In Never Forgetting, We Forgot

All day today, we're all being flooded by 9/11 remembrances.  And every year, it reminds of me how badly we responded.  9/11 is an example of so many things wrong with our country.

We all know Bush, Cheney, and Rice were warned about the threat Osama bin Laden posed.  They failed to prevent it & have never been held even remotely accountable.  The closest we've come are the illogical 9/11 Truther conspiracy theories too many have latched onto.

Bin Laden's stated goal was to bankrupt America.  So we responded by launching 2 ground wars we knew in advance would be quagmires, with the 2nd in a country not even related to 9/11.

We eventually killed bin Laden, with a SEAL team.  A tactic that did not require the ground presence that has been in Afghanistan for over a decade.  And by then, he'd already won.  We've doubled our debt since 9/11 and are headed for more, as Defense spending continues spiraling out of control.  The exact thing 9/11 was meant to provoke us to do.

We should, of course, honor the fallen 9/11 and the 2 wars.  But by heading for more war, we do not honor the fallen.  With calls for more unnecessary war, we spit on the graves of the fallen to make room for dead soon to join them.

By learning nothing, we've let out countrymen die for nothing.
By learning nothing, we hand victory to terrorists.

Huge Turning Point In My Life

In the last year, I’ve consumed a lot right wing media.  And after seeing them make their case, they’ve convinced me.

I’ve become a member the Tea Party movement.  They’re right.  Obama is the worst President ever, including James Buchanan, who’s best known for failing to prevent the Civil War.  That’s right.  The last two years have been worse than the entire Civil War.

Obama’s support of corporations in the form of corporate bailouts does make him a socialist, Marxist, Communist, Progressive, leftist, Nazi, liberal.  That’s right, they’re all the same thing.  The leftists pretend those things are all different to confuse us true patriotic Americans with their fancy words with their fancy different meanings.

Obama is definitely Muslim.  Twenty years in a Christian church & having his children baptized Christian was just a dirty trick taught to him by his Muslim master, George Soros.  Yup, Soros is Muslim too.  Why else would he have helped the Nazi’s round up Jews?

Obamacare’s individual mandate for people to purchase health insurance from private companies is a government takeover of healthcare.  The fact that the new insurance will be managed and profited from by corporations is another of their sneaky liberal tricks.

I’ll be a fervent protector of the Second Amendment.  I will not rest until there is a bazooka in every child’s backpack.  Our children must be allowed to protect themselves.  With bazookas.

I now support our troops, because as we all know only the Tea Party supports our troops.  Liberals hate the troops.  That’s why they don’t want to let them be at war constantly.

I feel so much lighter now, without that burden to evaluate each situation independently based on their own merits.  It will be so much easier to jump straight to thinking the opposite of whatever I’ve been told to pretend all liberals think.  Although, I suppose that will even out by finally working for a living instead of being the lazy, tax leaching socialist I apparently was before today.

My television will only have one channel from now on.  Fox News.  They can tell me what to think from now on.  Then again, why do I need to bother watching?  Since I already know that Obama is always wrong about everything why do I need Fox News?

Socialism doesn't oppress people, people do.

In 2009, the White House once again became occupied by a Democrat.  Fear of socialism rose to a level not seen since the last time a Democrat was President.

The people afraid of socialism somehow overtaking America will typically repeat the same reasons why they think socialism bad.  "Socialism is a process that has been proven by history to fail every time."  "Socialism suppresses individual freedom and liberty."  "Socialism is contrary to what America is supposed to be and the principles it was founded on."

On all points, they are correct.  But only if you limit it to dictatorships who have abused it and their own people.  Due to the Cold War, McCarthyism, and many dictatorships who called themselves socialist, many Americans understandably associate socialism with failure and oppression.  The problem with this is that socialism exists, and has always existed, in our own country.

Socialism exists and thrives in America, despite those who say it has no place here and is contrary to everything our country was founded on.  To say that America should have zero socialism is to say that we should end all of the following:

Medicare
Medicaid
Social Security
FDA
USDA
FAA
Police Departments
Fire Departments
Public Schools
Public Libraries
Public roads
Public parks
Public utilities
Public transportation
US Postal Service
Border Patrol
DEA
Immigration
US Armed Services

I do not mean just one or a few of these these.  I mean every single one of them.  Either you are an advocate of getting rid of every last thing I listed, and the thousands of other socialist parts of our country I did not list, or you're acknowledging (whether you want to or not) that socialism does indeed have a role to play in our country.

