individuals. There are no preconditions to our choosing a revitalized path of civilizational development. There is nothing lacking. Nothing more is needed than what we already have. We require no remarkable, undiscovered technologies. We do not need heroic, larger-than-life leadership. The only requirement is that we, as individuals, choose a revitalizing future and then work in community with others to bring it to fruition. By our conscious choices we can move from alienation to community, from despair to creativity, from passivity to participation, from stagnation to learning, from cynicism to caring. We tend to think we are powerless, helpless, impotent. Yet the reality is that only we -- as individuals working in cooperation with one another -- have the power to transform our situation. Far from being helpless, we are the only source from which the necessary creativity, compassion, and will can arise. The time of civilizational change is already upon us. The autumn of the industrial era of development has already moved into winter. It is time to begin the next stage of our human journey.

Duane Elgin was talking from his intuitions of the coming age of limits -- of arable land, of drinkable water, of diminishing oil, of the ecological constraints upon raw consumerism -- and the need to transform ourselves along equitable and sustainable lines. Very prescient, and it appears we have taken the darkest of available paths, but as this is already an overly long post, I'll leave it there (and suggest you get the book!).

So, though I have hope, it is for my future grandchildren that I hope; I'm not so confident (not at all confident) that we'll see sufficient change in our lifetimes to stave off growing darkness and struggle. But each of us is left with choice. I've made mine; may everyone here join us in what is right!

I'm the commander... see, I don't need to explain. I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation.
-- GWB to Bob Woodward in BUSH AT WAR

See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.
-- GWB, Greece Athena Middle and High School, Greece, NY, May 24, 2005

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
-- H. L. Mencken

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
-- President Dwight D. Eisenhower

You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.
-- Malcolm X

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you assume that there's no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there's a chance you may contribute to making a better world. That's your choice.
-- Noam Chomsky

You must be the change you want to see in the world.
-- Mohandas K Gandhi

Now. Or never.
-- Henry David Thoreau

I found it on Amazon. I am on that journey and have been for 5 years. I live in 550 sq feet, have no car and since being a political activist doesn't pay very well, certainly frugal. I am working on the interpersonal. I must admit I still do lose my 'cool' when confronted with kool aid drinkers that choose not to see the RW propaganda machine.
I do believe it takes a Gandhi , MLK, Dahia Lama to lead a change of thoughts & minds with a call to actions. With over 6 billion people of this planet we have been sold the war effort as a vehicle of peace that to many have been brain washed. I think collective consciousness only goes so far. We need a paradign shift of attitudes to ONLY accept diplomacy as the instrument of peace if we as a civilization have any hope. While I am writing this, thousands are dying in the Sudan with few giving it a passing thought.There is a genocide going on and the world is doing little. Poverty and lack of opportunity brings despair. * talks about globalization...OK, let's all feel, hurt, cry with the millions dying daily from corporate abuse in the name of profits. Let's really work towards sharing our natural resources to better mankind...........until that time, our children will be on DU in 30 years writing the same concerns.

After the nazi concentration camps were discovered. The world said "NEVER AGAIN!.....How quickly we forget

Namaste

... Dalai Lama's, and for good measure our Desmond Tutu's and Ticht Nhat Hanh's and Diane Nash's and Ceaser Chavez's and Nelson Mandela's and so many more. Now is not a time to wait to be led, but a time to lead through personal action, as in the Gandhi quote I shared:

You must be the change you want to see in the world.

This is what I believe; in the face of the impossible, we create what's possible -- individually, by our infectious right action, even if it takes generations for pieces of that vision to be realized. Look at the 27 year example of Mandela in (mostly) a Robben Island jail cell. Sometimes our actions take hold and wonderous things result.

Let me try this way: I've always liked Rainer Marie-Rilke's description of the "artist". An artist, according to Rilke, compelled to dance, refuses to be confined by the prison cell of convention and circumstance -- instead, they scratch out as art the unlived lines of their lives right there on the cell walls, always seeing beyond their confinement, and in so doing create for the rest of us new possibilities for how our lives can be lived. Mandela was an artist of the highest order; his life and politics were his art, and while in a physical cell he scratched out the unlived lines of his life by inspiring an end to apartheid. But Nelson Mandela would have been just a lonely old man if it were not for the rightness of his cause and it's budding presence in the hearts and minds of just men and women everywhere.

Martin Luther King, too, did not start the civil rights movement; on the contrary, it took the heroic actions of a then faceless individual (Rosa Parks) to create the opportunity for his leadership. It was not the power of King's charisma and oratory alone, extraordinary as they were, but the rightness and justness of the already-out-there cause that galvanized a burgeoning movement into a political tsunami of inevitability. This suggests to me that collective consciousness precedes action, comes first before someone steps forward to fill the role of "heroic leader". A population needs to be ready to annoint its leader before anyone can take on that mantle.

(An aside: Hitler inspired too, but he inspired a nation into a ditch; King inspired a different nation into a modicum of social justice, a modicum which endures. One form of inspirational leadership is manipulative, deceptive, and opportunistic; the other is organic, evolutionary, and with deep roots. Today we have the former but desire the latter.)

