Bully Saints and Ugly Anti-Americans

Posted on May 1, 2004 in Rage & Annoyance

There’s nothing like showing a little independence of thought to bring down the wrath of those lockstepped into ideology, partisanship, and nationalism. On this one evening, in comments here and elsewhere, I have caught it from both the Left and the Right. I have concluded these things:

• That Clint Eastwood is the patron saint of bullies.
  
• That in these dark days of the Bush Administration, one thing that cannot be blamed on Bush is the canning of people such as myself as “Ugly Americans” in his mold by self-righteous foreign observers lucky enough to have the means to live outside of this madhouse that is my country who do nothing to help our struggles to give those who are not part of the madness the freedom to breathe. I won’t be fooled, but George Bush thanks you because there are others who will be, who will laugh at us and call us fools for trusting in the friendship of anyone who is not an American.
  
• That angels are destroyed by innuendo and ridicule, but never by cynicism.

We’re whirling into a gyre worse than South Africa under apartheid yet some people think that every last one of us have no clue what is going on? We see family businesses closing down thanks to Walmart. We see the homeless eating out of dumpsters. We see the guns being hoarded by the Right. We read the comments calling for our death in the popular media. The time may be coming when an idiot acts on those advices and I am conscious of the fact that I might be one of those lined up against the wall. I’d rather die there than as a mocking expatriate in a neo-European suburbia. I see our politics and our values burning across the borders. If you piss on the People — and I am of the People –, you won’t put out the fire.

Time in the fire, I think, may be the only way we Americans learn compassion. Unfortunately, I do not think that disease is communicable to our foreign “friends” when they are committed to stereotyping.

No names mentioned here. This time. I say this for the sake of venting and venting alone. There’s a faint hope that certain people will get a clue, too.