No Reasonable Actions

Having such a difficult time trying to formulate my feelings this week.  I am stupified by the unreasonable, uncompromising, voices on the Far Right.  It really is difficult for me to compute it because it is for foreign to me.  I hear the voices from the NRA speak and I can't believe what I am hearing.  Have you listened to the cloaked fear mongering?  Maybe it's not cloaked.  I think you can tell that I can't figure out what to make of it.  I can't understand the justification for no gun control. I can't understand what could be the justification for assault weapons and huge bullet clips/magazines.  I can't understand why anyone needs an assault weapon.  Does anyone go hunting with an assault weapon and shoot off 60 bullets to kill a deer? Does anyone know what the numbers of assault weapons sold in America was before George W.?  I have a feeling that that was the beginning.  The Bush administration post 9/11 fed the blind fear of the "other."  People unlike themselves.  Religion that wasn't Christian.  Dark skin.  Burkas.  Hair coverings.  Confusion between Sikhs and Muslims.  

Which all led up to the greatest terror threat of all....an African-American President.  People went crazy. Ape-shit. I am sure that many Americans felt threatened that the hierarchy, the circle of life, the very reason to get up in the morning was tossed upside down. We know that the South hasn't really gotten over losing to the North even 200 years later. A Black President?  The past four years has elevated, as Chris Matthews says, the dog whistles.  The people that fear are plugged into code rhetoric.  They hear from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, members of Congress, D****d Tr**p, VP nominees, Presidential nominees, it's become bizarrely prevalent.  General Colin Powell said it better than I ever could the other morning on Meet the Press.  He was talking about words used to describe the President: lazy, shucking and jiving, uppity, etc. Code words.  He was so clear that the current Republican party is not a party he can be part of.  Too much intolerance accepted under the Republican umbrella, so the Republican party of their beloved Reagan would never fly in today's current atmosphere.  

That the former VP nominee, current Congressman Paul Ryan voted against the financial bill to help the people decimated from Hurricane Sandy is unconscionable.  It's been said, but I will say it again.  No one thought twice to send money to the people hurt by Hurricane Katrina.  Of course, we wills send money to the devastated Gulf Coast, but to the Northeast???  We have to beg, plead, get angry, threaten, call them out to get what has never been a political decision but has always been the historical role of government.  What the hell is happening to this government?  For a professed group of Christians in Congress, they are not acting very Christ-like at all.  I can tell that I will keep ruminating about this because Congress is going to keep going around and around on issues that 4 years ago, weren't issues.  Do I think that there is wasted spending in government?  Absolutely, but there always has been.  Can budgets and spending be improved?  Absolutely but not in the non-governing, non-compromising, non-yielding way the Far Right is leading.  

Let's see if I can sum up this multi-layered, multi-idea'd, multi-thought rant.  If fear is the method of a segment of the population, then it makes sense that the gun owners want to stockpile guns. To what end?  Do they want to shoot their way into government?  Take the country back from the Black President?  I have never heard that phrase more than I have in the past 4 years.  "They" want to "take the country back." It's unnerving.  I feel impotent.  I don't know what's going to happen.  Can the majority of the people in this country, Republicans and Democrats and Independents, stand up and come to the table?  

Sidebars:  American Idol premiered for Season 12 with Nicki Minaj, Keith Urban, Mariah Carey, and Randy Jackson. Much has been made about the women not getting along.  Not sure I can tell yet, exactly, but I can tell that the show feels tired.  They now run video pieces for people that don't go to Hollywood. The ultimate pay-off...don't care.  Maybe when they get to Hollywood?  I haven't written about Lance Armstrong yet.  I will. Tonight is part one of the Lance Armstrong/Oprah Winfrey interview.  Much has been said, not by me...yet. Downton Abbey was heartbreaking this week.  The Knicks are in London playing a regular season game against the Pistons.  So dumb.  David Stern wants to globalize the NBA.  Really?  How much more do they want to take over?  Hugely popular worldwide.  What a waste of energy, travel, and talent.  Not a fan of this gimmick.  It's an afternoon game here today so no one will be watching but barflies....

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