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

Czar chasm

50-70000 people showed up in Washington DC Saturday to protest...something. Everything! A few snippets:

The remarkable thing here, is that there is very little of this which has been taken out of context. It's easy to make people look stupid via editing, but the interviewer was really only asking them why they were so upset about the things that their signs claimed that they were upset about. Again, I'm not really wild about the debt and deficit being where they are, but when the economy is where it is, this is the only recourse. You don't have to be happy about it, but it'd be nice if you could veer close enough to reality for a moment to at least acknowledge a couple of things:

Barack Obama isn't responsible for cratering the economy.

Things would be a damn sight worse if the stimulus bill had not passed.

Thus, here we are in a very strange moment, where we have the chance to make some real improvements in the way this country operates, and there are people, even those who would benefit, who are opposed to it because televised multi-millionaires have told them they ought to be. I will not go so far as to refer to them as "oligarhs."

Oligarchs, maybe. Plutocrats? Definitely.

I try very hard to see issues and events from all sides, because I have no use for political parties, and no ideology has a lock on good answers or common sense. So, I watch these events, and I wait for the moment where someone says something that makes me think, "Okay, I can agree with you in principle on some of that." But there's just so much WHARRGARBL, that it's nearly impossible to latch on to something that doesn't make you feel lobotomized.

Honestly, I'm to the point anymore where I'm halfway in your corner if you can just say what's bugging you without screaming or starting to cry. The right has turned into the left, all emotion and no brains, just angry, scared, and making everything about everything all the time, which is a classic liberal mistake.

For example, the anti-war protests. You're against the war? Great, march make signs, show the colors. But when the left turns out, PETA shows up, NORML is there, Greenpeace blows in, looking to roll severely obese marchers back into the nearest body of water.

But the right has guzzled down that particular gallon of left-wing stupid. These people who showed up in DC Saturday were angry about health care, that Obama is African, that we have officials called Czars, higher taxes, that Obama is a Muslim, ACORN, the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, to support Joe Wilson, a civilian corps of volunteers to do work in the US, the new combo philosophy of Communist Fascism, that Jesus isn't president, Barney Frank, to take the country back, mandatory abortions for all females over 11, that the country has been mostly destroyed, that "Barack Obama" means "anti-christ" in Hebrew, and just dozens of other really sensible, well-thought out reasons to be upset without needing to admit that the president is colored and that ain't America.

I know that this isn't all about racism, there are legitimate political and philosophical reasons to dislike what the president is doing. But most of this is about racism.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009