We have become a nation of people I don't like.
I'm hardly misanthropic, but I'm getting there, and I get closer every time I watch the news: I don't like liars, cheats, people who pop their gum, swindlers, people who hang tea bags from their straw hats and make us look like even bigger boneheads to people around the world. I can't stand that there are still people who hate me because I am a Jew, people who park in handicapped spots when they're not handicapped and then give you shit when you complain; racists of all colors and creeds. I hate people who carry themselves with an attitude of "entitlement." I feel sorry for the empty heads filled with the rhetoric du jour because they grew up without any brains of their own, although this, too, can turn dangerous. I am not fond of rudeness or bad manners. I try to always remember to say please and thank you.
I hate the use/misuse of the internet, a wonderful tool which can answer any question you have in seconds, but has bloated the heads of kids and grownups alike who think "I got rid of the pills on my acrylic sweater today. What causes pilling, anyway?" is worth a Tweet. Tweets are for twits, in my opinion. How many twits can you fit on the head of a pin? The internet has caused a rash of plagiarism in high schools and colleges, so there's lots more original thinking flying right out the window before it's even born. Children are growing up without knowing how wonderful books are; a love of reading wonderful words in a work of good fiction (or non-fiction if you like history) is such a gift, but they can't stop to read now because they have to run upstairs and check their page on Facebook!
But I digress...
I despise the judgmental legislators who preach family values and them head up to their girlfriend's or boyfriend's houses for a little slap and tickle. These are the legislators who judge me, and legislate marriage between loving couples of the same sex (I'm straight, not stupid, and yet I just can't seem to understand how gay marriage threatens my status as a heterosexual married woman). I hate elected officials who legislate our bodies, and who wear too much hairspray like that wackjob Governor Brewer of Arizona who wants to make sure we hate immigrants (somebody oughta take that gal on a tour of New York and have her read the words at the base of the Statue of Liberty). Y'know what else? I'll bet she's already got enough hairspray on her vanity table at the Governor's Mansion to build that fence all the way around Arizona all by herself without breaking a nail.
I hate the pustular corporate gougers and gorgers who are destroying our economy and our earth and killing our wildlife and leaving the mess from their mess to be cleaned up somebody else - maybe a kid at a movie theatre sweeping up spilled popcorn? Could they possibly be so utterly devoid of souls? Taking responsibility would be a start.
Something is so very wrong here: there should be system after system after system in place to have prevented this latest oil disaster, but it's probably cutting too far into BP's bottom line to have THAT much safety equipment. There will undoubtedly be a flurry of lawsuits from grieving family members, but no doubt BP's smooth-talking car salesmen/lawyers will help soothe the grieving widows with a settlement of a little money so that little Johnny or Jenny will have a college fund thanks to his/her dead Dad and the company that should have valued his life so this would never happen. Except they didn't. They didn't care, and they didn't protect his life. Little Johnny or Jenny will have a college fund set up by the same bloated, rancid megacorp THAT TOOK THEIR FATHER'S LIFE. And won't that be a nice bit of closure on this terribly sad time. Let's not forget the billion dollar cleanup, the cost of which we, as consumers, will definitely have to eat (you think BP will pay it? I think not - they'll just do what they always do - raise the prices at the pumps, the other oil companies will do so as well with some 'BLAHBLAHBLAH" explanation (the translation of which is "bend over") and the countless deaths of our helpless, unsuspecting, critters whose beautiful lives have been smothered in oil in this cataclysm these "7 years without an accident" heartless bastards have wrought upon our world: our now world, our next year world, and, if the Exxon Valdez has taught us anything, our forever world. I wonder if they remembered to set the counter back to "Zero Days Without an Accident?"
Do you ever wonder how they sleep at night? How can they not be haunted by the terrible destruction, the loss of human and wildlife and the damage to such a beautiful aquatic environment? This is the deep sleep of the soulless.
I don't sleep well any more; this whole terrible nightmare fills my heart with grief. President Obama, those of us who worked hand in hand for your election and had a glimpse of how wonderful it is when different people talk to one another and how good the world could be, have watched this vision vandalized by lunatics. We need you to blow the whistle on this madness! Sarah Palin, whose intellect is as deep as a bic pen whose voice could rival any nail on any blackboard anywhere in the galaxy, makes me want to leave the country (even though she's all the way over in Alaska, I feel like moving out of the country to Canada (where my uninsured husband would have access to healthcare he desperately needs because I make too much money now on disability) and where I would not have neighbors like Sarah Palin! Oh, don't get me started on Sarah Palin...
She is living proof that the inmates here are running the asylum!
Sometimes I think Henry VIII had a pretty good idea to discourage his dissenters and punish his criminals (not to mention a few wives while he was at it): a recently lopped-off head on a stake works for me, for sure, especially when it's being buzzed by flies. I will definitely not be doing whatever THAT guy did!
How will we ever punish them? For their own internal leakages and disasters, I'm certain BP has layers and layers of lawyers and spokespeople and middle executives so the truly responsible are protected. I'll be looking forward to watching BP eat it's young, because that'll happen. After all, remember - shit rolls downhill; it'll be interesting to see who's going to be wearing that nice big turd hat.