As to your tiny green note: Maybe just read the news a little bit. Don't watch it on TV {I think you already don't} it seems even more creepy that way.
The news can be very enraging. I try to balance my news diet by looking for some positive advances in the big ol' world to offset some of those depressing and enraging events that are jam packed into every news cycle.
Yes, the news can drive one mad.
I can't drink or take drugs, any kind of drugs. But I still have to read the news.
I am a news addict and it makes me crazy too. I empathize but have little practical advice on how to cope.
I spend a lot of time looking at plants and trees and growing them. It buffers the situation somewhat. Also very long swims tend to inject some happy feelings into the brain and body. I guess these are a kind of distraction mechanism.
I would hope that you find a way to face the news music even if it means shutting off the world wide feed of information. I did that for some time once {18 months in 1990-1} but I was very adrift and then other deeper psychological problems bubbled up to occupy my mind.
I learned a frightening thing! My news addiction was just another distraction for deeper problems. It's a wonder I am able to function in the general community at all! I guess my ability to offer a reasonable facsimile of sanity is the secret. That, and many layered distraction.

So, hm, I don't know if this will be helpful at all or not, but it's what came to mind for me when I read your post script. By the way, what came to mind for me when I read the post itself was - right the motherfuck on, and thank you for saying so, and not a wasted word in there.

As to what seems to be, for a lot of people, the cyclical news-fucks-me-up dilemma:

Sometimes for self-comforting I do have to turn down the informational volume temporarily. But to me there has also always been something about the value of bearing witness. Not: "sitting in front of my tv and taking in the crap as well as the "important" stuff is a spiritual act!" But: there's all kinds of things I can do as a person who has a caring heart in this world, and, small-seeming or not, one of those things is that I can be a person who sees and hears and meets that intake with love and validation, which you of course already do. For me, for instance when I read about several lesbians being raped and tortured and murdered in South Africa not long ago - part of me went into meltdown rage and sorrow and fuck-I-don't-want-to-know-these-things-anymore-if-I-don't-get-to-have-the-power-to-stop-it. But then I also felt like - I would want them to know that someone at least is not turning away from what was done to them simply because it is painful to know. I don't want them to be invisible-ized because everyone either doesn't care or cares "too much." One way that I feel like I have a chance of getting that out to their spirits is by giving attention to their lives, and to their deaths.

One way of rejecting the unacceptable reduction of people to "issues" and threats is to address any way, that catches your attention, that this gets done.

Not to say that taking breaks or even ongoing insulation is a failure, people gotta do what works for them I think. Just that there are quite enough people not-getting-angry about angering things, and there is nothing crazy about refusing to join that movement, and there is something powerful about listening in and of itself, in my opinion.

I can relate mightily to the postscript.

But I was thinking as I read your post about White Flight. It's a bit ironic when looked at the grand sweep of history.

I mean, us white folk ran here to get away from big bad England and find somewhere we could all be what we wanted to be, but then all the garbage came with us. We couldn't let the people already here be what they wanted to be. And now people are on the run again, or at least they will be, that or learn to live with their neighbors. I'm thinking that there's really not many places to 'run' to anymore.

Nez:

I got all your rage, but nowhere near your energy or creativity. I just try to nibble around the edges a little bit.

A lot of folks in Virginia and further south are still pissed off about Mr. Lincoln's theft of their property with the stroke of his pen. He took all those dark children of God and changed them from law abiding slaves into ciminals. Damn him to hell.

Hey, did you hear about that crazy Governor Vila in PR. He told the 129th Convention of the National Guard Assn. that sending more troops to Iraq--especially Guard and Reserve troops was a bad idea. They stood up, en masse, and applauded--must have been some kind of subtle, but diabolical hispanomindcontrol.

LOL

Would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that one.

And I am sitting here smiling, even a low chuckle emerged. Not at you, but the image you allowed me to recall. (pig wrestling) You don't need to do a damned thing. No counselor or therapist(and the good ones will admit it)is as good as a friend. Counselors/therapists are merely placeholders until that friend comes along and replaces them. Friends you've got. Therapy you do not need.

Tired of feeling like you're needlessly banging your head against the wall? A large part of our unenlightened population are simply pigs. Not necessarily in the biological sense, but in the intellectual sense. They are not smart, they learn by what is called superstitious behavior. And they religiously stick by this learned behavior because that is all they are capable of handling. As one of my farmer acquaintances explained to me, that "mud 'rasslin with pigs is a waste of time. After a while, you realize that that the pig is actually enjoying it." He was referring to the same people that frustrate us all. As much as you try, I don't know if you can ever get through to the pigs. They are not your audience, they are merely the examples of some of the stupidity you want to communicate to us non-pigs. You help to keep me from becoming a pig.

in response to green note: i empathize completely. for me, the heaps of badsh*t i digest each day both infuriate me and inspire me to nudge my way into making my own goddamn media....which you are doing here and which is a great service to us all.

