I give up, we lost.....

[Bennyboy]

the past week tells me that there is nothing we can do to stop the country from becoming another casualty of "Austerity". it tells me that whatever the corps want they get and no manner or amount of calls, petitions or whatever is going to change that. we, as a people are done.

We have oil companies in charge of the media. No Fly Zones. Police taping is illegal. No recording anything. except the Gov't recording you that seems to be okay.

Keystone is a done deal. Count on that one.

SS Chained CPI etc.

Not just Obama but Dem senators are on this very same bandwagon.....

I give up, it is not worth fighting anymore. Poeple don't care, tehy are not protesting, they are doing nothing.

You get the Gov't you deserve and that is EXACTLY what we have.

[villager]

1. There won't be any meaningful change until after the empire collapses...

...because "both" parties are in fact supporters of the current empire...

[Bennyboy]

3. but no one seems to want to do anything

And I am not talking just politicians but the people. Whee is the marches on DC? Where is the demand for overturning Corporate Personhood? I mean some people are working that, I surely am, but it does not seem to be resonating with people.

[villager]

10. Part of the genius of the system is giving people just enough calories, and entertainment...

...along, of course, with enough constant low-grade stress/panic, to keep them off the streets...

It will probably take no food (or maybe just no easy access to burgers) to rally the masses...

[Egalitarian Thug]

11. They flat-out ignored millions of people in the streets trying to stop the invasion of Iraq.

In America, if it isn't on TV, it didn't happen.

[valerief]

30. Bingo! Marches won't change anything. A mass work stoppage might. But how to organize that?

Impossible. We're all flailing in the pool. Some of us can swim, some can't. If we could reach out and grab another's hand, none of us would drown. But our eyes are full of chlorine and the 1%ers keep peeing in the pool.

[Egalitarian Thug]

37. That's one hell of an extended metaphor, bravo!

You've hit on exactly why the Thugs are working to get out, there is no hope that we can see any longer.

Between the mean-spirited authoritarians that are so concerned that somebody, somewhere is doing something they don't like, that they are happy to demolish any principle of equality and liberty or to simply ignore what is happening, and the just-too-stupid-to-understand-what-the-hell-is-going-on, we just don't see any reasonable hope of averting disaster.

We're pretty good swimmers, and while we will grieve for the good people that will suffer horribly as this atrocity goes forward, we don't intend to be among them.

[klyon]

49. It might be better to stop buying

except for food and other essentials but that would throw people out of work
threaten strike and you will be fired
vote republican and bring down the whole economy
no real good solutions

[October]

42. Agree.They just didn't cover/report/show/photograph the millions who protested the invasion of Iraq

We've been marginalized by the media, and have not figured out how to handle that -- marching, petitions, nothing seems to work any more.

I hardly think it's apathy - look at the numbers of people who are FOR strengthening background checks when it comes to buying guns. Clearly a majority in every state WANTS more background checks. The media ignores, so it doesn't exist. Or, they cover it with condescension and lies.

[Nay]

44. Yes. I was there, along with about 500,000 others, and the media and pols acted like

nothing was going on.

[Egalitarian Thug]

56. We were in LA and those were far and away the biggest masses of people I've ever seen there.

It got a 10 second cut-away on channel 5 and nothing at all anywhere else. I saw the same in city after city all across the nation, massive protests that were all but completely ignored as every single corporate media asset beat the war drums.

It was blatant collusion in direct violation of the Sherman Act and dozens of other federal laws and those charged with enforcing the law successfully refused to enforce them.

[tblue]

33. The marches on Washington do squat

except make us feel we've done something. How many marches have we had? And what difference have any of them made in the last, say, 10-12 years? This isn't the 1960s when a huge turnout shook the government to the bone. Marching no longer gets even a mention on the news and if its not on TV, it's like it never happened. Our politicians are not troubled by peaceful, earnest people gathering. They have us on 'ignore.' So, oh my gosh, I despair. I really do not know what to do anymore.

[xtraxritical]

45. I flew from LA to Wash DC for the OWS demonstration at Freedom Plaza

in October 2011. It felt like something was "happening" at the time but it seems to have petered out. The movement has no focus and the winter weather but an end to it. Oh hell...

