Liberal Ravings.

My contributions here have been spotty for so long. It has been a ploy to make people not expect anything resembling a regular output. Ha. Ha. Ha. I understand from several sources that certain conservative people that know me, including some relatives, have visited to see what kind of foaming-mouth ranting that the ‘other side’ has come up with. Why, indeed, do I hate America, as the cliché goes?*

*In thinking about this topic I realized that I could just make a whole freaking blog about the latest outrage of government, and that I have tried so hard to not just talk politics and law on this site. A quick search of the archives will probably reveal many comments made by me like “I promised Krista I wouldn’t bore her with more law talk” or “I am becoming a bore with this stuff” or “I will stop being so serious now.” But then it creeps back in. So you take what you can get, I guess.

Loss of liberty: the PATRIOT act, heavily supported by our President and rammed through Congress in the days after 9-11, is only the latest step in the growing move towards fascism.
Fear mongering: racist and cynical exploitation of the suffering of victims to advance political aims.
Jingoism: (and see above too) "Ask the men and women who stood on top of the (World) Trade Center," said Rep. Randy Cunningham, R-Calif. "Ask them and they will tell you: Pass this amendment." (I suspect they’d have said “get us off this building” but hey, why actually do something when you can wrap yourself in the flag and not address any real problems?)

Related: Maggie said to me a couple of days ago “why doesn’t this Fourth of July feel like a real Independence Day?” My answer was that trappings of patriotism had been so cynically appropriated as political tools by Republicans, to the extent that it now feels a little ooky to express one’s love for country lest we sound as vapid as they do. When the president tells us to “sacrifice” for the Iraq war, when he hasn’t done so; when people think slapping a cheap magnetic ribbon on their car is “supporting the troops”, and when a traitor like Karl Rove scores points with his base by labeling liberals as soft on terrorism, playing along with their imagery begins to feel like I’m associating with the soft evil of graven idols rather than honorable symbols of our country. Bill Moyers wore a flag pin one time, and explained it well, and predictably was pilloried by the conservative press for it; as far as I’m concerned it does as much to prove one’s patriotism as being an armchair chickenhawk blogger. If you care that much, sign up for the service. As it is, stateside cheap patriotism masks the fact that it’s a rich man’s war, poor man’s fight, and that we were led by lies into war by power-hungry idealogues. And hey, you want red, this is what a socialist critique looks like. Not that much of it isn’t true.

Other problems with conservativism: The war on science; the failure to stick to stated tenets (that is the famous Reagan “time for choosing” manifesto, in which he argues for such laudable goals as a balanced budget, decreased subsidies, and not sending aid to corrupt governments), and the lies, lies, damnable lies.

Tomorrow: The State GOP and the road to perdition and shutdown.