I Think My World is Upside Down

[Foxfyre]

It has been a long time now that I felt that all was okay with my world.

I was reading over the headlines on several news sites this morning and scanned the topics in several USMB forums. And it is depressing guys. The world seems upside down these days.

--The Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, would not acknowledge the existence of radical Islam at a hearing before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and refused to acknowledge it had something to with the plot in NYC. But he is gung ho to use his power to challenge Arizona's recent immigration law while admitting that he hasn't read the law.

--The ACLU will not defend those who respect and demand enforcement of the law, but files suit against a state that presumes to do so.

--The President has nominated to US Supreme Court a former Harvard Law School Dean, former college professor, a “softball player,” a woman who practically grovels at his feet, one with scant legal and zero judicial experience, one who wrote an ode to socialism, a woman who is hostile to guns, and a woman who kicked the military off campus which, in his words, was not to increase the stature and competency of the Court but rather to make the Court “look like America;”

--A bunch of parents in Florida apparently believe it is ok to allow 7 year-old girls to dress up in skimpy outfits and dance provocatively, even suggestively in public.

--An enormous mosque is apparently being built just blocks from ground zero in Manhattan, and taxpayer dollars are supporting a mosque in Virginia while the ACLU challenges any form of religious symbol on village or county seals.

--The Space Shuttle program launched Atlantis for the last time leaving space travel to the Russians and Chinese while our entire economy and national defense relies ever more on satellites.

--Schools increasingly focus on boosting children's self esteem by creating illusions of success rather than achieving honest and real success.

--Parents increasingly leave the care, raising, and education of their children to hired services rather than seeing that as their solemn responsibility, duty, and a blessing.

--More and more we are seeing one segment of society forced to give up more freedoms and privileges lest another segment of society be offended.

--More and more we are seeing devoutly religious people who express their opinions as more of a threat than we do terrorists committed to destroy, kill, and maim anybody they can.

I could go on and on, but I suspect some of you get my drift.

Is it just me? Or is the world upside down these days?

 

[Truthmatters]

Only for cons who created this mess

 

[Foxfyre]

Thank you for participating TM.

Now I will hope for some responses for people who usually think before they speak. Comments like yours spoken without thinking or any basis in fact are one of the reasons I am depressed.

 

[gslack]

It has been a long time now that I felt that all was okay with my world.

I was reading over the headlines on several news sites this morning and scanned the topics in several USMB forums. And it is depressing guys. The world seems upside down these days.

--The Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, would not acknowledge the existence of radical Islam at a hearing before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and refused to acknowledge it had something to with the plot in NYC. But he is gung ho to use his power to challenge Arizona's recent immigration law while admitting that he hasn't read the law.

--The ACLU will not defend those who respect and demand enforcement of the law, but files suit against a state that presumes to do so.

--The President has nominated to US Supreme Court a former Harvard Law School Dean, former college professor, a “softball player,” a woman who practically grovels at his feet, one with scant legal and zero judicial experience, one who wrote an ode to socialism, a woman who is hostile to guns, and a woman who kicked the military off campus which, in his words, was not to increase the stature and competency of the Court but rather to make the Court “look like America;”

--A bunch of parents in Florida apparently believe it is ok to allow 7 year-old girls to dress up in skimpy outfits and dance provocatively, even suggestively in public.

--An enormous mosque is apparently being built just blocks from ground zero in Manhattan, and taxpayer dollars are supporting a mosque in Virginia while the ACLU challenges any form of religious symbol on village or county seals.

--The Space Shuttle program launched Atlantis for the last time leaving space travel to the Russians and Chinese while our entire economy and national defense relies ever more on satellites.

--Schools increasingly focus on boosting children's self esteem by creating illusions of success rather than achieving honest and real success.

--Parents increasingly leave the care, raising, and education of their children to hired services rather than seeing that as their solemn responsibility, duty, and a blessing.

--More and more we are seeing one segment of society forced to give up more freedoms and privileges lest another segment of society be offended.

