This was inspired by a recent diary by DixieDemocrat
It is what it is. I probably won't reply to anything tonight. It's too much for me. Everywhere I turn - even here - there's just abject anger flying in all directions. The whole country is wound up like those toy planes we used to have with the foot-long rubber bands - and I don't know about you, but I had a lot of those planes in my childhood, and not one of them ever survived with the rubber band intact.
Ought to be a sign.
Either way, here's a rant, and I'm letting go.
The story of the AK-47 in my last diary is not melodrama. It's two doors away, in the hands of a guy who likes to drink a lot.
I'm going back to being an antisocial recluse and hope you all sort this out while we still have time.
Someday I may have the courage to publish my real name - I'm almost curious to see how long it would take them to come and get me given the current level of hyperbole and demogoguery that makes so many rich and so many others rabid.
Dear RedState, and to those in the red states:
If our founders all wanted us to have the same religion...
...if our founders all wanted us to have the same skin color...
...if our founders all wanted us to be politically conservative...
then what fools those founders were indeed to give us the freedom or liberty to be anything else.
Every time a TEA partier cries and wails like a second-grader to his gym teacher after he's been sidelined for a foul so blatant it only makes it so obvious he doesn't understand the rules of the game, I wonder if it's the Democrats who ought to be armed and ready to fire.
Freedom, Liberty does not mean we should all, or have to look, walk, talk, think, act, and pray alike. Indeed, some of us don't even pray at all.
If our founders all wanted us to be the same, if our founders had such particular and specific goals for what we should think, believe, and act upon, holy shit did they screw up royally by not writing it down and making it law.
Freedom can be meaningless and liberty can be taken away not only by tyrannical governments with oppressive legislation and taxes, but also by unruly hoardes and absurdist mobs who can make rational and sober people afraid to leave their houses for fear of the consequences.
Whether one's "pursuit of happiness" is obstructed by a despotic leader or a hysterical mob makes little difference to those who are affected.
Methinks you fools have fundamentally betrayed the most rudimentary tenets this country was founded to protect: Individual liberty means that you can't simply keep shouting that everyone who isn't just like you is a "threat". When you do this, you have shamelessly become the threat yourself.
Please see Aesop's fables for the lesson of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". This parable is not in the Bible, but you should read it anyway.
Our founders gave us two things: some simple rules that establish if you don't try to interrupt the pursuit of the next person's happiness, you will be left alone by the government to pursue yours; and the responsibility to recognize your personal obligation to making that possible.
There is only one political party right now that is openly betraying that spirit. If you're not sure which one, seek the brutal clarity of a mirror.
A logical mind; a reasonable mind would recognize this simple truth: Yes, you are free to pursue your happiness. If it makes you feel good to swing your arms, you may swing them to your heart's content but with this caveat: your freedom to swing anything ends at the tip of my nose.
It is up to the citizens of every age to not make a mockery of our founders by behaving as if freedom was only meant for them. Freedom and liberty cannot belong only to certain religions, certain colors, certain political ideologies, or be defined by what we do in bed or who we do it to.
If our founders wanted us to all be like you, they could have - they certainly should have - written it down and made it obligitory.
They did not.
Why did they not make it clear what they wanted us to be?
Did they run out of ink?
Was there no more parchment?
Did they damage the only remaining quill pen? Surely they did not run out of writing implements; they could have plucked them from the butt of birds so plentiful they are still the main course at every feast.
Or did they have more wisdom than you have courage, dear Republican?
They gave me the freedom to live my life, provided I allowed you the freedom to live yours. That Second Amendment you're so proud of was meant to ensure 'domestic tranquility'. I see nothing tranquil in a bunch of people waving guns in the air and suggesting everyone but them does not belong here.
Since 9/11, while you have made American flags into everything from bikinis to pickup-truck bed liners, and plastered "United We Stand" bumper stickers on everything from the aforementioned pickup truck to your golf cart, you've sadly "misunderestimated" the responsibility that phrase comes with. You can't be united with your fellow contrymen and simultaneously still so eager to forsake them.
When you say you're going to take your country "back" - realize, dear "patriot" - that you're not taking it from Al Queda...
...you're not taking it from the Nazis...
...you're not taking it from Stalin, Mao, or even Hugo Chavez;
you're threatening to take it from other Americans.
