A few weeks ago, I sent an email to my good friend from north of the border with the title “how do I apply for Canadian citizenship?”
Because seriously, I don’t think I can take the babyish political screaming any longer.
First, the country was in an uproar because the President of the United States wanted to give a speech to schoolchildren about the importance of education. For the life of me, I can’t imagine a less inherently controversial action. The, the country was in an uproar because the President of the United States followed simple courtesy rules by bowing to the Emperor of Japan, because we Americans must continually pound our chests and grunt about how we are superior to every living creature on the planet since “we bow to no one.”
Then yesterday before Thanksgiving dinner I had to watch my conservative uncle grumble angrily under his breath over this commercial, simply because Obama is in it.
Yeah, the bit with Obama is this super cheesy slow motion sequence with dramatic music, but is that reason to be offended? For Christ’s sake, the commercial is about stuff like building playgrounds for poor kids. Can’t we all at least agree that helping children is good?
Seriously, I really think Obama could say, “We should all work together to cure cancer” and people would find some way to find it a horribly offensive statement and use it to explain how the man is the next Hitler.
The crazy is not just limited to anti-Obama nonsense, although that does seem to be the loudest portion of the insanity lately.
When I campaigned for Chris Daggett (the independent for New Jersey governor), I was walking through downtown Red Bank on Election Day, wearing a Daggett t-shirt and holding up a rally sign. This random woman driving by slowed down, screamed at me, and gave me the finger. I wasn’t even looking in her general direction. But my mere presence on the same street as her caused to her have a temper tantrum. I mean, is that really necessary? Would she not punish her own children for similar behavior?
I’m absolutely certain that there wonderful examples of Democrats acting like petulant children, but I just can’t hear them over the (contradictory and nonsensical) screams of “Obama is a facist communist!”
Now let me be completely clear: I am not a Democrat. I am not a Republican. As I’ve said before, I think nothing destroys the ideals of this country as efficiently as politics. And I really like the U.S.- trust me, I am well aware that someone as loud and opinionated as me would have been quietly assassinated years ago in many other countries of this world. Which is why this crap makes me so angry.
In fact, if you tallied up my opinions on the top 10 issues of the day, you’d quite likely find that I fall a little bit more on the conservative side of things. And yet the only thing I hate more than Democrats are Republicans. Democrats, like all political or ideological party members in my book, are not remotely reasonable people. The only reason they appear so is because they coexist in a world right next to the Republicans, who have apparently gone from slightly nutty to batshit fucking insane in world record time over the past few months.
People tend to assume that I’m a Democrat because I hated Bush and like Obama. (Also because there certainly no crazy Democrats in my family for me to get frustrated with over Thanksgiving.) And I mean I really hated Bush with the best of them. I thought (and continue to think) that he was one of the worst things to happen to this country in a long time. So to avoid being a hypocrite, I have been constantly comparing my attitudes towards Bush to current attitudes towards Obama.
And the more I think about it, the more I feel like I’m the only reasonable person left in this country. I hated Bush’s policies, and disliked the man himself quite a bit. I thought he was completely wrong on a lot of things, and an arrogant prick to top it off, but I never thought he was intentionally trying to destroy the country. If Bush announced that he was going to make a speech about the importance of education to schoolchildren, I’d probably make some mean jokes about his intelligence, but I wouldn’t for a second actually think he was going to try to indoctrinate them. And I mean I really, really hated that man as my president.
See, the difference is, I’m not a crazy person.
Apparently I am alone in this.
You know, I think Obama has done an okay job so far. He hasn’t come through on a lot of things, and he certainly hasn’t lived up to a lot of ideals that I thought he would. But I have no regrets about voting for him, because as mediocre as he’s been, I’m confident he’s bringing this country in a better direction than McCain/Palin would have. And I also know that he’s not Superman, and he’s been going at most of this stuff completely alone. Even Democrats haven’t been very supportive or productive, with all their in-fighting. And Republicans and conservatives, as I believe I clearly illustrated above, have reverted to the mentality of toddlers and insisted on screaming about nonsense and petulantly getting in the way of any attempts to solve problems, rather than present solutions of their own.
Lou Dobbs was interviewed on The Daily Show a few nights ago. I certainly don’t agree with Lou Dobbs on everything (see: immigration. yikes) but this was an absolutely fantastic interview. It included the following exchange:
Lou Dobbs: The reality is this government functions best when we govern from the center. Now the public dialouge, debate, and discussion is dominated by the far left and the far right.
Jon Stewart: Agreed. You know why? Nobody’s gonna march in the streets with a sign going, “Be reasonable!”
Now let me just say, I would TOTALLY march in the streets with a sign that says “Be Reasonable.”
As funny as Jon Stewart is, I have to disagree on that. I don’t think that people can’t be both reasonable and passionate at the same time. And as the rest of the country gets more and more crazy, us reasonable ones are going to get more and more angry. At least I hope so.
Because like I said, I really like this country. Most people threaten or joke about moving to Canada in response to an election result they don’t like- because they’re upset about one person in the country. I don’t want to have to move to Canada because I stopped being able to stomach being around my own fellow citizens. It’s about time that some reasonable people took over this mess.