This. Just this.
Political BS.
Anger.
A popular meme on the Internet these days goes something like this: “Sally voted for Hillary. Bob voted for Trump. They realize the election is over now and even though they have disagreements when it comes to politics, Sally and Bob agree to be friends. Be like Sally and Bob.” Several of my friends and relatives have shared this meme and I have to say it just makes me angry.
Then, when I go to Facebook (which I still do when I know that I absolutely shouldn’t be there), I see all sorts of whining and complaining about all the political posts that are flying by on the feeds of folks that I’m friends with. They complain that they go to Facebook to see recipes and happy pictures of people and they wish that everyone would stop talking about politics all the time.
I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but the Trump Administration has pretty much been a god damn dumpster fire since his mediocre inauguration. We have Executive Orders coming from the White House like they’re freaking decrees. Rights are being stripped away from Americans left and right. Some friends from high school say it’s the whole “one bad kid ruined it for the whole class” mentality but I don’t know if anyone’s noticed or not but the vast majority of Americans are not in high school. I do not need to be treated like some wainked out teenager who gets spanked because everyone in the room is getting spanked. I am an American and a god damn patriotic American at that. I was fairly attentive in my social studies classes when I was a kid. I read. I research. I watch the news. I even listen to folks that have a different political viewpoint from mine if they are able to support their beliefs, just like I support mine. But anyone that rolls over and puts up with the horse crap that is coming out of Washington D.C. should be ashamed of themselves.
My beliefs of what this country should be are very simple. The populace should be working hard, contributing more to society than it takes, leaving the world better than we found it and doing good things for themselves and other people regardless of skin color, race, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity or whatever other label you want to slap on someone. I don’t have to pray to your God and you don’t have to pray to mine because quite frankly, as an American it’s none of my business whom you pray to. If you want me to read your Bible, don’t start out by beating me over the head with it every chance you get. Just because I believe that a woman has the right to do as she wishes with her own body doesn’t mean that I want women getting abortions at Wal*mart (Always White Trash, Always). I happen to believe that abortion is the wrong answer to the question 99.5% of the time but you know what, I don’t have a vagina, I don’t plan on getting a vagina and therefore I should have absolutely NO say as to what a woman can or can’t do with her body. If we want to outlaw something let’s start with face or neck tattoos or something, but that’s a rant for another day.
I’m not only angry about people telling me that I shouldn’t discuss politics, I’m angry that people are telling me to get over it. I’m not getting over it. Ever. I’ve had to listen to that cantankerous old stupid man Mitch McConnell contort politics six ways from Sunday to do everything he can to make President Obama’s term as short and miserable as possible and now I’m suppose to be happy that a man with fake hair, a fake tan and completely without a clue is sitting in the big chair in D.C. Give me a break. When we have a failed reality star who has done everything he can to make himself important in Hollywood since he was big enough to throw his junk around women become president it’s obvious that this country is a raging dumpster fire that’s about one and a half steps away from a completely meltdown to an “Idiocracy” scenario.
And don’t even get me started about any relatives who voted for Trump thinking that I’m going to be happy and cordial at the next family reunion. “But I didn’t agree with Hillary!” Wonderful. I’m happy that you’re offended by pant suits and that you made the bold choice to vote for a man who was supported by the KKK, is intent on taking away any right I have as a gay man away from me as quickly as possible and has loaded up his Administration with every white, rich, swamp dweller one can name. Draining the swamp? Get the hell away from me with that BS. The swamp is overflowing with raw sewage but Benghazi and an email server. Shall we discuss all the Administration officials using a private email server? No, because they’re not Hillary. Hillary stood by her man. Any woman that voted against Hillary because she supported Bill during the Monica scandal is a woman that would rather have a man make decisions for her.
On Tuesday night we had some sort of public spectacle to announce Trump’s pick for the vacant Supreme Court position. The position has been open for a year but because Obama was black he wasn’t allowed to get any traction with his nomination because, well, you know, these things take time. So instead we were stuck with an American Idol-type fiasco from the Orange Cheeto making grand gestures to tell us that he’s nominating a man that started a “Fascism Forever Club” in high school. That should be a hoot and half.
Crimminy.
