I'm a new poster here, though I've been reading DK for a while now. It's nice to get good information as well as to see others express the anger and bewilderment I so often feel upon learning of the right wing's latest outrage. A reaction I don't see very often, though, is despair. Of course, maybe I'm just reading the wrong (right?) diaries, but I don't see anyone fling his/her hands up and say, Well, that does it, the @ssholes have won.
I admire this, as despair tends to be my natural reaction to politics a lot of the time. I've been dealing with depression for a while; I've been seeing therapists and on medication for about five years, though as I look back over my life I think my depressive tendencies have always been there in some form. Which is basically a way of saying I don't have any trouble seeing the bad in the world or the worst possible outcomes of what's going on. Because of this, I "unplugged" just after 9/11. The constant assault of the news was doing a real number on my mental health. I had to consciously say, No, I can't look at this, can't think about it.
But, then again, I don't want to be ignorant. I want to know what's going on -- what's really going on, as even in my relatively "uplugged" state now it's hard to avoid the "official" news. Plus, I live in Texas. I started in a grad program this past year, so I moved here last summer. Bad timing. As the election grew closer, it became absolutely suffocating. You couldn't throw a rock (much as I wanted to) without hitting an SUV with a W '04 sticker on it. Bush signs sprouted like mushrooms on neighborhood lawns. A particularly enormous Bush banner appeared near the local supermarket. (But what was the purpose of all that, anyway? Were the majority of people there seriously considering Kerry?)
I felt like my head was being held underwater. I sought out liberally-inclined sites (like DK) to see that, yes, there really were other people out there who felt the same way I did. But the more informed I became, the more angry I felt every time I saw a sign or bumper sticker. Did people really know what they were supporting? Did the guy (I assume it's a guy) with the "Kerry equals death, vote Bush" sticker on the side of his truck really consider what on earth that meant? I felt a Tasmanian Devil-like fury spiralling up inside me every time I saw something like that, which I realized was a product of my growing political consciousness, but at the same time it's a pretty rotten way to go through your day.
It's gotten better. Somehow, I'm not sure how. The signs are all down now and a lot of the bumper stickers are off, which helps. But when I see, for instance, a bumper sticker on a beat-up pickup truck in the library parking lot, most likely owned by a maintenance worker who I'd assume is not a billionaire, with a bumper sticker that reads, "Osama bin Laden thanks you for voting Democrat," I laugh. I shake my head and say, You idiot, there aren't any Tasmanian Devils anymore. Thankfully I'll be out of here by the time the next election rolls around.
I'm by no means out of this particular wood, though, and here I'd ask you all for some reflections and advice. How do you keep from being completely depressed by the avalanche of bad news out there? Or, if you do, how do you deal with it? How do you keep from letting it paralyze you? Sorry this diary is so long and personal, but this is something I've been thinking about for a while now and thought would be worthwhile to bring up here.
-Matt