do you sense a kind of mass madness going on?

[mopaul]

sort of a static panic, a collective sense of insanity, a growing, contagious nervous breakdown?

or is it just.....me?

[leftofthedial]

1. it's just you

everything else is wonderful.

just fucking wonderful.

[Erika]

11. No way can this country last another 3 years under this idiot!

W is heading us in the wrong direction on every issue. People are mad and depressed. The normal worker's buying power is going down. We have the homeless and uninsured increasing constantly. Iraq is a total mess with our troops and innocent Iraqis dying daily. We are hated world wide.

Our schools and infrastructure are crumbling.

No, it's got to be just you.

[leftofthedial]

16. they are killing the country as though we were in a world war

and losing

[Hubert Flottz]

2. It's there...

The country is a powder keg and the chimp is playing with the matches.

[tnlefty]

33. LOL! What a comforting thought!

I wonder if Condi has the igniter fluid?

[marylanddem]

3. boy, and I thought it was just me! n/t

[xray s]

4. yes

I imagine it was like this in Berlin in 1933...

[1620rock]

22. ...not only has the country gone collectively mad...

...so has the Federal Government....be very careful in all that you do. At this time and in this place called America. Be very very careful.

[Arugula Latte]

5. Hell, if it were a powder keg I'd be happy!

What drives me up the frickin' wall is all the ho-hummers and their apathy. Scandal, war, deficits, graft, corruption, spying, torture, raping, pillaging: *collective YAWN* to most Americans.

[SkiGuy]

24. That's what I was going to mention

Apathy towards all the crap this admin is doing to our country.

[yorkiemommie1]

30. me, too

luckily, a lot of my friends are informed and infuriated, just as we are. some of the others just want to talk about the latest missing person.

i don't understand how so many can be so shellshocked that they are numb to the swamp water rising up beneath them. i do know that my husband, the rw'er, could be easily led by a Hitler type. is there a personality type that automatically gives the benefit of the doubt to anyone in authority?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. I sense a disturbance in the Force.

Or, putting it another way:


Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Second Coming -- W. B. Yeats

[Raksha]

20. Thank you for quoting my favorite poet!

I've lost track of the number of times I've posted "The Second Coming" on various discussion boards over the last few years. And it still remains just as relevant as ever, or more so.

[hang a left]

7. It is scary out there.....I am gonna stay right here.

:freak:

[ClayZ]

8. Is that why I have been snorting lavender oil all day?

[EST]

9. Fear, made palpable.

Telescoping the accumulated madness of a half century of hot/cold war into 5 years. Without the constant drum of 9/11 Fear-fear-fear, 9/11, Fear-fear fear, the fascist junta would lose their power. The mass hypnosis ofthe freeper types would start to slip.

[C_U_L8R]

10. It's the spiralling vortex of doom !!!

Dispensing with all the shit...
just like a toilet flushing.

Bye bye Georgie et al !!

[applegrove]

12. There is a kind of "backlash" to the madness of Kool-aid drinkers.

And the pragmatic arm of the GOP who have so diminished Christianity, democracy, decency, community, etc.

[meganmonkey]

13. There has only been one hour of sunlight where I live

since Dec. 19th.

Everyone in this area is going fucking nuts. It's kinda creepy.

Somthings gotta give.


on edit: A little Beastie Boys seems a propos

---------------------------------

I Wish For Peace Between The Races

Someday We Shall All Be One

Why Fight Yourself

This One's Called Rectify

There's Something Coming To The Surface

There's Fire All Around

But This Is An Illusion

I've Seen Better Days Than This One

I've Seen Better Nights Than This One

Tension Is Rebuilding

Something's Got To Give

Something's Got To Give



Someday We Shall All Be One

[Don Claybrook]

14. I always thought there was a wall somewhere behind the padding

What I mean is, Bush and team have been getting away with crap for all these years, and those of us who are progressive keep moving the markers back, and then back again. Remember in 2001, 2002, thinking, this stuff (name the scandal) is outrageous! Surely he won't get by with this. And he would always get by with it. And then something more egregious would happen. And we'd think, well, he won't get by with this--this one is really big. And he'd get away with it. And so on.

