What happened to us? I woke up this morning and it seemed that suddenly we're all at each other's throats. Disagreement has turned into pure hatred and there is very little discussion anymore. Pundits spout half truths and opinions to achieve a political goal while those of us out here trying to live our lives do our best to navigate a minefield designed to enrage us.
Did you get that email from your brother about Obama's secret camps for Tea Party supporters? What about the one years ago about Bush instituting a draft to cover the war in Afghanistan and the coming war in Iraq? How Pelosi is ruining America, or Boehner or who ever?
We used to keep our political leanings more or less to ourselves until it became easy to have a one sided conversation. TV interview shows and the internet have allowed opinions and beliefs to evolve without any connection to fact whatsoever, drawing instead on the writings of whoever agrees with them. Whether it's the 9/11 truth movement or Obamacare we now see the world in strong shades of red and blue and it's making me sick.
Sick to think that it's only going to get worse. That an armed Tea Party group will confront an Occupy ____ crowd and someone will say something stupid and before you know it we're at war. Civil War.
Taking it too far you say? Think back to when we got along. Sure we all had our differences, but it was subtler, we all made decisions based on the facts at hand. Some more than others, but there was always a back and forth, a sharing of ideas.
Now we have two groups locked in a fight that can never end without BOTH of them backing away. Abortion, healthcare, finance reform, banking regulations, job creation...these are not things any one party has figured out. Our current situation is not the result of our current administration, Congress or Court, but a continuous failure of all three for decades. The offices are inundated by monied interests looking to have the path cleared for their project, drug trials, regulations to the point that law makers have no choice but to take the easy way out and simply do what they say.
Our system fell apart and we all picked up our red and blue glasses and looked for someone to blame. We were told by new voices to hate the right wing gun loving nut job neocons or the leftist commie hippie liberals, each of us told what we wanted to hear.
And the voices only got louder and told us more half truths about who we were supposed to hate.
Then one day we looked around and instead of having a discussion with our neighbors and learning about WHY they feel the way they do, we just hate them.
We hate them because of a bumper sticker, T-shirt or slogan, for an avatar on facebook or a picture they linked to they believe in. We hate them because we're not sure who we're supposed to hate so we take the easy way out and just do what they say.
No one is without blame these days, we've all taken things way too far. Wire taps, healthcare mandates, war for oil, protecting some stupid salamander, we take something we dislike and assign an evil doer to it and nothing we read, hear or feel will dissuade us from even thinking, "Hmmm...I wonder if I might have this all wrong after all?"
The melting pot of America has had the heat turned up slowly for decades, most noticeably in the last 10 years. Choose your bogey man, blame whoever, but look in the mirror first. Hate the banks, but look at what you're doing in relation to them first. Hate immigrants or food stamp recipients but examine your own life for things you can do about it.
99%, 53%, 1%...
...100% of Americans believe something is wrong on some level. Perhaps instead of looking for a trigger in this current administration, Court or Congress, or the one before that, or the one before that, we should take a look at the only thing that has been a constant throughout it all:
US.
The American people.
The same people currently loathing half of our Countrymen and Women and for what? Why do we all hate each other? Skin color? Religion? Cheeseburger or plain? Kids or no kids? Booze or no booze? Last I checked all the things I disagree with had little to no impact on my day to day life with only minute changes to behavior.
"But (insert politician here) wants to take away my (thing you think is going to be taken away)!"
And we're back to hating each other instead of looking around for the cause to our troubles. Maybe they want it this way. James Andrews, the character from the film PCU summed it up nicely when he said "It used to be us against them, now it's us against us."
US against US.
I'm so tired of trying to figure out why so many people are so insanely upset at things they may know nothing about, but simply need to hate something.
We're all like toddlers who will spend more time crying about cleaning our room and how our sister never cleans hers than just getting the job done, being proud of it and moving on to other more interesting things.
There will always to a part of every society who doesn't carry their weight. The young, the old, the crippled, the sick, the just plain lazy...but should we hate them? There will always be those who excel at what they do and rise above us to higher position and stature...but should we hate them?
Depending on your bumper stickers I can guess which side you come down on because I've been conditioned to draw assumptions and build barricades. Just because I disagree does not make you wrong. We seem so quick to destroy someone else's opinion just because it clashes with our own preconceived beliefs.