Today. I think Aristotle was right, all men seek the good. The problem is in our differing definitions of the word "good", which leads us to the tragedy of Trojan Wars. The reactionary right has done much to define what is "good" these last 25 years. So a sensible first step, then, would be to insist enough! and wrest back the word for our own use, then grow this better definition in the sea of brains. This must first occur before anyone can take on the mantle of leadership. We must therefore each be willing to be the first in line to educate and not wait for the appearance of a "leader". The latter will take care of itself when enough momentum is present.

I really have no argument with you serryjw, as I too think things will get worse and that is something to cry about. The last time we watched fascism rise it took the united armies of the world to put it down. Since the fascists now budget a military at a level as high as the rest of the world combined, it is not clear how it will be defeated. To this I say we each must be like termites, nibbling away at the foundations, knowing that this might take generations -- and that might mean first wresting back the word "good" from the collective vocabulary and positing a better meaning -- there is simply nothing else to do.

2+2=4 and it always will; we must insist that it is so, regardless of consequence, and regardless of how long it takes to convince the bludgeoned all around us.

Namaste to you too :) Let me end this overlong post (apologies) with another quote, for no other reason than I like it and it should be heard:

so here's a toast to all the folks who live in palestine
afghanistan
iraq
el salvador
here's a toast to the folks living on the pine ridge reservation
under the stone cold gaze of mt. rushmore
here's a toast to all those nurses and doctors
who daily provide women with a choice
who stand down a threat the size of oklahoma city
just to listen to a young woman's voice
here's a toast to all the folks on death row right now
awaiting the executioner's guillotine
who are shackled there with dread
and can only escape into their heads
to find peace in the form of a dream

cuz take away our playstations
and we are a third world nation
under the thumb of some blue blood royal son
who stole the oval office and that phony election
i mean
it don't take a weatherman
to look around and see the weather

-- Ani DiFranco, Self Evident

Yes, 2+2 always equals 4 but on top of decades of previously fighting fascism we now have 2 more challenges we have never seen. Global Warming & Peak Oil.

The good news if we don't learn these lessons in this life we may have to come back and learn them in the next. Good does always win but unfortunately, we take it for granted and have to start again.

For in the final analysis our most common link is that we inhabit this planet. We breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal

Namaste,
Serry

"I think we've already had our Gandhi's, MLK's, Dalai Lama's, and for good measure our Desmond Tutu's and Ticht Nhat Hanh's and Diane Nash's and Ceaser Chavez's and Nelson Mandela's and so many more. Now is not a time to wait to be led, but a time to lead through personal action, as in the Ghandi quote I shared: "You must be the change you want to see in the world."

I agree with your post. As I see it, we're in a period of epochal change now - a crossroad of decision. It's time for the big questions. The teacher has already come; said what there is to say, and gone. And as Alice Cooper once said, "School's out."

There is a cyclone fence between
ourselves and the slaughter and behind it
we hover in a calm protected world like
netted fish, exactly like netted fish.
It is either the beginning or the end
of the world, and the choice is ourselves
or nothing.
~Carolyn Forche

...since she graced my campus 25 years ago. My only regret is she's written so little over the years.

...And so, you say, you've learned a little
about starvation; a child llike a supper scrap
filling with worms, many children strung
together, as if they were from paper
and all in a delicate chain. And that people
who rescue physicists, lawyers and poets
lie in their beds at night with reports
of mice introduced into women, of men
whose testicles are crushed like eggs.
That they cup their own parts
with their bedsheets and move themselves
slowly, imagining bracelets affixing
their wrists to a wall where the naked
are pinned, where the naked are tied open
and left to the hands that erase
what they touch. We are all erased
by them, and no longer resemble decent
men. We no longer have the hearts,
the strength, the lives of women.
Your problem is not your life as it is
in America, not that your hands, as you
tell me, are tied to do something. It is
that you were born to an island of greed
and grace where you have this sense
of yourself as apart from others. It is
not your right to feel powerless. Better
people than you were powerless.
You have not returned to your country,
but to a life you never left.

-- Carolyn Forche, The Return, 1980 (I suggest reading it in its entirety, a great piece)

We in the U.S. have NO RIGHT to feel powerless to stop the evil being done in our name; in fact, action is demanded of us else we are complicit in the crimes perpetrated by the Bush Regime. It's bad enough we sat home after Decemer 12, 2000; bad enough we didn't march into Washington to take Our House back in 2004. But the time for epochal change is now, action is required this day by everyone of us whether rallied by a Great Leader or by just our own hearts and conscience. Look at Cindy Sheehan: Housewife, divorcee, mother of a dead GI, and a symbol of the anti-war movement. She acted herself, led herself, to do what she needed to do. Imagine a nation with 10,000 Cindy Sheehans marching in front of the White House everyday!

The very same people who brought us the American Holocaust in EL Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua of the eighties (the beginnings of which Carolyn writes about here) have been involved again in post 9-11 U.S. and Iraq and Afganistan -- Negroponte, Elliot Abrams, John Poindextor, Otto Reich, and others. Same faces, different places.

