On the Contrary

As this year draws to a close and hopefully we are rid of the Bushies and all they stood for (lack of critical thinking), I was cataloging some of the more stupid things we do as a nation and a people that I would like to see end.  So, without further adieu, here they are:

• Our Cuba Policy – For forty years we have had a policy of isolation with Cuba and have pandered to the Cuban community in Florida that has resulted in nothing but failure.  Had we a more open policy to Cuba, Fidel might have been gone years ago.  Worse, remember the Elian Gonzalez fiasco?  That was when the courts ruled that Elian belong with his father (family law trumps international politics) and Janet Reno ordered his return to his father and Cuba.  This wonderful Cuban community voted in total for George Bush in the election of 2000 ensuring Florida’s close vote and enabling the disasters that have been fostered on us since.  So first and foremost quit listening to small thinkers and open up Cuba.
• Drug Wars – This approach to our drug problem has been so counter productive and destructive of human lives that it boggles the mind.  This approach to our drug problem of punishment has failed us miserably.  Our prisons are full of non-violent drug offenders.  Drugs are readily available anywhere you want to look.  If you have teenage kids, they can get you anything you might desire.  Maybe it is time to refocus this whole effort on the demand side instead of on the supply side.  Maybe we ought to spend our precious dollars on prevention and treatment instead of chasing around the bad guys in a game of cops and robbers.  When you read about one of those “great” marijuana seizures, wonder about the waste of resources that went into this and how they might have been more effectively employed.  It has no impact on the availability of weed.  Maybe we ought to learn how to live with it.
• Crime and Punishment – We have, in a similar fashion with the Drug Wars, taken a draconian approach to crime and punishment.  This has manifested itself in mandatory sentencing and three-strikes laws that are not effective as crime preventers and are filling our prisons to overflowing.  Worse, we forgot all about rehabilitation.  We became a nation that believes in Christian redemption but then denies it to our criminal element.  There are so many stories of injustice in prisons, that it is impossible to communicate them here.  We need to imprison the very bad and incorrigible, and rehabilitate the rest.  But we have too many people who still feel rehabilitation is coddling.  It is really working well isn’t it?
• The International Court – What is it about America that does not think they should be subject to international law?  If we ever catch Osama bin Laden which would you rather see him tried in, an international court where the full weight of the international community would judge his actions or an American court where  those who hate us will deny its legitimacy?  We, like everyone else, must live by international law
• Then there are the obvious domestic issues all of which revolve around the Religious Right/Catholic Church/Mormons wanting to enforce their religious beliefs on the rest of us:

1. Recognize gays are equal human beings and quit worrying about who marries whom.  If you don’t believe in gay marriage, don’t marry a gay person
2. We have a perfectly reasonable abortion law that restricts most abortions in the late term.  If you believe abortion is wrong, don’t get one
3. If someone makes an end of life decision, it is for no one else to judge.  Oregon has a perfectly rational approach to these decisions and why do others want to force people to live by their needs and desires?  Once again, make your own decision, but don’t make mine
4. Don’t pass laws or regulations that in effect prevent people from exercising their legal rights to access to abortions, birth control, and the morning after pill.  Bush’s latest regulation allows the Kmart checker the right to refuse to sell you birth control pills.  Who the hell do these people think they are? God? No they are tyrants who have no tolerance for tolerance.

• Finally on the Israeli/Hamas conflict, I am wondering if you finally get it.  Another cease-fire will just put off the inevitable.  It has to be decided and our actions to limit the damage are much like our actions to prevent forest fires.  It just delays what will finally be a monster firestorm.  There is fault on both sides, but the Israelis don’t launch missiles into Gaza to destroy anybody they can kill and they don’t deny the Palestinians right to exist.  And nobody in the Arab world gets upset about Israeli deaths.  Hamas is a radical Muslim group that has been arming themselves with ever more destructive weapons and needs to be destroyed.  Only when this true threat to peace has been removed, can the real grievances of the Palestinians be addressed and resolved.  Sadly had they taken the peaceful route after the Dayton Accords, they would be so much further along the road to a Palestinian State and would have the sympathy and support of the world.  Now they only have the sympathy of the Arab Street.  That would be a bunch of high testosterone men whose only aim is to riot, pillage, and institute a religious dictatorship that by holy decree makes women and the rest of us second class citizens.  They are great bunch.

I know I have said this many times, but doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of stupidity.

