I feel your sentiments. It makes me think about the meaning of cynicism (check this article my colleague, Sue Kerbel wrote on the topic). It also makes me think of the importance of trust in our politics. You might enjoy this take on it from one of my articles earlier this year:

Building a Culture of Trust in Politics

Going into the 21st Century we will need to re-evaluate our political and civic institutions in order to build governmental operations that work. The current system is grossly inadequate (especially the cultural parts of it) for addressing the challenges we’ve got to come together and address.

Just hang in there and take care of yourself. Our loved ones are what we do all our activism for. We have to take time for them (this includes ourselves!) and when we’re hurting, we need to heal.

Unmended wounds tend to fester. Nurturance lies at the heart of our progressive tradition. We don’t let our responsibilities slide away. But we do have to change our priorities when new needs arise.

(Can you feel me sending healing thoughts your way? Because I am.)

I want smaller government! I want a smaller military! What the hell are we doing sending a bomb to the moon and why are we sending so many expensive rockets into outer space. I want to shrink the size of the IRS with tax reform. This is the 21st century and the IRS is setup for the 19th century, lets reform it. We don’t need 2,000 pages of health care reform, just open up Medicare to all, give huge fines to health care companies that do not pay out for health care services people need and a law against not providing health care to those covered, and install a single payer health care system.

(If you want to keep in touch with me, bounce an email at brewer@cognitivepolicyworks.com or follow me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/cognitivepolicy)

large part of this is that they have internalized faulty conceptual models of “how the world works.”

Exactly. I read your scarcity article. Excellent!

Thank you both for this book salon.