The most frightening recent event for me was the appointment of Negroponte to "National Intelligence Director", with responsibility for coordinating intelligence activity within the continental United States. Does he plan to do to us what he did for Honduras and Nicaragua and Iraq? Develop and apply a Salvadoran solution here, too? Our own Battalion 3-16? Look the other way when we have an American El Mozote? Those Haliburton detention centers, will they be built for "special programs" under his care? If so then evil truly has been unleased in the most powerful nation on earth and it will indeed be a long, painful struggle to wrest power back into the hands of We the People. I really think this is what we're in for.

O they'll maintain the illusion of "democracy" as long as they can, but they'll drop the charade as soon as it becomes too cumbersome, a slight obstruction to their agenda already well underway, and agenda that steels the financial fortresses of the few that make up a global investing class, all the while knowing we're about to enter an age of limits, an age when oil supplies decline, arable land grows scarce, safe drinkable water a rare and, in the future, packaged commodity bought and sold at profit. When global collapse comes, it is we who will stand locked out of their bubble communities, secured by their private armies, we who will bear the brunt of deprivation and misery and even death. It will happen in a flash, but by then it will be too late for us. Katrina in so many ways was the example in microcosm.

Things will get much worse before they ever get better -- IF they ever get better. As Hunter S. Thompson said somewhere, Big Dark Coming, Soon.

1. Two enlistments in special forces intelligence
2. Six years living in and traveling through third world Asia
3. The poetry of Carolyn Forche

I'm with you in everything you put in your post Dave. Forche's "The Country Between Us" is probably more relevant now than it ever was. If only everyone could see what she's seen and written about. History needs witnesses who will recognize, remember and speak out. But more than that, Americans and world citizens of conscience need to take what we've learned from our past teachers (all of them), and become what they taught. Radical change must start with each of us. Time is a luxury we don't have now.

J.

I keep thinking that "the other shoe is about to drop". I don't know what kind of shoe it is, but the tensions in the world are just being pulled tighter and tighter. I think the undercurrent for change is strong, but it needs a catalyst. At age 42, I want a hero to step on the stage and lead. Maybe I'm too old for hero's, and its time to accept the fact that one won't appear to save the day, and that we have to become our own heros... I'm not sure, I keep looking though, because I need to have hope. As the father of two young boys, I don't see any place to run to, and besides, I don't want to give the S.O.B.'s the satisfaction. This is my country, so I say, too hell with the brown shirts. I plan to stand my ground and fight. . . .and hope.

one, But I agree with you. I've been feeling this way for several years and I just couldn't stand it any longer. I'm really tired of what we've become and I think back on the things we (USA)could have been. I had enough of that feeling when Katrina hit the US and I saw what we had become or what we had always been and I said ENOUGH!!!

I said to myself that I have to do something about this (this being my feeling of shame that we have abandoned our own people when they needed us the most).

I decided on day 3 of Katrina that I was no longer going to bitch and complain about the way things are. I was going to change the way things are and now I'm running for State Representative in my district in Illinois. Hopefully, I can make change happen.

I would encourage EVERYONE who feels the same way to take action in some meaningful way. Make a difference in your community and actively change the world you live in. Make it change by participation, otherwise, someone else will stand up for change and maybe that someone will be the next George Bush or "Dead Eye" Dick Chaney. We can't change it by watching CSPAN or CNN or MS-NBC or CBS we have to MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN.

I hope this helps anyone American who feels like they are powerless to change your world - because you are not.

Regards to all who read this,

Joe Serra aka. Gunaximbo
<http://www.serra06.com>

I hope you win. Keep us posted.

Welcome to DU. :hi:

My cousin lives in NYC... Richard Serra He's pretty well known there.

Like Tilted Arc in NYC and Fulcrum in London and Mark Twain in St. Louis. So many would look at the rusted steel and think ugly, missing the point that the steel intruded into the urban landscape was just a part of the work. To appreciate them, you had to be aware of the environment in which the work was placed, how the abrupt heavy mass of the steel so gracefully bisected space and views and altered the flow of people around it. Beautiful works, in my opinion.

However, Serra did come out with some awful elitist remarks during the Tilted Arc controversy that kinda' diminished my interest in his work (though I fully supported him at the time).

What is he working on these days?

or that we exist at all in fact. I think he is kind of a right winger so I better be careful about claiming shared DNA with him.

I do like his work though, I think he is one of the most important atrists of this century. I would honestly place him in the ranks of Picaso (my fav). He still has a lot of work in him and he seems to be quit prolific in his works.

And the best advice.

Godspeed.

From election day in 2000 to today, so many crimes have been committed in America's name that her glimmer has totally gone.

I have a dread for the future which causes my despair. I've seriously considered moving to Fiji.

But, I must admit that I do have a morsel of hope. I think my generation is beginning to feel responsible for this mess. Eventually, there may be reproductions. Unfortunately, I feel we've lost what we had forever. But, I don't feel fascism has won the day yet. I don't know what the future holds, but I can influence it in my small way, as we all can. I hope we will.

in the 60's. When Bobby was killed I was sure that this was the final straw and our nation would not survive. I worry today also but for some reason I have faith. We progressives always pull together and prevail when the chips are down and we will do it again this time. We got the troops back from Vietnam, we pressured a crooked President out of office and we won the civil rights battles. The elections this fall are critical and this is when we go into action. If we work together and stay focused we will take our country back, you can count on it. NGU NGU NGU

when Reagan was elected.

