There is no hope
That is what a very vocal minority of people here like to tell everyone.
We can't win. There's no point in trying to defeat TPTB. There is no hope.
They practically yell it from the rooftops.
For arguments sake, let's say they're right.
How have you helped anyone here by telling us this?
Have you improved anyone's life by helping to crush what little hope they have?
It is my firm belief that a life without hope is not a fully lived life.
"But it's true!" you reply. "And facing the truth is always better than denying it."
Are you sure?
Let me give you an example of undeniable truth using this logic.
"We are all going to die, and life is full of suffering. So what's the point of going on?"
Oh, wait! NOW we acknowledge nuance and perspective.
Now an inescapable ending doesn't mean giving into hopelessness.
So if you make an exception for life, then why not make exceptions for the things that make life worth living? And the things that make life worth living are (in most cases) anything that you feel passionate about.
So if someone is passionate about changing the world, don't step on their dreams.
Lastly, and most importantly, you're wrong.
There is always hope.
For 1,500 years the peasant revolts of Europe were brutally crushed.
Everyone knew the undeniable truth that it was hopeless to fight against feudalism.
And then the French Revolution happened.
Since before written languages slaves revolts around the world were brutally crushed.
Everyone knew the undeniable truth that it was hopeless to fight against slavery.
And then the Haitian Revolution happened.
History is full of examples of bad guys winning...until they stop winning.
Finally, I'm not calling anyone out. I'm not thinking of anyone in particular.
This is just me getting something off my chest.
Comments
Because we do not yet see the path,
Does not mean it isn't there. It means we haven't seen it yet. And we may not see it. Others may find it first.
One sure thing about life is change. Change in seasons, change in weather. Change of all sorts is continually happening.
@Granma Who is not seeing a path?
Who is not seeing a path?
I live in California where a Jewish democratic socialist won the Democratic primary by a large margin. I also live in a country that just got the biggest wake up reminder for the need for effective government since, I don't know, maybe WWII.
I get that its disappointing not to have a total win in this election but no way anyone on the right can see current events as going their way.
I can't answer for Granma
but I related to what she said. I don't see how anyone can see the path at this point.
We are in new territory right now. There is no path yet. Think of us as pioneers, arriving in a new world. We will be creating the path as we go along.
It's not a "right vs. left" or "Repubs vs Dems" thing. In fact, I'd say that seeing it in those terms would be like trying to navigate the new world according to the rules and maps of the old world that we've left behind. It can't be done. The old maps are irrelevant in the new world.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
The only time there is no hope
...is when you are vigorously doing the same things over and over again and believing that this time it is different.
In fact, it is that kind of thinking that allowed things to get so bad.
There is hope when you are trying something entirely new. Hope comes easy then. That's why so many invested in Sanders.
But why vote when there's no hope?
Who is going to get a serious downgrade in living standards to pay for these corporate bailouts?
I hope it is the one percent, don't you?
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
Not exactly
The Haitian slaves didn't do anything that slave revolts didn't do before.
They just did it harder.
The suffragettes didn't dramatically change strategies. They just stuck to it.
Labor unions didn't dramatically change strategies. They just organized more.
Sometimes what is required is simply working harder (and a bit of luck).
You are thinking in terms of an Age of Utopian Dreaming
The Age of Utopian Dreaming was a phenomenon that begun with the Enlightenment, most specifically with the French and American Revolutions, and which was cast into twilight with the elite consolidation of the 1970s, importantly with the rise of Thatcher and of Reagan. Before the Enlightenment, "utopia" was either an idea of a regimented city-state in which people were forced to behave well, like in Tommaso Campanella's "City of the Sun," or some sort of idle fantasy ("Cockaigne"). With the Enlightenment comes a utopia of human rights ("Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness") which "rational man" can fight for. Utopia, then, is popularized and projected into the future in the Enlightenment.
With the Seventies, utopian dreams achieve their last full flower in the concept of ecotopia. The elites consolidate and agree that the one utopian dream the masses will be allowed is that of entry into the Utopia of Money. Neoliberal rule begins in earnest. We are now at the point where it is obvious that the Utopia of Money will not be granted to anyone except a tiny few at the top. Ecotopia will not be achievable except through apocalypse.
Under such conditions no direct comparison to the 19th or 20th centuries is meaningful. Those people had a hope we are denied. Bring back our Age of Utopian Dreaming, and then we'll talk.
