Read this from Bob Bresny's Site

The Politics of Victimization

By Mel Gilles on Mathew Gross' Blog

Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Donna and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more likable, more appealing, have a stronger message, speak to morality. Watch them awkwardly quote the bible, trying to speak the new language of America. Surf the blogs, and read the comments of dismayed, discombobulated, confused
individuals trying to figure out what they did wrong. Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, "Why did they beat me?"

And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic violence shelter if they have heard this before.

They will tell you, every single day.

The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.

As victims we can't stop asking ourselves what we did wrong. We can't seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating.

Listen to George Bush say that the will of God excuses his behavior. Listen, as he refuses to take responsibility, or express remorse, or even once, admit a mistake. Watch him strut, and tell us that he will only work with those who agree with him, and that each of us is only allowed one question (soon, it will be none at all; abusers hit hard when questioned; the press corps can tell you that). See him surround himself with only
those who pledge oaths of allegiance. Hear him tell us that if we will only listen and do as he says and agree with his every utterance, all will go well for us (it won't; we will never be worthy).

And watch the Democratic Party leadership walk on eggshells, try to meet him, please him, wash the windows better, get out that spot, distance themselves from gays and civil rights. See them cry for the attention and affection and approval of the President and his followers. Watch us squirm. Watch us descend into a world of crazy-making, where logic does not work
and the other side tells us we are nuts when we rely on facts. A world where, worst of all, we begin to believe we are crazy.

How to break free? Again, the answer is quite simple.

First, you must admit you are a victim. Then, you must declare the state of affairs unacceptable. Next, you must promise to protect yourself and everyone around you that is being victimized. You don't do this by responding to their demands, or becoming more like them, or engaging in logical conversation, or trying to persuade them that you are right. You also don't do this by going catatonic and resigned, by closing up your ears and eyes and covering your head and submitting to the blows, figuring its over faster and hurts less is you don't resist and fight back. Instead, you walk away. You find other folks like yourself, 56 million of them, who are
hurting, broken, and beating themselves up.

You tell them what you've learned, and that you aren't going to take it anymore. You stand tall, with 56 million people at your side and behind you, and you look right into the eyes of the abuser and you tell him to go to hell. Then you walk out the door, taking the kids and gays and minorities with you, and you start a new life. The new life is hard. But it's better than the abuse.

We have a mandate to be as radical and liberal and steadfast as we need to be. The progressive beliefs and social justice we stand for, our core, must not be altered. We are 56 million strong. We are building from the bottom up. We are meeting, on the net, in church basements, at work, in small groups, and right now, we are crying, because we are trying to break free and we don't know how.

Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong. You must change only one thing: stop responding to the abuser. Don't let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (he'll win, not because he's right, but because force works). Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it failproof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side. But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, “loose”, irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.

Even if you do everything right, they'll hit you anyway. Look at the poor souls who voted for this nonsense. They are working for six dollars an hour if they are working at all, their children are dying overseas and suffering from lack of health care and a depleted environment and a shoddy education. And they don't even know they are being hit.

READ IT ALL HERE....

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Break Away

If at first you don't secede

Feeling they've lost any say in how the nation is run, liberals are turning to an unfamiliar philosophy: States' rights.

By Michelle Goldberg

In the days after the election, fantasies of blue-state secession ricocheted around the Internet. Liberals indulged themselves in maps showing Canada gathering the blue states into its social democratic embrace, leaving the red states to form their own "Jesusland." They passed around the scathing rant from the Web site Fuck the South, which lacerated the chauvinism of the "heartland" and pointed out that the coasts, far from destroying marriage, actually have lower divorce rates than the interior.

These sentiments were so pronounced that they migrated into the mainstream. Speaking on "The McLaughlin Group" the weekend after George W. Bush's victory, panelist Lawrence O'Donnell, a former Democratic Senate staffer, noted that blue states subsidize the red ones with their tax dollars, and said, "The big problem the country now has, which is going to produce a serious discussion of secession over the next 20 years, is that the segment of the country that pays for the federal government is now being governed by the people who don't pay for the federal government."

