Talking with a number of people around the blog, I’ve discovered a lot of us are having a hard time right now. It’s probably gotten worse since we’ve been bombarded with (and even indirectly blamed for) the slaughter of the children in Connecticut. But for many of us, the times (and our moods) were already rough. Maybe the election triggered it. Maybe the incessant war-mongering of the last 11 years. Maybe the latest “blessing” from the Department of Homeland (Achtung!) Security. Maybe Christmas or the dark skies. But if angst and depression are contagious, they’re definitely going around.

One grown man I know cried today because there were just too many sorrows — and too many a**holes rushing to build agendas on them.

He also said something that I suspect is key to what ails a lot of us: these are hard days for people who are both rational and empathetic.

I’d never thought of it that way. But he’s right.

Rational empaths. That’s what many of us are. Not all, but a good portion of us. And it’s a damned hard thing to be in a world where rational is judged to be unfeeling and empathy is fashionably divorced from all reason.

We care as much as anyone about the trust and safety of children. But when we show that disarming their protectors puts them in worse danger, we’re called “cold” and “hard hearted.”

We’re used to this, actually. We get this every day. If we point out the very human benefits of ending the drug war, people often scream that we want crazed meth heads roaming the streets, families destroyed, 10-year-olds hooked on heroin. We must be monsters to prize freedom, if that’s the cost. When we try to explain that crazed meth heads (and bursting prisons, and broken families, etc.) are more a product of the drug war than of actual drugs, most likely we just get yelled at louder because we “don’t care” about how much people suffer.

Even in the best of times, this can be hard to take. And these aren’t the best of times, it goes without saying.

—–

The only answer I have for this is a three-parter.

1. This, too, shall pass.

2. We are a marginalized minority, which is always a hard thing to be (but which can be liberating, too).

3. And it’s people on the fringes who create the world anew every day. We are a creative force, looking beyond what is to what could be. That’s not always an easy thing. But it is a worthwhile thing.

Oh, and there’s a fourth part: We have each other. Thanks largely to the ‘Net, we have that.

And the tighter they grasp, the more slips through their fingers. Never forget that.

—–

Slight change of plans. Instead of becoming a beach bum (and the economics of that were just not working out, in any case), from now until New Year I’m going to post only positive things.

Oh, I don’t mean the usual sort of “good news” things. You won’t be subjected to tales of guardian angels bringing cute kittens to adorable cancer-striken tots, I promise you.

(Well, at least I won’t do any such subjecting. I can’t be responsible for glurge you may pick up (like a social disease) elsewhere.)

But starting tomorrow and continuing for the next two weeks (barring the scheduled end of the world or some unforseen development that simply has to be dealt with), everything I post will be something worthwhile in a good way.

Might be funny. Useful. Encouraging. Entertaining. Could be that even a few smidges of uplifting-ness and mildly heartwarm-ery will sneak their way onto the blog, even though I normally oppose such things on general curmudgeonly principle.

But — for this little while — let’s step out of the sewage stream of the badness.

People often send me news links — often of appalling nature — and I’ve got a bunch I’ve intended to post. But I’m not going to. So if you’ve sent me news about the crocodile tears of hired killers or the latest development in high-tech torture or even the latest worry for people too foolish to quit using Internet Explorer, I’m not going to post it. Not for now. (Thanks, anyhow, J, M, and H.)

To heck with it. It’s Christmas. Hannukah. Yule. Solstice. New Year. Time for dark to yield to light. Out with the old and bad. Let’s take a couple of weeks break to celebrate what’s good and build on what we can make even better in our own lives.

It’s been rough. It’ll get rough again. But let’s not forget to laugh at the bastards and create our own lives in our own spirit — and for that, we need our best spirits.

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Inflation. Expressed in terms of bank robberies.

With human stupidity as a sidelight.

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Well, folks, this is it. Friday it’s all over. Zap. Kaput. This weary old Earth and all of us with it — gone.

Even though I don’t believe a word of it, sometimes I think it couldn’t happen to a more deserving planet.

And as to that lame, feel-good theory that the Earth isn’t really going blooey, but is just going to go through a tribulation, with the survivors (i.e. the people holding the theory) going to emerge full of peace, love, and enlightenment … yeah.

You just tell me when peace, love, and enlightenment have ever lasted more than about 15 minutes before some jerk with a Bright Idea came along to screw them up.

Nope. Despite boundless skepticism about the Maya and their multitudes of modern-day misinterpreters, boom, biff, kapow are definitely more our style.

—–

It’s been a crappy month. Is there any country on the globe that’s not about to go to war with some other? And once the Be-medaled Big Man of some hellhole starts the nuking or the gassing or the whatever, is there one, single one of these wannabe wars that neocon-gov won’t throw us into, claiming (and manufacturing evidence for) some Vital National Interest? Or Democracy or something?

Here in the U.S., even before Mr. Evil decided to make his mark in the world by shooting elementary schoolers, things weren’t looking so good. Take just one piece of news (out of many): that our Beloved Attorney General decided unilaterally and arbitrarily that the fedgov can not only keep dossiers on anybody, but decided the gov can sell them to foreign governments for their scrutiny.

Now, this would have been bad enough had the media ferreted it out and jumped on it immediately with howling rage. And had an aroused public demanded an end to such tyranny — and Eric Holder’s term in office — and the entire Department of Homeland (Achtung!) Security — and the heads of quite a few politicians and bureaucrats — and restoration of the Bill of Rights. But as usual, the news took months to emerge … and was barely treated as news when it did.

I particularly like the way the few media outlets that actually reported it repeated the fedgov’s assurances that this is totally, perfectly, absolutely, no-doubt-about-it all right and doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment (the what?) because of … oh, safeguards or some such thing. You know, because it’s the Good Old Red-White-n-Blue USA and the Government is Us and We’re the Government so what could possibly go wrong?

And of course there’s more. there’s always more. Even something as monumental as open-ended QE4 charging along right on the heels of QE3 doesn’t even raise an eyebrow (or the price of gold) even though the lowest member of Densa can see what it means.

—–

I’ve been having a crappy month, personally, too. It’s been brightened only (though I hasten to add, very, very considerably) by all the early visits from Santa and the goodness, support, and devotion to freedom each of those visits represents. Here in my living room, the tree, the dogs, and I are warm and happy.

And I hope you are, too, for the four and whatever-percentage of days that remain to you before your head (and everything else) explodes.

But for me, it’s been a month of small blows and small setbacks — not one of them amounting to anything by itself, but the whole chain of them leaving me in a Dangerous Mood.

Oh, not listening-to-the-voices-in-my-head dangerous. But dangerous in the sense of wanting to toss everything aside and become a beach bum. If only I could figure out how one makes a living being a beach bum.

Since I probably won’t figure that out before Friday, I guess you can count on me being here to bring you bad news, good cheer, and a relentlessly positive Bad Attitude for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for all the motivation to stick around, even if the future lasts more than four-and-a-fragment days.

—–

And let’s choose to be optimistic. The fact that the fedgov can “advance” tyranny by Godzilla-sized bounds and barely evoke yawns may be a good sign. It could just be that people have come to expect nothing else. Have come to divorce themselves by the millions from a government they recognize as thoroughly out of bounds and out of their control.

A government whose seemingly invincible underpinnings could collapse with a crash-boom at any moment. Who knows? Maybe even this Friday.

—–

All posters courtesy of MJR, with that last one stolen from here.

Newz links courtesy of P and J.

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