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
Your examples are shaky
Persistence may work on the smallest social scale. It might appear to work if you get lucky and the winds of change are already blowing your way. But it does not work in a complex system, where the actual operation and authority are purposefully made opaque to the people.
Your examples from the Olden Days can be seen as flawed:
• The French Revolution failed tragically in achieving its goals. The US Revolution had already happened and it succeeded. There was no question of what success looked like.
• When the suffragettes came along, women were already voting in the Scandinavian countries, New Zealand, the UK, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Suffrage was inevitable and it was sweeping the world. Meanwhile, women in the US can't get an equal rights amendment passed, with all the voting they do.
• The US business model always prioritizes capital formation, while allowing labor costs to take the strain. Off-shoring labor is considered a sound American solution to labor demands. There is a reason why the US has the fewest labor laws and stingiest unemployment benefits of any developed nation in the world. Labor's big victory was giving employers control over the health care of most USians, not realizing that losing one's job could be a death sentence or could ruin a family's upward mobility. Labor is the reason that there is no Left Party in the US and why we've had to endure a century's worth of anti-communist propaganda and tyranny.
.
This is a personal thing with you. You've been staring into the abyss.
It was personal with me, too. I was frustrated for a long time that no one wanted to see the danger and damage being done, no matter how clearly it was laid out for them. They had families and couldn't allow themselves to think that way. Or, there was an election coming up. Nobody else is sweating it, why should they? They had an amazing ability to find an issue that was more important than stopping the wars.
I stopped writing essays about what I saw, and stuck to comments that were fleeting. I realized that nothing I said or didn't say could change the fact that the US was headed toward a banquet of consequences as a result of the evil it had unleashed upon the world. The US had passed the point of no return when it attacked Afghanistan. Resistance was futile, as they say. No one told us then that, "You will be in an ever-expanding neocon war for the next 20 years, after which, the dollar will collapse. Your leaders are oozing with greed and stupidity, and pulling more of their kind into power. Before this is over, you will kill all the people who tried to help you. The world will turn against you." What other outcome can there be?
Right now, we are in a state of grace. People know nothing about what is to come. It's like Groundhog Day. When they are released from isolation, will they come out braying for War with China? Are the people going to fall for the neocon-designed China Hoax, which is based entirely on a propaganda lie?
A part of me hopes they do come out blaming China and demanding payback.
.
That would be a welcome change.
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
So sick of being right.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/eee2315f-6c5e-46f8-bfd8-df62633fcc2c#QYodog...
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
You have to have a place to start.
No hope can be the soundest and most valuable location.
No Hope leads to Nowhere
maybe the French Revolution is a bad example
since Napoleon came out of it as an Emperor.
History shows us that there are short periods where the sun shines. It also shows us that power grabbers take over when the people relax. I'm pretty sure there's a solution but danged if I know what it is, other than violent means and I'm opposed to that.
I'm sticking with that example
Napoleon became emperor AND the Bourbons were restored.
That doesn't mean the peasant revolt wasn't successful. In fact, it succeeded in breaking the back of feudalism all over Europe. Which is why the monarchies usually fell so easily from 1848 onward. No one could have predicted that in 1789.
Haiti is actually a tougher example, because it immediately became a kingdom.
That doesn't mean the slave revolt wasn't successful. In fact, it succeeded in ending the Atlantic slave trade within 12 years. No one could have predicted that in 1791.
"breaking the back of feudalism"
I forget which book I read this in, but it's a good quote.
"The 19th Century - which began with the Divine Right of Kings and ended with A Specter is haunting Europe." Plenty of conflict, plenty of bloodshed and in the USA ended with the Robber Barons in control, but undeniably 1901 was different from 1801 and IMO better.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Truth and Hope need each other.
Only a fool chooses one, and forsakes the other.
The difficulty is finding a way to love and preserve both. Our uncertain future ups the ante, clouds our thinking and stokes our fears. “Interesting” times, to be sure.
Still, in all, this C99 home is a haven of relative sanity for which I am most grateful.
“ …and when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,and understand who God is, and what our own potential is and duties are as human beings.- RFK jr. 8/26/2024
finding a way to love and preserve
there you have it
thanks for keeping it up!
