A profound sense of being fucking tired.

When I started blogging, I wanted to write about government and about my thoughts on government. I didn't want to write about my private, personal life. I've always had an aversion to that impulse that people seem to have with their blogs to publish their innermost lives, secure in the illusion that the internet provides anonymity. I don't like the idea of strangers reading about my life, and I've always worried, quite arrogantly, about the danger such information might pose to me later in life.

For the past couple of weeks, I've wondered if there is a connection between my state of mind and the current state of the world, however. It may be nothing more than projection and self-delusion; such things are common with me. Or maybe a fragment of what's going on in my head comes from the way the world is turning right now.

I am depressed. I've been depressed for a very long time, but only really accepted it relatively recently. And in a similar fashion, the world seems to be overwhelmed of late with apathy. We live in fear of disasters. Terrorism, hurricanes, that unknown danger looming just over the horizon or around that corner. Nixon dealt a horrible blow to the American populace's wobbling faith in government in the 1970s, and it's been bleeding ever since. Bush seems poised to end that faith completely, if he hasn't already.

The world is bleeding. Families are running in Darfur, running from the Janjaweed, raiders on horseback straight from the Bronze Age, backed by air support and the diplomacy of a government intent on keeping out food and medical supplies. The corpses of children lie on mountainsides in Kashmir, covered by snow, called victims of an earthquake; with more than 3 million left homeless, an estimated 100,000 dead, and the United Nations struggling to raise a paltry $272 million in aid, they are truly victims of neglect. Rebels fight on in Chechnya, caught between a hideous ideology of perverted Islam and Russian foes that have made clear that surrender does not mean survival. The French are still picking up the pieces of weeks of arson riots, sparked by racial tension and the frustration of promises unkept. The Gulf Coast is still picking up the pieces of what has been called the most anticipated disaster in history, and help is dwindling as people are forgotten amidst the chaos. People are starving on our streets, starving in the richest country in the history of the world. And somewhere, in the darkness, men torture in our name with water and wire and chain and cold, and we are told that this must be done to keep us safe.

We look away.

Some of us mutter something to ourselves, that someone should do something. Others promise to send some money, sometime. Mostly, we say nothing, and the frustration and worry and fear build up inside us. What happened in France was a symptom of exactly this. Frustration builds upon frustration, until in an uncontrolled spasm of wanting to do something, we scream THIS IS NOT RIGHT! We do not know what is right. We do not know what to do to fix it. But this isn't how it was supposed to be. The future was supposed to get better, not worse. It was supposed to offer hope, not just a bleak landscape into which we might hope to duck and dodge the worst of everything.

Is this just in my mind? Part of me says yes, and part of me says that the Republicans are losing support by the day in this country, but the Democrats aren't gaining it. No one knows what to do or say or even to hope for, except the amorphous platitudes of "hope" and "freedom."

Every generation complains at the loss of the golden age of their youth. Every generation, to one extent or another, says that these damn kids are ruining everything. To a certain extent, the complaints are grounded in something; the world changes. New ideas are introduced, some old ones are discarded, and some people miss them. Some people simply miss the times when things were new, and pine for those moments that will never come again.

So what of our era? People still pine for whatever glory days they imagine existed, but almost all of their complaints fall short. We haven't forgotten the secrets of our ancestors. We still invent new marvels. We still have writers who can touch our souls with their words, drawing out laughter or tears. We still have voices who can play the human heart like a violin. We still have teachers, painters, scientists, doctors, the ideals of their professions and the decency of good people.

But what of politics? Leadership? Where are our Thomas Jeffersons, our George Washingtons, our Theodore and Franklin Roosevelts, our James Madisons and Abraham Lincolns and John F. Kennedys? Where are the people inspiring us to greatness?

We have lost them somewhere in a sea of bureaucracy and money and obfuscation. Instead of bold declarations, we have press releases and apologies and refusals to commit. Instead of inspiration, we have desperation. In our foolishness, we have elected fools, and when faced with the panic that there is quickly coming a point where no excuse will cover that ugly truth, all that we can find in the faces we search for leadership are beads of sweat popping out of their brows.

There are wise men and leaders among us, but we have made a society out of crushing them. To be idealistic is to be a fool, we teach our children. To strive to change the mighty juggernauts of government and business that we have created is madness. Look out for yourself, your family if you have it, but everything beyond that is beyond your control and somebody else's business anyway. Fill out your forms, get to work on time, pay your taxes, swallow your frustration and your pride and know that if you complain, you're the one causing the problem. Everyone can mouth platitudes about our freedom of speech and how ridiculous it is to stifle dissent against our government's policies...but what does a child learn when she sees her parent's dissent against the policies of McDonald's stifled? Would you like a condescending sneer with that?

We are left with apathy as the only answer. Those dying children on tv are someone else's business, and if they aren't gotten to, it's too big for me. I know these tax forms are too complex and confusing to understand, but if I complain, I'll just draw their attention. Why should I vote? Nothing ever changes anyway... We try to fill that great gaping void in the center of ourselves with numbing apathy, and it works.

It works for a while, anyway, but frustration has a way of bursting to the surface. We need to find those people among us who can help and push them to break free of all the bullshit their potential has been covered with. We have to find a way to do the right things. If we're depressed as a world, it's the same as any individual; we have a responsibility to fight through it, to cut through the despair and the weakness and DO WHAT'S RIGHT.