Look it, I’m an American. I am a 48 year old, married, white, gay American male. I take my hat off when I hear the Star Spangled Banner. I like to believe that the United States of America is land of the free and the home of the brave, but if we continue to be completely stupid and make stupid choices and bury our head in the sand, there ain’t gonna be a country to be proud of for much longer.
Get your heads out of your ass, America, stop telling me to be all Pollyanna over something that is nothing more than a travesty waiting to go nuclear and for the love of God, get a friggin’ clue.
Passport, Please?
Imagine coming home to the U.S. from a wonderful trip to the beautiful city of Montréal. As you make your way through customs, the agent asks you for your phone and password. Your passport is no longer good enough. He then takes a moment to flip through all your contacts, looks at your Facebook contacts and interactions, sees if you have Twitter and then takes a glance at your email. Perhaps before handing you back your phone and granting you access to cross the border, he peruses through all your photos. If you don’t do this you can’t get back home. Would you, as an ordinary American, be OK with this? Because there is speculation that we are about one and a half steps from this sort of thing becoming the norm.
Best.
I will not be watching the inauguration tomorrow. I will be working hard at my job, strengthening the company I work for that connects Americans to one another and earning money to support my family. I will strive to solidify our future which may be plagued with uncertainty due to the change in presidential administration. We are outside of the “norm” and must do what we can to make sure we are protected no matter what legislators try to do.
I believe that a good citizen contributes more than you take, works hard, earns your way and builds your own existence. Good citizenship, good morals and good values all make the true wealth of a person. None of this is inherited or given to you through handouts. I don’t care what color, sex, creed, race or sexual orientation you are. I don’t care who you pray to or if you don’t feel the need to pray. We all have our own set of beliefs and abilities. And we should use those abilities to learn, to grow and to be our absolute best. And tomorrow, I will be doing what best makes me a good American.
Response.
So yesterday I saw this tweet go by on my Twitter stream.
I tweeted back at Rosie O’Donnell with a response. Honestly, I feel like folks are just disregarding the intelligence from, well, the Intelligence folks in D.C. because they were told that it’s all fake news.
One of my biggest criticisms of the Democratic Party is that they seem to have no fire, no feistiness, no desire to be on the offense. I have heard very little about any sort of investigation into the claims that Russia influenced the elections or their ties with Trump and/or associates. This is frustrating. The Republicans spent millions and millions of dollars to go after President Clinton over Monica Lewinsky. The Republicans have spent millions and millions of dollars to investigate Hillary Clinton endlessly. The Republicans have spent millions and millions of dollars trying to stop anything and everything that President Obama did during his term.
The Democrats need to get their act together. Now.
I received many tweets hurled back in my direction in response to my response to Rosie’s tweet. Most of them were unkind. Several were just downright hateful. The majority of them carried common themes: “Trump won, get over it”, “you’re a stupid liberal, cry your liberal tears”, “stop being a special snowflake”, etc. All but two of the responses were from accounts with less than 100 followers. These folks apparently created accounts just to troll folks who speak out against Trump.
I now understand why Trump won the presidency, especially if I heard the voice of “the people”.
I mentioned this in a tweet right after the Golden Globes last week, but Viola Davis was asked what she thought about the election of Donald Trump as President. Her response nailed it. We need to work to make our country a better place by starting with the people.
We have a long journey ahead of us.
I told Earl this evening that I was losing hope. He reminded me that there is always hope, it might just not be where we are looking for it. I revised my statement and said that I see no hope in the next Presidential administration and I certainly don’t believe that the next president has any vision of hope. Darkness pervades the country right now.
It’s a struggle, but we must remain as part of the light.
Free Speech.
While I do not support the burning of the American flag in any way, I will always defend a person’s right to the First Amendment and freedom of speech. President-elect Trump wants to either jail or strip citizenship from those that are exercising freedom of speech. Imagine what he would want to do to a woman that exercises her right to choose. Again, I do not support flag burning and I personally believe that abortion is the wrong choice 99% of the time, but I will fully defend the right to freedom of speech and a woman’s right to choose. Thank god he wasn’t running things at the American Revolution. All of the patriots and Founding Fathers would have been in jail, or worse.
