tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-178845628822671538.post8633503402792243196..comments2023-10-17T06:31:19.294-07:00Comments on Isolation Incomplete: American sadness.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-178845628822671538.post-77133321744117740072011-02-19T23:07:59.242-08:002011-02-19T23:07:59.242-08:00All my sympathy to everyone suffering out there.
...All my sympathy to everyone suffering out there. <br /><br />@Darwin: the history of American sadness would make a brilliant dissertation, I wish I had thought of that myself. I imagine there is some work done on it already, in bits and pieces in works that do not have that as their sole focus; I do know however that the book "Manufacturing Depression" is a good look at the last few decades of medical and cultural diagnosis of depression.Robin Mariehttp://isolationincomplete.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-178845628822671538.post-62563592076792461452011-02-18T20:39:07.714-08:002011-02-18T20:39:07.714-08:00This post makes me wonder what your thesis will be...This post makes me wonder what your thesis will be about since you shifted your time frame to 20th century: what methodologies would be required to, say, objectify the subject so this business of American “sadness” it might be within the purview of academic historical inquiry.<br /> Your use choice of “sadness” as the operative term for the despair, outrage, confusion, madness, anger, fear, perpetual suffering, woe and death, at the core of our lives of mostly silent desperation, while a form of litotes is possibly more effective than the more intense rhetorical reach in the terms I listed above because the term “sadness” is actually more engagingly, soulfully seductive in referring to the cruel society that is chosen each time someone votes for a right winger—who as Barney Frank notes, think life begins at conception but ends at birth.<br /> As we saw this week, House Republicans, in particular, are literally stealing food from the mouths of babes — nutritional aid to pregnant women and very young children is one of the items on their cutting block — so they can pose, falsely, as deficit hawks. The right wing fanatics continue to freak out about abortion while consistently determined to destroy anything that might benefit not only a pregnant woman but newborn children and toddlers. Consider this pathology of utter indifference if not hostility toward pregnant women while screaming about killing the unborn. The Repugians know this sort of attack on pregnant women is mainly an attack on poor and women of color.<br /> The latest right wing Christian stand, which will likely stall in the Senate, would mean the end of federal support for Planned Parenthood that each year provides more than 800,000 women with breast exams, more than 4 million Americans with testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and 2.5 million people with contraception, which, not for nothing, is the stuff that prevents unintended pregnancy, and thus abortion, to begin with.<br /> And at the end of today another 123 people will die from lack of health insurance to make the annual total of 45,000 dead from no health insurance thanks to the right wing approach to health care as Alan Grayson said consists of don’t get sick, but if you do, die quickly.<br /> What could be more tragic than studying American history and the cruelty it has imposed on millions in the name of a perverse form of ruthless, morally degenerate “individualism” that is code for corporate depravity and greed.<br /> From whence deep in the American psyche does this indifference to having not a heartbeat’s interest in the suffering of our fellow citizens? That is what I think is the most interesting, and profoundly challenge and worthwhile topic of historical inquiry, and goes deeper than providing intellectual explanations of how the ruling class since the 19th century has been able to make “socialism” a dirty word vs. every other advanced nation on the planet that provides longer, healthier lives in the form of a welfare state that shows a measure of regard for others that our morally debased nation still cannot comprehend.Charles Darwinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16589398609604448699noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-178845628822671538.post-32617537785959792632011-02-18T16:12:35.939-08:002011-02-18T16:12:35.939-08:00I have become quite intimate with sadness and hope...I have become quite intimate with sadness and hopelessness. I'm struggling against the pressing deep everyday just to break through the surface and gasp a little air.versalspectrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12434095666598914069noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-178845628822671538.post-9731124508411128752011-02-18T05:48:58.852-08:002011-02-18T05:48:58.852-08:00Sadness. Uncerainty. I wouldn't want to be you...Sadness. Uncerainty. I wouldn't want to be young in America. I was not. So, only the second part of my life is given to a sadness.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com