--More and more we are seeing devoutly religious people who express their opinions as more of a threat than we do terrorists committed to destroy, kill, and maim anybody they can.

I could go on and on, but I suspect some of you get my drift.

Is it just me? Or is the world upside down these days?

Fox society is broken.... We have a dislocation of our values from our sense of good and bad and right or wrong. This is the inevitable result of a monetary based society.

We have an entire world who works to attain material possession. And the problem isn't the people don't care for anything else, its that the media, the governments, the people we look to for guidance and clarity lead us this way.

Everyone says "why shouldn't I get paid" or "he does it why not me" and that makes the rest of pause and think "well why not".... I can tell you why not... Because its wrong and we used to know that back when our lives depended on one another in a visible and obvious way.

200 years ago most people in the us relied on their neighbors and their neighbors relied on them in turn, in a very pronounced way. One would have a couple extra dairy cows, the other had extra grain. They would work together to achieve their goals and sustain one another directly. They wouldn't charge the neighbor for milk only to pay him the following day for the grain to feed the cows. They simply knew this was an ignorant thing to do and would lead to disassociation of the principles of it from the act itself.

This simple and pure system kept men at their word. No one could risk relying on a dishonest man when their survival depended on one another. So the weak and poor character types where weeded out naturally.

Today, we use money to pay for everything. And even now they push for an even more distancing policy of checks or credit cards. As we disassociate the man (or person) from the service, deed, or act; we take away the feelings and moral/ethical code which kept us good and decent.

In short we have taken the understanding of mutually assured well being, and twisted it to rely solely on a material tool.

When we buy food we don't have to think of the farmer or livestock man. Part of it is because the food is now from a company mostly, and the other part is because we never see the farmer or those who made it possible. We do not get that personal contact to remind us of the human being that made it possible...

If we need something desperately we do not go to our friend up the street who works at a bank and get a good deal on a loan. We go to the bank but the man on the other end is rarely our friend, and usually the only good deal will be on the side of the bank. A bank usually part of a larger bank...

These things and many more contribute to our decay. This will continue until we get back to our humanity again...

 

[Samson]

Guess what?

If you went camping for a decade, it wouldn't be any worse when you returned.

And if it was, there would have been nothing you could've done about it.

Don't Worry.

Be Happy.

 

[Foxfyre]

Guess what?

If you went camping for a decade, it wouldn't be any worse when you returned.

And if it was, there would have been nothing you could've done about it.

Don't Worry.

Be Happy.

I'm thinking about what Gslack said and wondering how much of that I actually agree with--I'll get back to it after I think it through Gslack. . . .

But there's a part of me that really wants to take Samson's advice too:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9K4BKkLaCI]YouTube - Bobby McFerrin - Don't Worry Be Happy[/ame]

 

[gslack]

Guess what?

If you went camping for a decade, it wouldn't be any worse when you returned.

And if it was, there would have been nothing you could've done about it.

Don't Worry.

Be Happy.

I'm thinking about what Gslack said and wondering how much of that I actually agree with--I'll get back to it after I think it through Gslack. . . .

But there's a part of me that really wants to take Samson's advice too:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9K4BKkLaCI]YouTube - Bobby McFerrin - Don't Worry Be Happy[/ame]

Well don't take anything I said as a inevitable doom... We will get it right sometime.... I have faith in humanity. Might be a while but we will come around....

 

[Foxfyre]

Well don't take anything I said as a inevitable doom... We will get it right sometime.... I have faith in humanity. Might be a while but we will come around....

Oh I didn't take your comments as 'inevitable doom' and if I gave that impression, I apologize. The 'eternal optimist' under my screen name is a true description of my attitude most of the time.

But looking at the opposite perspectives between you and Samson, I think about my husband's mother who when asked why she named him and his twin what she did, replied that she didn't put any thought into it because she didn't think it would matter. She didn't think there would be any world by the time they grew up.

