Depression and politics

[nancylebov]

marykaykare wrote

I'm horribly hideously unbearably depressed and it has nothing to do with my brain chemistry. I am being crushed by the weight of things I know to be true but which half this country, or more, is denying. I have a whole long rant worked up about how we're throwing away one of the noblest experiments attempted by man. But thinking about it exhausts me.

Actually, I think vulnerability to depression does have something to do with brain chemistry, even if the objective situation is also very bad.

Even so, I'm going to talk about ways to think about these matters. One that I find helps somewhat is that I'm determined not to throw away what I've got--a present with some good points in a society where the government hasn't gone after me--because of what might or might not happen.

Secondly, I'm not convinced that the US is on an inevitable slide to disaster--there are a lot of institutional possibiities for resistance, and people who are using them.

Thirdly, Bush and crew are impulsive. They aren't loyal minions of abstract evil, they're people who want power so they can do what they please without having to think about it. While they're causing a lot of damage (not to mention continuing damage started by previous administrations), they're also eroding their support rather quickly--not fast enough, but I'm not convinced they'd win an election if it were held tomorrow, and I bet their odds would be worse a year from now.

For which reason, I think paper trails are one of the most important current issues, and would appreciate any pointers to the best people/organizations/websites who are working on paper trails and whatever structure is needed to make sure that the paper trails are protected and counted.

Fourthly, we have bad examples from history that people on previous downhill slides didn't have. This is certainly no guarantee, but I think it helps.

Fifthly, I'm sorry to say this, but I believe you and I and a lot of other people need to protect ourselves from a lot of the tendencies on our own side. Ok--it's only marginally my side since I'm a liberal-flavored libertarian rather than a liberal, but I do see a lot of expecting the worst. As far as I can tell, there are people who get energized by imagining disaster, but there are also those who get miserable and possibly paralysed. The truth is that the worst doesn't necessarily happen, and I would dearly love to see a site that doesn't just say "look at how awful the Dominionists are and how the Administration has ties to them" but who also does some analysis of how likely Dominionists are to get power, including the resistance they face from more moderate conservatives. Imho, the depressive tendency on the left isn't just shown by catastrophizing, it's also the tendency to have any political problem which makes them sad reminding them of a bunch of other problems that make them sad.

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Addenda: Would the US be better off with a parlimentary system so that an unpopular head of state could be recalled? Is it remotely conceivable that such a thing could happen?

I'm a liberal-flavored libertarian because I hate the way governments keep hurting people, and because while the left frequently irritates me, I find most of the right unendurable.

I was going to contrast the left habit of sadness with the right habit of anger, but the notion got more and more frayed the more I think about it. I'm not sure if the pattern was never there, or just that there's more anger on the left than there used to be.

Comments

[esmereldachubb.livejournal.com]

I agree that things probably aren't going to get as bad as we fear. On the other hand, I find it hard *not* to get depressed when it seems like every single piece of political news that I hear is bad. Just listening to the coverage of the G8 conference, for example. What kind of country are we when our message to the world is that we don't agree that there should be aid to Africa and we'd sacrifice the environmental well-being of the entire world so we can keep on polluting unabated?

I'm not sure that a Parliamentary system is the answer. On the face of it it looks good, especially these days under the Bush administration, but on the other hand, it would be just as easy for the political opposition to use that system to get rid of a good president. I think we'd end up making the entire system less stable, with new leaders constantly being elected and then ousted, and I'm not sure if the end result would be any better. Might be, but I wouldn't take it as a given either way.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I'm not convinced that there should be aid to Africa--a tremendous amount has been spent, and things are no better--frequently worse. It's at least plausible that the important thing isn't the relatively easy job of giving away money--it's the very hard work of ending subsidies to farmers in the developed world and the harder work of convincing African governments to lower trade barriers against each other's products.

[esmereldachubb.livejournal.com]

Agreed about giving outright donations; I meant "aid" in the very broad sense of debt forgiveness, lowering trade barriers, and helping African nations to build their infrastructure. I think our position should be that a) there is a problem in Africa (although, to be fair, I do think the Bush administration agrees with that there is and something should be done) and b) we should commit ourselves to helping them find real solutions instead of consistently ignoring the war and genocide and screwing them over in terms of international trade.

It would help a little

[bellatrys.livejournal.com]

if a) we weren't sabotaging the aid with strings and things, if b) the aid itself were actual aid, not a kind of company store voucher system, and if c) we weren't playing the Uzbekistan game with sundry african tyrants, not just Egypt. I'm surprised kind of that you aren't aware of any of this - it isn't as if it's much deeper hidden or harder to research than US involvment in Central American torture. Frex:

one link
another link
yet another
another
one more
and this

(all found by googling us arms african dictators)

But then, so many on the center-left are totally brainwashed by the SCLM talking points, I guess I shouldn't still be...

Re: It would help a little

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I'd heard of at least some of that--do you have any reason to think the US government will do any better in the short run? If it can't/won't, might it be better to not waste the money in such a destructive fashion?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

A parliamentary system has different advantages and disadvantages. I don't think you could impose one on the US, too many people think what they have is perfect in the best of all possible worlds and would regard any proposed change as close to blasphemy. I think this is part of the highly prevalent American Exceptionalist heresy.

