Ebbie, it's not that I don't empathize. I do. But it's that after a lengthy lifetime of real hope and belief in the Democrats as a viable alternative to the Republicans...and I did really believe that for most of my life...I have finally reached a point of complete hopelessness about it, that's all. It's not that Democrats aren't well-intentioned down at the level of the ordinary person who votes for that party...they are! But it's that the party itself at the upper level has been taken over by the same great financial powers who have taken over the Republican party.

Once in office, the Democratic Party ends up enacting what are really Republican policies. This isn't because of ordinary people who are Democrats. It's because of how the system works from the top down, and the top is all that counts in that process.

They'll tell you ANYTHING to get elected, but once in office...you get a deeply conservative policy, just like you do from the Republicans.

And that has been happening in Canada too. And in Europe. Bank bailouts to criminal bankers are the rule of the day, and the public everywhere is being made to bear the cost of bailing out the crooks who have bankrupted the society through irresponsible lending practices with money that was created out of thin air...in the form of debt.

Canada is one place that has escaped the direct effect of that so far, because our banks were not de-regulated enough to allow it to happen, and there have been no bank bailouts here. Yet. But we are suffering great peripheral damage of the general depression in the American and world economy.

This has been done by bankers...by creating unpayable levels of debt...and the ordinary people worldwide are being made to pay for it when they didn't do it.

That is the essential problem, and everything else flows from that. Obama has done not a thing to correct it...nor have the Republicans. They are equally guilty of serving the bankers, appointing bankster cronies into the administration, and pursuing militaristic policies abroad, and defrauding the general public.

And I don't think you or I can do a thing about it, and I feel hopeless in the face of it. It isn't that I am emotionally "detached" from things, Ebbie. I'm numb. I can't see any way of effectively opposing what's happening through the ballot box, and that makes me feel hopeless...given the fact that I am not the type who would recommend taking up arms.

What you think is emotional detachment in me is, in fact, despair.