Just my opinion...

On the turning away
From the pale and downtrodden
And the words they say
Which we won’t understand
Don’t accept that what’s happening
Is just a case of others’ suffering
Or you’ll find that you’re joining in
The turning away

It’s a sin that somehow
Light is changing to shadow
And casting its shroud
Over all we have known
Unaware how the ranks have grown
Driven on by a heart of stone
We could find that we’re all alone
In the dream of the proud

On the wings of the night
As the daytime is slurring
Where the speechless unite
In a silent accord
Using words you will find are strange
And mesmerized as they light the flame
Feel the new wind of change
On the wings of the night

No more turning away
From the weak and the weary
No more turning away
From the coldness inside
Just a world that we all must share
It’s not enough just to stand and stare
Is it only a dream that there’ll be
No more turning away?

“On The Turning Away”
Pink Floyd

My conservative friends actually look upon me with derision for thinking and feeling any of the emotion evoked by this song.  You know…  Being a bleeding-heart liberal and all.

One of my favorite comedians is Dana Gould.  I’ve always found him particularly funny with an ability to capture an idea almost poetically.  Recently he’s done some political commentary and has appeared on “Real Time with Bill Mahr“.  In a bit he did for the show, he covered some health care town halls.  He made an observation that I’ve been trying to put into words for a while.  When asked about an under-class in the United States he remarked that what he saw was a permanent “anger-class”.  Most of the members of the anger-class are what he then referred to as “conservative fundamentalists” who believed that President Ronald Reagan was a political diety and that everything that fell out of President Reagan’s mouth was their gospel.  Anytime our country deviates from this gospel they go ape-shit.  (To be clear, I don’t mean these people.)  Since Reagan’s utopia doesn’t coincide with reality, our country continues to move away from the Reagan years, so the anger-class is destined to just get more pissed off.  Most will probably carry that anger until the end of their lives.

Since the election of President Obama the anger-class has been in an snot-bubble-crying fit of rage.  Their current gripe is that he’s tyring to reform health care.  Most of them go on and on about how specifics of this plan are affronts to freedom and liberty.  Worse is that profit would be removed from the health care system.  This is how the right has beaten health care reform as well – the argument that everything should be for profit.  I disagree but my voice is pretty small.

The observation I’ve made is that the anger-class is orders of magnitude more upset since this last election than any other post-election reaction I know of.  I didn’t like President Clinton but after he was elected, I calmed down and got back to my life in like an hour.  I really didn’t like President George W. Bush but I went on with my life…  Twice.  The anger-class is still chest pounding and foot stomping all over the country nearly 9 months after he took office.  Not just that typical political commentary and disagreement but a vitriolic language normally reserved for personal hatred.  It appears that it’s getting worse not better.  I desperately hope that I’m wrong but given the mentality of some of the grass-roots base of the now decimated “right” I fear an attempt on the president’s life at some point in his term.  Again, I want to be wrong but folks the anger-class is accelerating the rhetoric and whipping that still disappointed base into a frenzy.

I wish there was something that could be said to calm them down.  I now find myself in the position of having lots of friends who I know for a fact are reasonable folks but are in the anger-class now.  How they got sucked into it is beyond me.  I overhear their conversations and read their articles and I know that I can’t engage them in conversation on an intellectual level about the topics because what I’m hearing is anger and rage.  I’ve attempted to engage a couple of them once or twice only to get shouted down.

I’m not sure why I felt compelled to write this down…  Maybe I’m hoping some of my conservative friends will see it and understand why I won’t talk with them about anything more substantive than the weather lately.

And honestly, I don’t know why they’re so worried.  Democrats have control of the House and the Senate with a Democratic President and they still can’t pass anything.  The Democrats are pussies.  Until the anger-class realizes this, I’m providing them the following quick link.

I’ve always loved living in the United States.  When I was young, my Dad would tell me the reason he loved this country was that we actually have the ideal that “all men are created equal“.  He also told me it was only an ideal because the men who originally wrote those words meant white, male, land-owners.  So the founding fathers didn’t have a perfect notion of equality.  We the people later started correcting the concept with the abolition of slavery, making sure everyone had the right to vote, etc.  We the people, given enough time, work toward a better place for us all.  We haven’t gotten there yet but this is still a very young country and some of our issues can be explained by our immaturity.

I know many people have issues with President Obama but one thing we the people can all be proud of is this.  We’re the only nation to elect a minority to its highest office.  We’re getting closer to our declaration that “all men are created equal“.

Later my love for the United States included the fact that we don’t fight religious wars.  I’ve now had discussions with friends and listened to pundits and experts talk about the current war in Iraq and the rhetoric leading up to the war.  I’d love to say that the war in Iraq isn’t a US religious war but as I look back over the chronology and recent news about how religion was used to promote the war to former President Bush, I can’t help seeing the war in Iraq as such.

There are plenty of criticisms of the war in Iraq.  The war in Iraq is really a spin-off of the War on Terrorism.  An extension or the War on Terrorism is the Patriot Act.  Patriot Act is a particularly distasteful name to me given that this law flies in the face of our core beliefs of civil liberties.  Perhaps you feel differently, I provided a link to a description of it and from there you can go get the full text of the law.  Read it all, I did.  It sucks.  If President Obama doesn’t make moves to repeal it I will not support him for a second term – and I supported him for President in 2008.

Our War on Terrorism  is also at the core of all the torture issues as well.  As a nation, we’ve allowed ourselves to become torturers.  Now, I’ve listened to all the arguments about “imminent danger”, you know – there’s a ticking time-bomb that can take out a city and it’s ok to torture this one guy to save many lives.  Problem is, that situation never existed in any of the cases.  Actually, that situation only existed on cable TV and in the movies.  Over and over I’ve heard the argument that “torture ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ have  made us a safer people”.  The argument no one can ever make is that torture has made us a better people. 

Is feeling safer really enough for us to resort to torture?  I hope not because it’s one of the same arguments made against the Second Amendment.  As Benjamin Franklin said:

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

(Often attributed to Thomas Jefferson but look here.)

I do love living in the United States (being allowed to write this blog article without regard to retribution is just one good reason) but I don’t think I’ll ever be “patriotic”.  A few pretty smart people agree with me on the topic of patriotism as well.  A few I find particularly resonant are:

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind. ~Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race. ~George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons. ~Bertrand Russell

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its office-holders. ~Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 1889

Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism – how passionately I hate them! ~Albert Einstein

The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? ~Pablo Casals

Remember that today is a celebration of freedom.  Not patriotism.

Have a great 4th of July.