Treyvon Martin. The name alone is sparking much controversy. I can't understand why, since the murdered black kid didn't do anything wrong on the night that he was murdered. Neither can I understand why it's so tough for conservatives to use simple common sense when even talking about this. If there is a killing, and you must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that foul play was involved, then you should press charges against the shooter and do just that. I can't understand why they must protect George Zimmermann to the death and beyond. Martin might as well have been murdered by Zimmermann's family, Malkin, O'Reilly, and the like the way all of the Right's defending a murderer (yeah, deal with it, Right Wing; Zimmermann should be tried for murder). I can't understand, even, what the Right's place even is in this argument, or what they even hope to get out of this. It's a continuation of them politicizing everything during the Obama Administration, and I can't understand why they must or why many people just allow themselves to buy into it again and again, but shouldn't be surprised that they are.
Since he first took office, Obama has been continuously attacked by the Right. This should be expected, of course, since he's a Democrat. What wasn't expected was how nasty or how far people would go to attack him, then attack us for calling out the vitriol, saying that anything is fair game.
We call them out on them saying that Obama could be a Muslim, and they have said that we're trying to silence them. Umm, how? For one, how is his religion even a part of him being able to lead the country. Let's be quite honest: he's a Christian, but even if he wasn't, even if he was indeed a Muslim, so what? How would that take away his qualifications? Last I checked, the Presidency can be held by anyone of any faith. This is the only time I would defend Mitt Romney, but this can be said about him and his Mormonism. I might not agree with the faith, but I'd judge him on what he'd do to our country more than what religious book he reads.
But more to the point, how are we even silencing the Right's ability to talk about Obama's policies? Hell, I couldn't understand why they were so upset that we called them out over the use of his middle name. Okay, so his middle name is Hussain. And? Well, the Right was using it as a way to show that he wasn't to be trusted. How is this? It's a coincidental middle name. That's all it was. Yet, when we called them out over how they were trying to link the middle name with him being some kind of domestic terrorist, they just told us that they had every right to, and that we were silencing them. No, we were saying that it had nothing to do with the campaign, and that the name had nothing to do about anything. It was just a name. Of course, when WE said his middle name, we were attacked because they thought we didn't want anyone to use his middle name, or for it to even be said. Umm, no? We had no problem saying his middle name, but as only that. A middle name. If people's middle names could be used in that manner, half of the American population would be in jail right now under mere suspicion.
Neither can I understand the whole issue with how people are saying all this bad stuff about "Obamacare" (can't understand the Right's love for that term as a detrimental word for the health care bill), yet they ignore that if it wasn't for the Right sliming it in ways that even I was bewildered by, then the bill wouldn't have been as controversial, as if it was even controversial to begin with. The public option was THE key part of the bill. If you couldn't afford health care, then it would be no problem, since the government would be able to provide some for you, a la Medicare. I can't understand how this got so skewed, but we had town halls that did nothing but bring people who didn't know what they were talking about scream to the top of their lungs in the faces of their elected officials, to the point where I feared for some of their safety. Was it that tough to get all the facts before going to these town halls? Is it that tough for these people to research things before believing anything the Right and Fox News tells them about this? Hell, is it so tough for them to watch something else other than Fox News every once in a while? Is it that tough to keep an open mind about things?
So the public option was taken out of this bill, and people still were complaining about the mandate. Okay, so if the public option was in the bill, the mandate wouldn't be as bad as it became for them. Now the bill forces people to get health insurance from someone who will rob them blind and whose funded by people who'll let them rob them blind without a single consideration to maybe they are doing just that. Can't understand why these people don't realize that the public option, something that they were firmly against, would've been a major solution to the mandate problem. The Right basically made the problem, yet I can't understand why they still blame Obama for that.
I can't understand the job issue, either, or why the tax thing is so contested by the general American public, as if they can't use their heads. Do any of these people know what middle class even IS? When Obama says "middle class", does the meaning behind that compute with them? Why is it that when the public hears "job creators", they believe every single goddamned thing to the manufactured term that the Right tells them, but get stupid the second the term "middle class" comes up? We know why the Right uses the term "job creators" (because they know the "top 1%" doesn't go over well with the public). But how come the public just buys into this again and again and again? We don't ever learn, and we keep buying into this lie. I understand people are scared, but things are getting better, and people would see that if they turn on, I don't know, ANOTHER DAMN NEWS NETWORK!
And yet, here we are again with Martin (thought I forgot the intro to this, did you). Again, the Right feels the need to politicize something it has no place TO politicize. However, more to the point, I can't understand why we are disallowed even a damn trial. I see the police try so hard to cover up the facts. I see the family of Zimmermann defend him as if his father gave him the gun, and his mother came up with the bullets, and his siblings followed Treyvon's every move. I see people try to link him to whatever wrong thing they could come up with and justify his shooting. I see so many people around the country facepalm every time we see this story in the news, thinking how they could possibly fuck something like this up so goddamn bad when all it takes is simple common sense and a sense of urgency.
Yet I can't understand why it's so tough for people to just DO things. Just arrest him, or just take him "downtown" for questioning. How hard is that? Hell, if I was the policeman on the scene, that would be the FIRST thing I would do. Period! I wouldn't be dancing around this like I have no idea how to do my job. I would have handcuffs, I would have authority, I would know how to read Miranda Rights off of a card. God, you'd think this was a several step process the way people who are defending this kid are handling this. I feel like I'm watching a Mafia movie the way this is going. And I can't understand how some people continue to eat up anything the Right tells them even in this case, as if they have any right to say anything about this at all. Yes, Obama gave his opinion, and it was a damn good one, but he shouldn't have had to do that in the first place because the politicizing should've never happened (and I can't understand the whole issue why his words are being marginalized now, but that does go into me not understanding the Right's place in this ordeal to begin with).
It makes me more frustrated than angry. It's like nothing we say ever fazes them in the least. We talk to brick walls mostly. No matter how many times we scream that the middle class is 90% of the American population, they continue to believe it somehow isn't. No matter how many times we say that the public option was why Obamacare was a good thing (see what I did there?) and that the mandate wasn't a big deal, they never listen and went into a town hall screaming their heads off without thinking of "hey, I should know what I'm screaming about before going in there". No matter how many times Obama's middle name is brought up as nothing more than that, they keep bitching that it has something to do with Saddam Hussein and that we shouldn't say it at all unless we're trying to link Obama with Saddam. No matter how many times we say that it would be okay even if Obama WAS a Muslim, they'd still insist that he is a Muslim and that would somehow be a bad thing.
Oh, and don't even get me started about the birthers. That'll make this way longer than this is already (seriously, how many more pieces of evidence do they need to be convinced that he was born in this country, and what else can any one person actually have as proof above what he's already shown? He was born in the USA! DEAL WITH IT!).
Though I shouldn't be surprised that this happens. We've come to a point where we, as liberals, have just allowed for this to happen. We've allowed for conservatives to paint this picture that we're the ones that are somehow not allowing other points of view when they are the ones doing that deed. Did Democrats ever try to say that Bush wasn't born here, or that he wasn't of the "approved religion". Hell, right after 9/11, there was hardly anyone that wasn't on his side. He quickly lost that when he decided to ignore bin Ladin and go after Hussein and the Right ate that up and went after anyone who disagreed.
So I shouldn't be surprised that the Martin thing is getting politicized to hell and back by those with no business doing such.
Meat Loaf was exactly right: this world really IS going to hell in a handbasket. Though I can't understand why it has to be, why it should, or why the Right insist that it's somehow not their fault.