I suspect this ghostly liberal in conservative disguise simply got tired. Maybe sick and tired -- maybe angry. She just snapped one day, maybe not so anyone sitting beside her might have noticed, but she snapped, just the same. Was it one single event that broke the liberal's back? Or was it the cumulative effect of, say, a presidential term gone amok, a long term crisis gone unresolved, perhaps one final irredeemable vote by a congressperson?
In any case, she got fed up. Something inside her said,
"Fuck this. I'm sick of working and working for a cause that is doomed. I'm tired of putting forth all my energy and time toward the betterment of life for a majority of people who don't even appreciate it, who prefer to remain ignorant and suffering, whose best interests lie in the ideals of the Democratic Party, but who consistently vote for the Republicans because they buy that load of risible propaganda the right wing has been passing off as "family values" for the past thirty years.
"If they can't be bothered to listen to the truth when it's being told to them face to face, if they're determined to continually vote against their better interests -- or, worse, NOT VOTE AT ALL -- then why should I bother?
"Why should I keep working my ass off for ideals that haven't a hope of success in a world populated by idiots, fools, morons, imbeciles, cretins and sheep, led by the nose as they are and have been by an elite minority of self-interested, immoral power brokers motivated wholly by avarice and their OWN self-interest, absent any morals, values, principles, ideals, ethics or standards of behaviour remotely resembling the Christianity they so callously abuse and manipulate for their own ends?"
So she gave up. She told herself it wasn't worth it, working this hard for so many people who didn't care. She decided, probably unconsciously, to adopt the classic conservative Republican credo: "Screw you, Jack -- I've got mine." She put a fence around her and hers, devoted to bettering her own life, irrespective of the rest of the world -- and one day she voted for a Republican solely because he promised her tax bracket a nice, juicy tax cut.
And before she knew it -- and maybe she doesn't know it still, maybe her denial is so deep she still thinks she's a Basically Decent Person -- she was completely in thrall to that particularly insidious mindset known as "self-interest." Now, she puts her intellectual resources to work developing and maintaining a complex and Byzantine maze of rationalisations designed with the single purpose of letting herself off the hook for giving up and joining the bad guys.
Indeed. I can see how that could happen, even to the best, most dedicated liberal among us. Once you've given up, there aren't many options: you can try to benumb yourself with drugs and alcohol and cigarettes and sex and shopping and gambling and food... you can go the Abbie Hoffman route... or you can take a right turn on Conservative Conversion trail... In any case, you give up. It's a surrender, a defeat.
I understand the impulse to give up, I really do. It's so exhausting, being always so keenly AWARE, so informed of current events and history and the truth -- especially exhausting, is the truth.
Oh, the unbelievable amount of energy it takes to stifle the screams of frustration and rage that are any SANE person's reaction to the relentless barrage of lies and deceptions and obfuscations and misrepresentations coming from not only the Republican Noise Machine, but also from its co-conspirators and quislings in the corporate media.
And then to have to struggle with social interactions with hordes of people who BELIEVE the viciously dishonest propaganda, whose ignorance of the truth is so thorough as to summon to mind a journey back in time to visit a world where everyone -- EVERYONE -- believes a solar eclipse presages the end of the world...
Yes, it is exhausting. And painful. And I want to give up, so often. I spend a lot of time trying to shut off the noise, to distract myself from the job at hand, because it's so daunting and Sisyphean... And often I feel so helpless, as if I'm trying to empty a leak rowboat with a melonballer.
What more can I possibly do? I'm so tired, my imagination so dried up. It's not like I don't have any of the ORDINARY responsibilities of a mother and wife and member of a real life community. I have a child to raise, a home to maintain in some sort of tolerably mild disarray. There are bills to be paid, plans to be made, dishes to wash and food to prepare...
It's really all I can do, some days, to answer my emails, to read the latest offerings at my favourite blogs. The notion that the day's agenda should include SOME sort of action is at once obviously true -- and depressingly intimidating. What -- call 100 senators' offices AGAIN? Write ANOTHER letter to the editor that won't be published? Post a diary at my blog and preach to the choir again?
Ah, but you see, it won't do, this grousing, this whining, this moaning and bitching and wailing self-pity. There IS work to be done, and that, as they say, is that.