The third party voting machines that do not allow for audits or verifiable ballots have already destroyed our notion of democracy. It’s only getting worse now that California has certified Diebold machines statewide in spite of credible evidence to the contrary.

Your absentee ballot vote can and will be overturned and manipulated by the central computers controlled by these third parties.

Where do we go from here? I’m too old for Canadian citizenship.

told that they wouldn't want someone my age.

Despair!!

because I have a son who will be of draft age in a 2 years. I couldn't determine what their politics was. Do they support the war or do they not? Australia on the other hand is so freaking conservative it makes me sick.

We have bought property and are building a place in Panama; we hope to have it completed by spring 2007. Our youngest graduates high school in 2008 and then we decide whether to move permanently to Panama or use it for vacation
until my husband decides to retire (he's 63 and I'm 55 next week.)

Yes, it's Spanish speaking, but English is spoken widely in tourist areas.
No snow to shovel, either. Terrific benefits for retirees.

Good place to look for information: www.internationalliving.com

www.escapeartists.com

www.panamainfo.com

Canada, New Zealand (both too old), Ireland, Bahamas, Bonaire, Belize,
Turks & Caicos.

We know people who've made the move to Bahamas, Bonaire, Belize, and are getting to know some of the other buyers in the development where we've bought in Panama. LOTS and LOTS of people are making plans to get out, or give themselves a place to go.

We figure we hope for the best and plan for the worst.

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

We've been through tough times before and got through them. I'll be the first to admit that we face a more challenging adversary than we've ever seen before, but we also have better skills and resources than those we had in that time. Keep the faith and stay in the fight. I expect it will get worse before it gets better. Once people who aren't aware fell the pain, things will change.

and there is comfort there...

..

I can only imagine a Dr. Frankenstein/Nat Turner/Boston Tea Party event to turn things around. The Cindy Sheehan SOTU T-shirt debacle should have been enough, but we are media disinformed and enslaved to mindless stories that have nothing to do with our best interests.

That's why I despair at times.

Do you remember the feeling that Nixon was going to get away w/his crimes? To me, it seemed nothing was going to stop him.

Back in 1960, I was sitting in the back of a VW Bug waiting for the school bus, when I heard his voice over the car radio. I piped up from the backseat...........That is a very, very bad man. To this day, 46 years later, I still don't know how I knew that.

Fast forward to the early 70's. I was devastated that my 1st vote was against him and yet he won. From that moment on and until that wonderful day, August 8, 1974, I read everything I could in hopes to discover that finally other people saw what I had seen in him for so many years. And that he would be stopped!

I want another August 8, 1974. I NEED another August 8, 1974. We all do!

But, I fear we won't see it. I feel battle weary and sad that all of our protesting, email/letter writing and phone calls to our "representatives" have been for naught.

I'm so very tired of re-living 1973 over and over and over again.

Please someone make it stop!

One of my earliest memories if of my mother sitting in front of our brand new TV set (our first). The kind that was a huge box with a six inch screen in the upper right corner. I asked her what she was watching, and she told me "A bad man named McCarthy."

Of course, Nixon was party of his vigilante brigade, but I didn't know that until much later. See my post below. I was always sure he'd face justice. But back then, our journalists and reporters did their jobs. Not like now.

But what am I going to do about it besides waking up pissed off day after day? I dunno. I can fax the shit out of my congressman and senators but it doesn't do any good. I'm in Maine and the media goes far out of their way to advertise my senators as "moderates" but they're just as right wing as everything else that's Republican today. My congressman is a good guy that represents me well but he's only one voice of 435.

These GOP fuckers do not like government so they are killing it as fast as they can by selling us out to foreign nations and greedy corporations. It's so frustrating that a third of the nation is orgasmic over it, a third of the nation absolutely hates it to the core, and the rest generally don't have a FUCKING CLUE about what is going on. Yet in these "Red/Blue" times we're at the mercy of these idiots every time election day rolls by.

in charge, I am damned glad I have no grandchildren.

Don't get scared, Get Pissed Off, and GET EVEN!

What if the folks back in 1776 had said I'm to scared to fight back?

These pricks are out to scare you into doing nothing.

sad isn't it that we will be the last bunch that can remember the world when it was good.

better. Do not ever lose HOPE. You give up, when you lose hope. I can still dream of a better world for my grandchildren. We must keep the spark of hope alive.

It does not one thing for the good of this nation, its constitution, or its people.

