"Fear is life-energy, full-bodied, rich, clean, exquisite, sweet. When you get right down to its bones, fear is love. Fear is made of love." ~ Gerald G. May in The Wisdom of Wilderness
Under fear is desire, and what is desire but love?
Years ago my kids gave me a "No Fear" shirt. On the back it says "I'm not scared. I'm not afraid. I am an animal and I will eat you if I have to."
And I'm not scared. I'm furious. This is the result of the Establishment thinking they know better than the people do. We tried to tell them, but they told us we were misinformed and mislead and didn't know what we were talking about. Well, it turns out that we DID know what we were talking about.
I am more determined than ever to stand up against injustice, to speak out in defense of others. I will not surrender to fear. I will fight, and I will never stop fighting.
Yea, verily, Susan. Yet I will never again expect to do so through a system or group. No one there is listening. You articulated it so very well. We told them and they laughed at and scolded us and attempted to guilt us into thinking their way. Stand your ground. I will ALWAYS defend the downtrodden. But I feel we're on our own now.
I find myself thinking of an incident during the Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese Navy besieged the island fortress defending the approaches to Bejing. There was no effective support by Chinese land forces, and it became clear that the Japanese would overcome the defenders. The commanding Chinese admiral and his staff took poison together. I very much doubt the DNC will exhibit such character.
I still think the GOP is in terrible shape, and is likely to fly to pieces in the not distant future; and I had thought the Democratic Party would get its comeuppance before long--but not just yet.
When it became clear that Trump was the probable winner, MSNBC started talking about the demise of the Republican Party. bBy the time I switched off around 4:30 A.M. they had yet to start talking about the demise of the Democratic Party.
There is a lot of hatred being expressed on Jill Stein's FB page. The usual stuff, You cost Clinton the election, just like Nader cost Gore the election. Why is it so hard to grasp that Clinton lost because she was a lousy candidate? But, no, it must be somebody else's fault. Why is it so hard to grasp that Clinton lost because the party that foisted her on the voting public is totally out of touch with said public? No, it has to be the Greens stealing votes that were rightfully the Democratic Party's.
When I went to bed, I was boiling mad. By this point, despite great talks by both Stein and Baraka, I'm just bloody depressed. How can I carry on the fight, try to organize and so forth, when I'm afraid to speak out in my own home? Each in their own way, Mum, Dad and Sis will all berate and denigrate me for voting Green. None of them listen. all of them think I'm a kook and always have been. Ditto for Patty. She said she was going to vote Libertarian. At least that was one vote Trump didn't get...
Did you see that article a few weeks ago that argued it would be the Libertarians that cost Hillary the election? By giving Republicans who couldn't stand Trump an alternative.
I haven't check votes in the ultra-close states to see whether third parties could have made a difference. But Massachusetts isn't one of those states, so it doesn't matter.
We leave Friday for Nantucket, to visit Mah*Sweetie's sister...all of us still grieving in the wake of Jillian's death. I won't be back until next week, so have posted front page photos through Wednesday...all with a heart to comfort you in your own sorrows. Be for Love.
A little H. L. Mencken would seem in order this morning:
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. 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. ============================= This via politicalwire.com:
Politico: “Democrats and many others are now in crisis, wrapping their minds around the reality of a President Donald Trump. But the crisis is sharpest in Clinton campaign headquarters: not only do they feel like everything is about to go deeply, collapse-of-America wrong, but it’s going to happen because she failed, and they failed her.”
“Clinton and her operatives went into the race predicting her biggest problems would be inevitability and her age, trying to succeed a two-term president of her own party. But the mood of the country surprised them. They recognized that Sanders and Trump had correctly defined the problem—addressing anger about a rigged economy and government—and that Clinton already never authentically could. Worse still, her continuing email saga and extended revelations about the Clinton Foundation connections made any anti-establishment strategy completely impossible.”
“So instead of answering the question of how Clinton represented change, they tried to change the question to temperament, what kind of change people wanted, what kind of America they wanted to live in. It wasn’t enough.”
We legalized it too. Yes, it's a definite possibility.Never have been fond of the idear of holding something burning, but somehow the prospect holds more appeal today than it did.
Californians voted to keep the death penalty, but otherwise largely agreed with me on the propositions. Maybe weed will help to get through the next four years.
There are still a lot of votes to be counted in my county, which is presumably comparable to California as a whole. Between write-ins, provisional ballots and mail-in ballots, it looks like about 40%.
Alan
P.S.: I figure it is time for the finger-pointing and leaking from within the Clinton campaign to start.
What kept me sane while Bush was bombing Baghdad was wallpapering a room. That may sound crazy, but it isn't. I had already nearly frozen my feet protesting and been interviewed and quoted in many statewide papers with my reasons against war with Iraq. While the destruction was raging, I chose to do something creative. If you are concerned about the harm about to be done, do something that heals. It doesn't have to be something that heals everything or everyone. Just do something to bring a little more balance to this terrible situation. It won't do anyone any good if you arrive at 2020 insane. Remember to breathe.
Reckon I'll just sit back for a while and see what comes down the road. I'm not going to rush to donate money. I doubt the wheels in the Democratic Party have either the acumen to understand what hit them or the maturity to step aside. This ought to mark the end of the New Democrats. But they came into power by organizing and actively pushing out the remaining New Dealers; probably the same sort of process will need to be applied to them.
"Fear is life-energy, full-bodied, rich, clean, exquisite, sweet. When you get right down to its bones, fear is love. Fear is made of love."
ReplyDelete~ Gerald G. May in The Wisdom of Wilderness
Under fear is desire, and what is desire but love?
I'm sorta feeling like we're about on the verge of The Handmaid's Tale.
