I’ve written and ranted at length about the decline of the U.S., like here, here, here, here, here, or here (or just click on my Blowing off steam category).
I have nearly an album’s worth of songs on the subject [Update: access the Bye Bye Murka album here]. It might include the following track list:
But something strange happened recently. It seems that I just woke up one day, with different feelings on the matter. My emotional investment, my outrage, my despair, my disgust, my anguish, which gave rise to the aforementioned ranting, raving, composing and singing, seemed to have receded.
I noticed this had happened while discussing the recent tasering incident by email with Matt Love, my partner in crime. I had written this sentence, as a lark:
[…] at this point, I’m past anger, denial, bargaining, depression and have reached the acceptance stage. I’ve accepted that the US are lost to civilisation for good.
Yep, it’s the old Kübler-Ross model which describes, in five discrete stages, the process by which people deal with grief and tragedy.
I don’t know if any particular event is responsible. Maybe seeing the media falling for the administration’s Iran war propaganda, even though it would have be an opportunity to redeem themselves after falling for the Iraq war propaganda only yesterday. Or the usual indifference of the population, more interested in Britney’s child custody woes.
The US has become a fascist theocracy, where policy is dictated by the selfish, short-term interest of its corporations, with the (at the very least tacit) blessing of its brain-dead population. The Democrats won’t rock the boat, because they know who’s signing the checks.
It is a tragedy. And a lot of people are going through the five stages of grief, at least outside of the US.
It’s not that I don’t care any more. It still registers, intellectually, but it doesn’t furiously stir my emotional pot anymore.
Maybe it won’t last. Maybe I’m in the eye of the storm, but something tells me that for better or worse, I’ve moved on to acceptance.
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