One difference is that nowadays nobody seems to be outraged by what is going on. I think we are so beaten down we are apathetic. Plus the fact that even though we have dozens of news stations, the Bushco stuff just isn't getting the coverage that Watergate and Vietnam protests got.

and PROFOUNDLY upset at the utter havoc I see being wrought on my country by the neocons and BushCo. I try to believe that, "we've been through bad/scary times before and survived", but I no longer feel sure about a positive outcome. The changes evident today are startling to someone of my generation. We no longer have any Sam Ervins as we did during Watergate. There are infinitely too few Congresspeople serving as "the conscience" of the people and upholding the Constitution and Democracy. In fact, there are too many who are merely tools of the hordes of today's omnipresent & powerful lobbyists. Rove's/Bush's use of FEAR as a tactic to win & maintain power has been masterful, historic and precedent-setting. The population is SO dumbed-down now that they are too busy being glued to 'American Idol' to realize that their Constitutional rights are being deliberately eroded and destroyed (rights a recent poll stated most Americans couldn't even name!) We've all read the horror stories about Americans who cannot identify Iraq on a map of the world --- or France --- or even California! The astonishing difference/change in the media from 40 years ago to today depresses and shocks me no end. They no longer serve as an independent check on government but are either passive, owned by corporations, or outright in cahoots. Paid, Talking-Head Bullies spouting personal opinions and Fox/Murdoch/Bush rightwing propaganda like Hannity & O'Reilly are considered the equivalent of serious journalists. Freakazoid, deliberately shocking, fascist "personalities" like Ann Coulter & Michelle Malkin are legitimized by being given airtime and newspaper columns. Worst and most crucial of all, with Diebold, etal, I fear that our votes now count for nought and elections are rigged/fixed/pre-ordained by the Roves of this world. As far as I'm concerned Bush did not "win" either election. When the Supreme Court intervened the first time and basically authorized a coronation of Bush, despite massive evidence of voting irregularities in Florida, I thought I was going to have a stroke. The people (sheeple) now swallow lies and outrageous propaganda that make the topsy-turvy world of Alice in Wonderland or an LSD trip seem sane. Bush says, "51% is a MANDATE." Few argue. I say to myself, "In what friggin' alternate, parallel universe?" The simple arithmetic doesn't compute. Bush STILL walks around saying things are going positively in Iraq and not enough people are outraged. The list of scary, anti-democratic trends grows longer every day. There's the evil, pernicious WARRANTLESS domestic spying. And the so-called "Patriot" act. And the deliberate stacking of the Supreme Court to tilt seriously to the right. And the insane, almost incomprehensible numbers of the national deficit. The rise of the so-called "Christian" movement is a new and extremely disturbing element in the mix of American life/politics. I can only believe the neocons/BushCo are deliberately destroying/bankrupting the American economy as an adjunct to their Grover Norquist-inspired edict to destroy/hobble big government. The recent port deal affair does not dissuade me from that opinion. The Congress and the American people better wake up before its entirely too late (and it may already be too late.) What exactly does that sneering, smirking Bush have to do for people to hear alarm bells? How obvious does it have to become? Does he have to wear a Nazi uniform and a Hitler moustache and goosestep on the balcony of the White House? Open up the first domestic "internment camp" for "opponents of the administration"? Declare martial law, abolish elections and the Constitution? Let's hope its not too late.

MUCH worse than the Nixon era for many reasons - the religious right, the complicit media, the handwringing useless Dems, the abysmal ignorance of the populace. It is a start testament to the idea that propaganda works, and the group that has the most effective propaganda wins. And it ain't us.

I find myself thinking, "Gee, my son is 24, I sure am glad he is having a somewhat normal adulthood of working, enjoying life, because this isn't going to be the case for very much longer." And I just feel nothing but dread for his later adult life, and the lives of any future grandchildren.

I also saw the beginning of the end, as a poster said above, when Reagan was elected president. This know-nothing piece of SHIT a president!! It boggled my mind then, and it does now. Hearing about the hagiographic shit that went on at this POS's funeral made me want to :puke:
Don't people get it??? Obviously not. They're still drinking the KoolAid.

They will never see what hit them!
And then the wail will be heard from coast-to-coast (unless there will be unmarked body-filled graves also coast-to-coast).

Our malady has much deeper roots than that. It is the truimph of a global investor class that has convinced us to sacrifice our sons and daughters, even ourselves, at the altar of economic efficiency.

O it took defeat of the Fairness Doctrine, and the neutering of the Rule of Sevens; it took the rise of a FOX news network to pull the nation like lemmings to the right so that "center" today would have made a John Bircher happy 50 years ago. It took funding thinks tanks such as AEI, PNAC, the Cato Institute, the Hudson Institute, etc., with their steady stream of false "authorities" to speak to the interests of the owning class as if they were our interests night after night on ABCCBSNBCCNNMSNBCFOX News Nightly. They've realized their wildest dreams: A State whose sole purpose is to preserve the sanctity of the contract (regardless of how asymmetrical the bargaining position of its participants), and retains a military whose sole purpose is imperialistic exploitation the world over. We, the working men and women of this nation, are f*cked for now.

Reagan began the manipulation of fiscal policy that greatly benefits a global economic elite at the cost of the working man. Think of it: The $8 trillion in national debt wracked up by Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, temporarily reversed by Clinton, then greatly accelerated by George Walker Bush -- who owns those debt instruments (Treasury Bonds)? Not me. Not you (o you might have a few pennies invested). The top 1% of our nation, in 2001, owned 38% of our net wealth, more than the bottom 235 million people combined (the bottom 80%). The vast majority of Bonds are owned by the top 20%, with most owned by the top 1% (that is, those not owned by foriegn investors and governments -- a whole other issue and side-effect of the policies aggrandizing the global monied elites).