This tweet from the President-elect is very telling. It tells of a leader who believes in more of a dictatorial role. It tells of a man who has a very narrow view of what American citizens should do, how they should act, what they should say. It shows a line of binary thought, everything is black or white, there’s no room for gray, no room for color, no room for compromise.
When people defend their vote for Trump and say, “but he’s going to drain the swamp and clean up Washington!”, were you willing to give up freedoms to accomplish this? Were you willing to change the very fabric of what makes this country great just because you didn’t like her, her pantsuits and her sense of entitlement? If you’re willing to give up freedom of speech, if the speech doesn’t fit what you define as proper, then this country is in more serious trouble than I realized.
In 1783, George Washington proclaimed: “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
Fresh.
Jeb Bush formally announced yesterday that he is actively exploring the possibility of running for President in 2016. I don’t know much about the former Florida Governor; all that I’ve seen thus far is that he’s not convinced that Global Climate Change is a thing. Honestly, to me that’s like a frog saying that he’s not convinced that the water around him is boiling, but that’s just my spin on it all.
With Mr. Bush’s announcement of actively exploring an official announcement someday, I have to admit that I find this all disheartening. I thought that the choices for both the 2008 and 2012 Presidential Elections were tepid at best; with Hillary Clinton always hinting that she may run for President in the next election, the idea that we may have a Clinton v. Bush Presidential choice in 2016 irks me.
Is this all we have left? Are there no bright up-and-comers inside the Beltway? How about outside the Beltway?
I can’t help but think that if we have a Clinton v Bush election in 2016 that voter turnout will be mediocre at best. I can’t be the only one in the United States that would find this choice too mundane, too much of the same same same. Do you know what happens when voter turnout is low? The crazy people make the decisions, because they’re too crazy to realize how crappy the choices are and they go out and vote and vote crazily. They vote on things like “who believes the Earth could be flat”, “who was there when Jesus was celebrating Christmas” and “who will make laws so the government can prevent me from burning my nether regions with coffee in the McDonalds drive thru”.
At one time I was rather worked up about the possibility of Hillary Clinton becoming President. Given the choice with what’s being bandied about right now, I’d probably vote for her, but honestly my gut says she’s been around too long and is way too entrenched in the political machine.
I know that my ideal candidate will never run, but I’d love to see some up-and-comer come in, be broad minded about social issues, be really conservative about fiscal issues and be super sane about world and national policy. My ideal candidate would the person that believes in a strong work ethic, that you earn what you get and that your life is your own business. Government would be small. Focus would be on the future, not the past, and we would double down our efforts to rebuild our country (infrastructure, etc) and then build from our rebuilt solid foundation.
I don’t think we’re going to get that with more of the same old, same old.
Politics.
Over the past week I have read a few online articles indicating that marriage equality legislation has been passed by various governments recently. This is wonderful news because it shows that things on that front are moving in a sensible direction and that even though the steps are very small, at least the steps are headed the right away.
Yay for small victories. Let’s keep up that momentum.
I have little faith in our government. I have lots of faith in the United States and her citizens, but I don’t have faith in our elected leaders. “It’s good enough” is never an acceptable answer for me, but when it comes to electing people into office you kind of have to just choose the one that seems the least evil. “He’ll be good enough, I guess.” That’s how I feel when I pull the lever color the little dot next to the name of the person I’m voting for.
I try to keep tabs on what’s going on in Washington but lately I’m finding that that sort of activity just depresses me. Usually an avid listener of POTUS 124 on Sirius/XM, I’ve stopped listening to coverage of inside the beltway for a while so I can regain my sanity.
I just found myself deleting about six paragraphs of a rant because I could feel my blood pressure rising and I’m trying not to let that happen these days. I guess I just can’t write about politics. It makes me feel too hostile. Like many of my fellow citizens, I think I’ve grown tired of blatant stupidity and ignorance. Inaction. Lack of compromise. Grandstanding. Stupid people vote for stupid people and by golly, I really think we are in the prologue of that movie called “Idiocracy”. I know ignorance is chic these days, but quite frankly, I’m proud of my 144. I pride myself on my knowledge seeking ways.
