Coming Up

It's May 1, and I'm really over it with the shoveling. We got something like 10 more inches of snow today. It sucks.

You know, this whole day really sucked. Ever have one of those days when you know you're just going through the motions and your heart is not in it, and then you realize just how much you are forcing yourself to endure?

Then I came home to find one of our trees in the backyard, the juniper, was uprooted by the heavy snow. I'm hoping we can save it once the snow melts, we'll need to figure out a way to stabilize it. Seeing the juniper lying down in the yard, buried in heavy snow, made me see myself and where I am.

I've been reading a lot of crap lately, mostly because I am procrastinating. Procrastinating taking some sort of step forward. Feeling like barfing up something from this hole in my gut, but there's nothing there, it's just dry heaves, empty. I feel sucked dry, with no hope of repletion.

I've been suppressing a rant.

So I get these newsletters in my e-mail every day that talk about medical news. And I read other people's blogs in medicine and get news about the pharmaceutical industry, and other things related to health care and reform thereof. And the shit continues to be cranked out. All the trouble in healthcare is the same trouble we have in every other sector of our world, which is, corporations have too damn much power and all the wealth is concentrated at the top, because politicans can be bought by wealthy interests. The "I've got mine, screw you" mentality.

And then I see snippets and links to things on Facebook. And I see what people post, divisive, politically charged, mean-spirited crap, because they are angry and frustrated with the way things are. They are afraid. It makes me wonder just how much the recent rash of violence we've seen is related to how upset, frustrated and powerless people feel.

So I want to talk about fear. People are afraid for their livelihoods. They are afraid because they want to keep a roof over their heads, food on the table, and live their borrowed, temporary, fake comfortable lifestyles full of gadgetry that they sell their souls to live. And they'll lie, stab someone else in the back, cheat, and steal to keep going, because they think they will be safe.

And so they put up with a lot of crap, that affects their health and well-being, sometimes staying for years in the same place because it's comfortable, but it's a false comfort because underneath they are afraid, very fearful every day that their paycheck and way of life will dry up suddenly. And they know it all depends on keeping a smile plastered on their faces, on being apologists for bad corporate behavior, acting like domestic violence victims who will come back no matter how many times they are beaten because they just don't get it, that they are enabling it themselves by their complicity.

But the way things are has us by the proverbial family jewels...and most people see their only hope of survival to be docility. It's not a good thing when you see multiple instances of people going berserk, and the copycats who follow, and you never know what it was that pushed them over the edge. There is way too much mental illness and not enough care for people who can't deal with the stresses life throws at them. It doesn't have to be this way. We have created this situation.

Over the years I have heard of so many people who got sick from their jobs, the stress, the inability to wake up in the morning and face another day of faking it, of making excuses for the sick and perverse way they enable the poor treatment of other people, of toeing the line and shutting up. And the behavior of corporations is dependent on fear, because those in the highest tiers are fearful of losing their control, so they rig the system to work in their favor, because they can. It makes people sick.

If you have the ability to see what's leading to a downward spiral, taking back control over your life and refusing to be sucked into the quicksand is what you have to do. You cannot force yourself to do things, you'll be bitter, angry, hateful, and sick. You'll be lucky if all you need are antidepressants.

I love the words to the song/poem "Coming Up" by Ani DiFranco. Reminds me of our politicians. Indulge in some wishful, idealistic thinking for a moment.

Congress, having formed its own set of rules for its members' behavior, works with their own code of unethics to guide them and obstruct any progress that might be in the interest of most citizens. They don't want to abide by the Affordable Care Act. That's for the little people. Whether they are on the side of attorneys or Big Pharma or insurance giants or big banks, they're all pitted against the common good and only acting in their own interest. As long as your ass is covered, it doesn't matter who's winning. What we need to do is remove them from office. Voting won't work. Hog-tie and carry them out if we have to. They are not serving us, they don't deserve be called our representatives. Send them back home where they can learn to work paycheck to paycheck like the rest of us.

The people are numb, anesthetized by their own gullibility for shiny flashing objects...necks flexed and mesmerized by their little mobile devices. When you spend most of your leisure time focused on a tiny little screen and fingertip-operated keyboard, and the remaining time focused on a bigger screen operated by a remote control device, there's not much brain space left for focusing outside, for thinking critically, or seeing a bigger picture.

Can't step outside yourself and your situation for a moment to ask yourself: Why? Why are we doing this? Why are things the way they are? Does it have to be this way? The thing is, we have short attention spans. No sooner is a thought thought, than it dissolves into the atmosphere. Can't hang onto it long enough to pursue it. It's true that we are powerless as individuals but wrenching ourselves from our butts and banding together with other people is what needs to happen.

It doesn't appear that anyone will be waking up from this societal coma anytime soon.

No, people want to find the next distraction, they're stupid enough to fall for fake "quizzes" as marketing devices for fake cures for middle age, or the latest snack food to support the obesification industry, or anything else of which irresponsible journalists enable the marketing: camel's milk, red bean Triscuits, snake oil, Androgel...

As long as they can still buy these things, they don't seem to care about changing anything.

You can't regulate stupidity. There's a whole industry built on it. It's called "America".