Abandoned American dream

[feuervogel]

When I see my country, which for generations was characterized by freedom and "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," turning into a playground for hard-right ideologues, and their opposition isn't leftist but center-right, I want to cry. Speaking out and getting involved won't fix a fucking thing; any leftish position will be pilloried and forced into "compromise," which means bending over backwards to accommodate the hard-right neofascists and their ilk while abandoning basic principles.

It's all fucking useless. We may as well give up this idealistic dream of an America as the land of opportunity. It's the land of "Me First" and "Yes, My Lord Capitalist" and "Keep your grubby lower-class paws off the money I worked so hard to inherit."

Thanks so much, conservatives. And that includes you, libertarians.

Comments

[pharna.livejournal.com]

Why do you think I booked it outta there? ;P

Not that I am in a safer place if North Korea really starts doing shit.

[feuervogel]

North Korea wants to end the world. Kim Jong-il is seriously nuts.

[tiurin.livejournal.com]

Honestly? I'm not sure this place ever was all that great as the land of opportunity. It just sucked less, and mostly still sucks less, than most other places opportunity-wise.

Of course, a fair amount of the opportunity these days, as viewed by Asian immigrants, comes because the gwailos are lazy and increasingly stupid.

[feuervogel]

It's the theory and the dream, though. And the promise. Things seem to cycle between relative prosperity for all and highly concentrated wealth for some. This current concentration of wealth keeps going on, and with the pathetic opposition to the Greed Party, I don't see that changing.

I cry because it's true.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

The things I care about aren't the same things you care about, but it's ostensibly my party running the government too and I still know this despair. I increasingly feel like the choices I make at the ballot box are between "Authoritarians" and "Authoritarians... with kittens!" What can we do; at least there are kittens.

lyonesse once said she tried to do one political act a week, whether that's writing to a Congressperson or whatever. I have extremely mixed feelings about the utility of writing to Congress, but I think at worst it can serve as, well, an atheistic form of prayer: putting your hopes and your worries into words so that you can do other things with the rest of your life. I am thinking about a new years' resolution mimicking lyonesse; I don't know if it will fix the world, but I think it could be good for me.

[feuervogel]

I think the things we care about intersect in a lot of ways. There are a lot of issues I care about, and it's hard to focus on any of them over the others, though lately I seem to be on a "libertarianism is immoral and wrong" kick. (It doesn't seem that dating one has done anything to improve my opinion of them; doch, it's made it worse. Which is why we're not dating anymore.)

I'll just keep looking at emigration as an option, and being frustrated by having 5 cats to worry about. ... I wonder if you can take boats, and if you can take your cats on a boat.