Fortunately, I do not have upon me the onus of determining the course of action I should take on any given day, of using my imagination, though it be sapped, spent and desiccated from overuse. Fortunately, I am not alone in this endeavour. Fortunately, someone has taken up the load, and shown me a way to spread the weight around, to divvy up the tasks and the responsibilities, to share the duties of the politically aware, the conscience-stricken, the bleeding heart liberal.
We are none of us alone, nor need we feel that wrenching guilt at the end of a day when we seem, once again, to have failed to affect the social change we know is incumbent upon us to bring to this world...
Those of us who attended Yearly Kos received, among many useful tools, a copy of a book that serves as a "To Do List" for the more weary among us. Within its pages are hundreds of Action Items that anyone can take; it's not a "Do Everything On This List" book -- more like a "Take what you can handle and leave the rest to someone else" list. Pick a few tasks you think you might be able to commit to and DO them.
The book is titled 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Fight the Right, and it's quite possibly the best Field Guide to Liberal Activism I've ever encountered.
If you're tired, depressed, frustrated, maybe on the verge of giving up, you've had it with the circular firing squad, the internecine squabbles, be they blogular or congressional or social... You are not alone. And you do not have to give up. You can slow down, peel off that grimy layer of guilt you may have been wearing for months; nobody can save the world on her own. But you can take baby steps.
If enough of us take our own baby steps, we CAN change the world, we CAN overcome the seemingly insurmountable obstacles blocking our entrance into a better world. We are not limited to posting on a blog and writing the occasional letter to the editor or calling our Senators and Congresspersons. If attendance of another Friday night anti-war rally at the Veterans' Association fills you with dread -- don't go. Save it for when you feel more like doing the anti-war rally thing. It doesn't mean you have nothing ELSE to contribute.
There are scores of actions you can take, many of them perhaps ideas that have never occurred to you before. That's why the authors of 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Fight the Right put it all down on paper, in a handy BOOK size just DARING you to pick it up and give it a read.
It's my understanding that DKos Front Pager DarkSyde has taken it upon himself to periodically highlight some of the marvelous ideas in the book; it's a terrific endeavour, and I hope we can all support him in it.
Among the book's many features is a constant reference to the many, MANY blogs out here on the Internets -- many will be new to some of us. Some have been forgotten, and don't think I'm not disappointed about THAT...
(I have been promised that the NEXT edition WILL include My Left Wing -- and don't think I won't be checking!)
Anticipating the writing of this post, I had originally considered excerpting the book; but not only was it too difficult for me to choose, I thought it might step on DarkSyde's toes a bit -- AND, more important, I tend to think more people are likely to consider purchasing the book if they can't get it all, eventually, in bits and pieces from people's posts about it. So I'm going to leave you with just a TEENSY little taste...
Donate Materials to your local library
Some right-wingers steal books they disapprove of. Help replace them. Ask at the library.
Go to...
* School board, city council, planning commission or other municipal meetings. You can be sure the right will be there.
* Town hall meetings. These are forums where elected officials or candidates come and speak about community issues...
*Public hearings. ... Public comments often have a considerable impact on the decisions -- and in any case, it's your chance to be heard. These meetings are usually listed in local papers.
Run for the school board.
Contact TV networks and their local affiliates. Make sure to reference the show details, your support or criticism of the program, and whether you'll keep watching it. Let them know that you'll be contacting their advertisers as well.
Communicate with the Federal Communications Commission. Right-wing groups makea big deal about filing complaints with the FCC... Contact them and register support for programming you know is under assault from the right: www.fcc.gov/cgb/ecfs
That's enough for now. I will say that my favourite action item is Chapter 31: Balancing Act -- it's devious and clever and easy to do. Best read it yourself, but the shorthand description is this: Join a right wing action group and take the exact opposite action every time you get an email exhorting you to do something. I just love the symmetry in that one -- not only am I doing something good, but I'm also undermining a specific right wing tactic and battle plan, and that makes me as happy as I used to feel when crossing a picket line full of idiots protesting a movie they hadn't seen because they HEARD it was somehow sacrilegious.
Do yourself and your cause a favour -- pick up a copy of 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Fight the Right. If you already have a copy and haven't read it yet -- open it up and steep yourself in good ideas that you can implement easily and happily in service of your liberal principles and goals.
It's easy, it's fun -- and it lets you off that guilt hook from which you may have been dangling for the past little while... I know it's eased MY burden.
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