Fools.
We're all fools to have let it get this bad.
Did you get that email from your brother about Obama's secret camps for Tea Party supporters? What about the one years ago about Bush instituting a draft to cover the war in Afghanistan and the coming war in Iraq? How Pelosi is ruining America, or Boehner or who ever?
We used to keep our political leanings more or less to ourselves until it became easy to have a one sided conversation. TV interview shows and the internet have allowed opinions and beliefs to evolve without any connection to fact whatsoever, drawing instead on the writings of whoever agrees with them. Whether it's the 9/11 truth movement or Obamacare we now see the world in strong shades of red and blue and it's making me sick.
Sick to think that it's only going to get worse. That an armed Tea Party group will confront an Occupy ____ crowd and someone will say something stupid and before you know it we're at war. Civil War.
Taking it too far you say? Think back to when we got along. Sure we all had our differences, but it was subtler, we all made decisions based on the facts at hand. Some more than others, but there was always a back and forth, a sharing of ideas.
Now we have two groups locked in a fight that can never end without BOTH of them backing away. Abortion, healthcare, finance reform, banking regulations, job creation...these are not things any one party has figured out. Our current situation is not the result of our current administration, Congress or Court, but a continuous failure of all three for decades. The offices are inundated by monied interests looking to have the path cleared for their project, drug trials, regulations to the point that law makers have no choice but to take the easy way out and simply do what they say.
Our system fell apart and we all picked up our red and blue glasses and looked for someone to blame. We were told by new voices to hate the right wing gun loving nut job neocons or the leftist commie hippie liberals, each of us told what we wanted to hear.
And the voices only got louder and told us more half truths about who we were supposed to hate.
Then one day we looked around and instead of having a discussion with our neighbors and learning about WHY they feel the way they do, we just hate them.
We hate them because of a bumper sticker, T-shirt or slogan, for an avatar on facebook or a picture they linked to they believe in. We hate them because we're not sure who we're supposed to hate so we take the easy way out and just do what they say.
No one is without blame these days, we've all taken things way too far. Wire taps, healthcare mandates, war for oil, protecting some stupid salamander, we take something we dislike and assign an evil doer to it and nothing we read, hear or feel will dissuade us from even thinking, "Hmmm...I wonder if I might have this all wrong after all?"
The melting pot of America has had the heat turned up slowly for decades, most noticeably in the last 10 years. Choose your bogey man, blame whoever, but look in the mirror first. Hate the banks, but look at what you're doing in relation to them first. Hate immigrants or food stamp recipients but examine your own life for things you can do about it.
99%, 53%, 1%...
...100% of Americans believe something is wrong on some level. Perhaps instead of looking for a trigger in this current administration, Court or Congress, or the one before that, or the one before that, we should take a look at the only thing that has been a constant throughout it all:
US.
The American people.
The same people currently loathing half of our Countrymen and Women and for what? Why do we all hate each other? Skin color? Religion? Cheeseburger or plain? Kids or no kids? Booze or no booze? Last I checked all the things I disagree with had little to no impact on my day to day life with only minute changes to behavior.
"But (insert politician here) wants to take away my (thing you think is going to be taken away)!"
And we're back to hating each other instead of looking around for the cause to our troubles. Maybe they want it this way. James Andrews, the character from the film PCU summed it up nicely when he said "It used to be us against them, now it's us against us."
US against US.
I'm so tired of trying to figure out why so many people are so insanely upset at things they may know nothing about, but simply need to hate something.
We're all like toddlers who will spend more time crying about cleaning our room and how our sister never cleans hers than just getting the job done, being proud of it and moving on to other more interesting things.
There will always to a part of every society who doesn't carry their weight. The young, the old, the crippled, the sick, the just plain lazy...but should we hate them? There will always be those who excel at what they do and rise above us to higher position and stature...but should we hate them?
Depending on your bumper stickers I can guess which side you come down on because I've been conditioned to draw assumptions and build barricades. Just because I disagree does not make you wrong. We seem so quick to destroy someone else's opinion just because it clashes with our own preconceived beliefs.
Fools.
We're all fools to have let it get this bad.
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