For the record --
My essay It's easier to imagine the end of the world --
is meant as a reductio ad absurdum, an attempt to take some rather mainstream concerns and bring them together to show what a ridiculous picture they paint when this is done. Yeah, we're still going to be playing the "two-party system" game when the world is toast /snark. Which should bring clever readers to the question of why we are so desperately playing it now.
The problem with hope is that, in American politics, we are continually asked to place hope in the wrong things. The Trump campaign is going to ask us to place hope in "America," which is now in the middle of an incredible clusterf*ck. The Biden campaign is going to ask us to place hope in a "return to normal," when the return to normal is more likely to be what normal was in 1932, except with no New Deal on the horizon. Right now people are placing hope in their backyard gardens. The real Left is gearing up for a general strike. What would it take for a general strike to work? It's going to take more than one day.
Oh, there's hope all right. We just have to wait a few months for it to become something more solid than what it is now. Talking about a new political party in the middle of election run-up and coronavirus isn't going to have immediate results. This is planning time. Plan for a future, then tear up your plans and plan again in a way which takes reality into account. Fail, then fail better.
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
planting seeds
in hope for a future
don't give up
to say the truth,
i never even read it, given the title. i was so taken aback at your contentions that the green party's rules had destined them to obscurity...and as i took it: forevermore. and given that you're a thought leader here, many followed suit.
when all seems lost, why not vote Green, at least you won't be wasting your vote on LOTE voting. when the PTB want to jigger the diebolds (although mail-in voting has been, and should be accomplished, given the herculean task of enabling it before november or whenever it is.
but voting is not the serf's friend; will the coming may day strikes matter? will they be virtual or actual picket line strikes? some related #hashtags are blaming trump, as if the dems haven't been just as complicit.
Given its status,
the Green Party really ought to be holding a set of competitive, binding primaries. At least in doing so it would get some publicity for what it believes in.
The Green Party started out as "party plus movement." At some point the movement disappeared and the party became a chore -- you know if you're going to have a party you've got to have ballot status and if you don't have anyone in charge of maintaining ballot status you don't have ballot status. As the years pass and everyone puts their energies into taking over the Democratic Party, fewer and fewer want to handle the chores of keeping the Green light lit.
The turning point for me was when the Milwaukee convention in 2004 was rigged to nominate John Cobb, and then about two months after that convention my friend Walt Sheasby died, about half of that death occurring in my house when I was busy doing something else over a weekend, and the other half at the Kaiser hospital in Fontana. I was pretty crushed after that.
If the ballot access page is correct, the Greens are on the ballot in maybe a couple of dozen states, not really enough to win much of anything given that in a good election their candidates might earn 4% of the vote (assuming that they are in fact counting the Green votes at all). I think they need to have a threesome, and not just party plus movement. It needs to be party plus movement plus theory. Everyone is so hyped on action, but there really needs to be more thought put into what the plan is for a better world. We tried it the old way and it has led us to this moment.
Now, me, I think the starting point is this piece:
CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION IN FANTASY AND REALITY
The password is: AddletonAP2009 . I think it's case-sensitive.
It's the inspiration for what will probably be my two books. First book is being looked at by an editor; second book is what I do to pass the COVID-19 time these days.
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
as far as i'm concerned,
Hope is just another 4-letter word. yes, 'hope dies last' (dunno if WD in athens had been waxing Ultimate Irony or not), but for me, when all hope is lost, the serfs act.
when the breadwives in paris marched because there was no flour to feed their families (Let them eat cake!), for instance. most insurrections have been based on the price or availability of food; now it's rent that's even out of reach for far too many. formerly public housing is being privatized in NYC and minnesota with a little bit of help from the squad...
but the Hope of 'reforming the D party from within' has just another False Hope con, imo. on edit: 'let's hope the DSAs can reform capitalism a lil bit'.
so yeah, even if one's only looking at a viable third party protest vote, why not the Greens? no, let's start from scratch and unify all the leftish parties, make a platform, tra la la..someone said on my thread.
the Greens can have no illusions that one of their candidates will win the white house, methinks. but often it's in the campaign that one can make their mark, no? and yes, we've learned the lesson only too well: 'if voting really mattered, it would be illegal'.
she may not have known what she was onto, but janis had it right: 'freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose...'
That's counterintuitive
Why would the serfs do anything together if they had no hope of accomplishing anything?
