In general, it makes me nuts when people speak derogatively about feelings. I think feelings are the best things we have, and most of the problems with them come from not expressing them, or from various forms of illusion that the mind creates because it is not allowed to actually express feelings straightforwardly and honestly. Anger - everyone fears anger. But anger is NOT a dangerous emotion unless it is denied, sublimated, subverted and turned into, say, irrational and potentially world-destroying wars.

Or look at it this way - who's angry - you or your agent? What's the chance that her mistreatment of you was motivated by misplaced anger? She may have no idea where the anger that led her to act that way is from. She may have such deeply habituated patterns of anger that she treats lots of people that way. She may think that her passive aggressive behavior is the pinnacle of niceness, of gentility.

What you say about the diminishing artistic playground seems true to me. I'm not sure if it's a social change, or just that I'm getting older and I'm no longer welcome where the people who self-identify as creative gather. I think it's both, but mostly I think the society I live in, the US, is now a hyper-militarized society, which it wasn't just ten years ago, at least not to the same extent. It's also very gender-differentiated. There's little of that nineties unigender culture around. There's little of the 90's slacker cultural ideal. America today reminds me of the film Starship Troopers. Somehow war is now imagined as the ideal state. And there really is no other economy to speak of, so when you have lemons you make lemonade, I guess, or something like that. All War All The Time. That seems to be our future, unless there is a signifigant change of direction.

I'll say this about Obama. I thihk a lot of folks have Obama wrong. He may not wear a flag bikini while drinking beer and waving a gun (that we know of), but his policies are barely different from McCain/Palin.
It's all about cutting taxes (though our taxes are too low already); it's about continuing imperial policy, including confrontation with Iran and Russia; it's about bandaid solutions to social problems.

Also, I would argue that, when it comes to qualification, Obama is not nearly as qualified a candidate as Kerry was, and we all saw how Kerry did. The American political system turns people into monsters, because it is so completely controlled by Big Money. Polls show that BOTH parties have drifted far to the right of political consensus. I urge people not to be fooled by Obama's measured tones. Not only will he not stray signifigantly from Bush's right wing policies, if elected, I predict that he may even be worse than Bush.

Take Obama's famous Berlin speech. Look at it coldly, I suggest, and put aside one's wishes that he really will change things, and I think what one sees is a speech that is 1) uninspired, 2) preoccupied with restoring Nato (even though Nato is really an outmoded alliance) and 3) very provocatively anti-Russian. This is just one indication that the American elite has long since decided that Russia is our new Enemy and Obama is simply playing his role as a cog in the (very militaristic) elite.

The people who decide elections in the US, to the extent that elections are not simply stolen, are a minority of the population. America is NOT as polarized as folks would have it. The polarization we constantly hear about is more hype than fact. Cultural differences are played up to the max, in order to obscure the many fundamental agreements. Most people think it's all crap anyway, rightly, and pay minimal attention. Voting is perennially low, and will be again in 2008, no matter how many new people register. It's considered something like a miracle if over 50% of the people vote.

And, surprise surprise, the political views of the 50% who don't vote tend to be - by a wide margin - more progressive than the views of those who do vote. Why don't people vote? Because they know that the political system doesn't represent them. Because they are poor and it's hard just to keep going from day to day. Because neither party bothers to reach out to them. Both parties are content with things as they are.
Sure, the balance of power changes from election to election, but most people retain their little fiefdoms.
Democrats have more in common with Republicans than with the working and poor folks they are supposed to Represent. There's no better example of this than Obama. Obama has a reputation for getting along just fine with his GOP colleagues, even better in some ways than with his fellow Dems. After all, they are all PROFESSIONALS. No dirty people. No fanatics. No one with strange ideas, except for the occasional whacko llike Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich.

Above all, poor folks don't vote because they are afraid, in my opinion. They are afraid of potentially negative consequences at work, where they rent, etc.., if they don't toe the line. The GOP has a thousand ways to make it difficult for folks to vote that might not go along with the status quo, and the Dems go along with it all. In Ohio in 2004, many different techniques of vote suppression and manipulation were documented, yet it all got swept under the rug. For example, the GOP apparently sponsored a phone bank which called black urbanites and threatened them with arrest if they voted. This was attested to by affadavit (one witness) and by circumstantial evidence. There was no investigation. Anyone who knows the percentage of incarcerated blacks in the US would have a pretty good idea how chilling such phone calls could be to potential voters.

And look at New Orleans. It was one of the strongest voting blocks in the nation for (potentially) progressive Dems. Now it's gone. Just gone. The city is fully in the hands of the power elite and will presumably be turned into Vegas South. A cynical person might suppose that the government simply allowed a progressive stronghold to be wiped out, and the Dems stood by and watched. That would be a very evil thing to do, but what was lying the country into war with Iraq? One million dead and 5 million displaced and they have the nerve, the moral coldness, to call it "victory".

But it's the same all over, isn't it? Whatever happened to the guy from Midnight Oil? Peter Garrett!? What a strong voice he was for truth and justice - until he became a politician. Then he turned into just another cog in the machine, didn't he? And has the victory of the Labor government in Australia really changed anything? So far as I can tell, from here in the US, Australia is just as eager as it ever was to play the role of America's sidekick, Robin to America's Batman. Everyone wants to be Robin to America's Batman. The UK, France, Australia, Canada - countries are lining up for the privilege. I don't get it. It took the recent confrontation between the US and Russia to get the EU to think things through a little, but even that isn't enough to keep them from supporting the US' anti-Russian policy - even though they'll get the first nukes if real war breaks out.

It's all like a terrible dream. I keep thinking about the idea of "fin de siecle". People fear the future so much, especially when a new century dawns, that they'll do anything to perpetuate even the worst aspects of the past. In that context, Nato and the Cold War take on some kind of rosy glow. Nuclear weapons seem marvelous, instead of horrible. How long has it been since the last nukes? 60 years? Well, hell, it's time to pop out some more!!

In that context, creating art really takes on a kind of heroic quality. Content aside, it's an attempt to say that we can express ourselves through art, not bombs. My paintings may not be able to compete with the sheer visual pizzazz of flag bikinis, but I can try. That's one thing that keeps me going.