UncleSunny
Well-Known Member
I suppose that I am too much of an idealist. Here I am, some guy in some city, with a degree in Liberal Arts and a bad credit rating. I can read, and I'm kinda smart if you get me on the right day.
Now, I end up looking at the world through news sources and such, and I see an ever increasing change in our democracy into a flat out, unapologetic disgrace of Fascism and injustice. On one hand, there are the big guys. King George W. and his cronies openly BREAKING THE LAW, and obviously lying...see, this is what really gets me. In an era of recorded interviews kept on file, with an entire industry dedicated to listening to world leaders, you are just, too fucking stupid to be a policy maker if you don't realize that you can't get away with "no, I never said that." A journalist would be professionally destroyed if they questioned a particular statement which they had completely fabricated. Just picture it, "Excuse me Mr. President, but when you said 'eating Mexican babies is just something I do for fun; it's hunting the pregnant mother's that I really love'; were you excluding the hunting of non-Hispanic mothers?"
I know I'm being over the top to illustrate my point, but none the less, any person who has struggled through the ranks of journalism to the point where they can sit and ask the President questions is not going to say something that cannot be backed up. (unless you're Bill O'Reilly)
Saying, 'I didn't say that' when you have been recorded and broadcasted around the globe in the Information Age is proof enough that you are too stupid to lie, and therefore should not be a politician. We expect them to lie, but we expect them to be smart and careful enough not to get caught. Bald faced lies just illustrate the notion that these cowboys don't even respect us enough to try and hide it. Fuck you, we run the world, and if you disagree, you are a terrorist. Mr. Rumsfeld, how about, "yeah, I did say that, but we are humans, and just like you all, we did the best with the knowledge we had. We watched those towers fall just like the rest of you did, and in our human failings, we panicked and made a mistake."
Bingo. You now have something called 'character', and believe it or not, it goes much further in making peace than a Halliburton missile.
But the sad thing is the state of the opposition. Some hippie, standing outside a coffee shop with a petition to impeach Cheney??? Sorry there, Starshine, but you are even dumber than they are. In fact, much more incredibly so. To take the specific "impeach Cheney" line of garbage...do you people have any idea of how long a case like that would take to even prepare to bring to trial? What would that do? Rather than make Cheney run home crying, it would waste MORE of our money on some ridiculous trial that would be held up in appeals for the next 8 years. People like this seem to need some kind of symbolic gesture rather than a fixed issue. Let's block up traffic to protest immigration laws in some part of the city that INS policy makers wouldn't be in. Demanding that policies be put in place that would cripple our economy for the sake of some territorial bird, or else be a policy that policy makers cannot control. You can't force Americans to drive Hybrids or dismantle corporations because you think they aren't fair.
If we have learned anything from Iraq, it is that you cannot, with all the guns and bombs in the world, change a society that is not yours, unless of course you are willing to blast it into a sheet of glass. And you can't do that without great consequence; we're not the only boys on this street packing guns.
The same is true for America. Most activists live in a bubble of other activists, and anyone disagreeing is just a redneck. Transversely, "Rednecks" live in a bubble of their own kind. You cannot expect your agenda to be something that everyone can agree on. For as much as the hippies like to espouse that we are all one, we are not. I am very different than some housewife in Indiana or some broker on Wall Street. The perfect world for those folks would be a nightmarish hell for me.
My point is that I generally tend to shy away from politics because in all honesty, it boils down to screaming and expecting that a handful of people are going to change the world to the way we personally think it should be, and if they don't, it's because they are evil. Everybody thinks that they are right; that's why they think the way they do. George W. Bush really does believe he is doing the right thing. He really fears Socialized Medicine to the point that he will allow young children to go untreated. He recently vetoed a bill that would institute Universal Health care to children under a certain economic level, insisting rather that the "[uninsured] people should to talk with their doctors to come up with solutions." Too bad folks without insurance don't HAVE doctors.
He hates Socialism because that idea is the enemy of his entire world. Screw the fact that certain elements of Socialism are actually working in the real world. He talks about how it's a "'slippery slope' to a Communist Police State like they got over there in China," but I get the impression that we're already on that slope and he's steering the toboggan.
But that's just what I think, some guy in some city with some bullshit Liberal Arts degree. I don't even have a job right now. Americans today are caught in a swing between apathy and hopelessness, and it's only a matter of time before something breaks. The people running America now are running it on the assumption that we are still the world's Superpower, like it was when they were kids. The dollar has sunk down to the same value as the Canadian Loon (no disrespect intended, my Canadian friends), Our education is one of the lowest in the Western World, our manufacturing base is all but gone, and the war in Iraq, the one that the majority of people think we should get out of, is costing $10 million an hour, while public infrastructures are being undercut and New Orleans is still a mess.
The good news is he won't be around forever. Let me be very clear, I absolutely think that George W. Bush is the cornerstone of what is wrong with modern America. I absolutely hate him, and really, you know all those things you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy? For me that doesn't apply to King George. I hope he gets the full brunt of God's wrath, but I digress. The good news is that things will change. History is full of dictators and travesties, but they die, and really, the one thing we can do is make peace around us. I always say that the best way for a culture to take over the world is by being the best culture in the world and having others emulate you because they admire you. I guess I can't change policy, but I can control how I act in my daily life.
I'm having a hard time ending this, because there is no conclusion to what I'm talking about. If we all did what we thought was right, well, George would still be invading the world and people would still be screaming in Congress. I guess this is why I stay away from it, even though I know that doing just that is the biggest part of the problem.
