Final thoughts

[Cyrano]

A few final thoughts (excerpts) from the diary of a friend. (Yeah, some people still write diaries.):

I've been doing a lot of reflecting lately and I'm aware that I'm living in the past. I remember during the JFK years, many believed in the talk of “The best and the brightest.” Then they murdered him and, for a moment, sane people lost hope.

But MLK pushed racial justice to the top of the agenda, and LBJ brought about Medicare, Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and it was the FDR era all over again. Well, except for that Vietnam thing, which made many of us believe we should have hung the prick. What a dichotomy. LBJ was FDR domestically and Hitler on foreign affairs.

But, for the most part, I thought the world was going to be a better place. I believed in a better future. I believed the horrors of the the dark ages and world wars were behind us. I believed that America was leading the world toward some kind of Utopian existence.

And then they murdered MLK and RFK and so many dreams crashed. People were incapable, or too distracted, to understand the degree to which Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” would poison the well.

Then came Reagan, whose destructiveness of democracy was hidden behind the facade of a "harmless, likable moron." Those who used him did their best to destroy the world that most people considered to be "normal."

Perhaps I've outlived the definition of “normal.” But by anyone’s definition, the current Republican Party is in no way “normal.” Watching those “plantation/slave owners” in the senate taking a crap on our Constitution is beyond any possible definition of what is allowable in a civilized society. Yet, come next November, they’ll probably own the congress.

We may be living through the final years of America. I’m grateful for having spent my life in a somewhat free country. But it seems those freedoms are disintegrating daily.

I really hate to die without seeing American Nazis purged from decent society. I was hoping to leave this world seeing the promise of the future come into being.

[lapfog_1]

1. Al Stewart has a song that captures how I feel about the 60s

In coffee bars I spent my nights
Reading Allen Ginsberg, talking civil rights
The day Robert Kennedy got shot down
The world was wearing a deeper frown
And though I knew that we'd lost a friend
I always believed we would win in the end
'Cause music was the scenery
Jimi Hendrix played loud and free
Sergeant Pepper was real to me
Songs and poems were all you needed
Which way did the sixties go?
Now Ramona's in Desolation Row
And where I'm going I hardly know
It surely wasn't like this before

Post World War 2 Blues

[Joinfortmill]

10. 👍

[Boomerproud]

2. I was born in 1956. A very flawed time, but this is not the

country I want to die in and my great nephews and nieces to live in.

[hlthe2b]

3. Fully captures a lot of my thoughts right now. I try to be optimistic, but never has it been more

difficult. I hope and I hug my dog and friends/family to keep sane.

[Cyrano]

4. Me too. It seems that crazy is the new normal

Hopefully, we'll see an end to the current insanity while we're still here. The most deadly disease threatening America today isn't Covid. It's the Republican Party. And it's incredible that so many millions can't or won't see it.

[multigraincracker]

5. It seem to always be 2 steps forward and one step back.

We will have some catching up to do.

[Faux pas]

6. Kickety Kickin'

[usonian]

7. Racism is hard to get rid of.

I've posted this elsewhere. Worth repeating because it shows what's damn near impossible, and what WE CAN DO.

This is from the epilogue of "Stamped From the Beginning", by Ibram X Kendi.
This is of course, about racism, but racism is the engine of the Repugnant party.
Emphasis mine:

Protesting against racist power and succeeding can never be mistaken for seizing power. Any effective solution to eradicating American racism must involve Americans committed to antiracist policies seizing and maintaining power over institutions, neighborhoods, counties, states, nations—the world. It makes no sense to sit back and put the future in the hands of people committed to racist policies, or people who regularly sail with the wind of self-interest, toward racism today, toward antiracism tomorrow. An antiracist America can only be guaranteed if principled antiracists are in power, and then antiracist policies become the law of the land, and then antiracist ideas become the common sense of the people, and then the antiracist common sense of the people holds those antiracist leaders and policies accountable.

