My ex-girlfriend was essentially right when she said to me something to the effect of "Why do you care so much about politics? You don't care about people!"

Of course, her claims were in favor of political passivity: stop paying attention, because what you do doesn't matter; things happen, and you can't influence them. The outside world doesn't matter, so focus exclusively on your family and friends. But we know from history that people, coming together, can do incredible things. The problem is that I am not a part of humanity. I look like them, but I am not one of them. I can't take part in a movement because I can't leave the house. I can't be involved in my community because I'm not a part of it. I can't influence people because people don't care about me. There's no one even willing to talk to me.

So I follow the news, not as closely as I once did, and miss out on things that are days or weeks old sometimes, and feel dumb. I post pronouncements and links and the occasional petition on Facebook in lieu of doing something else, because that is the most I can actually do. But there is no point, because no one is actually interested in what I have to say.

I just fucking take up space.

Not conversant

I've have thoughts why I can't talk with others about politics when they don't already agree with me, at least partially. I find myself avoiding my friends and acquaintances Facebook updates because the liberal claptrap, the painful conventional wisdom I see there, actually irritates me too much to argue rationally. It pissed me off that people I like would even consider thinking in ways that are so self-evidently misguided, it pisses me off that I live in a society that drums this shit into people's heads, and it pisses me off that I have nothing coherent I could say that would change their minds.

Part of it is my inability to argue points and remember things (my memory has been failing at a remarkable rate the last two years or so), but part of it is lack of effort, a laziness, and a conviction that it will be futile whatever I do. Sometimes I assure myself all was lost before I began, and other times I kick myself for failing to argue a viewpoint that they may never hear again if I don't personally intervene. A person with opinions who doesn't act on them is worse than someone who believes nothing at all, and I am the former.

And then I wonder if it's just that I'm not brave enough to pick fights with people who will think worse of me, even though it's their beliefs that are ridiculous and offensive, not mine. There's certainly a level of that. Do I really want to post on my brother's friends's wall (who I don't know that well) on how Birthright is a cynical Zionist PR plot designed to force young Jews into a narrow view of their cultural identity that condones apartheid and murder? Maybe I should be that guy. I thought about it, and I guess I'm not. It looks like I'm just the guy who is very picky in choosing brands of hummus.

And I wonder if such otherwise reasonable and smart people could get things so wrong, what might I have wrong, having displayed lacking judgment and intelligence at so many points in my life?

I am not a strong enough person to stand up for anything.

The Battle of Algiers

I just watched The Battle of Algiers with my mother. After it ended, I asked her what she thought.

"Do you just try to pick the longest movies?"

"It was two fucking hours!"

"God, it seemed a lot longer!"

Here I'm trying to watch classic movies, and all I hear is that they're long. Even when they're not. Given, my appreciation of everything is limited, but at least my philistinism isn't intentional.

Confronting hopeless inadequacy

When I read lenin or Duncan Mitchel or any of the people I cited in the series about people I am inferior to on the DepressionJournal, I am always struck by the vast amount I don't know because I haven't read the relevant things. But my comprehension is shoddy, too, so that when I did read Tariq Ali's The Clash of Fundamentalisms or William Blum's Killing Hope, I retained almost none of it. So I prove incapable of bettering myself. This constant rediscovery of my own inferiority is wearying and maddening, and another of the things that makes me want to check out early.

I don't seem to be able to keep up with my blogroll every day, let alone the hundreds of books I've put on my list of things to read. On my hard drive I also have at least a half-dozen PDFs of books I'd hoped to read, but I'm still trying to follow the news and opinions of today. So I will never progress in knowledge — as if I retained any of it anyway.

The other thing I've noticed about myself is my orthodoxy. Since I have no self-esteem, I am constantly questioning my own opinions. And where that may lead some people to improved opinions, it leads me nowhere. Because I'm not confident to come up with my own opinions on things anymore; I've been wrong so often in the past about so many things that I don't have faith in my own reactions. Best to see what someone on my blogroll says first. I'm perpetually stymied by the belief that I'm missing something that other people are seeing, that I'm making some elementary mistake that makes me wrong vis-à-vis my own beliefs. I first noticed this in blog comments, when my statements were always simplistic things about two sentences long that added very little to wide-ranging discussions that sometimes were quite valuable. This feeling has leeched from politics into (what's left of) the rest of my life as well. I don't know what can be done about it; it seems to just be part of the familiar downward spiral.