I think you fundamentally misunderstand the situation.
perhaps you didn't
read my comment well enough. 'nothing left to lose' (hunger & starvation, for instance) can bring spontaneous combustion. and 'imagining a better future' doesn't imply 'hoping for one', especially globally.
there's a global collective consciousness some call the noosphere, which is likened to whales a thousand miles apart beginning to sing a new song one group started. spontaneous knowledge, harmony, unity... like that.
Nice work
Clearly, it's necessary to approach climate change in a radically different way. Instead of pushing the string, we should locate the other end and pull it.
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
Thanks Pluto!
You're definitely on my "good" list today. Cassiodorus definitely spends a ton of time saying "read this" and "read that" to people who don't.
So far this is the most important thing I've ever written.
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
Hopefully, Sir Keir Starmer, the new Labour leader
will put DePiffle Johnson to the sword over the next few months.
Already knighted for public service, his lawyerly mind will find the clown out... if the clown bothers to show up.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
as far as this you've written:
it may be that the haitians upped the ante and won their freedom was partially due to the fact that entire families were sent to haiti (and i believe the dominican republic) unlike single slaves sold in the US of A.
but fighting for the lives of your children and grandchirren crosses the great divide, as in:
love force can act as a physical entity. but then haiti has been colonized and recolonized (see the clintons and bono family project) and the U-imposed dark ruler moises jovenal their lives are a nightmare. one tweet's worth:
There is hope
More now than ever. People are beginning to see. Including me.
This is a story. About democrats. I'm at the point where I found my significant other (dems) didn't give a shit about me, except for what I could do for them (my vote and my $). They say they care about us , always have, we're the only one. Lies. Mostly, though, they hung out with their little party friends (ID pol, cause du jour). They're sorry they couldn't be there when we really needed them, but we understand, right?
What they really cared about was hanging with those old rich dudes, happy to put out to be part of the high life, fucking for money and fame. Me, I'm at the point where I know I was used. Every day, in every way they hurt me. I've already made all the excuses about how they didn't mean it, they'll change, that deep down they care about me. They don't.
There is hope because my (our)worth does not lie in what they think of me (us). They don't have that power anymore. After 50 years of voting for the lesser of 2 evils, I'm done voting for evil. Don't mistake anger for despair. Don't mistake being screwed with making love.
There are kids today that are far wiser at a younger age than I was, am. It's their world they're fighting for and they could give 2 shits what I think. I'm banking on them.
I've read so much about Bernie the sheep dog, Bernie the traitor, Bernie the fool, when if he dropped dead tomorrow his beliefs would be valid, still live on. So no, there is hope.
Or: short version. Your car shits the bed. If you can't get another, you hitch. That doesn't work, grab a bike. If that's no good you walk. If that's no good, then it's time to start getting creative. To get on the road to where you need to be.
I like a lot of what you say here
Especially this: Don't mistake anger for despair.
And I would add, don’t mistake people seeing that one given path is a dead end and deciding to not take that particular road again, is the same as giving in to hopelessness or despair. It isn’t.
I feel like this is deja vu all over again, this is the same discussion we’ve had over and over in the four years I’ve been here. Some people say, in various ways, about channeling all hope into electoral politics “... that way is a dead end. It does not lead to where you want to go. It is time to see that it’s a circle that goes nowhere, and step away from it.”
The point to doing so, obviously, is not to squash anyone’s “hope” that this circle eventually leads to success if you just “do it harder” or for long enough. The point is to get people to stop wasting so much time and energy on an endless grinding wheel that sucks you dry. Only then can we hope to find new ways to succeed.
Then we are told, stop saying that! You are depressing other people who believe in this wheel. They need to believe in this wheel, and you are harming them to even suggest they might reconsider this method of working for change. You are a bad, bad person for saying that. SHAME!
I was tired of this three years ago, and — amazing! — I am still tired of it. But I also still do think it is important to see what is happening here. Look, if you (anyone) really want to have faith in this wheel, go ahead. No one is stopping you. But IMO you do not get to tell others to stop saying what they see from their perspective, or to shame them as being “mean” or “spreading despair” when it is pointed out that going endlessly around the same circle is not working. You are free to ignore such perspective, but I don’t agree with shutting it down.
For me this brings up a strong memory from much earlier in my life, when I read this little story and it became a guide for me during some rough times when letting go of things that were not working was necessary to save my own life. People who try to cast shame for walking away from a broken situation just do not get it.
