This was inspired by ExplodingKitchen's diary, "I never thought I would be ashamed of being an American."
...in commiseration;
... in a celebration of our freedom and liberty to say precisely those things which would get our asses kicked (or shot) by those who insist they alone know what freedom (TM) and liberty (TM) were meant to be used for, and who are also some of the same who are sure they alone KNOW who should be entitled to use them. (and of course, who should not).
Let's take this freedom thing out for a ride, shall we, and maybe I'll put up a poll to see if you think that revealing my true name and location would make me famous (presumably my fame would come posthumously).
Here goes -
If the Bible that those Christians and
the Republicans who use them like tampons to win elections were actually enforceable or verifiable, don't you think that the sin of pride would have caused at least a few of them to be more wary of how blindly proud they are of their country?
I think it's father funny (in a sick kind of way) that so many of the Christians who are co-opted and employed by the Republcian party supposedly read a book on Sundays that insists "Pride" is a sin; and yet so many of them have apparently no mirrors anywhere in sight so that they might recognize how "G"od might have some problem with their current level thereof.
The thing that would make our founders explode from the ground with fists in the air is how the very meaning of the word "freedom" and "liberty" have been so bastardized by those who scream loudest that they alone know what they mean - or what purpose they were given to us.
I'm ashamed of my country because so few people have any idea what "cognitive dissonance" is -
- those who proudly say they are members of the "party of Lincoln" who then promote seccession...
- those who brag America is great because it was divinely inspired that Christians be here, and thus do violence to the very First Amendment to its' Constitution - Yes, Michelle (Bachman) there is separation of Church and State...not in precisely those words but in "Congress shall pass no law"...
- those who, in the spirt of the last point believe that freedom exists only for people to behave like they would; and any other use of freedom is an "attack" on theirs - not realizing the irony of their own attacks on everyone else when they say such a thing.
And lastly -
...if any other country had done what was done in our name since W. invaded Afghanistan, we (the US) with no hesitation would have bombed them back to the stone age.
...if any other country had ever used a phrase in front of the United Nations and the world such as we ..."don't need a permission slip from anyone to protect our interests..." (imagine how many other invading nations wished they had thought of that line) - particulary ironic coming from a president who's own country was one of the founding members of the United Nations; a body created to deal with rogue nations who thumb their nose at the world...
..if any other country had the blindess to claim themselves the most powerful nation on Earth with the power to do anything it wants --- but then to walk it back somehow and insist such power could never possibly change the air, the water, or the climate...
...If any other country had done what was done in our name through renditions, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Baghram AFB, or more appropriately to Jose Padilla (an American Citizen, born in Brooklyn, captured on the "battlefield" of Chicago O'Hare Airport) - the US would have intervened on humanitarian grounds and said that there is not a functioning democracy in such a country.
...if any country continued to claim they are the "greatest country in the world" while some members of it deliver "let them eat cake" lines for those people still eat hand-to mouth (if not from a shelter, or not at all) who, for "moral" reasons support an oligarchy that confines them to such a fate because even the poorest of them believe that to take ten cents from the most wealthy would somehow come back to bite them when they who are not so weathy yet...because they believe surely someday will be so.
...if any country had so many people who claim abortion is the murder of an unborn life, and make this the basis for all their reasoning to never vote for any Democrat or support any Democratic social program, but in doing so tacitly endorse by indifference the death by starvation, illness, abuse, or abandonment of those who would be affected by loss of such programs -
Well I have been trying to get Jesus to grant me an interview so that I might ask him just what he meant when he said "Those that do for the least amongst you do for me..." - because some of his most ardent worshippers and promoters apparently can't find that passage in his teachings.
Jesus does not return my calls.
So I also am a conflicted American. I love what my country stands for; but lately I don't see us standing for it. And because of these conflicts, well, lately I dont' hold back and I say without apology with a vehemence that makes most people step back or reach for their weapon "I want to meet this 'Jesus' who the Republicans think love only them and hate us, because if logic or intellectual integrity plays any part in 'H'is judgement, there is going to be a new wing in Hell that Dante never wrote about with the Republican's name in flashing neon upon the marquis, and a great many of their members who are going to find out that sound of gnashing of teeth is coming from their own head..."
...When people say that there is utterly no excuse to ever take away someone's gun, precisely because they reserve the right not to be one of the thousands every year who are killed by one - we've lost the plot. No amount of death or misery will ever pry their hand from their gun, and that is no less idealistic and dogmatically rigid than those who say that religion has absoultes (which religious people by the millions hypocritically promote but fail to follow in their own lives). If our founders wanted things to be so rigid and forbid the possiblity that the population ever encounter a reason it might change it's views over time, why would those founders have given us precisely the tools needed to make such changes?
(still waiting on my meeting with Scalia to ask him that one)
I'm ashamed of America becuase you and I both know that in a country which breathlessly shouts about "Freedom" (TM) and "Liberty" (TM) and demands the government must be hands off to let the people be and do as their free will directs, the very same people doing the shouting have used their power to harass, intimidate, condemn, and cast aspersions upon anyone else who has the hubris to use said "freedom" to do anything other than they alone declare is "right" or "good". These people brag about the freedom that supposedly "G"od gave us (but requires those same failed and flawed humans to defend, since "G"od seems to be nowhere to be found when one needs "H"im) and then use their own mob mentality to make it impossible for others to use that freedom they're so busy defending for themselves if anyone else tries to express a different "pursuit of happiness"....
