There I Go...Reading News Again

I spent some time hanging around the 'net and some news outlets today and once again...got a dose of weirdness that seems to be so prevalent lately.

Does anyone actually believe...?

• That because the health care system is in trouble, we've begun the long slide into socialism?
• That torture is a legitimate way for the United States to interrogate prisoners?
• That paid radio and television commentators should be dictating policy?
• That the President of The United States is not a citizen?
• That some secret government agency is going to tell you to euthanize your relatives because they’re old, ill and not worth the cost of saving?
• That every follower of Islam is a terrorist and wants to kill westerners?
• That America should lead by 'going it alone' as we did for eight years?
• That the government was responsible for 9/11?

Please...tell me it ain't so.

Some of this stuff is so outrageous that it seems like even the lunatic fringe would have a hard time swallowing it but I guess since it gets air time, somebody's listening. It's awfully hard for me to absorb quite so many conspiracy theories when I'm just trying to make a living every day. I guess it shouldn't be too surprising though since there's still a lively debate on the Kennedy assassination and a good share of those doing the debating weren't even born when it happened. Could we move on please? It's obvious that the 'vocal minority' has a lot on their minds and a lot of time to dedicate to their cause...whatever it is.

Hey, I'm just a blue collar guy with a mortgage and car payments. Most folks trying to make a living can't spend hours doing Freedom of Information lawsuits and digging through 'newly released govenment files' when they have to earn a paycheck. There's a few things that really do get my curiosity going but trying to figure out if Roswell was a federal cover up isn't tops on the list. One that does make my skin crawl is the debate over waterboarding ie., torture. Like I said, I don’t pretend to be overly educated in politics or social sciences but what I do know is this:

A while ago, I realized that I was for the first time in my life, terrified by what was happening to our country. Even more so than when 9/11 occurred, I felt as if we were vulnerable and under attack, not from some shadowy terrorist band but from ourselves and some of the people we elected to represent us. Not because of some secret conspiracy, but because of what was happening in the wide-open...in front of God and Country.

We somehow sold our souls to the devil of ‘security’ and nothing was exempt from that all-consuming, double edged sword. I never felt as ashamed of us as I did the day that ‘waterboarding’ became a legitimate tool in our ‘war on terrorism’. We jumped, fell or were pushed from the high ground and lowered ourselves into the same evil mud pit occupied by our enemies. We were told that torture was necessary to gain the information we needed to protect ourselves and in a blink, the end justified any means. Legal teams were trotted out to legitimize it and the talking heads of Fox News lined up to tell us that it really wasn’t torture in the strictest sense of the word and that since nobody really drowned, it was all OK. Good people knew it was wrong and our leaders spent useless time whistling in the dark trying to make everyone believe it wasn’t. We lost our position of strength in the world right then by refusing to hold to our honor and took a dangerous step closer to becoming what we were supposedly fighting.

How did we, not 'they' allow this to happen? That's a question that matters more to me than any rumors about Lee Harvey Oswald or Obama's birth certificate. When did we decide that we could do this and still be leaders in the world? I wondered then and I wonder now...I'm just glad that it's supposedly over and hope we learned something from it. Nobody respects a hypocrite and we led the world in that department for a while.

That's it for my political and social commentary (commonly known as my own opinion) for tonight. I'm on my way to work again in a few hours and the sheets are calling before the phone rings.