Letting down the beleaguered people of El Salvador

Two emails, to and from, cross-posted from my DepressionJournal, telling part of the story of my failure. I spent a long time on the email, debating what was or wasn't TMI and did or didn't make me sound like a PoS, but I never got a response, so I assume I came off as vapid, self-pitying, and useless as I feel. I really didn't deserve a response, and I respect the decision not to reply.

---

Hey Jeff,

How are you doing? Great to meet you at the action with Miguel Rivera. I just wanted to give you a reminder about the El Salvador movie night that we're having tonight at Encuentro 5 - it's from 7-9pm, and if you're on facebook the invite is here: [omitted]

If you can't make it, would you be interested in having coffee and talking more about our anti-mining/anti-CAFTA (Central America Free Trade Agreement) campaign? We've got some cool stuff coming up - we're targeting shareholders of Pacific Rim Mining, trying to get meeting with Rep. McGovern to ask him to sponsor a letter about renegotiating free trade agreements, and planning a party next month to celebrate CISPES' 30th anniversary. Would you be interested in getting involved in any of those things in particular?

Take care & hope to talk to you soon,
[redacted]

---

Hey [redacted],

Thanks for remembering me! It was nice to meet you too.

I'm in Rhode Island now, probably until next year; I've gone on medical leave from grad school due to severe depression... part of which is a crippling doubt about my own abilities that makes me think I can't contribute to causes or society in any meaningful way. That in turn makes me feel very guilty, because I've become aware of vast injustices but don't feel able to help combat them.

(That's probably too much information, but I feel like it's fair warning.)

Anyway, I'm unsure how much or what I can do (I'm trained in math, so I don't have many real-world skills), but I *would* like to help in any way I can.


Take care,
jeff

News break

I took a three-weak break from reading the news, and it made me feel like a self-centered asshole out of touch with the world. Not coincidentally, that's what I felt like before the news break, but the feeling worsened. The problem, or at least part of it, is that I used to read my blogs for several hours a day, four or more, and finish the day with ten tabs open I promised to myself I would read the next day. And this would repeat for weeks. And Firefox would crash, and I would archive those links and feel guilty I wasn't able to read more, and feel terribly stupid and ignorant.

I'm typing this in Safari, because if I try to restore my Firefox session my computer will hang and I'll just have to force quit it, but I'm not ready to give up on those articles and admit I'll never read them. I don't understand how other people do it. What it is it they have that I don't, and how can I get it? The depth of understanding the bloggers I read seem to exhibit is something I lack, and my incapacity pains me. Part of the point of this blog was to be proactive about it. But I can't think for myself or remember what I read.

I would like to be the sort of person who convinces other people of my views, and thereby makes the world a better place, sort of, but it turns out I'm bad at that. I tried that on Facebook, and I just wound up tired and frustrated, leaving many comments unanswered, feeling that the people I was responding to were making fundamental, simple mistakes, but not calling them on it because every time they answered, I felt like I had to answer again, and there was another hour gone when I tried to assemble my thoughts into coherent form. And I realized, yes, that's the nature of political debate, but I'm not up for it.

In summary, I am not the kind of person I want to be.

I also would like to be the sort of person who reads a lot of books, Chomsky and Bakunin and Shakespeare and Virgil and and and and... and learns a lot (retention is a problem), but my news hobby was such that it was all I was doing. Yet I was still behind, never able to catch up with the events of the day.

And ultimately, the point wouldn't be to analyze the news, but to do something about it, and there I've fallen far shorter than anywhere else. I cannot contribute to society in any way.

Hiatus

I know it's not much that I was taking a break from, but there you have it. Coping with what I'm told is rather severe depression, although there haven't been any psychotic breaks yet. I created this blog to get better at reading and analyzing things, despite unfortunately not having anything original to say, special analytic talent, etc. It only makes sense that it would join the long list of projects I've half-started and abandoned in the course of my life.

I'll get back to doing this; that's what I'm telling myself.