And that day is sure to come. No power lasts forever. There will come a time when Americans will realize that the only thing wrong with Black people is that they think something is wrong with Black people. There will come a time when racist ideas will no longer obstruct us from seeing the complete and utter abnormality of racial disparities. There will come a time when we will love humanity, when we will gain the courage to fight for an equitable society for our beloved humanity, knowing , intelligently, that when we fight for humanity, we are fighting for ourselves. There will come a time. Maybe, just maybe, that time is now.

In short (you saw this coming) DON'T KVETCH, KICK BUTT!

Any time spent griping about things you and I can't control or influence takes away from things you CAN influence, namely ELECTIONS. That's the purpose of disinformation: to disempower you by focusing on people, and things you can't possibly control or even influence. And when that happens, they have won.

PLEASE focus your energy on winning. Lots of great ideas here.
https://democraticunderground.com/100216380145

WE CAN DO IT

[greblach]

8. Optimism is hard work!

I know the feeling, but my own feeling is that we own the Senate, and if we have anything to say about it the House. We cannot slide backwards at this time. I am forever hopeful that truth will out!

[Joinfortmill]

9. Oh my. I've been reflecting, too. The good guys will win.

[slightlv]

11. I was born in 1956, too.

I lived through so much, and I marched against (and FOR) so much. --WE MADE A DIFFERENCE!!!-- for a while. Where did it go? And why? Who dropped the ball?!

Was it my daughter's generation? Did my marching for her rights as a woman to live as free as any man... to make her own decisions about her body, her financial life, her LIFE... did that diminish them in her sight? Did she and others in her generation not see how hard we fought and suffered for them?

I went through two riots in high school... and I lived in a VERY small town in the Midwest. Both were for civil rights. One was for POC, one was for gender rights. How is it, that at 66 years old, I am seeing all those freedoms we fought so hard to win turned back against us now until we are now right back to where we started from once again?

The first three stories on DU tonight. I gotta be honest. I could very well have stroked out, I was so enraged. What do I do with all that rage? My body is broken from all I did in my teens and 20's. I march now, and it's in a wheelchair! I'll do it, too... but to what freaking end?

Does anybody really care anymore? Or is there just so much wrong that it all just get lost in the morass of evil?

[Evolve Dammit]

14. I share your outrage and the hard work we did seems to have been forgotten. But not by all. If

the younger gen can get it's voice projected, there is hope. It's going to be hard, because as Elizabeth Warren stated: "The game is rigged." It is.
I hope we can all continue to articulate the struggle and the need to never accept what the right is trying to impose, because it is counter to our fundamental rights under our Constitution. They hate that.
Thanks

[jaxexpat]

12. It's all quite disappointing, I'll admit, but that's....

probably just what the dinosaurs felt as the asteroid hit. I see them flying about every day. I even feed a few of them. I'm certain T-Rex was blue with white and black trim.

[FakeNoose]

13. I believe these disappointments fall to each generation - and we're up next

I remember my grandparents (born around 1900) saying they survived so much. They did so much, why isn't the country turning out like they thought it would? My parents (born in the mid-1920's) thought they were the Greatest Generation, rescued the world from Nazi Germany etc. And they ended up disappointed that the country turning out so selfish and nasty.

I'm a Baby Boomer and a lot of us are on DU. We're trying to keep our courage up but it's not easy. Seeing our contemporaries dying off, not sure how much time or energy we have left. I can't march in protests in Washington or New York City like I did in my youth. I see it on TV and I feel helpless, but I don't want my grandson to inherit this awful mess.

Things are better now in some ways but we can't always see that, because things are worse in so many ways too. It's the unforeseen things that knock us for a loop. I'm learning now in my 70s that DISAPPOINTMENT is a human condition.

[Martin Eden]

15. The optimism we felt with President Obama ...

... came crashing down when a racist demagogue mentally and morally unfit for any public office was elevated to the White House.

Outrage overload has worn us down and dampened our spirits as one of America's two major political parties has has doubled down on Big Lies and poisonous ideology.

Yes, it's difficult for us older Americans to be optimistic (I was born in 1957) but, like baseball, hope springs eternal with the flower of youth.

New, perhaps better, generations will rise up and carry the torch for a better future.