Scrap IT

I haven't written in several weeks. I have a variety of excuses and reasons. I've been busy at work, zapping my energy, I've been busy in my life, zapping my energy, I've been focusing on artwork, completing 9 pieces in 2 weeks, thereby zapping my energy.

Aside from being stressed and busy and then exhausted, I think I am also numb with disbelief, anger, and a sense of overwhelm by the news of the day, every day. The level of dishonesty and incompetence by our government is frightening and enough to drive me into a severe case of apathy. There is no way of getting away from it. It effects our lives everyday.

There are some things the government does that we can't always see in detail. Farm subsidies to large food corporations, pork spending projects, undefined defense spending. Then there are the things we can see clearly: Gas prices that effect every one, rich or poor; men and women dying, daily, in foreign lands for confusing, unclear reasons; tax breaks for oil companies that bilk the American people and earn billions quarterly in profits; elected officials and political appointees that commit crimes and bend and bastardize laws to fit their own agendas and personal greed; a President who is so over his head and beyond his skill level that after 6 six years in office his ineptitude is reflected in every aspect of American life.

Today the Senate panel reviewing FEMA has recommended scrapping the agency:

"Our first and most important recommendation is to abolish FEMA," said Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "FEMA is discredited, demoralized, and dysfunctional. It is beyond repair. Just tweaking the organizational chart will not solve the problem."

Well, that's festive, on the eve of hurricane season. No FEMA or a useless, dysfunctional FEMA. Never before in the history of the USA has FEMA been more needed. Scientists have recently reported that global warming is indeed a problem in the here and now, not the future, and as a result the tumultuous and extreme weather of the past will continue and worsen. We will see more Katrinas. We will see more cities destroyed. We will see more Americans suffer and die with no reliable relief or protection.

That brings up the issue of apathy. Apathy, as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary means:

"1. Lack of interest or concern, esp. in important matters. 2. Lack of emotion; impassiveness."

I'm not apathetic as I am greatly concerned. I'm not without emotion as despair is clearly an emotional state. But I am overwhelmed with a sense of hopelessness not unlike the hopelessness expressed by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee today. I'm trying to put it aside. Not let it effect me. Not let it drain my energy or my enthusiasm for living. Trying to put it on the back burner -- until Tuesday, November 7, 2006.