[DeSwiss]

31. Willful Noncompliance Until Disclosure.

What America needs is some balls

GOP honcho Mitch O'Connell says what America needs is for Republicans to finish beating the snot out of Obama, and strengthen the already rich by eliminating taxes for them and shifting the burden onto us. Obama says America needs to find bipartisan cooperation with the party of ruthlessness. Elton John says that America needs more compassion (Thanks, we never noticed).

What America really needs is a wall-to-wall people's insurrection, preferably based on force and fear of force, the only thing oligarchs understand. And even then the odds are not good. The oligarchs have all the legal power, police, jails and prisons, surveillance and firepower. Not to mention a docile populace.

Shy of open insurrection, a nationwide refusal to pay income taxes would certainly shake things up. But broader America is happy in the sense they know happiness as an undisturbed regimen of toil, stress and commodity consumption. Despite the way it looks in the news, most Americans remain untouched by foreclosure, bankruptcy and unemployment. So risking loss of their work-buy-sleep cycle in an insurrection looks to be sheer lunacy to them. Like cows, they are kept comfortable in the pure animal sense to be milked for profit. Animal comfort kills all thoughts of revolution. Hell, half of mankind would be thrilled with the average American's present material situation.

And besides, revolutionary history does not exist for Americans. The 20th Century's successful revolutions in Russia, Germany, Mexico, China, and Cuba are wired into our minds as history's evil failures, because all but one were Marxist. (The only successful non-Marxist revolution of the 20th Century was Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution).

So if we are talking change through revolt, we're necessarily talking about deconditioning because the thing we fear already has a life deep in our own consciousness. Deconditioning from cultural ignorance is at the heart of any insurrectionary politics.

Deconditioning also involves risk and suffering. But it is transformative, freeing the self from helplessness and fear. It unleashes the fifth freedom, the right to an autonomous consciousness. That makes deconditioning about as individual and personal act as is possible. Maybe the only genuine individual act.

Joe Bageant, AMERCA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM?

Willful Noncompliance.

Disclosure Now.

[xtraxritical]

48. American's know all about all that fire power and prisons. Most Americans

have families to think of and are extremely against street riots. I lived thru street riots and cities burning in the 1960's also in LA in the 80s. How are you going to organize a nation wide tax protest? I feel your angst but it's hopeless. The proper thing for the individual to do is boycott large corporate entities and if possible become self-sufficient living off the grid.

[randome]

2. Oh yes, let's lie down and die.

Health care that addresses pre-existing conditions and contraception.
Gay rights are going forward.
Gun control is going forward.
More equitable taxation is going forward.
Chained CPI is a proposal that will never see the light of day.
There is no money in Obama's proposal for Keystone.

But if you'd rather lie down and die, go for it. Just be a dear and resign from DU while you're at it, will you? We don't need this brand of defeatism.

[FSogol]

4. Well said. We need a "The Sky is Falling" Forum.

[SidDithers]

27. They need a "sky is falling" board...nt

Sid

[AverageJoe90]

57. Truth is, I've been saying that same thing for a little while now.....n/t

[Bennyboy]

12. Party on....

Health care that addresses pre-existing conditions and contraception. (written by and for the HMOS, the HC industry and big Pharma.)
Gay rights are going forward. (This one I will give you)
Gun control is going forward. (Yeah right...background checks. What a freaking load of crap. every mass shooter would have passed any and all checks)
More equitable taxation is going forward. really? I don't recall Obama saying EXXON, GE you need to start paying taxes....


Chained CPI is a proposal that will never see the light of day. But a compromise will occur and he gave up way too much in his original bargaining position.To even mention cutting SS and Medicare is bad place to start.

There is no money in Obama's proposal for Keystone. Gonna happen, mark my words.

[randome]

22. If you want to give up like the OP, no one is standing in your way.

But progress has been made. It is not enough but we have an obstructionist Republican majority in the House, you know.

[sharp_stick]

26. He is the OP

I guess he hasn't completely given up yet as he is still "on the grid". It makes him a lot easier to find ya know.

[calimary]

28. Agreed. Hey, remember just a few days ago ALL media was talking about how the filibuster was gonna

sink ANY gun controls - at even the DISCUSSION level. "Not gonna happen, not gonna happen, hopeless, hopeless, hopeless." We heard it again and again.