I think about my own mother who used to comment that the world seemed so much harsher and less fun and less positive when I was a kid than it was when she was a kid. And yet to me the world was just fine then and I much preferred it to the world now.

So will today's kids look back on these times as the 'good old days' and see values and M.O. that they want to be reinstated? Or will they prefer the here and now as some do and will only see the negatives of the past?

 

[Coyote]

It has been a long time now that I felt that all was okay with my world.

Maybe it's "upside down" because this is not very accurate? Although, in fairness, I felt the world was very dark under the Bush administration, reflecting my own ideological bias'....

--The Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, would not acknowledge the existence of radical Islam at a hearing before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and refused to acknowledge it had something to with the plot in NYC. But he is gung ho to use his power to challenge Arizona's recent immigration law while admitting that he hasn't read the law.

Apples and oranges....there is no point of comparison between those two things. Arizona's recent law has the potential to be discrimminatory and will likely face court challenges to determine it's constitutionality.

That has nothing to do with whether or not to "acknowledge" (what does that mean exactly) radical Islam in the NYC plot - which, in reality appears to have more to do with getting back at the U.S. for it's attack on Talibon sites in Pakistan then it does with the religion. Concentrating on radical Islam doesn't offer any solutions and more likely, gets in the way.

--The ACLU will not defend those who respect and demand enforcement of the law, but files suit against a state that presumes to do so.

That's another "apples and oranges" comparision. The ACLU's mission is the protection of civil rights and unless those who demand enforcement of the law are having their civil rights endangered - what exactly can ACLU "defend"?

--A bunch of parents in Florida apparently believe it is ok to allow 7 year-old girls to dress up in skimpy outfits and dance provocatively, even suggestively in public.

Gotta agree with you there...but, it's nothing new - remember the expose on the child talent show industry after Jonbenet Ramsey's murder?

--An enormous mosque is apparently being built just blocks from ground zero in Manhattan, ...

Religious freedom applies to all.

...and taxpayer dollars are supporting a mosque in Virginia while the ACLU challenges any form of religious symbol on village or county seals.

Inaccurate and also "apples and oranges". The census bureau is RENTING building space. That's hardly supporting a mosque and more than renting space from other religious organizations is supporting them beyond a landlord/tenant relationship.

...which has nothing at all to do with the government actively supporting religious symbols as in the ACLU challanges (and yes, some of them are ridiculous).

--The Space Shuttle program launched Atlantis for the last time leaving space travel to the Russians and Chinese while our entire economy and national defense relies ever more on satellites.

I was sad about that...though for different reasons....

--Schools increasingly focus on boosting children's self esteem by creating illusions of success rather than achieving honest and real success.

Yup...agree there.

--Parents increasingly leave the care, raising, and education of their children to hired services rather than seeing that as their solemn responsibility, duty, and a blessing.

Yup....

--More and more we are seeing one segment of society forced to give up more freedoms and privileges lest another segment of society be offended.

What "freedoms and priviledges"?

--More and more we are seeing devoutly religious people who express their opinions as more of a threat than we do terrorists committed to destroy, kill, and maim anybody they can.

umh......many of those terrorists are "devoutly religious" people....religious radicalization - and acting on those beliefs - is not unique to any one religion. If acting on those beliefs endangers someone than yes - they should be treated just like any other terrorist or terrorist wannabe.

I could go on and on, but I suspect some of you get my drift.

Is it just me? Or is the world upside down these days?

Eh....I think you and I are just old farts....

 

[Samson]

So will today's kids look back on these times as the 'good old days' and see values and M.O. that they want to be reinstated? Or will they prefer the here and now as some do and will only see the negatives of the past?

Kids.

Well, lets think about it:

No Bills
No Responsibilities

Yeah, I think they'll look back on the good ol' days.

 

[Foxfyre]

Eh....I think you and I are just old farts....

No argument here.

And on the points you disagreed with my perceptions, for now we should just mostly agree to disagree because we are almost certainly coming from different points of view.