ReplyDeleteYears ago my kids gave me a "No Fear" shirt. On the back it says "I'm not scared. I'm not afraid. I am an animal and I will eat you if I have to."
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm not scared. I'm furious. This is the result of the Establishment thinking they know better than the people do. We tried to tell them, but they told us we were misinformed and mislead and didn't know what we were talking about. Well, it turns out that we DID know what we were talking about.
I am more determined than ever to stand up against injustice, to speak out in defense of others. I will not surrender to fear. I will fight, and I will never stop fighting.
Yea, verily, Susan. Yet I will never again expect to do so through a system or group. No one there is listening. You articulated it so very well. We told them and they laughed at and scolded us and attempted to guilt us into thinking their way. Stand your ground. I will ALWAYS defend the downtrodden. But I feel we're on our own now.
DeleteYou don't have to be. There's the Green Party.
DeleteI find myself thinking of an incident during the Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese Navy besieged the island fortress defending the approaches to Bejing. There was no effective support by Chinese land forces, and it became clear that the Japanese would overcome the defenders. The commanding Chinese admiral and his staff took poison together. I very much doubt the DNC will exhibit such character.
ReplyDeleteI still think the GOP is in terrible shape, and is likely to fly to pieces in the not distant future; and I had thought the Democratic Party would get its comeuppance before long--but not just yet.
Alan
When it became clear that Trump was the probable winner, MSNBC started talking about the demise of the Republican Party. bBy the time I switched off around 4:30 A.M. they had yet to start talking about the demise of the Democratic Party.
DeleteThere is a lot of hatred being expressed on Jill Stein's FB page. The usual stuff, You cost Clinton the election, just like Nader cost Gore the election. Why is it so hard to grasp that Clinton lost because she was a lousy candidate? But, no, it must be somebody else's fault. Why is it so hard to grasp that Clinton lost because the party that foisted her on the voting public is totally out of touch with said public? No, it has to be the Greens stealing votes that were rightfully the Democratic Party's.
When I went to bed, I was boiling mad. By this point, despite great talks by both Stein and Baraka, I'm just bloody depressed. How can I carry on the fight, try to organize and so forth, when I'm afraid to speak out in my own home? Each in their own way, Mum, Dad and Sis will all berate and denigrate me for voting Green. None of them listen. all of them think I'm a kook and always have been. Ditto for Patty. She said she was going to vote Libertarian. At least that was one vote Trump didn't get...
Did you see that article a few weeks ago that argued it would be the Libertarians that cost Hillary the election? By giving Republicans who couldn't stand Trump an alternative.
DeleteI haven't check votes in the ultra-close states to see whether third parties could have made a difference. But Massachusetts isn't one of those states, so it doesn't matter.
We leave Friday for Nantucket, to visit Mah*Sweetie's sister...all of us still grieving in the wake of Jillian's death. I won't be back until next week, so have posted front page photos through Wednesday...all with a heart to comfort you in your own sorrows. Be for Love.
ReplyDeleteA little H. L. Mencken would seem in order this morning:
ReplyDeleteDemocracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. 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.
=============================
This via politicalwire.com:
Politico: “Democrats and many others are now in crisis, wrapping their minds around the reality of a President Donald Trump. But the crisis is sharpest in Clinton campaign headquarters: not only do they feel like everything is about to go deeply, collapse-of-America wrong, but it’s going to happen because she failed, and they failed her.”
“Clinton and her operatives went into the race predicting her biggest problems would be inevitability and her age, trying to succeed a two-term president of her own party. But the mood of the country surprised them. They recognized that Sanders and Trump had correctly defined the problem—addressing anger about a rigged economy and government—and that Clinton already never authentically could. Worse still, her continuing email saga and extended revelations about the Clinton Foundation connections made any anti-establishment strategy completely impossible.”
“So instead of answering the question of how Clinton represented change, they tried to change the question to temperament, what kind of change people wanted, what kind of America they wanted to live in. It wasn’t enough.”
—Alan
The third quote sounds a whole lot like inspired prophesy to me. *sigh*
DeleteWe legalized it too. Yes, it's a definite possibility.Never have been fond of the idear of holding something burning, but somehow the prospect holds more appeal today than it did.
DeletePot brownies?
DeleteCalifornians voted to keep the death penalty, but otherwise largely agreed with me on the propositions. Maybe weed will help to get through the next four years.
ReplyDeleteAlan
There are still a lot of votes to be counted in my county, which is presumably comparable to California as a whole. Between write-ins, provisional ballots and mail-in ballots, it looks like about 40%.
ReplyDeleteAlan
P.S.: I figure it is time for the finger-pointing and leaking from within the Clinton campaign to start.
This is just a whole lot of "nope". I can't even...
ReplyDeleteDeep, calming breaths, Renee. A friend of mine recommended watching funny movies and eating *lots* of chocolate.
DeleteWhat kept me sane while Bush was bombing Baghdad was wallpapering a room. That may sound crazy, but it isn't. I had already nearly frozen my feet protesting and been interviewed and quoted in many statewide papers with my reasons against war with Iraq. While the destruction was raging, I chose to do something creative. If you are concerned about the harm about to be done, do something that heals. It doesn't have to be something that heals everything or everyone. Just do something to bring a little more balance to this terrible situation. It won't do anyone any good if you arrive at 2020 insane. Remember to breathe.
ReplyDeleteReckon I'll just sit back for a while and see what comes down the road. I'm not going to rush to donate money. I doubt the wheels in the Democratic Party have either the acumen to understand what hit them or the maturity to step aside. This ought to mark the end of the New Democrats. But they came into power by organizing and actively pushing out the remaining New Dealers; probably the same sort of process will need to be applied to them.
ReplyDelete--Alan
I'm looking at Our Revolution as a start. And DFA. and PDA. And ....
Delete