What is wrong with my head?

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

(From "Everybody Knows" --Leonard Cohen)

I used to analyze, expose, expostulate, perseverate, even, on all matters political, especially feminist. I used to write for a feminist blog, a feminist magazine, and I even ghost-wrote a feminist political book. I belong to feminist list servs and read feminist blogs...

Yet, lately, when I read the glut of political perseverating that populates political blogs, the little voice in my head that used to say, "Yeah! You tell 'em! And what about--?" now shouts, screams, shrieks: "Shut-up shutup, SHADDUP!!!"

Even without a tv, even with very limited and controlled media exposure (limited primarily to podcasting Rachel Maddow and BBC Global News) I feel like I am overwhelmed by the constant chattering and nattering of pretentious pundits talking to hear themselves talk. I have no use for it.

But I should... I don't know what is behind my sudden aversion to political punditry. I don't feel any less passionate about politics, or any less opinionated, but I think the eight years under Bush just crushed any ideas I had of my voice ever making a difference. That was the first to go. I quit political writing cold-turkey, and I have to say while I loved the occasional deft turn of phrase, or the sudden Gestalt moment that comes when my research and writing would converge into a moment of crystal clarity mirrored by perfect prose (very occasionally), I don't miss it a bit. Not even a little.

Now I don't even want to HEAR it. I know Obama is making imperfect compromises. I know the economy is in the shitter and it's stuck on "flush". I know that the cronyism continues and the Bush is still seeking absurd expansions of executive power ad infinitum, and it pisses me off. I know that the world is filled with unwinnable wars and the the ice caps are melting and that polar bears are drowning and epidemics are expanding and antibiotics are failing. I know that the educational system in this country is collapsing, that we are all getting fatter, that no one gets enough sleep and we will all die of cancer. I know that while this goes on people are profiting from injustice and exploitation.

And then I am pissed off.

And then I get a headache.

And then the shit is still going on. The oil and munitions and banking companies still run the goddamn world, the rich are still getting richer and getting more tax breaks while the poor are getting poorer, getting no healthcare, getting no family planning services, and I still have a goddamn headache.

Is it just that I feel powerless to change anything? That all the nattering just creates a hell filled angry voices?

So last night gf and I made eggplant parmesan from an original Italian gramma's recipe photocopied from a book lovingly passed down to a friend of gf's. It was perfect, even though we switched manchego and aged gouda for the parmesan (it being too cold and us being too lazy to go out to the store when we discovered the missing ingredient.) I talked to one of my best friends for over an hour about sex and love and our lives, 3,000 miles apart, and went to bed relatively early, basking in something close to simplicity....

I highly recommend it.