Those things are all socialist and government run.  Yet they do what they were designed to do quite well.  Most people are aware of why these things are necessary and what would happen if any of them either went away or were privatized. 

The rest are the people I was talking about at the beginning of this.  Sadly, those people are not likely to ever get it.  They're more likely to read this, dismiss it, and call me a communist.

They do not make money because they were never intended to.  Certain things are necessary for a country to function.  Some of those things would never make money, which means private industry would never do them.  This is why the government does these things.  This is why some socialism is necessary.

We want/need certain things done that the private sector would never do or would only do for the richest of us.  So we have our government do it for us.

Even those that oppose things I listed, would never directly state it.  Social security has been under attack since it was created, but how many elected officials have publicly voiced a desire to abolish it.  They know it would be political suicide because it's a program that is well known as one that works.

Opponents of socialist programs rarely attack the specific programs they don't like directly.  They attack socialism itself.  It's more vague and saves them from the guaranteed backlash of attacking a specific program.  We should not let them.  When someone attacks socialism, point out socialism they support themselves.  They are attacking socialism because they do not understand it and do not realize that they actually support it.

Yes, socialism has been used as tool by some very bad men to do some very bad things.  But so have guns.  It's not the guns themselves that are bad.  It's how they're used.

As I've described above, we already utilize socialism responsibly.  Guns can be used responsibly without getting rid of them completely.  And so can socialism.

Sex and Violence

The "new" MTV show Skins (yet another US /adaptation/ripoff of a BBC show, but that's another point for another time), has been getting a lot of attention recently, due to a campaign against it by the Parents Television Council.

I think we all know what happened when a similar campaign was launched against Married With Children. So far, Skins seems to be following the same pattern by getting a lot of free publicity because of the controversy.  Time will tell if its ratings follow the pattern, after the show's strong start.  And time will tell how many of those lost sponsors return.

PTC has a Family Guide to Prime Time Television, where most of the shows they rate get their worst rating "Show may include gratuitous sex, explicit dialogue, violent content, or obscene language, and is unsuitable for children."  I can't help but wonder how they'd rate Glenn Beck or his program.

I'm sure most who would ever be reading this are already aware that Glenn Beck's program is losing sponsors like he's allergic to them, but I doubt the general public is as aware of Beck's sponsor losses as they are Skins'.

With good reason, the man behind those sponsor losses, has been wondering about the difference in attention.  Beck is one of the most talked about people in our country, but his tremendous loss of sponsors gets very little of that attention.  Personally, I don't think there's anything special behind the difference.

We're treating the two things like we do most controversies over content.  The controversy over Skins is about sex.  The controversy over Beck is mostly about about (potential) violence.  Traditionally, the way attention has been for these two shows is how it goes for other things.  

The best example I've been able to think of is Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.  This game series is well known for its violence, including killing police.  Each game in the series received mild criticism for its depictions of violence, but never with as much attention as when a controversy erupted over sex.  Google "gta san andreas scandal" and the search finds only stories about the "Hot Coffee" mod that wasn't even a part of the original game and wasn't created by the makers of the game.  But it's what is most remembered and discussed about the game.

How much controversy was generated by the shows 24, Dexter, or The Shield?  All involve a great deal of violence as a regular plot point.  24 & The Shield were wildly popular, and Dexter is still in its successful run and getting very little attention from potentially inspiring real violence.  Each of those shows received mild criticism, just like GTA games did before the Hot Coffee mod scandal.  

But all of it combined doesn't compare to the intense attention received from a one second flash of Janet Jackson's right breast seven years ago today.  That one second changed how the FCC did its job.  It also affected the the lineup for subsequent Super Bowl halftime shows, with this year having the first modern act since the incident.  It did all this even though the number of people seeing it would have been far less without the help of DVR.

There are times when violence will get attention though, but it seems to require real blood being shed.  Not only are we still talking about the recent Tuscon shooting and attempted assassination of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords, but we're still talking about two young men who shot up their Colorado high school 12 years ago.

A much more recent near massacre was reported, but got very little attention after the initial reports.  Does this mean that someone has to actually be killed for the general public to take true notice of the clear problem Glenn Beck's hate speech poses?  I certainly hope not, but if Byron Williams' failed attempt on the Tides Foundation barely got noticed, what will it take?