[Edited to correct typo]
That's a good poem
It pretty much sums it up. We're in a rut. It used to be a path, but little fences and detours got us going in a circle, and around and round we go, until the ruts walls above our head. The big thing is now we can see it more clearly, and start to figure out how to get out.
Tell me about it.
Now and then I’ll write an essay to put forth an idea of what might possibly be done, and be effective.
You get the naysayers, with their “yeah but you still got this other problem” as if there Wasn’t a proposal on the table, one subject to analysis or criticism on its own terms.
And even though I write that people can point out the faults in my idea, or Improvements, or better ideas of their own, it seems the best I get Is some positive “good piece” comment or a riff on some minor point that doesn't matter, there’s never any development offered.
Very weird. It’s like people have put on vision blinders or something. And not just at this site: really everywhere I know of.
Just read that Philip K. Dick have a speech "The Authentic Human vs. Reflex Machines." Haven't read it but I do know the Authentic Human has empathy. And that having empathy one feels hope, however grim the situation. And Reflex Machines...they just get run automatically; have no resistance nor striving.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
This is a timely observation, Jim.
I've been thinking along the same line.
Maybe we forgot why we are communicating, or forgot the destination we are traveling toward. At one time, we could identify distractions. More often, now, it feels like we are inside a distraction.
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
Lots of ways of coping...
One size doesn't fit all. Jimmy (who I enjoy) rants in order to vent. Aaron Mate' (who I also enjoy) is more refined and less emotional. We as individuals must come out of who and what we are.
We all have hopes. I must admit I have no hope for our current corporate political system. It is broken (IMO) beyond repair. My hope is we blow it up and build something new. None the less, that seems a doubtful outcome.
So I guess I see our community in a different light. I like the variety of view points...positive and negative. Perhaps we could expend more energy thinking about and discussing the path to a better world and society rather than focusing on the failures. Of course without understanding the failures, you're bound to make the same mistakes over and over, as in CS in AZ story.
There is no one path. We all must find our own. However, I do agree with your premise of being hopeful, because life is simply more pleasant when you are on a positive pole.
I enjoyed the piece and all the comments.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Markos used to say "It's a big internet."
I prefer to say "If you don't like something don't click on it. If you didn't know you wouldn't like it (by the title and author), and then discover you hate it, click out of it. If you don't like something and click on it anyway, you know what you're getting."
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
A hopeful article in Time Magazine - Mikhail Gorbachev
https://time.com/5820669/mikhail-gorbachev-coronavirus-human-security/
Mikhail Gorbachev: When The Pandemic Is Over, The World Must Come Together
It is an impressive read.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
For me, hope is a dual edge sword
On the one hand it bring inspiration, fuels action, and helps keep one from just giving up, but on the other hand, again for me, losing one's hope is quite liberating. For me, it's like watching the box we've be constrained by, disappear, and allows a more creative idea's to surface and develop.
For Example.
When I got busted for possession of pot, I thought, holy shit I'm dead meat. After months of agonizing frustrations with the courts, I finally got a public defender, who turned out to be a fucking joke of an attorney. When I asked her for all the evidence, cop's statements / affidavits etc... she was like, wtf, you were guilty, why would you want all this stuff. (I'm paraphrasing..) I said, IT IS MY RIGHT. READ THE FUCKING CONSTITUTION LADY. (Art. 1. Sec.10 of Texas Constitution, "He shall have the right to demand the nature and cause of the accusation against him, and to have a copy thereof.")
I learned right then she just wanted me to plead guilty so she could get her 30 pieces of silver. I had already experienced an attorney abandon me at the most crucial moment, like be in court. I wanted to go to trail, so the DA was wanting to throw the book at me, 2-5 years in prison. The police violated my civil rights as well as multi-civil codes during the arrest and subsequent towing and impounding of my vehicle.
Anyway, while I lost hope of getting any type of decent defense, my rage at my public defender fueled me to do my own research, which netted at least two supreme court cases I could use as a legitimate defense. Ohio vs Terry and Brown vs Texas. I threaten to 1 fire her, and 2 take her before the Texas bar and have her law license taken away, for incompetence, if she didn't mount a proper defense for me.
I kicked their ass. Instead of "possession of a controlled substance" and 2-5 years in prison, and thousands in fines, I got them reduced to "possession of paraphernalia", 4 months non-reporting probation and a $600 fine.