Since I’m starting to fume to the point of incoherency, I think I’ll take a nap.
180º
So a while back I was blogging about the fact that I couldn’t take anymore about politics and news, it was simply just burning me out and all of the information, commentary and rhetoric was overflowing my brain with information that I couldn’t use anymore. Inside I had decided that I was going to be one of those typical Americans that went into the polls in November 2012 and stab blindly at the ballot box that contained the name that sounded the least menacing, or if I was familiar with the candidate, was the better looking of the choices.
Now that’s not the right thing to do.
Over the past 48 hours I have done a complete 180 degree turn when it comes to politics and the news and quite frankly, I now completely give a damn, I can’t know enough about what’s going on in the U.S. and in the world and I want to be a very informed and engaged citizens when it comes to make the important choices at the polls in November (even though it’s 11 months away).
Bored with hearing Billy Joel and Elton John on 70s on 7 and/or 80s on 8 on Sirius/XM last night, I tuned into POTUS (Not red, not blue, red, white and blue, Politics of the United States for the People of the United States) and caught the last hour of “Stand Up with Pete Dominick”. Pete’s an ok guy and show host, after all he is a native of Central New York. There are times when his show sounds like a poor-man’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” but I think his schtick works 90% of the time. For a station that isn’t suppose to lean in any particular direction, Pete will admit that he leans squarely to the left in his political beliefs but he lets those that disagree with him have their say and he asks the good questions, so for the most part, I enjoy listening to his show.
Last night he had Will Cain, a political commentator frequently seen on FoxNews and LZ Granderson, a writer for ESPN who happens to be black and gay (only brought up because this was a prevalent topic in the conversation) as his guests. Like all of Pete’s shows, the format is listener participation driven. Much of the conversation had to do with what being gay or black was like in the United States and how it contributed to political campaigns.
Will Cain, who leans solidly towards the right, is a very smart man. I wish I could grab a transcript of the show because he had brilliantly worded explanations and analogies for his arguments during the conversation. His Republican-centric point of view actually made sense to me. Which is saying a lot, because the campaigns leading up to the primaries and the caucuses has been rather crazy. There is no one currently running for President that gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling. Ron Paul gets into the ball park with his Libertarian ways, but I can only buy into 80% of what he offers (when he gets into the racist stuff I become very uncomfortable). I have never been a big fan of President Obama; back in 2008 when given the choice between McCain and Obama I wanted to vote for Hillary. I still think she was a stronger choice for the Democrats and I think that the country wouldn’t be in the same spot we are in today if she was to hold the office of President (though I think we’d still be in the same ball park, just not way out in outfield somewhere). I said this back in 2008 and I stand by that today. Do I respect President Obama? Absolutely. Do I think he’s been a stellar president? No. I rate him around Jimmy Carter.
The problem is that the alternatives are weak. What bugs me most about the current Republican folks trying to win the primary is the hypocrisy. Mitt Romney, who will most likely get the nomination, wants the government out of our personal affairs (unless you’re gay). Rick Perry wants to guarantee the “pursuit of happiness” as decreed by the Declaration of Independence (unless you’re gay). Michelle Bachmann is such a mess it’s hard to tell where that woman stands, but I know she said something about gas being $1.79 a gallon within three months of her taking office and her husband has more chiffon coming out of his mouth than Charles Nelson Riley (no offense to Chuck intended) so I don’t know why she is so angry towards the gays.
I feel like the choices that have been handed to us, even this early in the game, are “none of the above”. And that’s why I have to get myself educated. Voting for the next president is not a clear, cut choice for me. None of them really tailor to my Libertarian beliefs; some of them want to spend so much money that quite frankly it makes me fearful for the solvency of future generations of Americans, others want to practically give soldiers the right to “shoot to kill” as they patrol the U.S.-Mexican border and yet others want to just get rid of those pesky gays to the best of their ability.
I grew up in a Republican family with steadfast beliefs on the individual responsibility each of us to contribute to our society and to not be a burden on it. This is where my core political beliefs are fueled – small government, fiscal responsibility, respect the rights of others and contribute to the greater good.
It’s not a difficult concept. And I’m going to do my part to make sure that I know everything I can do to make sure we are headed in the right direction.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
