The Illusion Of Concern

For me, the event in Austin,Texas today is only the beginning of many such acts that will occur in the coming months and years. It is simply a logical extension of the anger and frustration with weak and ineffective government, as exemplified by the Tea Party movement. The genie has been loosed from it’s bottle,and it’s really pissed. I wouldn’t expect that all these angry people will simply vent their collective displeasure at the ballot box. Home grown indivdual terrorists inflamed by anti-big government rhetoric perpetuated on talk radio and of Fox News ( i find it hard to enunciate thos two words together without gagging),will continue these random acts and will be pretty much impossible to stop. The nuts from the fringes will spurred on  by the purveyors of hate with microphones and control of the airwaves and they will find their targets. Hide and watch.

It is obvious that our leaders are cowards, more concerned with reelection or keeping power than in effecting any action that would be for the common good of this country. There are some good men among them, but really so few. The People are cowards too, prone to knee jerk reactions.Real Democrats are almost nonexistent. They are a party in power in name only. Too many of  them are just republicans in democrat clothing. The republican party has ruined this country and continue to do so. Therefore, I have to agree with many of my friends that no incumbent office holder deserves to be reelected. Many of their potential replacements will not be worthy either,but that is yet to be proven. I believe that real change can only be accomplished, by ridding ourselves of those who take for granted their priviledge of power. This is an extreme measure and I only suggest it as a message to be delivered in the upcoming election. If the message it is not heeded after that, then all bets are off.

I think the presumption of guilt, at least among those of a conservative bent, has become a worrisome trend in this country. The picking and choosing to whom we shall, and shall not extend constitutional guarantees,strikes me as a slap in the face of the founding father’s not to mention to those who have fought and died to defend those rights for all. And it makes me wonder just where it all ends. If the constitution only applies when it is convenient,it might as well be so much striking paper anyway. If it is only a document of  convenience,how long before we all become inconvenient? It has become a long dark night,in all too many ways in this land. But we’ve given in and given up so much in the name of fear. Do we even deserve the light to shine?

I noticed I really haven’t posted much in the past two months,and nothing at all in December. I suppose I should…but i’m not really feeling it. I’m not at all sure if I will continue this humble blog site. That,I doubt, will  be of concern to many, least of all myself. I will close by saying a Happy New Year to all. It has got to be a better one upcoming. This one has sucked way too much.

I grew up on a lot of milatary bases, and I can tell you I met a lot of crazy folks and witnessed many crimes during that time. There were many wonderful people I met as well, who were like a family of sorts. A large often dysfuntional family much of the time. I often felt fear  while on base, but that was from my own alcoholic dad. But the kind of fear generated by a mad man at Fort Hood,Tx., never entered my mind. There were brawls and individual acts of violence that I heard about; serviceman against serviceman,or against civilians.i Can’t imagine the effect this senseless act of violense will have on sevicemen and women , and on there families, but I think it won’t be good. This most unfriendly fire  will unfortunately effect the military negatively for years to come.

The fact that democrats have only an illusion of a majority,has never been so apparent as when Sen. Joe Lieberman stated he would not vote with dems on a bill with a public option.  Sen. Joe has proven himself to be an unreliable vote when it really matters. It seems maintaining this illusion of a majority is more important than getting urgently needed things done. I think health care reform is not worth doing at all without a public option. At this point, reconciliation is the only way to go. It is regrettable,but it is in the rules and such tactics are needed when a party sells its soul for the illusion of a majority. Get it done and move on.

Recently hate crime legislation has been extended to include sexual orientation. It is obvious to me that gays and lesbians have been targeted for acts of violence simply because of Bias and homophobia. The argument against such legislation, has been that it requires knowledge of a person’s thoughts  and that acts of violence are already criminal offences. I think this misses the point. Anyone is free to think and express their viewpoint on most any topic,but when these  thoughts lead to actual violence,then I think intent is fair game. It is not necessary to read someone’s mind to guage the intent behind their actions.

The American Dream, I suppose these three words conjure different images in the minds of those who see it in print, or hear it spoken. I think for my grandparents generation, it was the idea that if they worked hard ,they might be able to own a house and their children might do a little better than they did. My parents genration had pretty much the same expectations. In my own generation, I think the dream has been corrupted. It has been morphed into the idea, that the acqusition of wealth is a reasonable expectation for all. I think this idea has been propagated by the far right and to great extent by the media. If you hold to the supposition(and i do) that there is only a certain amount of wealth to go around, the fact that a relative few Americans are able to accumulate a vast amount of wealth,doesn’t that affect the ability of those with more modest and reasonable expectations to realize their vision of The American Dream. But more and more of my generation have bought into this ponzi scheme, but to acheive it they must work longer hours and rely on increasing debt to maintain this illusion,in effect becoming slaves to this corruption of The American Dream. It took the recent bursting of housing bubble to expose the reality behind the illusion for many Americans who had greedily bought into this lie. Mere survival has always been The American Dream of those living in poverty, and for a lot of the former middle class, who now face the threat or realization of foreclosure and bancruptcy, this has become their reality as well. I think this will be true for many more Americans and unless they wake up from this new American Nightmare, what was once a reasonable expectation will become the impossible dream for our children and grand children.

The immediate objective of the war in Afghanistan was a failure. Osama and his cohorts were allowed to escape and yet we are still there. We made a strong point,that a country which supports and or harbors terrorists could very well face our wrath,but other than that we pretty much dropped the ball. Yet, we are still there. So what do we do instead of concentating on rectifying our failure in Afghanistan,we start a new war, with a new villain(who we are eventually able to capture). Yet,we are still there. Now we are mired in two wars in which the original objective of both have not been met. What do you do when your objectives have not been accomplished? Do you do what you can to help the civilian populations of both countries and leave as quickly as possible ? Obviously , not. You develop new objectives, and eight long years later, these objectives have not been acheived either. The slow trickle of death ,that is well over 5000 at this point , is something i do not believe our country will endure very much longer.

To paraphrase John Stuart Mill,”While it is true not all people who oppose the President are racists, it is true that most racists are stupid people. Many of the people professing to be members of the Tea Party Express are openly racist in their actions and in their signage. I suppose if  you want to show thosands of people on the Washington Mall, you really can’t turn people away, no matter how much vitriol they spout. I don’t know if Rep. Joe Wilson is a racist,but he has been a member of The Son’s of The Confederacy. I do know that many people feel having a black president is nothing short of a tragedy for this country( most of them aren’t shy about saying this). That these people would gravitate to theTea Party movement is not surprising. The smarter(and I use the term loosely) of these folks use code words: socialist and muslim, but we all know the epithet they’d really love to use. There are people who will never accept a black man as their president. It is a sad fact. Sadder still, the folks who honestly disagree with the president’s policies are bringing the racists along for the ride.