And look what DID happen. We're not out of the woods by any means, but PRESSURE WORKS!!!

If any of this stuff you don't like does go through - it's because...

As we've heard some of these Congresspeople and Senators admitting - they hold a town meeting and who attends? All the louts and loud-mouths and bullies and baggers crowd in and shout everyone down and are rude and hostile and aggressive, and nobody with an opposing view is heard (possibly because those with a different view just don't get off their asses and GO TO SOME OF THESE MEETINGS, and make themselves heard)! They cede the point before the point is even made.

And the result? Said Congresspeople and Senators get the idea that THAT point of view is the only one out there, or the majority one, or the only one that counts.

LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED when the Sandy Hook parents went to Capitol Hill and faced down every Senator and forced them to SEE, to LOOK, and taste, and feel the anguish - sitting there two or three feet away, living and breathing and in many cases sobbing into kleenex that was being passed around by the box. As in - "look me in the eye and tell me you can't do anything about this. (Proceed, governor.)" And look how that turned the tide. What was it sixty-EIGHT Senators who voted to proceed with debate? That seemingly invincible filibuster by that obstinate self-flattering thinks-he's-presidential-material jerk rand paul - never made it out of the gate.

Howard Dean said it a few years back - the only way you lose is if you give up.

Stand up and be counted. Let 'em hear you, and hear your anger at what they're failing to do. Heck, I didn't post all those TOLL FREE numbers to the Capitol Hill switchboard in my sig line for nothing, you know.

IF THEY THINK YOU DON'T CARE, THEY WON'T EITHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[randome]

34. Howard Dean was right!

[RKP5637]

13. Well said, some things are getting better. It's a tough uphill battle, but in many areas things are

getting better IMO. Yep, I have some major areas of disappointment ... but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater!

[Bluenorthwest]

18. When you say 'we' to whom to you refer, other than yourself?

Are you authorized by the admins to speak for the community? Or is there some other 'we' you claim to speak for? Is it the royal we? Does it mean 'me and the McCathyite in my pocket' or what?
Because you do not speak for me.

[randome]

20. I mean 'we' no more than anyone else on DU who uses the word.

My point is that progress has been made in some areas.

It is never enough, I have no quarrel with that sentiment.

But to say 'I give up' is a ridiculous point of view, IMO.

[Maraya1969]

21. Thank you.

Too many people on here are just dire doomsday predictors. It only reduces our chances of winning the next elections.

[zeeland]

29. Yes of course, we are the peanut

gallery and let us never forget to play

cheerleader to anything and everything our great

leader and party puts forth. Damn Liberals and

Progressives just can't learn to shut up and keep

their opinions to themselves, send in their money

and show-up in lock step when we need you to...how hard is that?

[randome]

35. Cheerleading is not needed.

But 'I give up' is not needed, either.

Neither is saying that there is no difference between the parties. There IS.

Make your views known to the WH and your Reps. But don't give up. Don't lie down. Don't hand this country over to the Republicans.

[zeeland]

38. My reps don't even bother

To send follow-up emails after I call or email.
Funny though, I get a beautiful, heartfelt letter
during fundraising.

Many people I suspect vacillate between throwing
their hands in the air and wanting to quit and DOING
everything possible to enact change. Given what
currently feels like huge betrayal, they are entitled
to post their feelings without being admonished as
If they are traitors. That's all I'm say'in.

[randome]

43. Yes, they (and you) are entitled to that.

I think Obama should be held accountable for this. But I don't see the sky is falling based on a proposed budget that will never see the light of day.

At the very least, it was in poor taste to suggest chained CPI. But I don't see Obama as our enemy so I'm willing to give him the benefit of a doubt. Hopefully he'll learn from this mistake.

[robinlynne]

52. Expressing strong frustration at what is going on is not being defeatist. It is being aware. And hum

human. Obama asking in writing for chained CPI is pretty shocking.

[gateley]

5. Oh, Jesus. Do you even think this will come to a vote?

I doubt it. And if it does, the ones doing the voting are those whose futures are on the line in 2014, and they know which way the wind is blowing.

[Honeycombe8]

6. Part of the problem is...people voted for Republicans in Congress.

If there were more Democrats in Congress, none of this would be happening.