We currently pay around $320 billion in interest on the national debt. That is $320 billion taken from the hard work and sweat of the American population at large and funneled into the hands of a few at the top. It is tribute, a tithe to the furious God Mamon. Further, part of the reason we've amassed such large debts is because the aforementioned Republithug administrations decided to overwhelmingly lessen the tax load on monied elites, so they retained more money to buy more bonds (and they did), thus we exceed a concentration of wealth that foreshadowed the great depressions that followed the Roaring Twenties and the Guilded Age. It will happen again, but not with pain for the well-off (who would have cushioned themselves long ago against such disaster), but you, I, and our children will suffer greatly.

It is amazing that the vast U.S. population hasn't spit up their KoolAid yet. Too late, as a diminished quality of life for them and their children is now inevitable. That's what you get when Republicans run the Presidency, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the SCOTUS, and the news media. Twenty-first century feudalism!

and it's sunk down to this. They're like cockroaches.

Or maybe you will want to tell me to piss off but either way, you get my unsolicited $.02. :)

There is more good when there is more evil.

At present, an old, bitter crust of a woman is trying to make my life a pain. She is always into others' business and is a gossip and people cater to her because of her position. I have to deal with her as she manages the building in which I work.

I have completely disliked her since she told a young student he "shouldn't bother studying African geography since the country names change every five minutes."

Because I was encouraging him in his studies at the time, holding his carefully labeled map of Africa in my hand, I couldn't smack her upside the head like I wanted to. Anyway, she's picked up on my dislike for her and is going after me in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.


Contrast her with Ella. She is young and very beautiful but kind. She is a friend of my son and has just recently started practicing songs with me for a "girls with guitars" duo. I've hired her for my business, and she is a hard-working, honest, great kid.

Now she is getting harrassed on her other job and since this is a small community, I have little doubt that Old Hag is widening her scope of terror to include trying to make Ella's life miserable.
And Ella just doesn't need this right now. Her parents live in the UK and she is struggling to survive, skinny as a rail and she needs help, not hindrance.

But the Old Hag is trying desperately to get me fired, my boss fired, most of my employees fired and I just feel in my gut she is "punishing" Ella to get to me.

Three nights ago Hag accidentally left a substantial amount of cash in a seat in my business (where she sits for hours gossiping.) Ella found it.

Ella immediately turned it into my boss who came to me. It was returned to the Hag within minutes.

Ella is just a naturally good person who will never be changed into anything else. The Hag is a sad excuse for a human who serves as an example of who NOT to be, and many diverse people have found common ground in their dislike for her ugly ways. But she didn't change Ella into less than who she already was.

There is a lot of evil, but there are good people who overcome it, too.

Wonderful story. Thanks for sharing it with us.

:hi:

:hi: :beer: :party: :bounce:

but then that's just the way I have ALWAYS been. If we let the terrorists change us...THEY WIN.

and that's why she is so hateful toward me.

Apparently, everyone is afraid of the SheBeast. Not me.

She doesn't have an answer for her behavior, but I have done my two-bit analysis and come to my own conclusions ;)

I never could help myself. I guess that's why I was always the union steward. And I liked it!

I didn't ever have any brothers to help me out, when the bullies came to beat on me growing up, but I had two sisters to look out for. I learned early that the bullies can dish it out all day, but they can't take it when they get a dose of their own crap, rubbed in their faces. Bullies turned me against bullies! Turning the other cheek, is for suckers and folks that are into serious pain!

I'm a peaceful person at heart though. My motto is and has always been...Don't start any shit and there won't be any shit.

and not enough Ellas. Great story to start the morning.

I'm 54 and have memories of almost 50 years in America.
I was scared as a child due to the Cold War, possible Nuclear War and the assasinations of great men.
I was scared & angry as a teen and young adult as I saw friends go to VietNam and not come back.
The first year I was eligible to vote, Nixon won...
As an older adult, I've seen the bad and the good and now, the worst of our generation.

As bad as it is or seems to be, we should be able to survive.

I heard my Grandparents talk about the turn of the century, WWI, the Depression, my parents talked of WWII....it was terribly bad then and they survived.

I heard my Great Grandparents tell of their Grandparents/parents being removed from the Cherokee Nation of Georgia, The Civil War, the South and whole country at odds and in shambles, yet they survived.

I keep thinking, We should be able to overcome this time of bad government, war, no voice or no one listening and (still) survive.

Our ancestors faced all of this and more.
They survived to see a better day.

That far too many seem oblivious or just plain apathetic to it all. Too many are watching the country going to hell and sitting idly by doing nothing to stop it.

People think we are over-reacting because "these things have happened before", but it feels different this time. Maybe it's because our leaders in the Democratic Party won't help us. At least in the past, we had support. That's why I always had hope that somehow, we would make it through. This is like a nightmare. I wish I would wake up from it.

Tammy

eom

I remember during Watergate feeling confident the whole time that Nixon wouldn't get away with it. With Bush, there have been so many times that I've told myself, "Okay, this is it. This outrage will bring him down. He won't get away with this." I'm still hoping, but dayum...

