When I started this blog, it was, for the most part, discussions of the events of the day filtered through my own particular life experiences. I did not write very much about my family, and, although more, not all that much about my every day activities.
That has changed over the past few years. I stopped blogging almost completely in 2008 and 2009, posting a total of 20 posts in two years, twelve less that I have thus far in this July alone. When I recommenced writing in 2010, the posts were mostly about me (with far too much navel-gazing), with far fewer about the world around me. Although the purpose of the blog remained the same (to give me a generalized outlet for my writing), the subjects and tone changed, and not necessarily for the better.
Lately, I have been trying to figure out why this is. I know that part of it is a result of long-term unemployment: except for last year's four and a half month stint with the Census Bureau, I have not had a paying job since Thanksgiving 2008. I have worked hard: I have been important in my teenage sons lives, and have contributed to society through volunteer work. At the nonprofit where I volunteer, I am greatly appreciated. Which is great, except that I can't pay the mortgage with it, and they can't afford to hire me. (I know: I have been doing grant research, and filling out online applications, and I see the budgets.)
Unemployment damages your trust in your own capabilities. I know that I tend to obsess far more over the things I cannot do than the things I can. I can write clearly and convincingly, but I tend to downplay that ability. A friend has told me that I seem scared of the possibility of my own success; she may be right. I am terrified of letting people down, and am a firm believer in the Peter Principle, so I tend to skirt the possibility of rising to a level of incompetence by tending to not rise at all. Even though I am trying, it becomes hard to sell yourself to employers when you don't feel you have anything to sell.
However, that does not completely explain the shift in focus here. This blog has never gotten many hits. I don't expect it to do so. I have no responsibilities to others to live up to, and feel no pressure. Why have my interests shifted here? And it is not only writing about the world around me, to a great deal it has been stopping reading about the world around me, as well.
What happened? Burnout. Then fear.
Sometime in the middle of 2007, I began to get "outrage fatigue." So much had happened to change America for the worse, that I found myself saying "yeah? that's not at all surprising." (One of my favorite quotes from the 2000s was from Teresa Nielsen Hayden: "I deeply resent the way this administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist.") My expectations for my government had sunk to a level where being angry seemed pointless. In some sense I had done everything that a good conscientious citizen is supposed to do: I voted, I talked to my fellow Americans, I wrote letter after letter to my Congressional representatives. And the slide continued.
The election of Barack Obama gave me some hope. But only briefly. It is not that Obama has done all that badly: there are a great many things he has done right. (There are things that I am deeply angered at the failure of this administration to keep to its election promises, chiefly the detainee issue and Guantanamo.) But he is hamstrung by a Congress, media and (if we are to believe said media) a populace that has moved beyond simple self-interest to insanity.
The conversation about the debt ceiling is insane. The willingness of politicians to play chicken with the country's economy is insane. The failure of many of the people to use basic critical thinking skills about these issues is insane.
You don't want any deficits? Stop the wars, and raise taxes. Funny, you were all for increased deficits under the prior administration. There is almost little room left to cut, unless you want to gut wholesale social programs, not to mention things like NASA -- and, even though we are NASA family, if we had to there are other jobs out there for my husband -- and, more importantly, the FDA, Agriculture, OSHA and the EPA. You gut their budgets, and you have no one to blame but yourself when your next door neighbor's kid dies from e. Coli or salmonella contracted from eating non-inspected food, or you come down with cancer from the toxins in your water, or your son is seriously injured in a workplace accident that was entirely preventable had said workplace been required to meet safety standards, or the drug that your wife takes for her arthritis turns out to cause liver disease.
This idea that there are people who do not pay taxes? Individuals pay all sort of taxes, even though they pay no income tax. They pay payroll and Social Security, and sales tax, and property tax in some form, either directly if they own their own home or by proxy when the landlord passes the costs through. And the less money they make, the more these taxes hit home. (Warren Buffett is, in my opinion, a hero.)
The income disparities between those at the very top and those at the very bottom have not been so large in decades. Again if one listens to the media, far too many people seem not to know or, if they do know, not to care.
There has been a YouTube video making the rounds about a supposed boondoggle of a housing project in Tacoma, Washington. All sort of crazy claims have been made (falsely) about how it will benefit foreigners and poor people. What intrigues me is not the video, but how people put trust in someone they don't know simply because what he is saying fits into their own preconceived notions. On his website, he makes such claims as that the Jesuits are hitmen for the Vatican, that the U.S. was dissolved in 1933, and that the Federal Reserve outlawed money in 1913. This guy is a complete loony. That people take anything he says seriously is frightening. (And yes, as I (and Don Marquis) have said before, ideas are not responsible for the people that hold them, but there are or should be limits on what you take at face value. Especially from someone who claims he used to be an ambassador.)
It's not just nationally, either. California has its own brand of insanity, economic and otherwise.
I can't even talk about health care issues right now, or what is happening in the abortion arena. All I can say is that, sadly and selfishly, I am relieved not to have daughters. I am afraid for the future for my sons, I can only imagine what mothers of young women feel. I have to fight from falling into despair for my country. Part of the way I have done this is by concentrating on the little picture, on my family, on me.
I keep telling myself that there are areas of progress. The movement on same-sex marriage has heartened me a great deal, as has the pending end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and the administration's refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act. The Lily Ledbetter act, the first thing Obama signed when he became president, was a very good thing indeed. In California, recently districts were redrawn to reduce gerrymandering. And there have been other places where there is burgeoning pushback from thoughtful people.
I keep telling myself the country has seen much tougher times: we have many protections that people in the 19th century did not have. The Great Depression was also worse. The safety net may be shredding, but it is still there.
Somehow it doesn't seem enough. But it will have to do. By trying to insulate myself from what is going on in the country, I am failing in the first duty of every adult citizen, to stay informed so that you can make informed decisions, so you can pressure your government to make intelligent decisions.
A number of the quotes on my sidebar -- especially those from the Book of Micah, Mary Harris, Reinhold Neibuhr and Molly Ivins -- talk about the responsibility to work for, as the John D. and Katherine T Macarthur Foundation says in their mission statement, a "more just, verdant and peaceful world." Molly Ivins, in particular, talks not only about the work, but the joy that exists in that work.
I think it may be time to pick up the fight again, even in the small way I do so. Molly, I hope you're right.
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