Have things gotten really worse, or have I just become an Old Fart? [View all]

[Armstead]

Despite my occasional feistiness on DU over the years, I've always been an optimist underneath. One of the reasons I have been cantankerous at times is because I honestly believed we could do better. I always have felt that our country was capable of improvement.

It has been grounded in what I would describe as hopeful anger.

But something has been building up that feels fundamentally different. I got so pissed off I posted a couple of venting threads here in the last few days that were more downbeat than usual.

But thats just the tip of the iceburg. Obviously a lot of You folks on DU are pissed off and frustrated too.....But what else is new? DUers are always pissed off....But it seems much deeper now.

And its not just DU. Just about Everyone I know in the 3D world is also frustrated, angry, demoralized...hopeless at the state of things.

Heck even one of my freeper friends feel similarly.

Its gotten so bad it almost seems to be transcending the usual political stuff. It doesn't matter whether President Obama is good, bad or indifferent. ITs bigger than him. Its getting bigger than the other D vs. R battles. All that stuff seems more and more irrelevant.

It's getting bigger than individual issues. They too seem irrelevant, compared to the rate of breakdown that's occurring.

IN other words ITS BAD.

I'm 61, and I've been paying attention since the 70s. Experienced a lot if up and down cycles and periods of hope alternating with frustration.....

But I can not remember a time when it seemed this bad, or when the problems seemed so intractable.

It seems to me that we're finally reaching a point where if we don't -- as Samuel Jackson said -- Wake the fuck up, we're going to cross a threshold I don't even want to think about.

Or else maybe I've just crossed a personal chronological threshold and am officially just an old fart. GET OFF MY LAWN.