My head is spinning

[randy_byers]

So now the Department of Justice has said it will stop defending Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act in the courts. Between multiple budget crises, Wisconsin (and Indiana and Ohio), Libya (and Bahrain and Yemen, etc), and now this, I can't keep up with what's going on anymore. It feels like something tidal is going on. And where it's goin' no one knows.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about "tidal". I felt that way in 1968.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I can believe it. The 1968 presidential election was really the first time the Southern Strategy was put into play, and the conservative tide began to rise. At the same time the anti-war protests and countercultural movements were in full swing.

[spacecrab.livejournal.com]

People in poorer parts of the world are fed up with the autocratic hegemony that siphons what wealth there is to be produced/found within their countries. They have more ruler-supported cultural repression and subjugation than we do in the U.S. They study the histories of other, successful democratic revolutions and have a knowledge that those things can occur.

Here, our autocrats are elected through a tissue of commercially-crafted lies that earn them the votes of the stupid and the unaware. The autocrats maintain power through a network of alliances with non-elected plutocrats. In our country, the autocrats serve the plutocrats, rather than vice versa. Our plutocrats have to overcome certain egalitarian societal memes that are not in place in less-developed portions of the world, hence their dominance tends to be more economic than cultural. Not that they aren't also trying for cultural dominance, but they're achieving more success with their slow campaign of economic subjugation than with overt campaigns of social oppression.

The memes of social oppression are easier to oppose, here, than the economic ones. Obama, and the Justice Department he controls, may believe they can buy liberal votes by taking a stand, there, that they are unwilling to take against our *corporate* masters.

What? Me cynical?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't disagree that corporations rule the roost here, but I don't share your level of cynicism. If minority civil rights are advanced, I'll celebrate. (In this particular case, that's still a big if.)

[dalmeny]

You forgot Wikileaks and the infowars. And those of us in the southern hemisphere have had a parade of natural disasters.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Natural disasters are acts of the unhuman, although I'll grant you that they feel tidal too, in the sense of forces at work beyond our control. But everything else we're talking about is human, which puts them in a different category to my mind. It's the natural vs. the political, perhaps. Earthquakes and floods have no policy preferences, as far as I can tell.

[circusfolk.livejournal.com]

I concur. I have taken to not turning the news on in the morning when I wake up to save my brain from having to process another breaking news item.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

The important stuff will get through soon enough, no doubt.

Year of Decision (maybe)

[magscanner.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if it's 1848 or 1914.

Re: Year of Decision (maybe)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to feel optimistic, but yeah.