That Bush and Ronnie Raygunz are similar. I felt the same about Reagan but somehow he got reelected.

this country has not been ours since before I was born. After WWII people with plans set in motion actions to corrupt our country, control world politics, and have delivered with great patience, their agenda. Ike was very clear when he warned of the great military industrial complex, and those warnings were never heeded.... I am now in the position of having 2 teenage sons and I shiver to think what their future will be here.

I never thought I would don the 'tinfoil hat' - but things don't just happen 'randomly' on this earth.
A great deal of thought, preparation and action have gone into what we are seeing now.
I also worry for your sons.

there doesn't appear to be any saving this cesspool.

immigrate your way into another country.

when you bring your own income, most countries have open arms.

covering people who will come into their country w/out adequate personal coverage of their own.
Check with your health insurance to see if it follows you abroad.
Mine doesn't.

but hope you'll stick around and help us take our country back...

but i recently met someone who made me realize that i've still got half my life left to live.

and i don't want to spend it fighting.

I look around at the people who are supporting Republicans and I wonder who are these people and where did they come from. Have these people been in our midst all this time?

The Bush administration is primarily concerned about its political opposition in America, and since Bush knows no limits, since Bush has no respect for the history and traditions of our representative democracy, we are at risk.

Because a draft is not needed yet, the policies have not come home to visit most Americans, who can be disconnected from the Bush policies abroad.

Most Americans are oblivious to what is taking place, to the extent to which this administration is tracking Americans, monitoring Americans, and spying on Americans using US government employees, contractors, and service personnel, most of whom also have no appreciation for the history and traditions of America.

To a time when blacks could not vote. Could not enter a bathroom. Were not allowed. Were not really human. And then, be black. And see how the same fraction of the country as now were not contrary to that. And did not ask why, or even desire change. And be black.

The problem now is, we are black. Again. And it is ugly. But this time, it's the Iraqis who are paying the price. It is we who are trying to make the change.

It IS ugly. But it isn't new.

I thought long and hard about the struggles your generation faced, and all the positive results of your generations' efforts, and have come to a theory that may or may not be accurate, but here it is:

I think we are seeing the right wing in it's last attempts to hold on to a smaller exclusive world of theirs. Just as they have created a God in their own image, they wish to recreate a World in that twisted image as well out of convenience. Everything is changing around them, and they are trying like hell to hold onto what they have. Unfortunately for them, their last attempts are seen by all political stripes as ridiculous, unconstitutional and full of hatred and fear. In the end, their efforts will fall apart and the majority will restore sanity, with some compromises. Most of them will be inevitably ostracized from a major counter-culture.

For every action, there will be a cultural reaction, and there is nothing the right wing can really do about it. In as much as they have tried to do, in the last 5 or so years, I am already seeing signs of a backlash, and it's not coming from politicos, the right or the left, but from average people, who see the right wing christo-fascists, as I like to call them. Now that these folks have naively assumed their place in the "mainstream", they will be beaten back by the reality that most folks inherently dislike, extremism.

The best thing for us to do, is laugh at them, while working hard on a grass roots level to change this country. Watch the average folks reject their fanaticism, and their efforts to control popular culture. Nobody wants to be "Square".

you give me great hope.

:hug:

I was at a car dealership, waiting for my oil change to be finished. I was sitting in a small waiting area, where they had a tv airing the news. Suddenly they aired images of the Iraqi War, bodies smoldering within the frame of a vehicle, and as I shook my head in disgust, I looked to my left noticing a similiar reaction from a teenager.

He look at me, and asked me how much I knew about the Iraqi war. He questioned the reasons for war, as he had heard in the news. He said he didn't buy any of it. He felt the administration lied us all into the war, and that it was a shame people were dying so needlessly. I then asked him how his friends or other kids in his school/neighborhood felt about the war and politics in general. He replied that many he knew felt the same as he did, and wanted to do something about it. He said they all feared a draft. His mother, sitting next to him, listened closely to my answers and just nodded her head in agreement.

When he asked me what he could do, I told him to find a way to volunteer in his community doing whatever he could. I was astonished to see a young kid so curious and so worried. It gave me hope.... I guess I am now passing that hope now to you.

By the way... he was about 14, colored, and lived in the city. Kids want change, and color of the skin will not matter as we all seem to want the same thing! Peace.

The younger generation may have the time to wait them out but for those of us who have come this far only to see this, and other Republican President's piss it away, well you'll excuse us for being a little more anxious about it...
Don't get me wrong, I'm encouraged that the younger generation has the forsight to recognise whats going on. However expediency is the word in our house...
There was a saying in the 60s that "God is Dead" this is just a backlash from that...

Vietnam, Race riots, Nuclear proliferation, poverty you had to wonder what kind of god would allow that...
In retrospeck we haven't changed all that much, just names changed...

are trying to dismiss your worries. Unfortunately I too share your feelings, but I still see some hope is all. I think we all need hope as we all spread the word and work hard for change. Up until 5 years ago, I didn't involve myself with politics at all. Now I do so, daily.

