feeling: mentally & physically drained
thinking: why do I bother?
listening to:Type O Negative's October Rust cd
currently reading:The Greatest Sedition Is Silence by William Rivers Pitt

Drained to the Bone

I am exhausted, and I do not just mean exhausted from lack of sleep either. My psyche is drained which is causing me to be both mentally and physically weary. I am so deep into politics that sometimes I feel buried alive and sufficated. I see so many horrors occuring around me that I cannot possible report on them all and yet, I feel that I must keep trying to reach people, to make them understand what is happening in this great country that I call home. Some days I feel like I am just shouting at brick walls or into a grand abyss and no one can hear me.

We have become a nation of sleep-walkers. People go about their daily business not caring about travesties that eat away at our basic human and civilian rights. Just don't take away the SUVs, cell phones, multiple-channel cable boxes, fast food restaurants, or whatever else occupies most people's drab dull lives.

I am convinced that people do not get angry or motivated until events hit home. If it doesn't directly affect them, then they do not care. They are content to remain blissfully ignorant. I tried to be that way, really, I did. In the early 90s, even though I opposed GHW Bush's Gulf War, I did not protest. I was too busy working a full and a part time job and going to school full time. I didn't have time to be angry enough to voice my opinion. I got upset many times during Clinton's eight years over his unfulfilled promises and his military actions, but again, I was still in school during most of his tenure and didn't have time to protest. I didn't get angry enough because in those days, I didn't feel like any of my Constitutional rights as a US citizen were being trampled on.

Then along came GW Bush. I wasn't particularly fond of any of the candidates for president in 2000, but I figured that since Virginia is a republican state (the electorial college here always votes republican), and I really didn't like Gore or Nader, I would just vote for Bush anyway. Yes, I was very ignorantly blissful at the time. What Bush did in Florida - over-riding a state's right to make and keep voting laws - by using the Supreme Court to stop the recount, clued me in quickly that our country was in trouble. I wanted so desperately to take back my vote, not that it really mattered anyway, but it was a symbolic gesture that I seriously wished that I could make.

So for three years, I have been working actively to get people to see and understand that our rights are being trampled on slowly, decisively, so that the common-joe will not be aware of it until it is too late. I create and print a small newsletter every week and hand it out downtown or have friends hand them out when I cannot be there. I keep my political diary updated nearly every day with things that affect us all as US Citizens. And yet, I still feel like it is all for naught. It is as though people are comfortable with that veil of ignorance they keep shrouded over their eyes and ears.

I keep telling myself that I need a small vacation from all of this madness, but I cannot bring myself to take one. How can I rest when our government wants to destroy the Constitution and our Rights? No, there will be no rest for my weary bones. Not until I have reached as many people as I can and make them *aware* and that our rights are fully protected.

Past Ramblings :: Future Ramblings