Hope didn't do that, my focused rage did. For me, having hope is like praying in one hand and pooping in the other and recognizing which fills up first. It doesn't mean there isn't a GOD, but maybe right now I just need to "think" of something else to focus my rage on, and then act accordingly, "hopefully" that yields a positive outcome.
Losing hope doesn't mean giving up, at least not to me. It means recognizing what I am doing is not working, therefore, I need to act differently and try something else. Losing hope means I am a clear and present danger to the "system", because I have nothing left to lose.
"Fear of loss" is the fulcrum which keeps this "system" in place. My "hope" is, that people are starting to recognize that golden nugget of wisdom.
C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote
That's a good story, but...
We have a very different idea about what hope means.
For example, when you pass through the gate of Hell and you see "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."
Do you think "I just need to do things a different way"?
I think you are thinking of "faith" or "trust", not "hope".
Or maybe it's simply "when you stop giving a fuck" which I agree is liberating.
OTOH, this much we agree on.
Well ...
if I'm passing through the gates of hell, then several questions must be asked...
Who is judging me that I should wind up in hell? Madeline Albright? Henry Kissinger? Alan Greenspan?
What did I do that was soo bad, that I should wind up in hell? I didn't vote for Hillary? I won't vote for Biden? Blew the whistle on an energy company?
But, if I'm going to hell, then I might as well treat it like it's a job interview to be the new Boss. At least then my suffering would be a direct result of MY own choice(s), to fight the top dog, and not the judgement of others who deemed me unworthy of their "idea" of "heaven".
And my "hope" would be, that the other poor slobs condemned to damnation for eternity would see my struggle with the devil, as an opportunity to over turn the apple cart, and maybe get a beer or two after 16 hours of torture... (Maybe there's a lesson for BernieBro's in that...)
On the bright side, if there is a hell, it means we all do live forever, just some less comfortable than others. Right? If we make it to "heaven" we get to live forever in "God's kingdom", if we go to hell, we live in damnation for all eternity, which means, either way, we all live forever. So, there's that...(snark)
C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote
So, if I'm going to hell...
In a dystopian present, remember the words of T-800:
"Anger is more useful than despair."
Anybody who truly believes there is no hope needs to quit kvetching, get off their asses, and commit some intelligently-targeted acts of terrorism.
When all else fails...SPITE!
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Hope For Lessons Learned
When you fly, part of the safety instructions are that in the event of loss of cabin pressure, put you own mask on first before you help anybody else, even your children. The point is that if you become incapacitated, you'll help nobody.
For a long time now, we as a nation forgot that point. We shipped American jobs to China and closed our factories. Suddenly, we needed millions of cotton swabs for coronavirus testing and find we don't have enough. China will (hopefully) send us some at some point.
We rely on pharmaceutical companies in Ireland to provide reagent for test kits. They can't send us enough due to production backlogs and a shortage of guanidine thicyanate. We don't make our own.
And Surprise! China is the world's leading maker and exporter of reagents and coronavirus test kits. Chinese internal demand and an export ban dried up global supplies and exacerbated a test-kit shortage that affected responses around the world to the mounting pandemic.
My Hope For Lessons Learned is that we return to manufacturing our own products, ideally everything, but at a minimum supplies that are essential to life and health like masks, gloves, swabs, reagents and more.
We can't be the world's benefactor when we can't even take care of ourselves.
Amen
And we need to grow local food. Texas is 49th out of 50 states for growing local food.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Produce aisle
Yikes! And here I thought it was some failure on my part to locate local farmers' markets. I've been to the ones around me that call themselves "farmers' market," but compared to other places I've lived, they're a poor excuse for it. Mostly re-boxed stuff from Krogers or produce brought in from far away. Hell, I hardly ever see a tomato plant in a backyard around here.
Ditto that 'Amen'
We've gone from supplier to the world, to moocher. We can't even buy yeast, and toilet paper, partly because the supply chain for packaging originates elsewhere. Yeah, that "just on time, no warehouses" scheme saved us a bunch of pennies. Now it's getting us more deaths, from not being able to crank out masks and protective gear. Pretty costly, in my eyes. Don't do that again.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
Our duty -
“The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.”
― Samuel Adams
Can't say the present generation seems all that enlightened - more like drugged and dumbed down.
Doesn't absolve those of us who aren't from our obligations, though.
How about them Confederates!
Confederatio Helvetica - Don't screw with the Swiss -
Battle of Sempach
Or those Hussites neither.