Even assuming that the Mayan calendar got it wrong, and the planet will not end in cataclysm -- 2012 still figures to be a tough year.
We're going to live through the bizarre primary of C-list choices, and a general election that is likely to leave us all feeling like the clean-up crew after a carnival.
Then again, maybe the Mayans saw this coming.
It will be an election where the super-PACs, by law, can spend what they want, and say what they want, about anybody they want. The candidates can claim nothing to do with any of it, while repudiating none of it.
So as much as we might want to feel the sense of hope and possibility that comes with the change of years, this is an election year. Worse, it comes in a time spittle-flecked animosity toward the effrontery of contrary opinion.
Imagine what the coming months of full-contact campaigning and mercenary assaults on character are going to do to positions already tempered by four years of political trench warfare.
Reporter and commentator Sam Donaldson once said of Washington politics: "Only the amateurs stay mad." That was politics then. Politics now is a place of molten incivility and viscous resentment. Anger is the common ground.
All due respect to Mr. Donaldson. Everybody's mad, and they're going to stay mad -- about houses, about taxes, about spending, about jobs, about inequality, about healthcare, about marriage, about faith, about immigration, about war, about security, about our shaken sense of national identity.
The irony here is the corrosive division over these issues eats away at any hope we can resolve them.
But: back to the New Year being a time of possibility.
It's possible that the economy will allow some rays of sunshine break through the low-hanging clouds of the past few years.
If it's true that the angriest people are the people who are most afraid, a calmer and more optimistic constituency might make for more collaborative representation. It might diminish the fear that giving something to get something will invite the torch-bearers of the extremes to drag you from your office come next election.
Even so, it's going to take time and courage to reach across the divisions of recent years -- where rational policy has become entangled in convoluted resentments.
In the hopes that 2012 will, in fact, be a happier year, I humbly offer this piece of advice to those who would lead us out of the dark impasse of ideologies:
"Go to hell" is no way to start a negotiation.
Follow Dr. Peggy Drexler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drpeggydrexler
So let's get this straight. Your government can call you a terrorist and give you life imprisonment without a trial. This is what we've come to in our country. The same bill gives the military law enforcement powers within the U.S. Both of these provisions are the first time such power has ever been given away by the citizenry. The founders never intended this, and tried their best to keep this from happening. But, Americans today are so dumbed down that they probably don't realize what they have just done.
And most disturbing is that I have just checked out the front page and politics section and there is no mention of this, anywhere. I repeat, our freedom has just been lost and no one cares. Is this because the law was signed on a national holiday and no one paid attention?
People should be afraid, very afraid. All you occupiers could be branded as terrorists and just disappear. We have just given away much of the bill of rights and our constitution. AND NO ONE CARES!
Reality, your cell phone and web searches have been monitored for the last decade, people have lost everything trying to prove they didn't download child porn but someone hacked their wireless network..there's no arguing with the IRS, there's no trial or way to appeal uncalilbrated speed monitors at a construction zones on weekends, or for me, a ticket for putting my muni-meter receipt upside down on my dashboard while visiting another city, just pay by mail, go away. Grannies in Depends are being strip searched before flights by minimum wage "officials" who by now may have badges all in the interest of flight safety?
Once you have been accused of a crime against children, even if found not-guilty and lose everything proving it, it stays on your record forever. Look, it is what it is for now, just roll over and play dead because it's easier, and as a nation we are so divided by the jokesters trying to get ratings, Maybe if just one TV network went back to being a NEWS network..not a revenue producing machine, people would know what's really going on...it would be NEWS....then we could focus on the real issues instead of whether some politician wanna be ate a corn dog.
http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2011/04/hidden-american-100-trillion-debt.html
This additional debt of $100 trillion makes the $15.1 trillion debt pale into insignificance by comparison. It is this debt that will hobble America's economy for decades to come.
I've been saying this since I went to work for my own City over 7 years ago. I had to quit that job for the sake of my own sanity two years ago. Being so close to politics on a daily basis -- especially as an activist -- wore me down.
Anger and vitriol. Petulance and inflexibility. Lies and distortions. Irreverence and disrespect. These are the tools of the modern politician. Cranks and charlatans all.
Where have all the statesmen gone? We have been abandoned in our time of great need.
I myself am most certainly far from expert on the Mayans' maddeningly complex system of calendars nor can I read a single Mayan heiroglyph. However, I *have* read quite extensively from the writings of experts with hands-on experience in trying to decipher the mysteries surrounding not just the Mayan calendars but, indeed, much of their impressive civilization and achievements. So while I'm in no way expert, I do think I possibly have a bit more knowledge and understanding of what the experts do think. I note that your own area is a doctorate in psychology with an emphasis on psychiatry, and that you have done extensive work in the important field of gender studies. In the absence of knowing anything to the contrary about you, I assume you aren't an expert yourself in these matters -- though undoubtedly well-read.
I also recognize that the Mayans are merely introductory material to your true focus in this article -- the primaries.
The Mayan calendars or surviving Mayan heiroglyph texts predict the end of the world is nigh.
But to your article: an excellent read, Ma'am.
Your closing paragraph sums it up magnificently, Professor. And thanks ever so much for penning it.
"Dr." Drexler should probably, I don't know, KNOW SOMETHING about statements she makes.