the pelican

once more with feeling

obamarama

oh look out.

yeah ok so i guess i’ve kind of taken my side. me who really doesn’t like to take sides much. but yeah. and hope i’m not offending anyone here but this is just how i feel.

and well i’ve always got to cheer for the underdog, don’t you know.

and true i have wondered if am merely caught up in the rhetoric.

and what glorious eloquent words they have been. but truth of it is, it’s not just the words so much as the feeling behind them. and the way they make me feel. it moves me. it’s moving. this is a movement. and i have been moved. so there it is.

yeah so i have found myself wrapped up in politics lately. something i guess i do care about. i mean i grew up in a newspaper you know. we talked issues. we read we debated we discussed we argued we watched we reported we noted we shared we fought we agreed to disagree. but maybe as i’ve grown older i’ve tended to watch more from a distance. avoid the fray really. don’t like the abuse. the struggle. don’t like being pitted against the opposites. don’t like feeling like there is an inevitability. fate. doom. that there is really no genuine choice but only a choice between evils. the grain of salt approach maybe. yeah.

distance taken for my own sanity i guess. and i have been too obsessed with the outcome and i have been frustrated i have cried i have taken it personally i have found myself critical and irritated and i am not proud of this no i am not proud.

but it is so emotional because well the thing is see things have looked so bleak for so long. so corrupt. so pointless. and from this great bottomless pit of despair and hopelessness and helplessness and inevitability the whole big mess has just looked way too big to consider taking on.

there has been such a great surrender to the cynicism. crushed under by the power of it all. we can’t be bothered to care because there’s no reason to bother. everything seems too big too all-consuming too entrenched too corrupt too entangled too tricky too twisted too deadly too frightening too established to take on. guns and war and fear and terrorism and waste and pollution and money and the sheer and utter material destruction of it all.

and just plain sick of the fighting fighting fighting. red and blue. out of the box it’s defensive and offensive and said not says so and i’m bigger and tougher than you and i’m never going to stop fighting fighting fighting and didn’t these people ever read their dr. seuss i mean come on it’s a zax in their trax situation and we’re all fed up with it. we’ve been divided and conquered. and it’s time to move on.

oh politics politics politics. they say we get the government we deserve. and oh boy but look at we’ve got right now. what a swirling pile of corruption and mess and war and economic trouble and shame in the world and frustration and hopelessness and cynicism and pointlessness and futility and lives on the line lots and lots of lives on the line.

oh what an addiction what an obsession what a strange thing to get sucked right into it. ugh oh how do all the political bloggers do it really? keeping up on it all when the news shifts and starts and stops and ebbs and flows every few minutes. and the bickering and the trash talk and the personal attacks. opinions. just opinions. from tv to the radio to the internet but oh so quickly the movements and words the memetic frenzy electrified on the information superhighway speeding screaming screeching round the corners right into each collision of waves of activity it’s constant it never sleeps it’s every ten or fifteen minute segment of time in a day it’s non-stop ups and downs and endorsements and speeches and events and comments and attacks and defense and maybe it’s more like football than anybody would care to admit.

maybe it really is just all about territory.

and then there’s the whole planet itself, basically. choking on our own vomit here. excuse me, but could we someone please talk a little bit about global warming?

and so this must have all happened while we were all looking away it seems. we don’t even want to hear about it anymore. the news barely covers it. sometimes it seems as though it’s been decided that there just isn’t any point in bothering because caring might hurt more so we’ve rationalized a sort of passive and pathetic desire for alternative distraction instead of trying to understand it. and we give up. and we say it is all out of our control and we look away.

and then along comes this guy talking hope. simple as can be and so true. his heart shines and he moves us to tears. some one talking simple common sense who didn’t think a proper case was ever made to rush off to war. someone who knows better because he knows himself. someone who promotes the unity of all that we are. someone who sees with compassion that we all want the same thing. someone of vision and kindness and eloquence. someone who says we can do it. who says we’re all in this thing together. he says we’re going to have to make some serious changes. we are. all of us.

