2 November 2010 Ante mortem

As millions of other citizens have and/or will do today, I exercised my franchise and voted in our mid-term elections. The privilege of voting to attempt to determine whom controls our political system is one I take very seriously. Our citizens paid for it in blood and pain in our American Revolution, in the 1812 War, in our American Civil War, and in World War II.

I have no reason to believe, nor should anyone be so poorly informed as to believe that our rights as citizens of the U.S. were ever endangered so as to require our participation in the Mexican-American war, the Spanish-American War, World War I, Korea, Vietnam, Granada, Panama, Iraq, Kuwait, or Afghanistan. The lives lost and the soldiers wounded in those wars were spent to acquire territory in the former Spanish colonial nations. World War I was fought, in part, over shipping and sea-lanes vs. unrestricted submarine warfare. Korea and Vietnam were proxy wars fought over ideologies. Granada and Panama were staged to make Reagan look good. Kuwait/Iraq was over oil and little else. Afghanistan/Iraq began over terrorism and then was changed into an attempt to prove out a political ideology that was to enrich several corporations and pay off cronies of the Bush family. In none of the latter wars were American rights of citizenship, our “freedoms” ever at risk except from the American right wing and religious right.

The GOP/TP/theocrats are spending millions of dollars trying to convince the rank and file voter that they are being steadily deprived of rights defined and protected by the Constitution. The standard attack is to complain that Christians are being attacked when they are prevented from trying to force others to live as the fundamentalist Christians want them to. That is generally in referral to limiting Christian prayers at public events.

The 2nd amendment attack is carried out by members of “militias” who are enamored of guns and who have deluded their selves and others of their kind that they will be called upon to save the nation from some invading army. No one is trying to take their guns from them, but some of them probably should not be trusted with any sort of weaponry. As to their ability to counter and repel an invading army; they fail to realize what a collective failure they would be.

“The freedoms cited as being in danger, are not. No one is being deprived of his or her rights to free speech or assembly. No one is made to quarter troops. No one is jailed for owning firearm, or for carrying them openly in defiance of common custom and many local laws. No one is tortured to obtain a confession although our most extreme Islamophobes and theocrats seem to find no wrong in torturing those of other origin and faith.

Today, even more so than in our early years as a nation, Americans are fortunate to have nearly unlimited rights to free speech; which includes the right to write and broadcast frank lies about the candidates standing for election in today’s races. Sadly, they are also free to believe such lies and to vote for the party that founds such lies as a part of its platform. There is no amendment protecting stupidity in voters or in candidates for office.

We are entering a third period of political stupidity. The first led to the election of Ronald Reagan and ushered in the “greed is good – Trickle-down” period. This was notable for trumped up wars that were intended to make the voters forget the Iran-Contra idiocy, the fake war with Granada –that still killed troops so that Reagan could pretend to be the CIC. His cronies sold off as much of the nation as they could. And Reagan slept through most of his terms/

The 2nd event was the 8-year Bush-Cheney/neocon/theocons period. The political and religious fundamentalists conspired to bring us two un-funded wars, to remove science from our schools in favor of mythology, to sell off mineral resources and to hand, the conduct of large parts of our ongoing wars to private corporations that then overcharged and looted the treasury while providing shoddy and even lethal attempts at supporting our troops.

The third instance began with Obama’s election as the bigots, racists, theocrats, homophobes, Xenophobes, Klansmen, and “militias” fell into lockstep behind the GOP-funded Tea Parties that base their platforms around “taking back our country,” excluding the educated from government, taking science our of schools in favor of religious mythologies, and trying to turn back the calendar to that imaginary time when it got left to Beaver by people who knew no better then and who know no better now. They flock around a shrill-voiced, minimally literate woman from Alaska who has stopped her mental and emotional growth at the 16-year-old stage. What she wants is to be allowed to run the nation as if she were its Prom Queen, ruling from her table in the lunch room and passing notes, spreading lies and rumors about anyone who has a better intellect or education than she does. She, and her followers, believe in witches, support anti-Semitic agencies, lack ethical platforms, and spread lies, fear, and hatred anonymously and personally while complaining if they are called to answer to anything they have said.

There is a very real danger that these “know-nothing” Tea Party Mobs and the GOP far right wing will do grievous damage to this nation after today’s election. Not since the anti-civil rights caucuses have so many blatantly stupid people been allowed to take seats in Congress. These idiots keep talking about “2nd Amendment solutions to America’s problems.” They have probably forgotten that progressives and liberals can shoot also.