Can I kick it? No, you can't.

My job wants me to write a blog that they will use on their website. That's fine, I suppose, and they don't even care if it's political. They just want it to be funny.

I'm told, mostly by people who don't read this blog, that I have one hell of a sense of humor. I usually stare at them, expressionless and mute, until they become uncomfortable and walk away. So, I don't know if it's necessarily true, and that sort of thing is subjective, anyway.

But a lot of what I write about is political, because I know that a great deal of good or harm can be done by those who have their hands on the levers of power in this country. I used to think that due to the Constitutional checks and balances in place, no one person could do real long-term damage to my home, but I don't believe that anymore. People can be reprehensible to the core, but that doesn't mean that they are always wrong, or that we can learn nothing from them. Hermann Goering, for example said:

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

And it's true.

The United States was attacked on September 11, 2001. Fifteen Saudi Arabs and a few close friends killed some air crew and flew planes into buildings. We have been told for almost six years that everything changed that day. That phrase is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Everything changed, because we changed it.

We let our government convince us that the whole world wanted us dead, and not because of anything we did, only because they envy our freedoms. I look at that sentence, and I shake my head. Someone believed that once.

A lot of people still believe it.

I'm just not scared of terror attacks. I understand that they are within the realm of possibility, however remote. I guess I've just decided to go about my life, enjoy what I can, and try to fix the things I'm able to. I'll probably die in a car crash, of heart disease, or at the hands of another red-blooded American enjoying his Second Amendment privileges.

Pardon the pun, but I can live with that.

So, I suppose the key will be to not think big thoughts when it comes to politics. If I keep it small, maybe I can keep it light, and then a good time can be had by all.

"Ha! Ha! Did you see that hat Hillary was wearing? What is she? A socialite? Ha! Ha!"

"Mitt Romney is a Mormon! I wonder how many wives he has! Ha! Ha!"

"Obama! That sounds just like Osama!" Ha! Ha! He must be a terrorist!"

Damn, someone's already been using some of these. I probably owe some anonymous, post-modern Mark Twain a royalty.

"Look at the tyranny of party--at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty--a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes--and which turns voters into chattels, slaves, rabbits, and all the while their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction; and forgetting or ignoring that their fathers and the churches shouted the same blasphemies a generation earlier when they were closing their doors against the hunted slave, beating his handful of humane defenders with Bible texts and billies, and pocketing the insults and licking the shoes of his Southern master."

And now I owe the real one a buck, too.

Thursday, August 23, 2007