Okay, I have been complaining about how the lowest common denominator is driving our train in this country and resisting change.  Since I am forced almost every day to listen to their babble and half baked ideas, I thought turn about is fair play. So here is my babble and half baked  out ideas about turning George Bush’s ship around:

• Outlaw torture even for the CIA.  It is simply not who we are and the ends do not justify the means.
• End rendition, close Guantanamo and live with the consequences that we have tainted the evidence so bad with our treatment that bad people are going to have to be let go.
• End the Patriot Act and restore private citizens right to privacy.
• Undo many of the regulations he has put in place that destroy our environment, health or welfare.
• Etcetra

Etcetera?  Well you get the gist.  That is the easy stuff and obvious stuff.  Here comes the hard stuff and some would say half baked.  But since this world has never tried it my way why not?:

• Join the World Court and get over the idea that we are special.  Whenever I hear objections to being judged by foreigners, I think of moving this nation from a confederation in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.  It is the same thing.
• End the “War on Drugs” and start helping to reduce consumption through education and treatment.  Attacking the supply is a waste of time.  Decriminalize non-violent drug use.  Quit wasting your time chasing marijuana growers.  It just keeps the prices up.
• I like to go to Cuba and lie on the beach so can we stop the criminally insane and counter productive policy we have had with Cuba for the last 50 years.  It’s worked well hasn’t it?
• End the abortion thing once and for all.  Nobody likes them so why don’t we spend half the time trying to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.  Oh no, we would much rather see some truly unfit mother raise some kid to be a truly unfit parent.  On and on….
• Realize that power is limited and military power is an oxymoron.  Sure we can level a nation, but then you have to tame the population and shouldn’t the Russians have taught us a lesson in Afghanistan.  Oh I see, that’s different because we are freedom-loving occupiers instead of commie occupiers.  The end result will be the same.  I think occupier is the operative word here.
• Did you ever ask yourself why we are the only large industrialized nations that does not have high speed rail?  For God’s sake, Mexico has one.  Government has a major role to play in planning our transportation future and it is not in moving around in individual steel boxes.
• Did I mention that the price of gas is way too cheap in this country?  Anything below $4/gallon and we once again fritter away a chance to move away from gas guzzles or encourage alternate energy research.  Slap that old tax on there right now and never again will we ever pay less than $4/gallon for fuel.
• This one is a shocker.  TAXES ARE GOOD if they help pay for our investments in the future.  It is time to pony up.
• On the health care front, give me a break.  Private insurance is the most inefficient way to provide health care.  Any of you geniuses out there ever done a business plan.  Well do one for health care.  Bottom line:  Lots of people paying premiums and no pay outs for sick people.  Having a no-duh moment?  Skim the healthy, deny claims, and screw the poor or sick.  It is what we have today.  Single payer, single payer, single payer.  Or we can just continue our moronic dance trying to fit a round peg in a square hole.
• Why do we pay more than all other nations combined for our military?  Time to rethink how much bang we get for our buck with all those fancy toys when we are fighting Stone Age people in the Middle East.
• Speaking of the Middle East, why do we support any country who denies women’s rights.  Pakistan comes to mind.  Muslims have a lot to answer for here.  Mormons run a close second.  Real change will come when we finally decide to walk our talk.  Respect for other cultures can never be an excuse for enslavement. All value systems are not equal.
• Can we get over the gay thing?  Can we finally stop having a homophobic attack and call it religious righteousness?   I will never lose my interest in women and even when I was two, the choice has always been obvious for me.  What the hell are you people afraid of really?  Real change will happen when nobody cares anymore.  Our children may save us on this one.  They seem to be a lot more secure in their sexuality than us old farts.
• Here is one most of you will disagree with me on:  Just because you serve in the military does not make you a hero, and hero worship of the military just enables them to suck in more kids who pay the ultimate price. Sometimes it is more honorable not to serve.  Honor is being true to your values, not conforming your values to public adulation.  Real change will come when our youth have more than one choice for upward mobility and employment that doesn’t involves killing and maiming.
• Deficit spending is bad when we are making fat white people fatter and richer, and it is good when we are building an infrastructure that helps all of us.  Real change will come when we let go of market place ideas that have failed us miserably
• Conservatives are selfish self-centered people who have used their marketplace religion to justify screwing the rest of us.  Behind every high sounding value of self-restraint and discipline hides one more justification why they should get your piece of the pie too.  The real reason they hate taxes is because they got theirs and they feel no empathy to help their fellow man and they justify that by saying everyone else is just lazy.  Real change will come when we throw their whole ideology into the trash heap.

But if you really want to know what I think would make the biggest change in our world think about this:  There are some truly sorry ass people in this world.  But once they were just little kids, but they had sorry ass parents.  If I have learned anything in this life of mine, it is parents who hold the key to their children’s future.  And so many of them should never have been allowed to procreate.  The next time you see some human being performing some despicable act, think about who they were at two and wonder what happened.    Parenting is the most important thing we do in life and we rarely hold parents accountable.  We love to blame teachers, but we never hold parents accountable.  Where the rubber meets the road….

Just some random babbling before I go back to trying to be rational.