[Egalitarian Thug]

14. No, they didn't and that's another huge issue that is ignored.

More people voted for Democratic Representatives, yet the republicans hold the House, and you can find that same fraud in Statehouse after Statehouse all across the country. More citizens want Democrats running their state, yet republicans are holding the majority of offices.

And who's talking about that one?

[Honeycombe8]

19. But they were able to do that because the voters voted for local & state Repubs, to begin with.

So the local & state reps gerrymandered the districts (which is legal).

It still comes back to who the voters voted for. They voted for Republicans local and statewide in a lot of states, which resulted in Republicans in the U.S. Congress.

More Dems were voted for for the House of Representatives, but it didn't matter because of the gerrymandering.

The whole thing is sick.

[Egalitarian Thug]

25. "The whole thing is sick." I think that's kind of the point of the OP. The whole thing is corrupted

by the two divisions of America's Political Party.

There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party ... and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently ... and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties. - Gore Vidal

This is the way it has been since shortly after the revolution and it won't be allowed to change without another.

[boilerbabe]

7. 'this means we need to vote for even MORE Democrats!!111"

because doing the same thing over and over and over getting the same result works soooo well..

[840high]

39. Definition of insanity.

[Autumn]

8. I don't deserve this. I have voted Democrat every election in my life.

I have donated, I have worked the phones, when I could walk I went door to door, I drove people to the polls I did what I needed to do. I protested since Vietnam, I've written letters, I've made phone calls, sent faxes.. I did my fucking part. Maybe it's time to burn the fucking tent down. That's the only way to get the stench of elephant shit out of it.

[Hoyt]

54. Do that, and Chained-CPI will seem like Eldorado, or the good old days.

[spanone]

9. bwahahhhahahaaa

[freshwest]

16. In an unrelated story, the planet Earth was vaporized for an interglactic freeway.

[sheshe2]

46. News at 11? Holy shit.

I missed that story, wait what, we were vaporized?

I am posting from the great beyond now.

[freshwest]

50. LOL! The great beyond. I see your angel wings, too. Thanks for taking the time...

[tabasco]

15. Yawn. More tiresome prattle from comfortable defeatists

who demand instant utopia and will not suffer if the country regresses.

[freshwest]

17. Yes, gearing up for another victory for the progressive agenda just like 2010.

[sheshe2]

23. I have no reason to roll over, I plan to fight.

In addition to what randome posted. This is some of what we have done so far...there is so much more to do.

1. Passed Health Care Reform: After five presidents over a century failed to create universal health insurance, signed the Affordable Care Act (2010). It will cover 32 million uninsured Americans beginning in 2014 and mandates a suite of experimental measures to cut health care cost growth, the number one cause of America’s long-term fiscal problems.

2. Passed the Stimulus: Signed $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 to spur economic growth amid greatest recession since the Great Depression. Weeks after stimulus went into effect, unemployment claims began to subside. Twelve months later, the private sector began producing more jobs than it was losing, and it has continued to do so for twenty-three straight months, creating a total of nearly 3.7 million new private-sector jobs.

7. Turned Around U.S. Auto Industry: In 2009, injected $62 billion in federal money (on top of $13.4 billion in loans from the Bush administration) into ailing GM and Chrysler in return for equity stakes and agreements for massive restructuring. Since bottoming out in 2009, the auto industry has added more than 100,000 jobs. In 2011, the Big Three automakers all gained market share for the first time in two decades. The government expects to lose $16 billion of its investment, less if the price of the GM stock it still owns increases.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_2012/features/obamas_top_50_accomplishments035755.php?page=1

I will add these, I don't know why they are not listed.

Lily Ledbetter act, signed!
Equal pay for equal work!

VAWA
Violence Against Women Act! signed!

[duffyduff]

60. Big whoop. Destroying 80 years of Democratic Party policies, destroying public education,

in bed with Wall Street and billionaire interests.

Those outweigh any so-called achievements.

Wake up, please.

[olddots]

24. I' ve been a pacifist all my life but this time I'm going to fight till I die .

This is a different kind of fight ---do it for nature if you don't care about the human suffering that will happen if we give up .

[Raine]

32. Well I will hope and work for the best but prepare for the worst. Obviously we

(the people) can't count or depend on anyone (or any polit. party) looking out after OUR interests.