I will admit that I don't understand how some come to see the world as say Truthmatters or you see it? And of course that is part of the problem in my world being upside down. I grew up in a society where of course there were those out of step with the majority on basic social values, but for the most part we all pretty much agreed on what was right and wrong, good or evil, constructive or destructive.

It was a world, just as an example, that the ACLU would not presume to challenge a historical religious symbol on a village seal just to boost their own cash income. To presume to do so would have been seen by a very large majority as ludicrous, obscenely wrong, trampling on religious freedom, etc. etc. etc. And yet in those days, there was no 'threat of a religious right' and no fear of any kind that the USA might become a theocracy or even that the 'religious right' would presume to take away anybody's rights.

So when did that change? And how did it come about? And why?

It was much better before.

 

[eots]

It has been a long time now that I felt that all was okay with my world.

I was reading over the headlines on several news sites this morning and scanned the topics in several USMB forums. And it is depressing guys. The world seems upside down these days.

--The Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, would not acknowledge the existence of radical Islam at a hearing before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and refused to acknowledge it had something to with the plot in NYC. But he is gung ho to use his power to challenge Arizona's recent immigration law while admitting that he hasn't read the law.

--The ACLU will not defend those who respect and demand enforcement of the law, but files suit against a state that presumes to do so.

--The President has nominated to US Supreme Court a former Harvard Law School Dean, former college professor, a “softball player,” a woman who practically grovels at his feet, one with scant legal and zero judicial experience, one who wrote an ode to socialism, a woman who is hostile to guns, and a woman who kicked the military off campus which, in his words, was not to increase the stature and competency of the Court but rather to make the Court “look like America;”

--A bunch of parents in Florida apparently believe it is ok to allow 7 year-old girls to dress up in skimpy outfits and dance provocatively, even suggestively in public.

--An enormous mosque is apparently being built just blocks from ground zero in Manhattan, and taxpayer dollars are supporting a mosque in Virginia while the ACLU challenges any form of religious symbol on village or county seals.

--The Space Shuttle program launched Atlantis for the last time leaving space travel to the Russians and Chinese while our entire economy and national defense relies ever more on satellites.

--Schools increasingly focus on boosting children's self esteem by creating illusions of success rather than achieving honest and real success.

--Parents increasingly leave the care, raising, and education of their children to hired services rather than seeing that as their solemn responsibility, duty, and a blessing.

--More and more we are seeing one segment of society forced to give up more freedoms and privileges lest another segment of society be offended.

--More and more we are seeing devoutly religious people who express their opinions as more of a threat than we do terrorists committed to destroy, kill, and maim anybody they can.

I could go on and on, but I suspect some of you get my drift.

Is it just me? Or is the world upside down these days?

(Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)

You've got to pick up the pieces
C'mon, sort your trash
You better pull yourself back together
Maybe you've got too much cash
Better call, call the law
When you gonna turn yourself in? Yeah
You're a politician
Don't become one of Hitler's children

Bonzo goes to bitburg then goes out for a cup of tea
As I watched it on TV somehow it really bothered me
Drank in all the bars in town for an extended foreign policy
Pick up the pieces

My brain is hanging upside down
I need something to slow me down

Shouldn't wish you happiness, wish her the very best
Fifty thousand dollar dress
Shaking hands with your highness
See through you like cellophane
You watch the world complain, but you do it anyway
Who am I, am I to say


The Ramones Lyrics, My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down Lyrics >>

 

[Foxfyre]

It has been a long time now that I felt that all was okay with my world.

I was reading over the headlines on several news sites this morning and scanned the topics in several USMB forums. And it is depressing guys. The world seems upside down these days.

--The Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, would not acknowledge the existence of radical Islam at a hearing before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and refused to acknowledge it had something to with the plot in NYC. But he is gung ho to use his power to challenge Arizona's recent immigration law while admitting that he hasn't read the law.

--The ACLU will not defend those who respect and demand enforcement of the law, but files suit against a state that presumes to do so.