And let me perfectly clear about one thing that you're blindly oblivious to: That concept of unity is not some superfluous delusion or marketing strategy; we need each other whether or not we like each other. We are a symbiotic country; we are a society. We interact. You can't be so deluded to believe that all the things you find so enjoyable and that makes your life worth living somehow only came to your table, hangs in your closet, or sits in your living room touched by only the hands and minds of conservative Christian Republicans.
There is a reason that labor unions can only call a strike under certain circumstances and within certain limitations: because things shut down fast when people summarily abandon the roles they have in a society. Your hero Ronnie the Reagan made that clear when he busted the PATCO strike (air traffic controllers) in the early '80's. People can't just quit, or demand others just leave, because we have an obligation to one another.
So when you act as if the country would be better without any Democrats in it, we should engage in a little thought experiment about what the place would look like if there were enough "patriots" to shoot every single Democrat in these United States of America, leaving you and Ted Nugent and his big bad gun to make the whole place over in Jesus and your own image. (nevermind how much Ted Nugent really does not seem to embody the Jesus that so many others think the Republican party should)
You'd wake up to a country that would grind to a halt in seconds. You can't seriously believe that only Republicans/Conservatives or even Christians are the only people who allow your country to function.
Think I’m kidding? If I, as a "socialist" am so loathesome, lethal, and as much of a threat as you say, you'd hardly allow my filthy hands to touch anything you might come in contact with lest you be poisoned by my evil, or shamed that you could not endure without the efforts of people so nefarious and deleterious to your country. So you can stop with this ludicrous act as if you alone know who the "good" people are and who the "bad" people are. Your posturing seems to say your next move is to make us all wear armbands based on our voting history, then make the country all better by getting us out of your way.
When I see lunatics like Ted Nugent, and his other "Guns are the only thing that matter" one-note bands who seem to insist that the country would not miss a beat if all the Democrats were wiped out by a plague of AK-47 staccato or a liberal-targeted plague, I only see people who desperately need to find some shame.
At long last, perhaps indeed you do not have any.
How did it ever come to be that the poster child for the hippie movement - Arlo Guthrie - the man -who was- who's father was known to sing a song to millions called "This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land" - now -has a son- is a man who thinks Rand Paul and the TEA Party have sound ideas?
UPDATE: http://www.dailykos.com/... wanted me to clear up a few things about the Guthrie family. I'd never heard of Brett when I wrote this, but Arlo made teh Google in a few places because he said this:
Where are you politically these days?
I became a registered Republican about five or six years ago because to have a successful democracy you have to have at least two parties, and one of them was failing miserably. We had enough good Democrats. We needed a few more good Republicans. We needed a loyal opposition.
and this below me the idea he was Arlo's son; the error in identifying this properly was mine and is a function of the way my rants unfold. I apologize for any confusion.
How often do you think of your dad, the folk legend Woody Guthrie, who wrote “This Land Is Your Land” and died of Huntington’s disease?
Every day. I think of my parents as a single unit, and it’s interesting because they shared so much and they were totally opposite. My mother, a Martha Graham dancer, had a classical background; my father had a back-porch background.
I still don't know who Brett is, and since he was not in my thoughts when I wrote all this, it doesn't seem important to me. The implied change to the song lyrics was my goal
End update.
Are you going to re-write the lyrics to
"This land is my land,
this land is my land,
This land was made for only me"
???
From that cup of coffee you drink to stay up misspelling the posters you wave at rallies, to the toilet paper you wipe the rest of your crap off with at the other end, if all the Democrats were to get up and leave for Canada and Mexico tomorrow, your life would shut down so fast your ** would get caught in the door.
So enough with the "we're right and you're wrong" act. Our founders chose to make the first word of our nation "United" for a reason.
You are no longer fighting our enemies, you're fighting your own countrymen.
Makes me wonder when you bastards will have the intellectual integrity to admit that the word "United" in the name of this country has become a sick joke, and you have made it so.
The rest of us are not laughing.
How surreal it is for the United States to parade around the world, waving around the largest military ever amassed and claiming it is our solemn obligation to give the world "freedom" and "Democracy" (TM) as if we alone are the only society that could ever understand what it is; when meanwhile when every Republican Administration since 1992 has made a mockery of it?
You pout like children and shut everything down when you lose, claiming that minority rights must be paramount;
...then when you win, tactics instantly reverse with chants of "elections have consequences", while you then seek to rewrite the very rules that protect the minority that you were so proud of a few years earlier.
