Pounding your head against the whiskey bar

A facebook page I have followed for a while called "Whiskey and the morning after blog" is written by a fellow in Louisiana, not the bastion of liberal thinking in America.  Daily he takes on all of the foolishness of the extreme conservatives in this country and their outrageous rantings that are slowing this country almost to a standstill.  It is a thankless chore.

Today he published the following:

"I've been doing this for almost 3 years now and I've come to the sad conclusion that most people want to hear about how they're right and the other side is a bunch of evil villains who kill cute puppies as a sacrifice to the Koch Brothers.

"And then there's the idiots who believe in chemtrails or the Illuminati who inbox me constantly. Sweet Jesus, I just want to bang my head on my desk until unconsciousness sets me free."

All some of us who have delved into that morass can say is welcome to the club.

At first I recalled a time last fall waking up every morning to all the liberal pages I was following along with the news, and thus beginning my days utterly depressed with the state of the world. I finally unliked most of them, just for some peace of mind. It was just too much to be reminded of all that was wrong with the world, and at that time, the politics of this nation, as it was just before the presidential election.  I shut them all off and only scanned headlines for a while rather than start every day outraged and discouraged.

And today as I thought about this writer's angst, I also recalled my own experience with the same sort of thing.

My senior year in college, I was editorial editor of the newspaper for the first semester and managing editor for the second.  By the time the first semester ended, in my daily masterpieces of opinion I had solved just about all the world's problems to my satisfaction.  This wasn't easy. After all the Vietnam war was still raging.

During the second semester it was the managing editor's privilege to plan and produce one special edition of the paper focused on a single subject.  A movement dear to my heart was just gaining some steam and I chose ecology as the subject.  With that mission, reporters and editors began scouring Kansas for just what the issue was in that state and how it related to the world order. Climate change hadn't even come up as a concern at the time.

We put out a pretty good special section and with that, I felt I had solved the last remaining issue that would make the world an ideal place to live.

Then, within a couple of days, we were celebrating our last days in school at our favorite pub, joined occasionally by well-wishers and others all in generally good spirits, all of us with our journalistic chests puffed out from our accomplishment.

Then a young fellow sat down and started a conversation, at first about the paper and then after learning that I was the managing editor wanting to know how that all worked.

It took him a little time to reach his point.  His point was a question:  "What's all this bullshit about ecology?"

Apparently the liberal education he was supposed to be receiving hadn't quite taken hold yet.

For my part, like my friend at Whiskey and the morning after, I pounded my head into the beer-soaked table.  For a moment it felt like nothing I had done in the previous four years was worth a damn thing.  Nothing was solved.  Nothing was settled. Every single issue I had explained was still an issue.

Looking back now, I think that was the beginning of my disenchantment with journalism. Since that time I have taken a much more practical approach to opinion.  It's like the equal and opposite reaction law of physics and no one has ever changed anyone's mind. Let it out all you want as cleverly as you can but the people who disagree with you will always disagree with you and not always politely.  It's part of the game.  Grow a thick skin, take another slug of that whiskey and keep going.  The alternative is nonexistent.

On another occasion a friend in the conservation movement said to me: "Why do we keep trying, we’re never going to win."

It was one of those times when I actually came up with an answer which was, "No, we won't win, but we couldn't live with ourselves if we didn’t try."

My activism days are pretty much behind me, not for lack of issues and causes or necessities, but because I am just tired.

Near the end of Federico Fellini's movie "The Clowns" there is a circus parade inside the big top. In the scene three clowns are sitting on the actual ring perimeter and not participating in that parade. Someone offscreen asks and one of the clowns says, "I can't do it any more Mr. Fellini, I am just too tired."  Well, Mr. Fellini, me too.  This circus is going to have to go on without me.

So my friend at the Whiskey blog, pounding your head on the desk or not, could you live with yourself if you didn't try?  You are too young to be tired yet.

Whiskey and the morning after blog