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The (IN) Complete Resource to Virtually Nothing |
| Reading: Amazing Spider-Man: One More Day Pt 4. · Listening: Seal, System · Watching: Primaries |
31 JANUARY 2008: Pow! Right in the kisser!
First, for those of you that have wondered, mom's slowly on the road to recovery. Can't go into details yet, but she will not have surgery to repair the breaks in her leg, but she is in a cast that limits her mobility. My nephew took care of her during his winter break from University, and then her neighbor and I have taken over so she can remain at home instead of at some prison-like "rehab" center that Medicare won't really pay for (and, honestly, is worse than being taken care of at home). Mom should be in a walking cast soon...
Second, I've been with my mom so much that I don't yet have the 2007 ICRVN Year-in-Review done (or started, for that matter), but the darned thing is such a tradition that I can't let it go. I'll probably split it up into parts and start posting it soon.
Third, I am in a whopping amount of pain. I had to go have some dental work done today, and it took over the whole day. Basically, I'm due for a series of crowns to replace my four front teeth, but one of them needed to be reconstructed first because the filling had come loose, plus another couple of small cavities showed up. Unfortunately, on one cavity, the anaesthetic didn't take, despite four injections. So, the dentist tried again four more times. Nada. Well, he had to go to the old stuff, with the old needle. Three injections later, I was most definitely a pin cushion, but he finally got part of the area numb, triggered a migriaine, and began drilling. I felt it anyway.
Apparently, according to his notes, that area was problematic the last time he had to work around it, so he wasn't too surpised. Luckily he tried to work fast, but it still hurt like hell. So, rather than do anything else like work or try and stay upright, I had my wife drop me off at home where I stayed in bed until dinner. Despite being soup, it still hurt to eat, and my jaw is still very sore, and I cannot open my mouth completely... If I still cannot do so by tomorrow, I'll worry.
Sorry that there aren't any photos this month... Maybe next time.
31 JANUARY 2008: Open Question for Bush Supporters...
My friend Anthony has posted a comment about a recent article about a town petition from Brattleboro, Vermont calling for the arrest of President Bush and Vice President Cheney for "crimes against the Constitution." One respondent to the petition, who is of course not a resident of the town or even Vermont, but of Minnesota, wrote: "Maybe the terrorists will do us all a favor and attack your town next, our country would be much safer with several thousand dead wackjobs in Vermont." Another emailer (also not from Vermont) wrote: "Be American, not a sniffeling liberal town that sleeps under the shield of safety provided to you by your President." There was more, but you get the gist.
Anthony noted that according to these emails in response to the opinions of a few residents of one town, "liberals aren't Americans. Not real Americans, at any rate."
I had a different reaction.
I hear a lot of people, mostly Bush supporters and Republicans, complain about people that aren't fully supportive of Bush or the "War on Terror." (By the way - since "war" is an activity and "terror" is a noun meaning "fear," it really is silly to even discuss having conflict regarding a sensation.)
Many people that aren't Bush supporters also complain that many Americans aren't being "good patriots" by not suporting the war, or the troops, or the president. Many people don't think that it is possible to support the troops and not the conflict. I disagree. I look to Vietnam and the way in which the soldiers were treated upon their return home during and after that conflict, where protestors spat upon the soldiers as they got off the planes from Vietnam. No one should ever have to endure such treatment. However, just because I don't agree with the administration's reasoning for having troops in the middle east (or agree with anything this administration does, actually), does not mean that I do not hope for their safety and success (one does lead to the other, which leads to their swifter return home, in case you were wondering).
So, if you accept the fact that I don't support the war or revere those that fight to avenge those who died in the events of September 11th (aka "Giuliani Day), and as I also believe in such wild, earth-dooming "liberal" causes as health care for kids, I'm a "bad patriot," and thus deserving of the same fate as Brattleboro. (BTW, Quick quiz for the conservative evangelicals out there: which do you think your God would favor? (a) war that results in tens of thousands of lives lost, or (b) sick kids being made healthy? Take your time...)
If we take recent election results to heart, roughly half of the country doesn't support Bush. Currently, Bush's approval rating is hovering between 30 and 40 percent. Many people share the sentiments of the emailer who said that liberals don't deserve to sleep "under the shield of safety provided to you by your President."
This, then, is my question:
I will assume that my question will not be answered in a way in which I hope - calmly and logically. No - I will more than likely receive the same kind of response that the petition in Vermont received, and it will confirm my notion that true political discourse is gone and dead.
Would this vitriolic and enthusiastic belief that America had every right to attack Iraq and Afghanistan in retaliation for the events of September 11th, and the same enthusiastic defense of Bush and his administration regarding everything the administration does in the name of 9/11, be so vehement if there was available proof that half (or more) of those killed on 9/11 were not Republicans but Democrats or (worse) liberals?
Statistically, it can easily be assumed that they were. The one thing that I can say for certain, is that save for the known immigrants that had not yet been nationalized and visiting foreign nationals, almost everyone killed on 9/11 was an American, regardless of political preference. And so are the residents of Brattleboro, Vermont, and vocalizing the notion that "our country would be much safer with several thousand dead wackjobs in Vermont" could be construed as terrorism (defined as "the use of threats to coerce for political purposes").