You brag about freedom of speech, but from the fenced in "free expression zones" miles away from wherever Bush was during his reign, to Bill O'Reilly's obsession with screaming "cut his mike" whenever he gets his ego caught in his fly, you're awfully eager to make any voice but your own seek a back seat in the bus -- or be thrown beneath it.
All the while you brag to the world about how you alone defend free speech?
You petulant little brats have made it clear to the rest of the world that the United States is the largest non-functioning democracy in the world; all the while demonstrating unbelievable hubris to keep acting like we're the only ones who could ever know how the rest of the world should behave.
Now if you really believe all that bullshit you're spewing, fire the guns and shoot me already.
Every day you don't, you're embarrass yourself - and particularly the memories and legacies of those dead founders you claim you understand so well and who you insist would love you so dearly.
I think were they alive today, they'd kick your candy asses for shaming what they fought for.
"A little revolution every now and then is a good thing", said Captain Rameus in The Hunt For Red October; but you posers think revolutions should come as frequently as Republican sex scandals.
Cries for "revolution" are not just to raise money for PACs and hack candidates. It is undeniably immoral and illegal to yell "fire" in a crowded theater if there is no fire - for it is true that people can be killed, trampled, and crushed in the hysteria of the panic. On the other hand, if there is indeed a fire and you don't make it clear that we all must save ourselves or surely die in the flames, it is also a crime for not using your pbligation as good Samaritan to save your fellow man.
It can't be both so dire to warrant a cry for revolution, yet not serious enough to never fire the guns.
So, here is my ultimatum - If I am a "terrorist", if I am a "traitor", if you truly feel your president is a "tyrant", (or not even your president at all);
...if you insist that we as Democrats openly betray the Constitution willingly and flagrantly and you don't shoot me and save your blessed country already, then it is you who have made yourself a fraud and a joke.
Were you a soldier in the revolutionary war (or any war, for that matter) you'd be court-martialed for dereliction of duty for waving your gun in the air without firing it if indeed the threats were so clear and imminent.
Lets go off on another thought:
The "Cold War" that you idiots think was "won" by Ronald Reagan was a time when the Strategic Air Command kept B-52 bombers in flight nonstop for fifty years; each plane loaded with an armed nuclear weapon, with 20,000 other nuclear warheadss on top of missiles hidden in silos or sneaking around the oceans of the world on submarines that stayed submerged for six months at a time; all ready and intended to be delivered in less time it takes to read this diary. For three generations the president was never more than a few feet from the device that would detonate them - each missle and bomb capable by itself unleashing more firepower than all the bombs dropped by all sides during the entire length of World War II - each mortal human who's hands touched that chain of events sworn to be willing and expecting to kill tens or hundreds of millions worldwide...
...We were told this was necessary to defend against the evils of socialism.
(hiss of snakes, nails on chalkboard, ghostly sounds echo and reverberate)
Now, you bleating sheep are telling us that "socialism"(TM) has not only made it to the shores of America, but indeed has been installed by an illegitimate and openly tyrannical, despotic leader into every branch of the Federal government; a man so evil and corrupt he's willing to employ the likes of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi (two boisterous and belligerent rogues indeed, who fear nothing and stop at nothing) to achieve his nefarious ends; socialism embodied in every act of a political party openly willing to subvert the Constitution of the United States surely to forsake and destroy the country as we knew it...
To what ends; you won't say - but people so evil surely need no ruther explanation -
...and all you clowns have done about it is raise money for your candidates and enjoy the ratings boost for the Right-Wing radio and TV and blogs?
Do you realize what frauds you have made our founding fathers?
Do you realize what a fool you have made Ronald Reagan? He supposedly "defeated" the evils of Soviet Era communism and socialism, and you clowns claim that the very same has now taken over your country.
Guess he missed a spot.
And you "patriots" have done precisely what about it?
You crank up the fear to "11", watch the money roll into the PACs, because even though your country is being "destroyed", "sacrificed", "surrendered" - it can wait until the election.
If you're not going to act on your threats, you are the threat. A joke and a fraud for sure, but you're shaming us all.
Get on with it, or shut up.
The rest of the educated, rational, sane and sober world would rather you do the latter.
Mark Twain once said that it was better to remain silent and be assumed a fool...then to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.
Mission Accomplished, Red States.