[RainDog]

36. The U.S. is investing in the prison economy

iow, the south is now winning in the U.S. as we lock up more people, per capita, than any other nation in the world. Among those we lock up, the majority of them are not caucasians.

prison labor can compete with third-world labor on costs, well, if you don't factor in the taxpayer money that is being funneled to right wing private prison corporations.

Corporatism is another form of slavery.

And our political parties are captives of corporate money.

They indicate they have no allegiance to the American people by making for-profit prisons a reality in the U.S.

So, fuck the govt. if this is their idea of the basic concepts of the Constitution. But when you have religious extremists controlling the life of a nation, this is also what you get. They aren't about unconditional love, they're about control of others.

Punishment for poor children. Hatred for the poor. Hatred for the elderly. Hatred for those who don't want their beliefs to intrude in everyone's lives. It sounds positively nazi, doesn't it?

[HiPointDem]

40. I agree with the sentiment but I don't give up.

[Arugula Latte]

41. Not stopping the corporate takeover of government and not enacting strict campaign finance laws

have done us in.

[caseymoz]

47. Not protesting? What do you think the Occupy movement was?

Remember, they got beaten, they got maced, they got jailed, their property was seized and destroyed. There were protests. They were beaten down.

Now Occupy is trying some different tactics. Getting your head beaten in and being put into a privatized jail gets old fast.

And we should have known after the Iraq protests, the government doesn't care what we think, it doesn't care if we protest.

If you look at Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, you'll realized the people never had control. Governing by the consent of the governed has been a myth.

If you're going to get disillusioned, don't blame the people. The 1% know when to lie and they know how to use force. They're very good at it.

When you consider the Constitution was written by 51 rich white guys, then you know the government is working pretty much the way they designed it: except it would be a one-party state with slavery.

[Armstead]

51. Well there is one consolation....Someday we'll all be dead and none of it will matter

Sorry, I couldn't resist

[L0oniX]

53. Quick ...everyone move to Canada ...because they have all the answers. n/t

[SidDithers]

58. ...

Sid

[patrice]

55. New friends & associates??? I know lots of people who are busy making their own difference.

Some people should consider not being so top-down authoritarian in their assumptions, i.e. if it's not happening up there where "authority" is, it doesn't matter - suggests a slave mentality.

..................

If I/we can't end Corporate Personhood tomorrow and change campaign finance to make it public financing tomorrow and redistrict all of the gerrymandered districts tomorrow and insure our votes with paper ballots, marked by hand and counted in public tomorrow, I can accept my role as a slave and do what a slave does in REACTION to "authority", constructive or destructive, but ALWAYS defined by "authority" nonetheless, or I can do something else, something different, something that "authority" does not define for me positively or negatively, something that I freely choose and that is a concrete step in a direction useful to my own goals, with other people, people different from myself, but also who share certain things that have not been discovered yet.

If ALL of it is ALWAYS ALL about "them", those up there who "have power" over you, it will ALWAYS and FOREVER be about them, NOT you. You can choose to live your life by making it exclusively about them/"authority", or you can choose to live your life by taking your life away from their ownership and making it about you.

No, you are not all powerful, but you do have choices if you honestly want them. If you don't want those choices, have at them/"authority" and accept the consequences of that. Either way, whoever runs your life is, to a significant extent, up to you.

[duffyduff]

59. It's a government by and for gangsters

I know it probably has been linked elsewhere, but this debacle by our president is not a matter of playing 20th-degree chess.

It's who the man really is:

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/11/obamas_entitlement_plan_was_four_years_in_the_making/

To Obama, his plan to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, while funding the Wall Street bailout, was an act of political courage. (In his interview with the Washington Post, he “pledged to expend political capital on the issue.”) It was his long-term plan, even though the polls showed widespread opposition to it. This was a matter not of expediency, but of conscience, for him: He needed to find some way to fund both the ongoing Wall Street bailouts, and the massive federal debt that would be caused by the 2008 Wall Street crash and its resulting plunge in federal tax collections. This “balanced approach,” of tax hikes and spending cuts, would be his solution to both problems.

I remember this, and I was outraged though not surprised knowing where he truly stood on the issues.

Time to wake up and smell the coffee.

[Egalitarian Thug]

61. We didn't lose. We weren't allowed into the game. n/t