cynicism

I've noted, and you've probably noted too, a deep and growing cynicism on this site. It's not just on this site. I've noticed it in my general life as well.

I believe it started around July 2002, when the war talk began to leak out of Washington. I knew, right then and there, that we were going to war with Iraq. September confirmed it. October solidified it. The debate got ugly and people left and right (i'm not talking politically left and right, however) were screaming "Un-American! Un-American!" at each other. And I started to get turned off.

It was nearly impossible to tell people otherwise. People---liberals AND conservatives---had fallen under the spell. Saddam was responsible for 9/11. Saddam has nuclear weapons. Etc. Etc. Etc. If you dared mention that we spent the better part of the 1980s allied with Saddam against Iran you got stares, if you were lucky. It was Orwell's 1984 in reality. If you made the Orwell reference you got stared at, or worse---and I know Pennsylvania high school students DO read 1984, in quite a few districts it's required reading for contemporary literature classes. And then we went to war.

And then, adding to my cynicism, the President himself confirms what people with sense already knew: Saddam had no role in 9/11. And that was that.

Since then I've just taken a "why bother" attitude to it. A kid in class one day wanted to argue with the professor that everything that FoxNews ever said was right and everyone else was wrong because, and I quote, "They all annoyed him." The professor, to his credit, said all the news was wrong and if you just follow one network you're essentially going to get that one network's bias. I could have layed the rhetorical smackdown, but I didn't. I said "Why bother. He's not gonna listen anyway, and he'll probably call me un-American."

Lately it's been increasingly hard to get excited about causes. Having been bullied in the past, I champion underdogs. I tried to get a group interested in helping out with modern human slavery--one of my hot buttons. Got no interest. I was crushed. I really want this National Museum on Slavery built before I turn 35. But I'm getting so drained with this cynicism I feel like....this is beginning to drag on.

Fox was all giddy over the 7.2% growth rate yesterday. I was too. But what's the bigger issue? Does that erase a $500 billion dollar deficit?

I've noticed home sales are up? Good? or bad? Are people selling their homes 'cause they can't afford them because they've been out of real work for so long? Noone reports that, so it fuels my cynicism.

You know, I used to wake up and want to do something...cause I'd read the headlines and get pissed off. Now I just go, "Eh. Coulda seen that comin'." All I hope for is some karma to work its way back around.


Anyone else suffering? We could start a support group!


I know I'm not alone. I've detected the same cynicism in nearly every left-of-center to center site I read these days. The couple liberatarian sites I stop by are beyond cynical, I think.