"But hey! ILLEGULZ don't need food! OR compassion! They aren't people, for crying out loud! They are crimes in motion! Crimes don't have stomachs! Or pain!"

Ahh, cognitive dissonance... Have you heard of Dr. Joy Leary and her book POST TRAUMATIC SLAVE SYNDROME? She keynoted my organization's conference yesterday and i see an instant connection upon reading this post. She does a revolutionary truth-telling psychoanalytical presentation on the history of slavery in this country and its lasting trauma on black folks and all of us. She also teaches in-depth on cognitive dissonance and shows just what goes on in whitey's mind that allowed and still allows him to see black folks as inhuman and to justify slavery & subsequent injustices, then and now. She breaks it all down in an extraordinary way....and I see SO many connections to how undocumented folks nowadays are looked at through the same i-have-no-empathy-for-you-b/c-you-are-not-a-person-but-an-ILLEGAL lens. Check it out: www.joyleary.com

My pasty people have been in Virginia since the early 1800s. We were tight with Gen. Lee. Some are cultural narcissists (which is the nicest way I can put it), and some, in particular my own parents, are worldly and rational, and seized the chance to get involved in desegregation when it came to their school. Dad joined SNCC at his South Carolina college.

If it provides any hope at all, there are plenty of little pasty boys and girls who are taught to ring out, "I don't appreciate that remark, I think that's a moronic and racist statement." And it shuts people right up. It would be nice if the news would quote a few of those guys. I swear to you, they're there. I just never thought we'd still be having this conversation in the year 2007.

I was taught in the early seventies that this was a new day, we're all brothers and sisters, people knew better than to be racist thugs now, and the awful, awful things our older generation (some of them) said would die out with them. Gee, thanks again, Reagan/Atwater/Norquist/Rove & Co., for turning that ship around in the eighties.

But it can't be just them. There is simply something very wrong with some people, they need to believe in a feudal society where they are always the upper class. I know that they know it's bullshit, so I have to believe it's a form of mental illness. And it's everywhere, not just in redneckville, just ask Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Her grandmother taught her that their clan was superior to all other Somali clans, which were all superior to Kenyans of any kind, etc.

The so-called culture of the community in Virginia has some vile and horrific aspects. If those special few in Manassas really want to embrace their culture and history, they need to learn the whole story. They could start here, at the Without Sanctuary site: http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/

Effexor used to work, but then it didn't.

I feel better about the swirling injustice as I get more actively involved in fighting it. Working with others to plan and execute projects big and small that push back against the ugly tide makes me feel hopeful and less isolated in the struggle.

I think of a quote I heard a long time ago "The only way out is through."

"all this talk of ILLEGULZ really makes me seethe."

Help me out mano, cause right now I'm fighting a one man battle with the usual suspect racist, pendejo, idiotas out here in the Eastern Front.

http://www.topix.net/forum/source/hampton-roads-daily-press/TGRBCJLTVNVQ8MG65

Where they have laws to check on your citizenship if stopped by the police.

I first want to echo peasant's thanks: "you help me from becoming a pig." so thank you for that, for being unapologetically Mexican. a wonderful website, an excellent post. I am sorry for the hurt that can come even from just watching the evening news.
Like soyinkafan, i was taught in the (60's and) 70's that we had moved beyond racism - and then came Raygun (imagine my surprise). I quickly learned that there was no end to American racism.
I agree with soyinkafan that there are some "pasty people" out there who know the truth, and are maddened by it. And i think it is our responsibility to do just as noted, to "ring out": "this is racist, this is wrong." (However in my experience this usually only shuts the bigots up for a moment, after they recover from the shock of hearing this from a white person they quickly move on to attacking them as well.)
I believe this is something we should do more. Morally, stopping racism is primarily the responsibilty of those who are in position to benefit from the discrimination. And the costs are less to us, while our standing up to white privilege and bigotry may provoke anger or even ostracism, we usually do not face deportation or hate crimes as a result (and being ostracized by bigots is actually good for us). If more white people took up the much needed work of calling out the bigots like Dobbs and speaking truth to power, our darker brothers and sisters would not have to pay the high psychological price of confronting and seeing this hate on a daily basis by themselves.
Dobbs and Trancredo and the rest will continue to loudly espouse their bigotry, we have to be just as loud in pointing out their bigotry.

Demmocommie

A lot of has been made of Gov. Acevedo's remarks. But a) they where made for local consumption, because most of us are against the war b) some have ascribed the letter (d) to his name, but he is no democrats since we don't have neither democrats or republicans and c)one of the reasons he is saying this is that anti-war sentiment almost always translates to anti-American sentiment as the war in Iraq is a stark reminder of our own condition as subjects of the Empire.