I am not sitting back watching the cemetery fill it's vacancies...

I loved what you said...keep up the good work and spread the word...
It's one thing to sit on the internet and voice our opinions but it has to transend this medium and eventually hit the streets, I'm as quilty as anyone but the time has come to do something, before it's too late...

Onward!

I'm 38 so I'm not really young anymore so let me lecture you...
Your above post is a hopeful, even inspiring message. I don't share it. I agree with what you see, though; the last thrashings of Anglo-Saxon Christian exploitation. My disagreement is that I think that their last thrashings will be incredibly violent, even suicidally violent. The structure they built is supported by a racism and materialism so intense that I don't think it can end with a whimper. I see people so besotted with their image as masters of the world and with the pursuit of wealth that I think they would gladly die rather than live in a world where they can't easily conjure and cherish those images.
Hoping like hell you're right and I am wrong I am,

long green

it. I understand where you are coming from, and it is bad. It would be nice if we didn't have to fight and could just retire.
But I think that is what every fighter on the ground in our history probably thought.
No sane person really wants to fight, but if we have to, we will.
And we'll win again, and they'll go back to their shadows for another 60 years to rebuild their resources and allow a generation to forget, and try it again.
But people are living longer, they probably should've waited 80 years this time.
I think more are aware than you think.

I am 57 and know exactly how you feel. I cannot come to grips with how this country has deteriorated in every way from the days when we were young and growing up. Granted we had the Cold War and Communism but we never had the outright corruption and theft of our government that we have today. I am sorry to say that our ship has gone way off course and is being sailed by people who are held bent on running it aground or worse blowing it up. The only way we get out of this mess is for the country to experience another American Revolution of sorts. We needs some Patrick Henry's and Thomas Jeffersons to come forward to lead us in taking back this country and restoring our government to the will of the people.

...and I'm getting angrier with each passing day. We lost our business at the end of 2003, and had to file for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy which has just been discharged. I'm having a lot of trouble finding a new job that doesn't involve selling insurance, furniture, or cars, and my wife is killing herself with long hours at a minimum wage job.

We owed nothing at the end of 2000...the house and cars were paid off, and we had no credit card debt at all. Fast forward to the end of 2003, and we had $150,000 in cc debt, and mortgages on the house.

Thanks, NeoCons, for all that you've done to America.

nt

Why? Because the American people are now seeing clearly behind the veil of not only the Republican establishment, but also how big corporations are wringing the life out of our democracy (and even their personal lives).

I do believe the people are waking up. And the polls show it. And Bush's power is slipping with each passing day.

I have confidence that the people will rise up (somehow) to restore their republic. But this uprising will occur in a non-traditional way--that's why you're having trouble seeing it.

I posit that the nation is reaching a major catharsis, a singularity if you will, where all the old alliances, party structures and ideologies of the past will cease to make sense.

Watch it happen.

it is surrounded by a whole range of majestic peaks. We will be finding great leaders arising out of this because we are tapping into our own personal power to become leaders in our own right. A greatness will be born from all of our personal efforts. Maybe we will not become the person celebrated in history books, but we have all become more involved in making the world a better place and by doing so will generate the momentum to crush the evil doers that have led this nation down such a dark path.

Sometimes I get quite depressed about it all, especially because it seems to be getting worse rather than better. George Bush has done so much harm to this country - I don't know how we'll make it with nearly 3 more years to go. What will be left come January 2008?

If the Dems don't pick up seats in the House and Senate come November - truly I feel that all is lost.

related to the regime in power today.... While most of us mourned the deaths and injustices.... these bastards planned and executed them. Some of us need to wake up and connect these last few dots. Until we do there is no way to move forward.

want to be that young again. :evilgrin:

we need old phart liberal hippies even more now than EVER.

:evilgrin:

have a grandson, age 4 (5 in 11 days), and will fight to the death to keep him from ever suffering the fate the Iraqi children face thanks to the evil we have running this country now.

I agree with many in this thread, this started many years ago, * is the culmination of much planning and plotting. Poppy has helped much and * is just a dumbass frat boy. He runs nothing.

I still have hope that this country can be saved. And knowing there are others, like those here at DU, out there fighting the good fight, it just may happen! :applause::patriot:

Keep Hope Alive!!!

living w/ gray cloud over my head. we're not alone. lots of my friends in same age group feel exactly the same.

wonder what I've walked into?

about things than I've ever been. I guess during the civil rights movement and Vietnam and Watergate and such, that were plenty of people fighting against what was wrong so you didn't feel as alone. I think this was due to a press that would shine a light on things. I don't feel enough light is being shown on things to counteract all the propaganda and censorship today.

...globalized evil-doing (in the name of freedom & democracy).

and introduce them to logic and facts, or would that be too cruel?

http://www.rightwingnews.com/

"Of all the threads in all the world - they had to choose mine"!!

har har har.


Little do they know the people are becoming very restless - it's just a matter of time.

I'm 65 and the present time is definitely more frightening than any other in my memory. The first president I remember is Truman. I'm basically an optimistic person, but I gotta tell you things don't look so good right now. The criminals are in charge and crazy fundies want to run our lives.