We cannot seem to get people of standing to step up to volunteer to lead the country. There must be plenty of them out there - this is a country of 360 million people. There must be some fine people out there, some great leaders, some upright people. I know a few of them myself. And yet we can't flush 'em out of the thickets to be our leaders because the country is in such a state of chronic, immersive dishonesty. So how are you going to make authority credible? - James Howard Kunstler (hour 1, min 38).
I don't always think in terms of "animosities" - it is a habit I try to reduce. Or, said in a better fashion, I try and take my animosities and alter them, transform them, channel them, put them to use. upon finishing using my newly altered animosity I put it away or return it to the constant background which accompanies us all: potentialities that we hone before it is made to manifest. It is good to hone animosities instead of trying to discard them completely - however your mind may accomplish this task of getting rid of animosities.
Americans, my fellow Americans, live as though they are in a cult, a Cult of Happiness, that has removed the need for animosity, that sees animosity as an anomaly, as being out of appropriate form. Americans think as though they are in a cult: ah, this thought gives me assurance, an interesting way to see my social world.
That word animosity has not the best connotations - bad, resentful, frustrated, wild, not in control. Yet, if you have legitimate reasons to feel animosity, then what kind of push-over are you? If an injustice has been committed, anger and animosity are the early responses, responses that are steps on the path to understanding and then action.
Yet, in America we are post-animosity. This is the Promise Land: You. Are. Happy. Say it, sing it - the song "Happy" has 626 million youTube views. Chill. As though people act out for change - agitate - for neutral reasons. As though people exclaim their anger because they are bored. No, not the case. Conversely, do people in power often give away power/money/control just because they publicly state their support for justice and justice demands this egalitarianism. No.
How do you really feel? What are true emotions versus emotions that you have been trained to feel? There is an advantage in avoiding animosity - its nicer to not feel bad, just feel good and feel like others should do the same.
Some people have the advantage of not needing to feel anger - or, said in a better way, they channel these emotions that manifest in animosity in some other method of expression.
Haven't we gone beyond feeling that Dems v Reps is the only game in town? How perfect these foils are. Does level of success dictate how I view these parties and how I view the system of government what we have? My feeling of lack of success being manifested as a grab for esoteric knowledge which may free us all if only we all shared a similarly shuttered esoteric redoubt? A redoubt which the successful could be made to acknowledge, to nod at in some three o'clock in the morning drug conversation but the successful do not need those talks, they need only to pay into keeping things rolling the way they have been which is the way that provided them a venue for their success, for them to flourish. The third party option the outre domain of outcasts, freethinkers, freethinkers being the unconventionally successful.
Fuck. The successful going to the Glassbead Game to draw talking points. But fuck if public relations don't work well - still the wheels will fly off one day and I feel it is a rewarding to discuss whether or not to support the Beast cuz may as well keep a good thing going: and we don't have a real choice anyway, the soap opera of our politics, the limited hangout of our politics and if you say "Well, each candidate has substantive policy claims that we may rationally analyze" then fuck off, fuck you, end of conversation.
As Jasun Horsley has mused: "The only sane option is to disengage and to focus on the people that one can connect to and work with and just try to rediscover a way of living together in the midst of all this chaos and just hope for the best." (hour 1, min 39).
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