--The President has nominated to US Supreme Court a former Harvard Law School Dean, former college professor, a “softball player,” a woman who practically grovels at his feet, one with scant legal and zero judicial experience, one who wrote an ode to socialism, a woman who is hostile to guns, and a woman who kicked the military off campus which, in his words, was not to increase the stature and competency of the Court but rather to make the Court “look like America;”

--A bunch of parents in Florida apparently believe it is ok to allow 7 year-old girls to dress up in skimpy outfits and dance provocatively, even suggestively in public.

--An enormous mosque is apparently being built just blocks from ground zero in Manhattan, and taxpayer dollars are supporting a mosque in Virginia while the ACLU challenges any form of religious symbol on village or county seals.

--The Space Shuttle program launched Atlantis for the last time leaving space travel to the Russians and Chinese while our entire economy and national defense relies ever more on satellites.

--Schools increasingly focus on boosting children's self esteem by creating illusions of success rather than achieving honest and real success.

--Parents increasingly leave the care, raising, and education of their children to hired services rather than seeing that as their solemn responsibility, duty, and a blessing.

--More and more we are seeing one segment of society forced to give up more freedoms and privileges lest another segment of society be offended.

--More and more we are seeing devoutly religious people who express their opinions as more of a threat than we do terrorists committed to destroy, kill, and maim anybody they can.

I could go on and on, but I suspect some of you get my drift.

Is it just me? Or is the world upside down these days?

(Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)

Appropriate. Catches the mood exactly.

 

[Granny]

Well don't take anything I said as a inevitable doom... We will get it right sometime.... I have faith in humanity. Might be a while but we will come around....

Oh I didn't take your comments as 'inevitable doom' and if I gave that impression, I apologize. The 'eternal optimist' under my screen name is a true description of my attitude most of the time.

But looking at the opposite perspectives between you and Samson, I think about my husband's mother who when asked why she named him and his twin what she did, replied that she didn't put any thought into it because she didn't think it would matter. She didn't think there would be any world by the time they grew up.

I think about my own mother who used to comment that the world seemed so much harsher and less fun and less positive when I was a kid than it was when she was a kid. And yet to me the world was just fine then and I much preferred it to the world now.

So will today's kids look back on these times as the 'good old days' and see values and M.O. that they want to be reinstated? Or will they prefer the here and now as some do and will only see the negatives of the past?

Did you and I know each other at some time in the past? Neighbors maybe? Same HS? I hear you ... but alas I canna share me antidepressants with ye.

 

[Coyote]

Eh....I think you and I are just old farts....

No argument here.

And on the points you disagreed with my perceptions, for now we should just mostly agree to disagree because we are almost certainly coming from different points of view.

I will admit that I don't understand how some come to see the world as say Truthmatters or you see it? And of course that is part of the problem in my world being upside down. I grew up in a society where of course there were those out of step with the majority on basic social values, but for the most part we all pretty much agreed on what was right and wrong, good or evil, constructive or destructive.

It was a world, just as an example, that the ACLU would not presume to challenge a historical religious symbol on a village seal just to boost their own cash income. To presume to do so would have been seen by a very large majority as ludicrous, obscenely wrong, trampling on religious freedom, etc. etc. etc. And yet in those days, there was no 'threat of a religious right' and no fear of any kind that the USA might become a theocracy or even that the 'religious right' would presume to take away anybody's rights.

So when did that change? And how did it come about? And why?

It was much better before.

A world upside down....there is an interesting short film called Koyaanisqats (Hopi for " Life Out of Balance") that explores how life has gotten so out of balance - not in specific ways like you mention but in more general patterns. It starts with the slow process' of change - water carving canyons, village life etc up into urban mass living and high speed everything...everything just happening faster and faster with no balance. It has no dialogue only fantastic filming and music. But our world is out of balance - the pace of change is so rapid we can't adapt to it and culture, ethics, and morality have no time to evolve.

That's just my opinion....though we differ in the particulars, I find myself stranded in the middle of the stream much more lately.

