It makes me feel dirty

Barack Obama—the same man who falsely promised to close Guantanamo Prison—now has several times more people locked away without charges than Bush did, and he is planning to expand the capacity of the Parwan Detention Camp from 3,500 to 5,500. How can any of us claim to be moral people when we surrender money to an immoral entity like the United States government so that it won’t treat us with quite the same contempt for human rights that it treats others? If we too support evil, how are we more moral than those who supported Hitler?

Upon shooting politicians

If I was outraged when Congresswoman Giffords was shot, surely it behooves me to ask myself how I would have felt had G. W. Bush been shot when he was president. What Americans are supposed to believe is that if they dislike one elected official, they should work to elect another. But what if you think the official you dislike is single-handedly taking your country down the toilet? The fact is that I would have liked it A LOT had Bush been killed. The only thing I would have liked better had been if his entire cabinet died with him because it wasn’t Bush the man whom I cared about but the policies of the Bush administration.

But what of those today whom—benighted though they appear to me—see Obama as being as evil as I saw Bush? I could say that nearly all of the harm Obama is said to be doing will almost certainly be overturned after the next election, whereas George Bush left generations in debt, started two unnecessary wars, and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands. If I explained this to the Obama haters, would they be likely to agree that the politicians I want to see dead are worse than the politicians they want to see dead? But of course, when hell freezes over.

It’s almost a moot argument anyway because the odds of killing a president—much less a president and his cabinet—have gotten harder over the years (JFK was riding right out in the open through the streets of a city that largely despised him). Senators and Congressmen are another matter though. Any of us could kill one just by checking our local newspaper to see when she’s scheduled to appear at a nearby event, and showing up to shoot her. Imagine how scary this must make it for elected officials who support abortion, gun control, healthcare reform, or any other issue that makes the right lather.

But do right-leaning politicians not have just as much to fear from the left? Probably not. That’s an politically unpopular opinion, of course, but political popularity isn’t related to truth but to the desire to win elections. As nasty as the left can be, I don’t recall them putting crosshairs on opponents’ districts, threatening to exercise their “second amendment option” (for non-Americans, that’s the amendment that has to do with gun ownership), or talking about taking their opponents “out.” Neither do they have rabid radio talk show hosts egging them on 24 hours a day.

Be that as it may, if one side of the governmental aisle feels itself in danger of being assassinated, then it’s reasonable for the other side to get uneasy too, so the most outrageous rhetoric will no doubt be toned down, at least by the politicians themselves and at least until the next election, because if there’s one thing we can trust our elected officials to do, it’s to take care of themselves first, and that’s true of the right and the left. After all, it’s not their lifelong government subsidized healthcare they argue over; it’s ours.

For those who care, the Glock in the photo is similar the one used in Tucson but with a laser scope. I chose this photo because it also shows an extended clip similar to the one used by Loughner. Four extra clips are also pictured.

Peggy offers a **#%*! suggestion

Peggy sometimes offers subtle criticisms regarding the subjects I write about. For example,

“Why the fuck don’t you ever write about something more interesting than religion?” (Peggy will argue that that she didn’t say the f___ word, but since I am “overly sensitive to criticism,” as my mother put it, I always HEAR the f___ word at the least suggestion that I'm anything less than perfect.)

“Okay, Sweet Lambikins Baby Lovey Dovey Pumpkin Strudel, what do you suggest?” (I ask smilingly).

“Well, how about what you just said?”

What I had just said was that Fox News’ policy of continually assuring its listeners that it’s “fair and balanced,” is not only unforgivably redundant, it also suggests a cynical attempt to appeal to an audience that is too stupid to distinguish between a claim and a reality (“Your president is not a crook;” “I didn’t have sex with that woman;” “I know the Bible is true because the Bible says it’s true;” and my own dear father’s favorite, “I’m going to be honest with you”). Furthermore, it reeks of Orwell:

“Political language is designed to…give an appearance of solidity to pure wind;”

of Lenin: “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes truth;”

of Hitler: “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it;”

and even of that bumbling little bastard who was our last president: “See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again…to kind of catapult the propaganda.”


“But isn’t what I just said rather obvious, Peggy Darling Dearest?”

“Not to some people.”

Which is precisely why I had said it to Peggy. Intelligent though she is, she doesn’t know the difference between a Republican and a Democrat, a Catholic and a Shiite, a Brit Hume and a Jon Stewart, simply because it is all so senseless and depressing that she doesn’t want to know the difference.

Sometimes, I think Peggy is onto something, yet I remain inveterately incapable of “turning on, tuning in, and dropping out,” because if there's safety to be had, surely it lies in at least knowing from which direction danger approaches. Besides, human inanity can be awfully entertaining at times.