Now we've got the NSA spying stuff, which I fully expect is huge, involving spying on hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans. And predictably, the admin has come out with an in-your-face attitude: we did it, we'll keep doing it. He just completely destroyed the 4th Amendment of the Constitution. And the Democrats do not appear to be ready to at least try for impeachment. And by not trying, even if they know they'll lose, then they're giving tacit approval for Bush and the Republicans to destroy the constitution and the country. There is now NOTHING Bush cannot do. And he knows it.

And that's where the insane feeling comes in. I always assumed that even if I was terribly disappointed with the Democrats' actions to date, that there were a few things that were sacred, a few things they'd fight for. I'm starting to get the feeling that this is not the case, and it feels like the floor is falling through, like there's nothing to hang onto, no one really fighting for us, the average citizens.

All that being said, I still have hope that the Dems will get it in gear and do something. And I'm still not panicing, still doing ok, the eternal optomist (at least on my good days).

Thanks.

[Jacobin]

15. It's a neo-con orgy fantasy come to life

Big Brother is GOOOOOD and GOOOD for you!!

[Just Me]

17. Well, I sense "delusion" being carried out to the cliff of madness.

Yes. What this administration has accomplished is lunatic and madness. They have succeeded in deluding the masses,...to an extent.

Clearly, they have failed to MASS brainwash,...otherwise, 60+% of the American people would NOT advocate impeachment of Bush should he be proven to LIE about WMDs in Iraq.

So, I believe we are still living within the realm of reality.

[Poppyseedman]

18. Election in 2008......................A train or a light

Depends on your perspective. I'm a half full glass kind of guy

[tlsmith1963]

19. It's Not Just Here

I heard that some French youths went on a rampage on a train that was going to Nice, France. They even sexually assaulted women.

What the *Hell* is wrong with everyone these days?

Tammy

[Jade Fox]

21. Yep....

I was just thinking that before clicking on your post.

I think what we are seeing is the bizarre poses people strike when the bottom is falling out of a structure (in this case The House That Neocons Built), and those people are desperately trying to keep that structure standing. People lose any perspective on their behavior when they have to keep bending further and further back-wards to claim that everything is just fine, thank you.

[roguevalley]

23. Our country has been in a depression for five, six years. I feel it too.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

25. It's just the greatest power on earth being taken down by onsies

and twosies..... former Baathists and dead enders.... that is all. Imagine if we had a real war to fight.

[sweetheart]

26. physics of consciousness

there is inductance in human consciousness, and when a critical threashold of madness
takes root, it starts to subvert the entire masss, subtly. It doesn't take much mud
to make water opaque. It doesn't take much stupidity to make humanity dumb as a board.

So the physics say, that the advise in the film "my dinner with andre" is still correct.
That in this time of gross worldwide human degeneration, it is our truth (dharma) in life
to form a pocket of light with our own lives and those we love to light the way
extinguished by the stupidity of the billions.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

27. We've always been aware that YOU'RE on the brink

So I guess I'd have to say it's just you.

:rofl:

[EstimatedProphet]

28. Yes

People are blindfolded. They're literally brainwashed by the conservatives. It's like schizophrenia-they see a different reality than the real one.

[sendero]

29. We are finding ..

.... what America is made of. And it's not the tough, uncompromising, virtuous country we were taught it was in elementary school.

Way too many Americans are willing to kill massive numbers of civilians, toss the Constitutional rights that the founding fathers sweated blood over into the dumper, and turn into a bunch of nervous Nellies over a questionable terrorist attack.

I think a lot of Americans are coming around to just how insane our response to 911 has been. And that is causing the zeitgeist to implode upon itself.

[JanMichael]

31. More like mass obtuseness plus madness.

Heads in sand can suffocate the brain.

[rucky]

32. It's like when Jeff Corwin is about to grab a poisonous snake. n/t

[Strawman]

34. maybe you left Batman Begins in the DVD player