quatorz:
I just saw that NSA post and you’d posted something the other day and in the tags you called people out: something along the lines of ‘hey this really happened! How about bitching about this instead of Ben Afleck as Batman’. And I know what you mean, but I look and think ‘what can we actually do?’ I mean, other than wholesale revolution and and just cleaning house of entire govt. agencies (which would probably require the former) what change can we affect? Do you ever feel that way?

I was feeling a little cranky, honestly. It’s not to disparage peoples’ passions. I’ve just found the world very, very hard to take these last few weeks especially. The situation in Syria is horrific, and there’s no clear path to a right answer, only a thousand choices that lead to wrong ones. The tensions between the Snowden revelations and the – in my opinion – bald and even affected naivete of some folks about the nature of espionage, and my own concerns about balancing privacy with national security (which is a catch phrase so over-used the words are now devoid of meaning, but which, if you think about them, really break them down, are quite a valid function of government). And the list goes on and on and on.

It’s dark out there, and it’s easy to say, well, yes, but it always has been (and that’s not true – it’s been darker, it’s been lighter, but right now? It’s pretty damn dark). It’s easy – and very attractive – to be cynical and disengage, or to simply disengage through ignoring everything, but neither makes anything better, and neither leads to solutions.

So what can we do? We can make noise. We must make noise. We’re all busy, yeah, but you know what? A lot of us are online, and it takes a minute to find the email of your senators or your congresspeople, and you can find their office phone numbers, too. You can take five minutes to write an email and say what you think, what matters, and to let your representatives know that you will remember what they do and what they say. You have to follow through; we all have to follow through, with praise and condemnation alike.

And no, it doesn’t feel like nearly enough, but it’s a start.

Being informed, informing others, looking at facts and trying to verify them (and that can be hard, too; there’s disinformation on all sides, and conspiracy theorists to muddy the waters, too). 

If enough people start to push, any boulder can be moved. We have to fight despair. We have to fight that exact feeling of helplessness, because that is exactly how we’ve gotten where we are – made to feel powerless, so what’s the point?

I’m approaching rambling, here, and I apologize. But I will add this – it’s cliché, but one person can make a difference. And you never know how that difference will be made.