and we want something someone anyone anything to believe in so badly so madly we love him we listen to him and we cheer and we believe for a moment in something bigger than ourselves. we toss off the old worn out sarcasm and cynicism and we feel . . well . . we feel sincere. we feel we can dare to be sincere. we are moved. we are activated. we are involved. we are a part of something big.

he makes us look within and ask ourselves, what have we done? how do we contribute? what part to we play? do we want to change things? are we willing to change things?

and it is a feeling really it is felt it is not purely intellectual it is not just the right words though they are the right words. no it is a deep feeling that moves us and it is a feeling but it is so much more.

and so it starts out in iowa of all places. and obama wins and hillary attacks and obama defends and edwards wants to fight the good fight and well he’s a trial attorney you know he does know he understands he has a clear view of his enemy and knows of its lair and i believe i do for i work in a law office i work for good trial attorneys who do legal malpractice and personal injury and civil rights and i have seen so much and i know of the tactics and practices of insurance companies and drug companies and big corporate blobs and the power they have over our very own bodies our health our life and death and then hillary good old hillary she works so hard she always has she’s a good egg really but well she’s so entrenched she’s so much a part of the machinery that we’re tired of she’s fighting the same old fights and digging the lines between the divisions deeper she’s going to keep it all the same red and blue mess and yes she’s a woman and that’s so cool and yes she’s one smart cookie but she wants this so badly that she goes negative she attacks and attacks and she wants to question hope and and good ole hilary by gosh she’s worked so hard for so long and she’s going to fight fight fight and she’s ready day one and edwards is going to take on all the power and money and man but talk about a gridlock formation that sort of fight will be but do we really want the head of our country to be someone who can only fight and scrap and attack and attack and attack or do we want someone who knows when to fight and when to hold back who knows when a case has really been made for war and when we’re being fed a pile of false pretense? sure we’d all love to go back to the olden days the golden old clinton days but things have changed things have been torn asunder and they need repair and we’d like to go back but it’s time to move forward.

so don’t say to me it’s only words only words. don’t go yanking the very foundation split the entire party itself and tell us it’s all a fairy tale i mean what is this country really but an idea anyway and i don’t want to pit my opinion against yours because i’m not going to win anybody over trying to tear them down or criticize don’t go squashing my dreams your opinions and my opinions are just opinions they are not so precious and there’s no point at all in going about it in a violent way. it’s not about right or wrong. it’s about a dream.

we’ve all got a dream. we all dream of hope. we all fear death. we all crave peace. we all want to ease suffering. we all care.

and we don’t want to scrap and squabble and listen to the negativity and the slime and the grime we really don’t want all the doublespeak and the word twisting and the pettiness and the tactless comments and the sniping and the backbiting and the baloney. do we?

so i’m not going to tell you what to do. you’ll do what you want to do anyway. what you feel is best. i’m just saying. just saying. just saying because i got to tell you something. got to whisper in your ear. got to tell you what it all means to me. i guess maybe i feel that i’ve got to testify. i got to tell you i am moved by something very powerful and maybe it still has a chance to change our world as we know if we just go a different direction than the way we have in the past. if we try something new. if we believe.

because this politics stuff it’s about where we stand. something we hold so close to our hearts. we grip it we feed it we hold on so tightly because it is all about what we believe how we define what’s important to us what we care about ethics and our sense of law and order and principles and freedom and choice and hope and dreams and dreams and dreams.

yes it is about having a dream. and maybe it’s a dream we all share. hope is something we all need, even if we have different ideas of how we’re going to get there.

so i’ll just have to dream on. and imagine. and things may not go the way i wish they would but i’m not going to give up on hope. just can’t do that. can’t succumb to inevitability. doom and disaster. nope.

for while we all love to discuss the nuts and bolts and history and politics and the issues yeah the issues the issues what we really do what people really and truly do what a jury does what we all do ultimately what we go on what we know what we really do is what we feel like doing.

and maybe. maybe we’ll be able to really see this thing through somehow. maybe now we’ll do the right thing. maybe we are going to be trying to be have to be maybe we are maybe we always were maybe just maybe now is the time maybe this is the moment maybe these are the days maybe we have to be maybe we already are maybe we really will be the change we wish to see in the world.

maybe.

we can always hope.

posted by: limine at 18:07 | link | comments (10) |

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