As for me? I'm the worst kind of hypocrite. I fantasized for a long time about being one of those people, those great politicans who actually served the people and did real politics, instead of the corrupt, moneygrubbing politics that are so common that people have forgotten there's any other kind. I cannot find within myself the strength to fight through my depression, and the knowledge that this weakness is no one's fault but my own only fuels my self-hatred. I have spent sixteen months trying to honestly find a job in government, serving the people. All I have gotten is the lowest-level job working for a candidate for State Delegate who deserved her eventual defeat. I accepted the position in a moment of weakness, placed there by someone who knows someone instead of earning the job honestly. I placed the dream of a career in politics ahead of the love of a decent woman, so much so that she thought it would be wrong to give it up for her. It was the height of arrogant foolishness. I am not one of those people, and in place of foolish dreams, all I am left with is my own weakness and the knowledge that the only way I can live is to make my peace with it.

I hope someone will be stronger and wiser than I. The world needs such people.

A fresh week.

I've been told to blog. Encouragingly, desperately, plaintively, threateningly. And so I blog.

Last week was a damn hard week for the Bush administration. His Vice-President lost his Chief of Staff to a criminal indictment, Karl Rove still stands under threat of further investigation, he lost his Supreme Court nominee, and the number of the dead in Iraq passed 2,000.

I certainly cheered at all that, enjoying the suffering of people I loathe in a wholly unhealthy way, but what else happened recently that escaped our notice?

• Indiana saw one state senator's crusade to legislate our way into a brave new world cut short: Senator Patricia Miller (a Republican, but really, you'll learn in short order she's insane, so her party affiliation isn't really the issue here) introduced a bill into to Indiana State Legislature to limit artificial insemination or any other method of getting pregnant that's not sex to married, heterosexual couples. Said married, heterosexual couples would have to apply to a judge for a "gestational certificate," providing (among other things) a “family lifestyle” dossier detailing their participation in church activities, and demonstrating that they've never been convicted of any of a list of crimes, from murder to acting in a porn film. If you'd like to read a draft of this insidious bill, have a gander. The penalties for violating this new law were to have been heavy fines and the possibility of some jail time, but apparently some Indianans have read their Huxley lately, and Ms. Miller withdrew her bill in the face of a horrendous backlash, saying only “The issue has become more complex than anticipated and will be withdrawn from consideration by the Health Finance Commission.”
• In the House, a bill is being considered regarding how to spend the recent surpluses generated by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two big government-aided mortgage companies that help many people get their first homes. Nicely, the bill under consideration will direct that the money be put into a fund which can be tapped by nonprofit organizations to build affordable housing in the Wrath-of-God-ravaged Gulf states. Eventually, the fund would also be used to build housing for the disabled and elderly folks around the country. Not so nicely, the bill is now looking at being modified by House Republicans so that nonprofit organizations will not be able to access the fund if they engage in voter registration activities, even nonpartisan ones. You can help the poor to live, or help them to vote, but not both. It ain't quite Brave New World, but it certainly is anathema to people who value democracy and human decency.
  
• A recent amendment to a Senate military spending bill authored by John McCain, forbidding "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of any detainee held by U.S. forces anywhere, was passed by an unusually wise Senate, 90 to 9, three weeks ago. Last week, Cheney came to McCain and asked him to rewrite the amendment and exempt the CIA, gutting his own amendment. In fact, let me restate that, because this cannot be emphasized enough: The Vice-President of the United States went to a respected Senator who endured over a year of torture during wartime and asked him to allow the CIA to torture prisoners abroad. For whatever batshit insane reason, he declined. The President has not altered his previously stated intention to veto the bill containing McCain's amendment; Bush has not vetoed a single piece of legislation in his five years as President, but the need to maintain the ability to torture people is apparently so essential that he's willing to go out on a limb for it.
• Just for amusement's sake, Republican Zombie Ann Coulter was also busy in the last couple of weeks, appearing at the University of Florida to give a speech in which she said that "[Democrats] are always accusing us of repressing their speech. I say let's do it. Let's repress them." Just in case any clarification of her intentions was needed, she announced, "Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the First Amendment." She also called Democrats "fascists" during a Fox News appearance on October 27th, demonstrating one of my personal favorite idiocies.

Crazy isn't anything new. Hell, I babble about it all the time. I list this list, though, because it re-demonstrates the need for keeping a tight rein on the stupid. It is happening in some places-the parenting license bill was forced to be withdrawn, after all-but Bush and Cheney haven't been impeached yet. Miller might win her next reelection campaign back in Indiana. And we all tolerate lying, cheating, stealing, and generally being assholes without those doing it getting fired, arrested, or even just told to their faces that their assholes.

We ought to be better about that.

And as an addendum about being better...it's come to my attention today that a guy in Florida has made it his personal crusade to end what he percieves as needless police chases. The man's daughter was killed, an innocent bystander hit by a suspect's car in a high-speed chase, so you can't help but feel for him. Nonethless, his method of going about it is all wrong. We don't need criminals knowing that if they flee, the police are legally obligated not to pursue.

We need the Carpoon.

Developed by genius cop Sgt. Markku Limingoja of Oulu, Finland, the Carpoon is exactly what it sounds like. And no, I'm not kidding.

Buon giorno, all.