Saturday, September 25, 2010

A Note To MY Teabag Friends


I am watching the upcoming November mid-term election scenario with a great deal of interest and amusement.  In typical Ugly American form, if someone does not understand you, then you must yell louder.  Anyone who has traveled outside the US and have seen our noble citizens in actions know exactly what I mean.  If you ask a German for directions and they may well shrug their shoulders noting that "Ich kann kein Englisch sprechen.  Es tut mir sehr leid."   Often as not the American response is to first enunciate each English language word slowly and with great emphasis and grotesque lip movements.  This is then followed by continuing to speak slowly and with great emphasis but only now they increase the decibel level and continue to do so until out of frustration they note how stupid the Germans are for not being able to speak English even though their country as existed for several centuries longer than the US and its wonderful citizens.  That same warped logic train for communicating has now become the norm for some of our emerging political sects. 

First is the assumption on the part of these emerging political cults that they, and only they, are capable of divining the true word and all other political groups are not just misguided bit in fact totally wrong and are using this ignorance to destroy the very essence of America.  Everything that the current administration is doing is wrong even if that administration is simply carrying out legal mandates proscribed and approved decades earlier.  With an almost religious zeal they arrogantly call upon the "people" to support their attempts to seize the government in the polls and voting booths so that they can put a stop to the current administrative policies, abrogate policies decided upon by the majority of Congress and to begin dismantling this thing we call the Government into a much smaller, weaker and less expensive form of management.   These groups and sects feel no need to provide any substantive ways to either replace or modify these programs except to say they will "cut them."  Their list of "bad" programs that they would "cut" include the entire US Department of Education;  Social Security and Medicare;  the Department of Health and Human Services; support for civil rights initiatives;  most of the Department of Internal Revenue; almost all arts and entertainment subsidies; farm subsidies; all financial oversight programs; and by projection loads and loads of staffers and support personnel in all branches of the government.  They offer no "replacements": so we are left with the planned removal of all of the above listed support programs.  Some have even called for greater emphasis on returning power back to the States making the US a country of 50 competing self-governing entities with little if any loyalty to a central government.  Fifty little min-counties with competing political and social views who supposedly will no longer need Federal highway dollars for their roads, Federal funds for their schools, Federal support for their internal health systems.  

It would be nice if these cultist would explain how current support to US citizens would be modified or deleted completed.  I receive lots of benefit checks from my almost 40 years of public service.  Some of those benefits include disability payments for wounds and injuries received while on active duty as a soldier fighting for this Nation.  Which one of these benefit programs are they going to attack?  My military retirement?  My Social Security monthly allotment?  My Veteran's Administration Disability payment?   My military educational benefits so that both my wife and I can gain additional training?  Which one do they believe I no longer deserve?   Which one?  Tell me before I enter the voting booth so I can make a knowledgeable decision and not a decision based solely upon you increased volume of yelling.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Burn Baby Burn

Nothing so clearly demonstrates a sense of biased , prejudice and deeper down, fear and anxiety than the whole concept of book burning.  When a leader of a nation or a small cjurch decides to burn a specific book they do so because they are unable to intelligently discuss the merits or lack of merits of the book.  There  are a number of books that I find to be of questionable merit, integrity or worth to mankind as a whole.  My opinion is drawn from the fact that I actually read these books and compared them to my own I f to belief system and past experiences.  Based on my actual knowledge of these books, I am prepared to argue my point of view but only to the point that I accept the fact that my adversary may also hav e a conflicting point of view, no matter how silly I may think it is, and fore that reason, I may shake my head in disbelief and frustration but I would never interpose myself in any plan that would attempt to restrict others to draw their own conclusions.  In other words, no matter how stupid I think a piece if literature may be, I could never support any attempt to restrict someone from reading it.  The Quran is a religious document with as much historical bonafides as the Christian New Testament or the Hebrew Pentateuch.  No one knows who actually wrote the books of the new testament with the exception being the works of Paul. The other books of the new testament were written from oral traditions finally captur3d in written form by scribes and other nameless religious leaders.  If the nee testament were a contract, no court in the land would accept it as valid/  The five books of the old testament, while being more strictly controlled in their transcription process are written anonymously.  The Quran, on the other hand makes a point of notifying the reader that these are the words of a prophet who was illiterate and therefore the words were passed on verbally to scribes and relatives after the events in question.  No one, therefore, has the monopoly on blind ignorance following written words by people who are not the original authors.  Who then gave either of thew major religions the right to claim absolute authority on what is right or wrong.  As it turns out, from reading all three versions of religious dogma, none of the big three claims absolute authority and all make considerable room for dissenting ideas and provide for systems of tolerance of these dissenting ideas.  It is only when we turn over the concept of interpretation to individuals do we encounter problems.  All of a sudden we find individuals who have apparently set up a private email address to the deity and now become the deities private spokesman to the exclusion of all others.  No debate, no dissension allowed and no ability or wish to use anything even resembling human intellect in the entire process.  I am sorry that this miserable little minister is so afraid of the written word that he feels the need to burn it.  It is a shame that he cannot see that such intolerant acts have such grim and brutal historic precedence.  I doubt his educational background is notable and his concept of the Christian religion is certainly very lacking.  If his act of conducting a mass burning of the Quran leads to violence and deaths against the men and women serving in Islamic nations, then he must bear full responsibility and answer to their families and hopefully to a saddened and angry God.