Tangentially, I think the more one understands a parliamentary system, the harder the US system is to contemplate, and vice versa. I first thought of this when listening to the BBC and reading Rasseff during the 2000 election aftermath.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that enough Americans could come to the idea that a parlimentary system would be a good idea and get it to happen, but I'm also not going to swear that it's impossible. Things do change, though I'll grant that the Constitution is designed to be very hard to change.

From the outside, parlimentary systems seem silly and complicated, at least to me. Does a fixed-term two-party system look stupid and lumpish?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

It looks ridiculous.

I expect you remember rasseff at the time of the US 2000 election and the complete bafflement on the part of people who live in parliamentary democracies that you couldn't just have a new election?

You elect someone with 51% and they don't have to compromise with anyone, there's no balance, they have supreme power for four years, and then they can ease up on things they can time precisely for an election -- I'm amazed it worked as well as it did for as long as it did, it speaks very well of Americans and human nature.

In a parliamentary system, even with a winner-takes-all first-past-post electoral system like in Britain and Canada, the party in power is much closer to being in power at any given moment because of the will of the people, because if the people really don't want that government, they'll communicate this to their representatives and their representatives will bring the government down. This is what happened to Thatcher, she was popular, she became unpopular, there didn't need to be a general election, she was got rid of. There can be an election at any time and if there's screaming for an election in or our of parliament there will be one. And there is the whole issue of a mandate -- a government with 51% knows perfectly well it can govern but isn't likely to for very long and doesn't have a mandate. See Canadian politics right now, or the last Major government in Britain.

However, the things it seems to me the US needs and could possibly have, because people aren't so obsessive about them, are a non-corrupt apolitical civil service and (please!) vote-counting.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Afaik, American civil service isn't astonishingly awful. What do you have in mind?

I agree on the vote-counting.

What's on the top of my less practical wish list is less belief in the efficacy of punishment.

[madfilkentist]

A bit of historical perspective helps, though I'm not sure whether it makes things look less or more depressing. During the Civil War, there were serious losses of civil liberties, including suspension of habeas corpus, military conscription, and intimidation and (in the case of Maryland) arrest of state legislators. During World War I, people were put in jail for criticizing the government. During World War II, American citizens were relocated into concentration camps because of their ancestry.

Compared with those events, what we're seeing now is mild. But they also remind us that things can get still worse.

[kressel.livejournal.com]

I think you've done a good job of characterizing the left. I first became involved in activism in the 80's when Reagan was president. I was a teenager, and therefore more prone to depression and histrionics, but I really did believe nuclear holocaust was right around the corner.

Well, baruch Hashem, it's 20 years later and the world is still standing, which isn't to say our leaders haven't made a collossal mess of the world. But when I listen to more left-wing radio, like WBAI, I do hear a lot of worst-case-scenario predictions. I just can't believe it.

Do you really thing the parliamentary system would make a difference? Tony Blair is still prime minister of England, and he has probably has less support from his citizenry than Bush does.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that a parlimentary system doesn't always help, but I'm leaving open the possibility that it works better on the average. Imho, most of the purpose of government structure is to try to not have a government that's significantly worse than the populace.

[kressel.livejournal.com]

It feels so strange to have been discussing the Left and England with you just yesterday.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Addenda: Would the US be better off with a parlimentary system so that an unpopular head of state could be recalled? Is it remotely conceivable that such a thing could happen?

One fundamental problem that we have with this sort of thing is that the United States doesn't have a distinct head of state and head of government.

Modern monarchies have a monarch as a head of state, and a prime minister as a head of government. Israel, for instance, has president as head of state, and a prime minister as head of government.

We have a president who serves both roles.

Officially, of course, we don't HAVE a head of state at all. If anything, our Constitution fills that role, and that's how I use it.

The problem is that attacking the head of state is attacking the state, and is unpatriotic. Now, theoretically, that shouldn't be a problem in the US, since we don't HAVE a head of state in that sense. But the vast majority of the public treats the president as if he WAS a head of state in that sense, which is why people consider opposition to the president to be unpatriotic.

So, in other words, I think that changing to a parlimetary system wouldn't change the situation, since the ACTUAL problem is the confusion of "state" and "government," and "head of state" and "head of government."

Paper trails

[darius.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I haven't been keeping up, but I like http://verifiedvoting.org

Re: Paper trails

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That looks like a good one.

We don't have a real working left in this country

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

You might want to Google the Japanese Communist Party which is probably the premiere example of a sane working leftist party. They're something like 3rd party in Diet seats and have forced Japan to consider the damages done in WWII, so they're an active loyal opposition (the Chinese CP in the 50s tried to subvert them and failed).


Also, the real conservatives aren't too happy with the current state of affairs, either. I found this site http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/thoughts_on_fmfm_1-a.htm
through William Gibson's blog. If you have a rss feed reader, you can subscribe to it.

Being actually responsible for decision making is sobering. The American fringe politicos rarely have this opportunity, thus the screaming and catastrophizing. And yeah, I've done it, too.