 

[Foxfyre]

Eh....I think you and I are just old farts....

No argument here.

And on the points you disagreed with my perceptions, for now we should just mostly agree to disagree because we are almost certainly coming from different points of view.

I will admit that I don't understand how some come to see the world as say Truthmatters or you see it? And of course that is part of the problem in my world being upside down. I grew up in a society where of course there were those out of step with the majority on basic social values, but for the most part we all pretty much agreed on what was right and wrong, good or evil, constructive or destructive.

It was a world, just as an example, that the ACLU would not presume to challenge a historical religious symbol on a village seal just to boost their own cash income. To presume to do so would have been seen by a very large majority as ludicrous, obscenely wrong, trampling on religious freedom, etc. etc. etc. And yet in those days, there was no 'threat of a religious right' and no fear of any kind that the USA might become a theocracy or even that the 'religious right' would presume to take away anybody's rights.

So when did that change? And how did it come about? And why?

It was much better before.

A world upside down....there is an interesting short film called Koyaanisqats (Hopi for " Life Out of Balance") that explores how life has gotten so out of balance - not in specific ways like you mention but in more general patterns. It starts with the slow process' of change - water carving canyons, village life etc up into urban mass living and high speed everything...everything just happening faster and faster with no balance. It has no dialogue only fantastic filming and music. But our world is out of balance - the pace of change is so rapid we can't adapt to it and culture, ethics, and morality have no time to evolve.

That's just my opinion....though we differ in the particulars, I find myself stranded in the middle of the stream much more lately.

To Granny I would say that I think when I, and possibly you, were kids, there wasn't that much difference between the basic core values shared by most across the entire country. So even if we grew up on opposite coasts, most of the people around us shared the same core values. We all of course didn't always stick to them in our conduct, but we knew that when we didn't, most people would see us as being in the wrong. But we might have grown up in the same neighborhood too.

And to Coyote, that is a beautiful metaphor to illustrate what I'm feeling: stranded in the middle of the stream and being uncertain which bank to try for.

 

[Foxfyre]

Further observation on Coyote's post:

But our world is out of balance - the pace of change is so rapid we can't adapt to it and culture, ethics, and morality have no time to evolve.

Some time back where I business was going full steam, I would do field work during the day, worked out or did fun stuff when most of the world was still up after work, and then did paper work late in the evening. With the radio running in the background from 11 pm on, I started listening to Art Bell. Now Art dealt in a lot of wierd stuff - alien visitations and things like that - but he had a theory about a 'quickening' that Coyote summed up in the quoted sentence above.

The 'quickening' is a phenomenon when everything on Earth begins speeding up toward some great cataclysmic conclusion and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

Now I don't believe in a great deal of the stuff Art featured on his program, but I have given some thought to the 'quickening' as a good illustration of a social phenomenon more than some kind of cosmic event.

So maybe I'm not going nuts but several of us are feeling it these days?

 

[JW Frogen]

Just move to China, they are on top of the world now.

That reminds me, I have to flip my Rand McNally globe over.

 

[Foxfyre]

Just move to China, they are on top of the world now.

That reminds me, I have to flip my Rand McNally globe over.

I can't be Chinese. I would never be able to learn to write the language.

 

[George Costanza]

Thank you for participating TM.

Now I will hope for some responses for people who usually think before they speak. Comments like yours spoken without thinking or any basis in fact are one of the reasons I am depressed.

With all due respect, TruthMatters makes an excellent point.

There is a reason why things don't seem to be going the way conservatives want them to be going these days - there is a Democratic administration in the White House. And why is that? Eight years of abuse of governmental power by the Bush administration, not to mention the creation of a nightmarish economy.

Additionally, many of the examples cited in the OP are debatable as presented. For example, the ACLU reporesents all kinds of people - in fact, whether conservatives like it or not, they often represent conservative people and conservative interests.

Perhaps, when viewed in the context of what has preceded the present administration, turning something like that upside down might be a very GOOD thing for America.