Now, I end up looking at the world through news sources and such, and I see an ever increasing change in our democracy into a flat out, unapologetic disgrace of Fascism and injustice. On one hand, there are the big guys. King George W. and his cronies openly BREAKING THE LAW, and obviously lying...see, this is what really gets me. In an era of recorded interviews kept on file, with an entire industry dedicated to listening to world leaders, you are just, too fucking stupid to be a policy maker if you don't realize that you can't get away with "no, I never said that." A journalist would be professionally destroyed if they questioned a particular statement which they had completely fabricated. Just picture it, "Excuse me Mr. President, but when you said 'eating Mexican babies is just something I do for fun; it's hunting the pregnant mother's that I really love'; were you excluding the hunting of non-Hispanic mothers?"
I know I'm being over the top to illustrate my point, but none the less, any person who has struggled through the ranks of journalism to the point where they can sit and ask the President questions is not going to say something that cannot be backed up. (unless you're Bill O'Reilly)
Saying, 'I didn't say that' when you have been recorded and broadcasted around the globe in the Information Age is proof enough that you are too stupid to lie, and therefore should not be a politician. We expect them to lie, but we expect them to be smart and careful enough not to get caught. Bald faced lies just illustrate the notion that these cowboys don't even respect us enough to try and hide it. Fuck you, we run the world, and if you disagree, you are a terrorist. Mr. Rumsfeld, how about, "yeah, I did say that, but we are humans, and just like you all, we did the best with the knowledge we had. We watched those towers fall just like the rest of you did, and in our human failings, we panicked and made a mistake."
Bingo. You now have something called 'character', and believe it or not, it goes much further in making peace than a Halliburton missile.
But the sad thing is the state of the opposition. Some hippie, standing outside a coffee shop with a petition to impeach Cheney??? Sorry there, Starshine, but you are even dumber than they are. In fact, much more incredibly so. To take the specific "impeach Cheney" line of garbage...do you people have any idea of how long a case like that would take to even prepare to bring to trial? What would that do? Rather than make Cheney run home crying, it would waste MORE of our money on some ridiculous trial that would be held up in appeals for the next 8 years. People like this seem to need some kind of symbolic gesture rather than a fixed issue. Let's block up traffic to protest immigration laws in some part of the city that INS policy makers wouldn't be in. Demanding that policies be put in place that would cripple our economy for the sake of some territorial bird, or else be a policy that policy makers cannot control. You can't force Americans to drive Hybrids or dismantle corporations because you think they aren't fair.
If we have learned anything from Iraq, it is that you cannot, with all the guns and bombs in the world, change a society that is not yours, unless of course you are willing to blast it into a sheet of glass. And you can't do that without great consequence; we're not the only boys on this street packing guns.
The same is true for America. Most activists live in a bubble of other activists, and anyone disagreeing is just a redneck. Transversely, "Rednecks" live in a bubble of their own kind. You cannot expect your agenda to be something that everyone can agree on. For as much as the hippies like to espouse that we are all one, we are not. I am very different than some housewife in Indiana or some broker on Wall Street. The perfect world for those folks would be a nightmarish hell for me.
My point is that I generally tend to shy away from politics because in all honesty, it boils down to screaming and expecting that a handful of people are going to change the world to the way we personally think it should be, and if they don't, it's because they are evil. Everybody thinks that they are right; that's why they think the way they do. George W. Bush really does believe he is doing the right thing. He really fears Socialized Medicine to the point that he will allow young children to go untreated. He recently vetoed a bill that would institute Universal Health care to children under a certain economic level, insisting rather that the "[uninsured] people should to talk with their doctors to come up with solutions." Too bad folks without insurance don't HAVE doctors.
He hates Socialism because that idea is the enemy of his entire world. Screw the fact that certain elements of Socialism are actually working in the real world. He talks about how it's a "'slippery slope' to a Communist Police State like they got over there in China," but I get the impression that we're already on that slope and he's steering the toboggan.
But that's just what I think, some guy in some city with some bullshit Liberal Arts degree. I don't even have a job right now. Americans today are caught in a swing between apathy and hopelessness, and it's only a matter of time before something breaks. The people running America now are running it on the assumption that we are still the world's Superpower, like it was when they were kids. The dollar has sunk down to the same value as the Canadian Loon (no disrespect intended, my Canadian friends), Our education is one of the lowest in the Western World, our manufacturing base is all but gone, and the war in Iraq, the one that the majority of people think we should get out of, is costing $10 million an hour, while public infrastructures are being undercut and New Orleans is still a mess.
The good news is he won't be around forever. Let me be very clear, I absolutely think that George W. Bush is the cornerstone of what is wrong with modern America. I absolutely hate him, and really, you know all those things you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy? For me that doesn't apply to King George. I hope he gets the full brunt of God's wrath, but I digress. The good news is that things will change. History is full of dictators and travesties, but they die, and really, the one thing we can do is make peace around us. I always say that the best way for a culture to take over the world is by being the best culture in the world and having others emulate you because they admire you. I guess I can't change policy, but I can control how I act in my daily life.
I'm having a hard time ending this, because there is no conclusion to what I'm talking about. If we all did what we thought was right, well, George would still be invading the world and people would still be screaming in Congress. I guess this is why I stay away from it, even though I know that doing just that is the biggest part of the problem.
