[TheForge] Patriotic rant....

[Demon Buddha]

Phlip wrote:
> 

> I've gotta agree, guys. I'm no, "My Country Right or Wrong" jingoist-
> I feel when my country is wrong, it's part of my responsibility to point
> that out- and offer a solution, and help implement that solution, if I can.
> But I'm damn well a patriot.

	Here we come to the crux of the problem of 21st century America.
	This nation is almost universally wrong these days and it is
	not by accident.  We no longer have sufficient control over what
	happens to stave off the worst transgressions against the people
	of this and other nations.  When many of us were kids (pre watergate)
	can you not recall how hard politicians worked to at least APPEAR
	squeaky clean?  In the years since, they have worked less hard at
	it and then suddenly is became some form of political chic to
	have a scandal surrounding you.  All the while the "people" sat
	around and whined about it, yet nothing changed for the better.
	Why is that?  Is it because Americans a stupid as a brick and
	lazy?  It is because the "game" is stacked against them?  Is
	is something else?  I don't know, though I suspect it is some
	combination of these.  Regardless, the fact is that the political
	situation in this country is indeed becoming dire.  Just think
	of it: we have a raving lunatic in the Oval Office that is actually
	talking of using nuclear weapons against its enemies.  We have
	already laid Southern Iraq a radioactive wasteland!  This is insane,
	yet we, the people of the USA, have not acted to effectively stop
	this nonsense.  Why?  How is it that a nation born of the likes
	of Jefferson and Henry has become so impotent that it cannot or
	will not stop its government from acting in ways so repugnant to
	any half wit that people are beginning to fly jet liners into
	its office buildings?  Things such as that do not happen because
	we are innocent bystanders on the stage of world politics.  It
	would be terribly naive to think that we are.  

	We're a good nation slowly turning bad through inaction.  I'm to
	blame and so are the rest of us.  I have to say that while I
	disagree with organizations such as PETA in terms of their agendas,
	I have to at least give them my respect for acting on their
	beliefs, which is a whole hell of a lot more than most of the rest
	of us seem to do.  If the American people were truly fit for
	freedom, we'd shove our collective foot so far up the government's
	ass, they'd quake in terror at the thought of stepping out of line
	once more.  I may be wrong, but as I see it, we are past the stage
	of polite dissent with our government.  That government will see us
	all dead or in chains if we don't stop it.  War on poverty, war on
	drugs, war on AIDS, war on terror... doesn't something about this
	language disturb you?

	I love this nation, but I hate what the government does and I don't
	use the word "hate" very casually in my speech.  It is heart breaking
	to see what we are becoming.  We are like a person laying about so
	stoned that when thieves come to beat and rob him, all he does is
	lay there in a daze, unable and/or unwilling to do anything about it.
	Shame on me.  Shame on most of us, I would suspect, as the power
	interests put us over the wood while we sit passively by, fretting 
	about who will win tonight's game and who is screwing Britney Spears.
	Just take an accounting of TV content and you will see what great
	concerns we have.  It is sad.

	Fire away, folks.