The More I Know...

Lest anyone think the shock of my fiftieth birthday sent me off the deep end… I am still kickin’. We did a five-day event last week, from Wednesday through Sunday, not including set-up earlier in the week, and returning to the fairgrounds to pick up the trailer yesterday evening. Between that, and trying to recover from the back injury, I haven’t had much time or inspiration to journal. Thankfully, the back thing seems to be working itself out. I actually walked over four miles this afternoon…upright, in the manner of a true homo sapien. There were times during the last couple of weeks when I thought I would never again attain that uprightness of posture. Thought I’d been reduced to Quasimodo stature for the rest of my natural life…

During the slow times at the County Fair, I had the opportunity to do some political reading. No internet connections out at the fairgrounds, so I actually had to resort to reading books and magazines. I bought the current issue of Newsweek (the one with Karl Rove’s contemptible face on the cover) to catch up on that mess. And I dove into a book I bought on Marigolds2’s recommendation—War Made Easy. At some future date, when I have more time to do an in-depth post, I’ll go into more detail about both of these. The reading makes me uneasy. Lately, I find myself afflicted with a malady that anyone who decides to educate oneself about matters political must contract at some point: utter hopelessness.

The more I read about American politics, both current and past, the more I become convinced that we are truly beyond hope. That government is not about the will or the benefit of the people. That it is about subterfuge, power-brokering, aspirations of global dominance, and making sure that the pockets of the richest of the rich, who pay generously for the privilege, are continuously and heavily lined. The only use our government has for the everyday Joe is to manipulate him into lining up behind whatever campaigns those in power want to advance. They somehow manage to keep us believing that "We the people" have a voice, and that our leaders listen to us. That our votes actually count for something, and that the most powerful people in the government got there through some kind of Constitutionally ordained process.

The more I know, the more I wish I could go back to being blissfully ignorant…