Dear Kossacks,
I know that some of you have been waiting to read my analysis of California's races and the rest of the 45 states I had planned to cover by Election Day. Sadly, I've been unable to work on that project for a variety of personal reasons. Some of those reasons are not of any value for a political forum, but the ones I will be ranting about in this diary are. Essentially, I feel useless - useless to influence politics, useless to help candidates or my party, useless in getting ahead in public life, useless in reaching out towards others, and useless in changing my world for the better - "Tikkum Olam", to use the Hebrew phrase that is a real part of me.
You could call it depression, you could call it a "slump" if it were baseball - but it's not like that for me. What I'm seeing is a world going to hell in a handbasket, to use the proverbial term, and the world at large not giving a damn about it. I'll go into greater detail on this on the flip.
As I said before, I've been intending to write more of the 50-state analysis I had promised. But instead, the more I try to write the facts the more my feelings about the world behind the facts come out. For a long time now, probably since September 11th, I've been finding myself depressed about the future I will have on this Earth. I dedicate myself to politics in order to try and elect people who might change that future, that's true. But I also went into politics because it's a distraction from a world that is steadily falling to pieces.
I was 13 when the World Trade Center was attacked. My father watched the towers fall from across the Hudson River in Jersey City, and came home a changed man. I will never forget when he came into the living room, where I was watching the television coverage in horror. I went up to him to give him a hug. My dad, after all was always there if I needed him. But he simply didn't move towards me to hug me when I came - he stood there like a statue. And then he went to his room and cried.
My father is a wonderful man. But after September 11th, he and the world changed forever. I saw that change occur in my own grade at school. Before, we were young teenagers with little to worry about - no poverty, good education and a safe neighborhood.
None of these mattered after 9/11. We're suspicious of others, now; we find our worst fears and project it onto those we fear the most. We hide those fears behind a mask of ambivilance and sarcasm, sometimes even when the discussion is about ourselves. We teenagers loathe politics and anything else that smacks of authority - and we show it with our silent tongues and shrugs. Nobody at school talks about current events or issues or politics unless they're called on to do so by teachers. The children of those who grew up with Kennedy's words ringing in their ears have their ears plugged up with corporate media messages, and have shut their eyes to the bonfires of the Middle East and elswhere.
I live in an Age of Apathy. I see in my school every day, and I see it in the world around me.
I often imagine myself as Don Quixote, but at least that crazy old knight was OLD when he tried to change the world around him. You see, ever since I went into politics after September 11th (my first campaign was that fall) I've been angry.
*I've been angry at a country that doesn't understand WHY the terrorists attacked us on 9/11, or who they are (a fringe group of an otherwise decent and good religion), or what they want to accomplish (to "turn back the clock" to a world of pastoral simplicity and misguided ideals). Instead, all three of those questions are met by variations on "freedom" - either they hate it, they hate us for it or they want to get rid of it.
*I've been angry that 50% of the world's 6 billion and more people live in poverty. How can the other half justify our existence when our fellow man is crippled, dying or exploited? Instead, people simply say, "It's not our problem." I want to scream at them, "Are you out of your f-ing mind?! It's EVERYONE'S problem!" But that would be impolite at the dinner table.
*I've been angry that people seem to laugh at Al Gore when he proposes to save our world from natural apocalypse, and the powers-that-be simply shrug it off as "Nixon 2.0". How many more Indonesias and Katrinas will it take before we wake up? I'm serious - how many more?
*I've been angry that the very ideals of liberalism have been distorted, mocked and corrupted by right-wing spinmongers to such an extent that people look at me funny when I mention that I'm a liberal if that conversation turns up. The common good has been turned into communism in many eyes in this world, and it's just-plain-wrong.
*I've been angry that foreign policy has become a blunt tool for sowing destruction, anger and isolationism, rather than being the powerful, yet gentle instrument that FDR, Truman, Carter and Clinton made it. This country remains paralyzed by the legacy of Vietnam, and any chance to regain a love for the international obligations that this country MUST have has died on the bloody sand dunes of Iraq.
*And I've been angry that basic civil rights - the right to privacy, the right to organize and strike, the right to choose, the right to marry who you wish, the right to a fair trial, the right to die - have been castrated or denied to Americans and most people around the world by their governments.
For all these reasons I went into politics, because I've wanted to help change all of what I listed. Of course, I can't do everything, and if I ever did fix any of it I would be much older. A kid of 18 can't change the world, after all.
But five years of effort later, I only see my world moving backwards, not forwards. Oh yes, I know that the election is coming up, and that we may well triumph this time. I pray to God that it is so. But even if we DO win in November, and even if we DO win in 2008 and elect a responsible Democratic President, we still will have a world with a mindset that no President and no Congress can change.
I currently find myself in a rut, then. For five years I have tried to battle that mindset, but on the local and on a national level. Yet what few successes I have made have ultimately accomplished little, and the failures - the minds that closed even tighter after an argument, the lost opportunities to make an impact, unlucky turns of fate's wheel on multiple occasions - have left me feeling, well, useless.
I feel useless because every campaign I want to help has either turned me down or left me to promote them online. I want to help BE the change, not have people give their change to others.
I feel useless because I don't have a job this summer, and I don't want to sit on the sidelines while this country fights for its soul.
I feel useless because the same kids I grew up with are now going off to college, and most could care less about the world around them. And after they go through college, and get married, divorced have jobs and kids etc. , they will STILL care less about the world around them. I could not open their minds, and so I failed.
I feel useless because I'm leaving behind an organization, JSA, that I loved so much, and yet because I lost an election was unable to lead forward.
I feel useless because I spend my free time playing video games or reading books, trying to get away from the very world I want to improve. It's hypocrisy on my part, and I'm ashamed of it. I WANT to change the world, and here I am wasting my time on leisure. And yet I keep doing it...
And I feel useless because this nation, and this world, keeps slouching towards the Sodom of fear and the Gomorrah of hatred. Whoever wrote about "fear and loathing" in America was right, and he or she forgot about the rest of the world, too.
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Well, perhaps I'm wrong. I HOPE I'm wrong. And maybe this world will wake up before it's too late and save itself. But when I see the way this world turns, with myopic leadership and indifferent citizens, and the while the guns are blazing and the bombs are exploding and the glaciers are melting and the bigots are triumphing and the poor are dying and Darfur is frying and waistlines are bulging and CEOs are laughing and the children keep playing without a care in the world -
Well, you get the point. I feel useless to change all this, and I turn to YOU, the reader, to help me. What advice can you give to a young man in need of reassurance, of need of hope, of need to DO something? I urge you to post it here.