Politics With a Gun

I'm one of those strange, nerdy people who will actually dig through archived posts on blogs if I think the writer has something interesting to say. I was doing just that when I dug this up at The Walrus Said. It's an excellent birds-eye-view of US politics from an outsiders point of view for anyone curious enough to take a peek.

Ah, but there is part of the problem. Very few of us are terribly curious about others nor do most of us care even a teeny-weeny bit. We've been taught from the time we began to speak that we were superior in every way to everyone else. That everything our government does, even at it's worst, is far better than any other government, even at their best. The concept of Manifest Destiny didn't die after WWI, it just went undercover.

Luckily for the rest of the world we have turned our "my way or the highway" thinking on ourselves. After all, if you've always been taught that you are inherently morally and ethically superior and that this has been ordained by God himself what happens when that guy down the street believes something that contradicts what you believe? Even worse, what if he has the temerity to live in a way that offends your beliefs? You have a God-given moral RESPONSIBILITY to destroy him.

Any extreme belief is bound to create a backlash which is just as bad if not worse than the original....enter the far, far left. Moonbats as they are less than fondly referred to. Then there are the people not so different from myself who started out wanting to be civilized and peaceful and most of all to just be left alone. Except neither side will leave us alone and if you keep kicking someone eventually they start fighting back.

So now we are all armed and circling each other like the predators we are and in walks G.W. Bush & Co. No, he didn't cause this, he was just the flame that lit the bonfire. One more of history's opportunists seeking to use a situation to his own advantage.

We're a nation that was founded on conquest and enslavement and our entire belief system revolves around this idea of being the best. Everything must be ranked so seeing things as "different but equal" is not an option. Kill or be killed. Be aggressive, intolerant and mean as a junkyard dog because being tolerant or "nice" could be perceived as weakness and you will be eaten.

The good news is that as long as we are ripping each other apart we have less time and energy to bother anyone else.