I have a confession to make. The reason for my rant today "because 'they' aren't 'our enemies" was a bit over-stated. I don't have the readership to create a critical mass of reactions. Rather, I was drawing from both the blog and from my real-life experiences. So, why post such a rant?
Firstly, I've been wanting to rant about this point for some time. It's become a regular road-trip discussion for Slick and me. There really is a lot of "Us vs Them" occurring in our country. My friends and family really do react to even the slightest hint for support of the other side's ideas and policies. The unfortunate truth is that there's a lot of good reasons for their reactions.
The second reason for my post was to goad NothingKnew (NK) into a response on his blog. Apparently, it worked, as evident by his post Us Bleeding Heart Liberals. Since the two of us really sit on the same side of the fence, we certainly can't debate politics. But I really wanted to see if I could get him to launch into something insightful. He doesn't post enough (he's really busy, so it's understandable) but he's really got the ability to become a first-rate over-the-top commentator. So, while I was honest, I was also pushing buttons.
NK makes several good points in response to my worst-case scenarios but missed the reason for them. It's our fear of these worst-case scenarios that are central to our inability to work together. Gun advocates are so afraid that we will take their guns from them that they refuse to give any ground even in the face of real statistics. They only see their worst-case fears. The same is true for abortion rights advocates. We (and I include myself in this camp) refuse to give any ground because we are afraid that the old draconian reality of back-alley abortions will return, the age of the giant orphanage filled with unwanted children will return and that women will not have any say in the treatment of their own bodies.
Are these fears reasonable? Well, my "common sense" (note what I said about common sense in the last post) tells me that these things can't possibly come to pass. But then, I would have never dreamed that we would get ourselves into a Vietnam-situation less than 40 years after the first time.
He is also right about needing a thick skin to blog. Someday, for better or for worst, my readership and traffic may increase enough to get real responses. If you've ever gone to a popular political blog you'd know what I'm talking about. Actually, if you read Fake Steve Job's blog, you would know that he's had some problems recently from an obnoxious comment about gun owners. So, a thick skin indeed.
So, thank you NK for responding. Your friends and loyal readers want to read more!
1 comment:
Oh, those aren't the worst case scenarios. We don't even have to reach anything near them to have our freedoms and abilities as Americans to be gone.
But I spent too much time on that one post. Next time you want to goad me, do it on one topic at a time. Make sure to misspell something so I have something easy to make fun of.
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