I have a confession.
I used to be very angry. And the more I learned, the more I found out about how sick and twisted and unfair and awful the world can be, the angrier I got. It felt a little like Sophie, who gets so very angry that she explodes like a volcano and runs and runs and runs. Eventually, I realized that all that anger and exploding and running wasn’t really doing me or anyone else any good. That no matter how angry and active and upset, the world was still sick and twisted and unfair and awful.
Sophie cries to let it all out. I become cynical and apathetic.
How can I find a middle-ground with someone who refuses to let the President of the United States, a position that should be respected regardless of your political stance, address their child in a pubic space? Where I can start to educate an individual who enjoys their Medicare coverage on the fact that their insurance is a government plan? And if those ridiculous conversations cannot be fixed by reason and rational thought, then what future do we have?
I’d get mad, but I don’t think it’s going to help anything.
Is it to cliche to say I’m glad to read regular folks who write about these issues (and more)? So thank you for the reading, for bringing these posts to my attention, and for suggesting them for this space. Thank you.
August 2009 Just Posts…
Girl Griot at If You Want Kin… with: Choking on a Wishbone; Oh I See, Profiling is Colorblind; and What’s Good for the Goose
Kitty at The Show Must Go On with: Fallen into a hospital and can’t get out
Barbara at An American in Lima with: Government extends State of Emergency; more children to die
Holly at Cold Spaghetti with: Superheros; Thoughts on Rising Tide 4; and Why does New Orleans have different moral rules of conduct?
Painted Maypole at The Painted Maypole with: What Jesus would do and 4-years ago today Katrina made landfall
Laura at Our Feet are the Same with: B is for Backpack
Julie at Using my Words with: Why Playing the Whore Card in reference to Mommybloggers is not so cool
Catherine at Their Bad Mother with: Baby Got Boob
Margaret at Mostly in the Afternoon with: Youth in Asia
Elizabeth at A Moon, as if it had been worn by a shell with: Thursday Rant
Ilina at Dirt and Noise with: Marriott is a Disgrace
Angela at The Many Hats with: How dare you take your vagina out in public!
Jen at One Plus Two with: Culture Clash
Magpie at Magpie Musings with: You want to know how much a colonoscopy costs?
Chani with Finding my way back home with: War on Women
Fireweaver at Laboratory Tested with: Foolishness is Free
Contributors to this month’s roundtable:
Alejna
Mad
Emily
Holly
Painted Maypole
(Note: please forgive formatting and font issues here… the latest WordPress upgrade destroyed something important and I haven’t had a chance to track it down.)
The August Just Posts « collecting tokens | 09-Sep-09 at 9:35 am | Permalink
[…] Please drop by Holly’s to see what she has to say this month. […]
Mad | 09-Sep-09 at 10:16 am | Permalink
Ya, I get mad and shut down too. I wish I knew another way. I wish I could keep my heart and mind open no matter how many times it gets batted down.
Thanks for the list of posts. This is good work, Holly.
Barbara | 09-Sep-09 at 12:50 pm | Permalink
Thanks for the shout-out. I appreciate it so much.
I’m also disgusted that some extremists are creating an artificial furor over Obama’s speech. I wouldn’t be too concerned about finding a middle ground with “people” who object to the speech because, in reality, they’re not regular folk. A lot of those rabid voices are for-hires who are paid to sow dissent. The far right pumps millions of dollars into paying its constituents to protest and raise a fuss over issues like healthcare, school choice, etc. Big oil has done so for the last 15 years paying hacks to challenge the science of climate change. These “people” do it for money, not because they necessarily believe what they’re spouting. Some ignorant Americans are tricked by their rhetoric and echo their messages (unpaid!) but you’d be suprised how many party-liners are on the payroll to repeat lies on message boards, in letters to the editor, etc.
The Left should take a lesson and allocate funds to keep its message up front and center. Not to sound cynical here, but it’s all about money.
Pistolette | 10-Sep-09 at 8:47 am | Permalink
As usual I feel both sides. I agree with you that the office of the president should be respected regardless of who is occupying it, and that person should not be overly criticized for simply wanting to talk to the nation’s schoolchildren. However, the same people who tell me this now, are the ones *I* was saying it to back when they were trying to burn president Bush at the stake. So I find hypocrisy can reach all across the political spectrum. As for the ignorance being spread about health care, I think it can be partially attributed to the hysterics on right-wing talk radio, however, the Democrats are being deliberately vague about a lot of this plan so they’re asking for trouble. I think what bothers me the most though, is that there are many people like myself that have kept up with this issue, educated ourselves a great deal, and have come to a different conclusion on health care, yet many liberals insist we must all be uneducated, irrational idiots because we have not arrived at the same conclusion they have. Of course I think everyone is entitled to inexpensive, basic health care, worthy of the wealthiest nation on earth, and there are many non-government ways to achieve that. Sadly, most liberals refuses to hear any of us out, automatically assuming that if we disagree with them we must want to kill all the poor black people, and save all the rich white people. Talk about hysteria! And the debate continues 🙂
Painted Maypole | 10-Sep-09 at 11:39 am | Permalink
i get angry, too.
thanks for hostessing.
kitty | 11-Sep-09 at 12:40 am | Permalink
Thanks so much for linking me, Holly.
I worked at the free clinic tonight, a place where -believe it or not- most volunteers there do not want the government involved with health care. I have to keep silent about my liberal leanings lest they not call me anymore to work there.
So I was taking a break and one of the board members/founders of the clinic came around and asked me what I thought about Obama’s speech. I was about to play stupid when a Nurse Practitioner came around and gave her two cents. She used to run a free AIDS clinic and said government health care works and works well. Within five minutes that conversation got so heated, I left the room when she got in his face and said, “You run a clinic for the INDIGENT, for Crissakes, you should know, you should KNOW!”
After twenty years of supporting health care reform (I wish we had a single payer system), I realize it is extremely difficult to change people’s minds on the issue. I guess that is why I started volunteering at the clinic, reform seems hopeless and I have to do something or I will lose my mind.
It helps, but it seems like I’m in another dimension working with people who volunteer so much time to help the uninsured yet they do not support a government intervention.
magpie | 11-Sep-09 at 8:56 am | Permalink
As ever, thanks for rounding these up.