And if you don't forward this to 10 people you don't love Jesus and you'll get head lice.
I rarely talk politics.
There are plenty reasons why. For instance, when I want to go around in circles spouting the latest catch phrases from the left or right, I simply play with my children. Their conversation is usually more intellectually stimulating anyway.
I have about as much faith in the current two-party, line-up-across-from-each-other-and-fire-regardless-of-what-we’re-talking-about system as I do in my current business plan of winning the lottery.
Also, what is there to talk about? We have 24 hour news stations covering both Republican and Democratic propaganda - what good will it do for me to weigh in?
And, to be honest, I think that political discourse is nice, but I’m busy with my (not-so) subtle ploys to subvert the empire in other ways.
I don’t trust either of our major political parties. I think both have their own interests at heart and typically those interests only line up with the common good when the common good happens to benefit the party’s interest.
I don’t trust what politicians say and I trust political talk show/talk radio personalities even less. Unfortunately, I seem to be in the minority...at least among people who have my email address.
And I am unbelievably tired of deleting forwards. I’ve never liked them and to be honest I rarely read them. I find fishermen’s tales to be more factually accurate than the majority of “true stories heard on the news” which are constantly rotting in my inbox.
I do, however, love Snopes.com - I wish more people who enjoy sending ridiculous fear-mongering email forwards would learn to love Snopes.com as well. If you feel strongly enough about an issue to send to it to 100 people in your distribution list...please feel strongly enough to find out if its true. Just because the email begins with, "this was on the news" doesn't mean it was on the news.
If you don’t have time to check the facts, don’t feel too bad, apparently the news media doesn’t either. But, since they’re already (not) doing the work for you, why bother?
Lately I’ve been bombarded by the most horrendous “facts” about the healthcare reform bill. First of all THERE ISN’T A HEALTHCARE REFORM BILL YET!!! There are still 4 or 5 proposals floating around - and to my knowledge none of them mention the President killing your grandmother. However, we’ve all been asked to ponder what’s gonna happen when he answers the phone at 3am...maybe he’ll get cranky and take out his frustrations on an elderly woman who makes good cookies, I don’t know.
This may be a bit harsh - in retrospect I probably should have vented this frustration slowly over the past 30 years. To be honest, I don’t necessarily care whether you’re a Democrat or Republican (unless you assume that everyone who aligns differently than you should leave America), I don’t care whether you support universal healthcare plans or not - though I hope you do care that the system is broken and something needs to change.
And I care whether or not we’re mindlessly spreading hysteria because Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity (or if you don’t live in Texas, Keith Olbermann) have given us their word that its true.
There are a lot of serious things that need to be decided regarding healthcare and the economy and any number of other things. And we have got to be able to talk about it like big boys and girls. A friend of mine posted a link to this article, which is at least an attempt to wade through some of the fear tactics that have people so worked up these days.
You may still oppose the health care reform options being discussed. That’s fine - I’m still trying to sort through the details myself. But please disagree because you think it won’t work - not because the President and a band of zombies are going to eat grandma's brains while burning churches and confiscating our guns.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled brainwashing.
