but in Liberal Canada we have large safety nets, but tangled in them are rabid, frothing, angry, Canadian Conservatives (some of whom are right-wing wackos) who carry knives for the express purpose of poking holes in them. :-)

By the way, I take abolutely no medication...not even aspirin and often don't lock the doors when I leave my house. I'm prejudiced enough to believe that the segment of the Canadian population that need them tend to be conservatives. Most Canadian liberals I know are happy and contented people with an optimistic outlook on life.

and you know i sit at the front of the 'this country sucks' bus.

family is for those brave enough to fight for it. people who choose to live outside of the 'traditional' family model are mocked, denied benefits and opportunties, socially shunned, etc. so you've got to be a somewhat strong person to go against all that, and define what kind of family life is truly best for you.

i see so much emptiness in the lives of my traditionalist friends. they aren't fundies, not by a long shot, but i do see that they are slowly perceiving that the sacrifices they made are hollow ones now. i sit at the margins, waiting for the moment when my friends decide to live life according to their own beliefs, and not according to conformist pressures. i expect as least some will, someday.

capitalism, patriarchy and theocracy require social conformity, and to fight against that means giving up more than just a white picket fence. and some people aren't even allowed to get out of the stereotype, cf. the horror that is the 'family court' system in this country.

Actually, in the US, the wealthy typically 'borrow' (more like get) money from their family, both in subtle forms like better education, health care, and emergency support, and in more direct forms like college money.

The so-called conservatives in the US are, ostensibly, called that because they espouse a socially conservative view in public. In practice, it seems that there are very few politicians who are fiscally conservative, or conservative in policy. ('Conservative' after all means careful and cautious.) The 'neo-con's are radicals -- the opposite of conservative.

In fact, it's reasonable to call most of the 'conservatives' in the US 'fear and greed' politicians, since that's apparently what their campaign rhetoric is based on. These 'conservatives' are not interested in saving taxpayer money, but, rather in the nominal reduction of taxes. (The two are very different.) Similarly, they're, apparently, typically not all that interested in socially conservative values, but rather in pandering to fear and ignorance.

Politicians (in general, really) love to appeal to vague feel-good notions like 'small-town American values', primarily because it's a classic demagaugic ploy. After all, they seem all too willing to address other classic small-town values like xenophobia.

I don't have much experience in contrasting with other places (Ithaca, NY is my standard for "working community" right now--a pretty decent one, though its still in the US). But the hollowness of life in an exurban US city (Phoenix) is amazing. After living here for 2 years, we barely know anyone--even through work or school. No one wants to go out and do anything. No one is out in the streets.

I may be exaggerating a bit, but not by much. Both of us have been depressed at one time or another since coming to this city--and really carry on with a constant low-level depression all the time.

God, I would love to have guaranteed health coverage and know that I could get at least reasonable welfare if I get into trouble. I'd actually take risks and go out and do things then--join a startup, start my own business, get into political activism, build stuff, etc. As it is, I can't go more than ~60 days without health insurance before my recent cancer history becomes a "pre-existing condition" and is therefore not covered by most health plans. That means I can't be out of a health care-providing job or school for more than 2 months...

sad meditation...

so what to do?

hope for a better future, make little symbolic acts that would perhaps belong in it, but leave you feeling out of synch with the mainstream of now?

quixotic little spurts of doomed courage?

i guess there's a poignance in that...

thinking out of the box is risky, some find great ideas that profit humanity, most just get lost!

so you concentrate on covering up the bars with pix of celebs or fetish toys.

or....you go surfing, and let the search for balance, mind-body co-ordination, breath control and endorphins temporarily lift the fate of the weary, wicked old world from your shoulders for a while!

no weaker medicine seems to work, alas. conversely, at least something still does!