EVENT
I just got a form email from Senator Clinton reiterating her support for Net Neutrality, a subject I had written her about many months ago. I appreciate the response, partly because it’s kind of unheard of. I never received a response from Debbie Stabenow regarding her support of the Military Commisions Act, and I often don’t even hear back from people I contact at the Flint Journal.
I’m not saying it’s altruism. I’m just saying it’s nice to hear from people.
Anyway. The title is “Woe is me…”
Not “Woe is me!”
In the spirit of my mood these days, (which is the 28-year old version of histrionic) I’ve been feeling half-disillusioned from my political beliefs ever since around Thanksgiving. It’s very strange because I’m most comfortable and at ease with my more precarious positions. Abortion and so on haven’t really been providing me with any headaches recently, and perhaps this is because I hold compromised or ambivalent positions. Being ambivalent, I don’t have to situate myself within a community. I am only accountable to myself.
On the other hand, given issues of gay marriage, church vs. state, universal health care, the death penalty, and so on — what remain to me essentially black-and-white issues — I have to position myself within a very large community of like-minded opinions. I have to decide what I think of their strategies and the justifications for their positions, which may or may not align with my own, commonalities aside.
Again, not to come across as judgmental, but I’m really uncomfortable with myself. And it seems really weird, internally, because these are issues in which I am confident in my position.
Case in point: Global Warming.
I’ve belived in human-affected warming essentially since I first learned of it in junior high or high school. That’s the early nineties, incidentally. I’ve found the evidence convincing for awhile, and now I find it just barely shy of the smoking gun, if not the actual bullet. Here’s my beef.
If it is a smoking gun, aren’t I guilty of horrible under-reaction? Firing off some emails and blogging on the subject every now and then… is that really a good resume to present my kids and grandkids with? And I’m not alone in this at all… in fact, the number of blogs warning of “apocalypse”… if it really is apocalypse, shouldn’t the response be much more drastic than some emails or blogs? I mean, pardon me, but apocalypse. It isn’t a word to be thrown around. Or if we take a friendlier scenario (which, I don’t know, seems plausible to me) which still involves drought and malnutrition and epidemics and pandemics… let’s be honest, we’re heading in that direction even if we factor out global warming.
Doesn’t this warrant at least the sort of noise that many of our parents made over Civil Rights and Vietnam in the sixties and seventies?
I mean, as a media-interpreted thing, that whole cohort did and does sound collectively sanctimonious, but they did make a lot of noise very effectively, and did achieve a (granted, compromised) success.
Our efforts today seem somehow lacking in comparison, even as the issues are arguably more severe.
And back to the global warming issue, who is really more guilty and responsible?
Someone who didn’t believe that what was happening was happening, and went on doing what they were doing?
Or someone who did believe, and took a basic course of action (emails/blogs/conversation), but oh, nothing that would keep him from watching this or that DVD he’s interested in, and certainly nothing he could call more than an slight annoying rupture of routine?
Most of us, most of the time, have chosen option number two. I certainly have.
But I’d welcome being told I’m wrong, and I’d welcome being cheered up a little bit here.
END OF POST.