A shocked Tony Blankley asked him, "Are you calling for civil war?" To which O'Donnell replied, "You can secede without firing a shot."

Read the whole article here


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My Readers Mourn

In my newsletter, I asked readers: Report on the ritual of mourning you will carry out in the wake of Bush's re-election.

Here are some of the responses


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This Is a Perfect Moment

It's a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you and I are waking up from our sleepwalking thumbsucking dumbclucking collusion with the masters of illusion and destruction.

Thanks to them, from whom the painful blessings flow, we are waking up.

Their wars and tortures,
their crimes against nature,

extinctions of species
and brand new diseases.

Their spying and lying
in the name of the father,
sterilizing seeds and
trademarking water.

Molestations of god,
celebrations of shame,
stealing our dreams and
changing our names.

Their ingenious commercials
and bloodsucking hustles,
their endless rehearsals
for the end of the world.

Thanks to them, from whom the painful blessings flow, we are waking up.

*

Their painful blessings are cracking open more and more gashes in the shrunken and crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called "reality." And through the fractures, ripe eternity is flooding in; news of the soul's true home is pouring in; our allies from the other side of the veil are swarming in: inspiring us to become smarter and wilder and kinder and trickier.

We are waking up.

As heaven and earth come together, as the dreamtime and daytime merge, we register the shockingly exhilarating fact that we are in charge--you and I are in charge--of creating a brand new world. Not in some distant time or faraway place, but right here and right now.

*

As we stand on this brink, as we dance on this verge, we can't let the ruling fools of the dying world sustain their curses. We have to rise up and fight their insane logic; defy, resist, and prevent their tragic magic; unleash our sacred rage and supercharge it.

But overthrowing the living dead is not enough. Protesting the well-dressed monsters is not enough. We can't afford to be consumed with our anger; can't be obsessed and possessed with their danger. Our sweet animal bodies need love and fertility. Our imaginations crave tastes of infinity.

In the New World that we are creating, we've got to be steeped in lusty compassion and ecstatic duty, ingenious love and insurrectionary beauty. We need radical curiosity and reverent pranks, voracious listening and ferocious thanks.

*

So I'm curious, my fellow creators. Since you and I are in charge of making a brand New World, where do we begin? What wild truths do we want at the heart of our transformations? What fresh codes and stories will be our oracles? What crafty questions and uplifting desires will be our inspirations?

Here's where I want to begin: with pronoia. Pronoia is the opposite of paranoia--the antidote for paranoia.

Pronoia is the true theory that all of creation is conspiring to shower you with blessings.

Pronoia is the guarantee that life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.

Pronoia says that everything alive is working very hard to liberate you from ignorance and transform you into the gift of love you were born to be.

*

I am allergic to dogma. I thrive on questions, and don't trust any idea that tempts me to believe in it absolutely. There are very few perceptions or theories about which I am totally certain.

But I am absolutely certain that pronoia describes the way the world actually is. Pronoia is wetter than water, truer than the facts, and stronger than death. It smells like cedar smoke in early spring rain, and if you close your eyes right now, you can feel it shimmering like the aurora borealis in your soft, warm animal body.

Some Buddhists say the inherent nature of existence is suffering; they long to escape into nirvana. Many Catholics say the inherent nature of life is sinful; they long for the purified peace of heaven. But pronoia assures us that the inherent nature of life is to liberate us.

Being born on the earth is the highest honor and greatest privilege. To be alive as human beings gives us the chance to pull off exquisite and Herculean feats of magic that are not possible in nirvana or heaven or any other so-called paradise, higher dimension, or better place.

I'm not exaggerating or indulging in poetic metaphor when I say this. Visualize it if you dare.

The sweet stuff that quenches all of our longing is not far away in some other time and place. It's right here and right now.

As Elizabeth Barrett Browning knew, "Earth is crammed with heaven."

*

"This Is a Perfect Moment" is an excerpt from:

PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia:
How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings
to be published in early 2005