Pissed!

I am weary. The fear of failure that I somehow developed long ago in my childhood has worn me down. Any ambition that I once had has been gone for a long time now. In the past few weeks, I have wanted to write but just couldn't get myself to commit the time and energy to it. It was easier to let myself mindlessly chase illusions in FreeCiv.

I want to write because my fears are running high. I feared that my country would continue on the abhorrent path that it has been pursuing for at least the past 8 years. I might have been able to tolerate McCain but the idea of Sarah Palin one heartbeat from the Presidency absolutely terrorized me.

And I am ANGRY.

I AM Angry that my patriotism and love of country was being indirectly challenged by right wing ideologues in their denouncements of Michelle Obama for at last finding something truly worthy of respect in her political experience of America, of Reverend Jeremiah Wright for angrily finding fault with the America of his experience, and of William Ayers for having taken a stand against his own country in a matter of conscience. Being free to dissent from the commonly accepted beliefs about our nation is a fundamental principle and freedom upon which this very nation is founded. That people should be judged as somehow lacking in patriotism for exercising this right infuriates me!

Was Ayers a "terrorist" or a "patriot" and is calling him a "terrorist" just the most convenient way to dehumanize and dismiss him. Violence as a way of obtaining goals of any kind is repugnant to me, but evidently not to G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.

(God, I just found out that Wolfowitz, got his PHd in Political Science at the University of Chicago in 1972. I think I'm gonna be sick. Maybe if I'd been more radical and the least bit prone to violence and very prescient, I could have wacked him at the graduation ceremony and saved the country from entering another fucking war! It really makes me think that I have to re-think my time at the U of C. I was only aware of the leftist political groups, probably because they were the most vocal and publicly visible. Clearly, the extreme right was there too. Me, I was mostly apolitical, as I have been most of my life. Politics just plain makes my skin crawl. I feel incredibly dirty after being around it for even short periods of time.)

I AM Angry at the attempts to utilize guilt by association in an attempt to demonize Barack Obama.

I AM Angry that racism is still a blatant reality in MY country.

I am angry that our leaders and their cronies demonize and dehumanize our enemies. The very act of doing so serves only to justify the barbarism of our actions. How is a missile strike that kills innocent civilians any the less abhorrent than suicide bomber detonating him/herself among a bunch of innocents. How does losing thousands innocent lives in the world trade towers justify the tens of thousand of lives that have been and are being taken in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I can't help but wonder that if our forefathers had failed in their effort to establish this nation wouldn't they have been judged as terrorists by history. Weren't the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the Dresden Fire bombing acts of terrorism? Is a declaration of war all that it takes to redefine terrorism?

It is terrible that some people feel compelled to use violence to obtain what they want in the world. I don't see much difference between the likes of Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush and their cronies. Bush's actions have led to considerably more death and destruction than anything that bin Laden and Al Qaeda have managed. Don't get me wrong. I do believe that those who use violence are legitimate targets for responsive violence. I just haven't been able to make the connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda since before the war started.

I guess the sum of all this is that I am angry because I feel so helpless. We elect a new leader, Barak Obama, and I get that he wants to make nice and not continue the incessant and useless partisan political bickering and posturing that have been the American poliical experience for as long as I can remember. But what he fails to understand is that we the American people have been violated, virtually raped, during the past 8 ¥ears. Yes, Al Qaeda, was responsible for some of that, but the more pernicious violations have been perpetrated upon us by Bush, Cheney, the rest of the neo-cons, and the abdominal greed of the people in positions of trust and power.

I want accountability! I want Justice! I want Vengeance! And I am afraid that there is none of that left in the world that I live in.