O.K., this is stream of consciousness. Probably lots of typos. A vent. A rant. An almost-real-time event. Please, some help, therapy, validation,
something positive, pleeaaaase . . .
I'm at a local watering hole. A new friend's invited me out for an after-work drink or three. All's well. Somebody joins our party of 3 or 4. A woman. She's engaged. That's nice. We get to talking. She lends a very sympathetic ear. Oh, did I tell you about the divorce? But that's not politics, so, guess not something that needs to be "gone into" here. Anyway, a nice person. And all "yeh, your wife's broken all the rules" kind of sympathetic person. Again, this is with several people around and in a public place and all.
Then . . . somebody, NOT me, brings up the war in Iraq. Then someone starts trashing . . . get this . . . Al Gore !!! I hold my tongue. Somehow. more . . .
I listen and try and hold my tongue. This group, whom I thought I knew rather well, starts trashing
Al Gore!!! About
9.11!!! It's f'ing surreal! As if
Al Gore had been President (well, he was! just not in the White House!) in 2001!
I finally have it "up to here." Having kept silent for a few minutes, I say something like, "Well, of course, we'll never know what Gore would have done but, I'd like to think that he would've at least tried to have thwarted the 9.11 attacks, I mean, what with all the Al Qaida chatter going on in the Summer of 01 and that PDB from August 6. Well, fellow Kosniacs, if you've never known what it feels like to have 5 people look at you like you have 5 heads and a small waste treatment plant in your boxer shorts, trust me, it's rather awkward.
They (as we say here in the Deep South) "lit into me" like a pack of rabid coon dogs. I'd spouted sacrelidge! Bush did do the right thing! How dare I speak good of Gore and disparagingly of Bush! We all know that Saddam was a THREAT to the U.S.!!! On and on and on. . . Limbaughesque vacuuous piffle.
The came my unforgivable sin: I asked questions!
Well, if you had been President, wouldn't you have pulled out all the stops to have stopped an Al Qaida attack if you had been warned of such a thing.
What, exactly did Bush do, or even try to do, to stop those Al Qaida operations that would become manifest in the 9.11 attacks???
Do you really, I mean really think that Gore would've spent the month of August '01 on vacation if he had received the same intel as W. Bush??!
. . . and about 3-5 more questions like that. When I got any answers, they were something like, "Well Kim Song (not knowing Kim Jong Il's name) would 'have his way' with us if we didn't 'take a stand' in Iraq!"
I mean really loopy, Kool-Aid drinkin' crap. Finally, I got this one woman to admit that Bush had done NOTHING to event attempt to thwart the 9.11 attacks and to admit that NONE of the 9.11 highjackers were Iraqi . . . but that didn't matter: I was "too intense" (to me, the Kool Aid drinkers "out" -- an easier way of saying, "O.K., I admit it: my Limbaugh- and O'Reilly-esque talking points are nothing but shit."
Then, this woman's friend comes in, the woman with whom I've exchanged the "heated" words above. She (the friend) sees that her friend is upset (not boo-hoo crying, but upset). They go to the bathroom together. I talk a moment with another friend, a guy who says he, "Just doesn't know enough about it (log on to DailyKos, learn a LOT "about it"!!!) to comment." Anyway, it's time to go. I leave, having written a note on a napkin and leaving it with the woman server saying, "I'm sorry. Forgive me."
Get it? I wrote a note to her saying forgive me!!!
Of course, I write the note because I feel so obligated to do it.
It's just so said . . . And it's VERY frustrating. Your thoughts ? ? ?
BenGoshi
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