Shame Of The Nation

For those who have not been following the news lately, it's been a truly disgraceful few weeks. No, not talking about the celebrity trials (Peterson, Blake, Jackson) nor the phony hearings on steroid use in baseball. I would bet, however, that most Americans could tell you something about those news stories without being able to tell you what has been going on in our Congress and Senate. Last week the House voted to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. One reason the Republicans were so ready to do this is because Democrats set aside this land intentionally to protect. The oil reserves in the ANWR will take 10 years to get to market if we started fully exploiting them today, and will provide a whopping 4 months supply of oil. That's it. So how does this square with "protecting our vital interests?" It does not. The point is, the Republicans have chosen to dismantle everything sacred to liberal America just because they can.

The budget that was just passed in the Senate would have contained enormous cuts in funding to environmental cleanup programs, education, and farm subsidies. Environmental cleanup is another way to say "getting rid of toxins that will kill you and/or give you cancer." Industry has polluted the earth, the air and the water, and cancer is at a record high. By allocating money to detoxify the earth it is a tacit admission that the problem exists, which the polluters refuse to allow. Pollution causes health issues that kill more people every year than handguns do. More people die from cancer in America every year than in all our wars combined. The education cuts come mainly in the form of gutting financial aid. This also seems inherently evil. People who cannot afford education are going to be cut off, meaning they will not complete their degrees, will not earn higher wages, and will not become more productive in society. This is forcing them back into poverty, ignorance, and their corollary: crime.

Despite running up the hugest deficit in history, current Republicans are crying for more "tax cuts." They want to dismantle all "entitlements" because to them that word is a dirty word meaning their hard-earned dollars are being given to freeloaders. In reality, the "entitlement" of Medicaid keeps state medical costs down because if people have access to medicine they will be healthier and frequent emergency rooms less often. Medicine should not be an exclusive right of the well-to-do. It's a human right. Republicans seek to punish those who disagree with them not by debating them in open discussion in Congress, but by punishing their children. Removing all help for children of the economically depressed (who are more likely to be Democrat) just exacerbates the cycle of ill health, poverty, poor education, unemployment, crime, and inner city deterioration that we have seen happen from the 60s onwards.

As Americans we need to see beyond our fences. The street you live on, the neighborhood, the city, the county - we are all connected. If you have a problem with your taxes building a new roof on a school in Compton, consider this: if those children of gang members stay in school and learn something, they might go on to college and decide not to carjack you or mug you at the ATM. They will get better jobs and have more money to spend to lift the economy. They will want to improve the ghetto or leave it all together. This is in your blatant self-interest. But if you want a higher mandate, consider that no religion on earth promotes accumulation of wealth and material things. All religions preach helping the less fortunate, and in American, that means Jesus is telling all of you rich Republicans that you, in fact, do not know Him. What would Jesus do? He probably would start by destroying the sanctimonious snakes who rob and exploit and pollute in His name. Jesus would likely have a thing to say to those who heedlessly allow animals to extinct in the name of cheaper prices at the gas station. For anyone who claims Christianity but is a Republican, ask them if they've read the Bible lately. Jesus and his followers advocated poverty (abandoning worldly items), communitarianism (sharing things equally), vegetarianism (the Essenes of Qumran were all vegetarians), and a merciful kindness to the downtrodden. Christians today are fixated on abortion but won't allow contraceptives or sex education to be used to stop unwanted pregnancies. How does that work? They also blocked the RU486 pill which floods a dose of estrogen through a woman so that any eggs which might be in transit will not fertilize. If they are so concerned about abortion, stopping pregnancies would go a long way to stopping abortion. But, not to put too fine a point on it: anyone who claims to be Christian in government is a liar.

There was also news today of Afghanis longing for the Taleban to return. The US installed whichever local warlord was most powerful as the local ruler. This is not democracy. We don't want the Afghanis to become self-sufficient, we want them to remain dependant upon American aid. We don't want other nations like France and Germany that can veto our ideas, we want compliant bitches. If Afghanistan becomes a democracy, we can forget about them voting to be in our camp. The war in Iraq is still raging at 1 billion dollars per week. What would our country look like now if we had suddenly, as a people, decided to attack our shortcomings, our inequalities, our injustices with 1 billion dollars per week for the last 2 years? Problem with that is the "wrong" people would get the money. This way, all of the Republican donors are lining their pockets. The USA's largest export is weapons. We sell death. This goes back to George Orwell, who in his seemingly non-fiction work "1984" foretold a society that used all of the surplus labor of it's people to make armaments. This way, the people are put on a heavier yoke, they work more, and they see less of the fruits. All of their labor goes to things that will be blown up or destroyed. They are asked to give up more and more as the economy shifts to a permanent war-based system. This is what we have now, citizens. Twenty years late, but it finally arrived.