I'm ashamed of America because you and I both know that if either one of us were to reveal our real name and publish our real addresses there woudl be an angry hoarde to come protest outside our house (or drag us from it depending on the speed, power, and alliances of local law enforcement) just for saying it.
And that is how we lost the plot.
What shames me is that the current group of Tea Party libertarians are in fact proving that what they want is not freedom, but a totalitarian, fascist dictatorship - as long as the dictats enforced by such a leader are of their liking (meaning of course that they'd never be the ones arrested or punished; only everyone else who begged to differ).
In the spirit of your diary, I suggest that if there were to be an objective observer from some planet that could claim the authority or the means to judge America from outside, whatever force that might be would declare us to be the greatest hypocritical fraud ever to stand on a principle and then blindly obliterate so many of the things it was supposed to stand for - all the while pounding it's chest and ignoring the hypocrisy of still claiming to be the paragon of the example (which they just destroyed).
Jesus might have said the meek will inherit the Earth, but the current crowd of Republicans and their Christian minions somehow think it's their manifest destiny to grab it for themselves as if its' all a giant game of King of The Hill.
So - shall you and I both prove we are right, write our Last Wills and Testaments, publish our names, and see how long the mob takes to turn us into crimson stain near where we once stood for having written either of these passages?
Because I'm convinced of the near certainty that would be our, and the lack of irony in so many of my neighbors and family when I point this out is why I'm ashamed.
(Just for fun, Google "Top Gear" - its a BBC program about fast cars which came to America lately and was surrounded by a mob of rednecks with shotguns who followed them out of town at high speed because...well, you'll find it. I'll put up a link in a minute)
In the Preamble to the Constitution there is the express stated goal of preserving "domestic tranquility".
Any group of people demanding revolution whenver they lose an election have shredded that ideal, set it on fire, and pissed on it to exstinguish the light and leave the heat. And that's what we have had since 1976.
In one sentence:
When one group of people only respect the rules when they win, then demand the rules must be changed when they lose or ignored altogether on some idealistic crusade, then what we live in is not a functioning democracy.
How dare we have the hubris to claim we're a role model for others....for anything but shameless hypocrites.
Remember what was said to and about Michelle Obama (get a bucket to puke in before you read the comments) when she said "for the first time I'm proud of my country" - and how Cindy McCain said she was ALWAYS proud of hers...
....slavery....
...Jim Crow...
...segregation...
...poverty...
...crime...
...women's suffrage (?)
...if she's always proud, meaning that she's able to overlook or ignore all of the things about this country that are NOT so perfect -
...well then I guess we shouldn't expect any of our most miserable shit to get any better then, because when we show it to people like her, they're fine with it.
And that is why optimists piss me off, and pessimists inspire me.
end original comment. (reposted at the suggestion of
http://www.dailykos.com/...
(Apologies, HappyCamper, in advance if your handle implies you're an optimist)
Quick: Who said this?
"An optimist is one who believes we live in the best of all possible worlds.
A pessimist is one who fears this is probably true...."
Answer: J. Robert Oppenheimer - head of the Manhattan Project that gave us the atomic bomb.
Here's some links to the Top Gear BBC program and their adventures in the US.
...and no matter how you say that maybe the crew of the show were asking for trouble -
Any way you slice it, it obliterates "free" anything if you say that just by doing something another finds objectionable it's therefore OK to gather the boys with loaded shotguns to chase them out of town.
All freedom is local. Especially in the company of people who's elected representatives and media talking heads have declared only they know why we have freedom, how it shall be used, and who doesn't deserve it.
And that, my fellow citizens of the "United" States of America is how we've become our own worst enemy.
Here's some links to the Top Gear stuff.
(
">shorter clip; you should watch the full episode for context and an explanation)
Top Gear In America (Times Online)
Video: Season 9: Episode 3 Trip To America
Another video
link:
the rednecks were real
When watching this episode, I kept thinking to George W. Bush's first public statements after Abu Grhaib went public...something like the standard boilerplate...
"these acts by these individuals do not represent America, it's values, or it's people"
Um, yes they do, Mr. Former President. Abu Grhaib, in addition to being directed from the very top as we later learned (anyone still think Lynndie England is the type to go rogue in front of all those MP's?) was not carried out by foreigners, but members of the very same organizations that are described as "America's Finest" and "Most Noble" and "Most Patriotic" heroes. We can't only claim them when they do good things; we still own them when they behave just like...well, just like a lot of people who live here.
And so as much as you might be peterbed that the Top Gear crew surely threw out a ton of chum into shark infested waters, despite Jeremy's quaint British accent, all he did was hold up an example of his own 'freedom of expression' and was met with a firearm by people who were under no threat from them
what
so
ever.
I'd like to have two taglines, actually, because one of the things I frequently find myself saying for about four years now is
"Bin Laden must be laughing his ass off. He hasn't had to do a thing to tear apart this country since 2001 - we're doing all the work for him."