Our Constitution really looks like crap, doesn't it? I can only hope our descendants will laugh their asses off reading it someday. We start with the statement "all men are created equal" and spend the next four hundred years having to write in, "that means black people too," "that means women, too," "that means native Americans, too..." And here we stand in the far off year of 2010 - where flying cars dot the sky - arguing over whether it should mean homosexuals too. Not to mention whether torture counts as cruel and unusual; whether water-boarding counts as torture; whether a citizen has a right to their citizenship; whether it's illegal to spy on people sans cause or warrant; whether an individual gets a say in their own proliferation; whether the opinion of the department of justice should be held as incontrovertible fiat; whether war-crimes are war-crimes; and what the definition of the word 'is' is.
The mutual lunacies of American politics, law, and the media organizations claiming to cover it in a "fair and balanced" way drove me to NPR at first. NPR provided the only news media I could entertain without being driven to fits of fury by the "common sense" stupidity being bandied about as wisdom. Eventually, NPR couldn't keep me sane either. I found that even -they- were guilty of filtering and censoring content and contributors based upon popular consensus, regardless of that body's irrationality. In fairness, I suppose no one can present the daily news in a tolerable way when the day's news itself is become utterly intolerable.
The Bush era of lies, ignorance, bigotry, lawlessness, murder, and conspiracy nearly drove me to what some have politely called 'direct action.' Thankfully I managed to pull myself away for a view from a longer perspective and concluded that the world, taken en masse, is really just some sort of sickness. That there's a reason all the great spiritual figures of the various religions teach abandonment of it and its concerns, and that I could only do myself and others harm by taking personal responsibility for the behavior and policies of nations.
As I say I started by switching to NPR, then even that had to go. As of today I don't watch television; I don't listen to the radio; I don't read the paper. To quote Joseph Heller, "I don't spend much time keeping track of the world and can't see that it would change much if I did. I mind my own business. What's important I hear about."
Despite my media blackout I still hear more than I want to about politics. How people can be angry about Obama's health plan, which is so paltry an act of legislation, such a band-aid on a hemorrhage... That some should deride it as being "socialist" when it's the most capital-centric, corporate-friendly thing that could have happened to the private insurers... That no one, for all the months of commentary and conjecture and idiots shouting into the wind, ever saw fit to propose the concept of simply collecting and allocating enough federal tax dollars to cover everyone's health needs, all the time; and especially in a country that claims to be eighty percent Christian, and is thereby obliged to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and care for the sick and imprisoned, lest their God should forsake them...
Well, it's all just as ridiculous and meaningless as ever and I'm happier to turn a blind eye and deaf ear and let the devil put on his little stage show. I figure, if you do what's right on an individual level, person to person, then all the lofty declarations of all the over-educated, under-literate, morons wearing suits, feigning global-ownership, don't amount to any effect anyway.
the last paragraph is priceless.
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