Talk About Childish…
January 5th, 2005
I’m all for our rights as Americans to be able to express our feelings about our elected officials. I understand some people are still bitter that Bush won again, and I’m not too happy with it either. But you know what? There are better ways than this middle school approach to protesting. The fine fellows at turnyourbackonbush.org have come up with a brilliant plan:
Basically, as Bush drives thru Washington D.C. towards his Inauguration, “thousands” (read: dozens) of people will “at a given signal” (which i’m sure is some sort of secret hand signal - I can’t wait to see what it is!) will all…. turn their backs on the president. Yep. They’re going to really lay it on the line, and turn around when he drives by.
Seriously, this country doesn’t have enough normal people in it anymore. Either you’re a gun toting, bible beating, terror-infatuated redneck Bush lover, or a left wing, reality distorting, protest-till you drop, hippie that can’t accept defeat no matter how many times it happens in a row. Rather than EITHER side working on fixing our nation’s problems, we just spend time taking cheap shots at each other, and complaining about the current administration’s shortcomings.
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January 6th, 2005 at 10:39 am
Extremeists suck. I think I hate Michael Moore just as much as I hate Bush. You have the left wing and the right wing, but who’s in the fucking main hall? One of these third parties needs to wrest some power away from the two big guys so we can have some equality. Maybe we need to bring back the No-Nothings or the Bull Moose Party. Hell, the Whigs and the Torries would be better than the donkey and the elephant.
January 6th, 2005 at 11:47 am
VIVA BIC 2008!!!
January 6th, 2005 at 4:14 pm
Maybe it’s just me but didn’t the Whig party evolve into the republicans?
January 6th, 2005 at 6:11 pm
Neither party will allow smaller groups to take any of their power away - hell, the democrats are having a hard enough time staying afloat right now. As much as I dislike most democrats, balance is always a good thing.
You’d also think cooler heads would previal in times like this. I wonder if all of the protesters know that they’re in essense alienating themselves from most of the country (and in turn, making their party look like a bunch of whiners)? I’m sure they don’t care too much about what the rest of the country thinks of them, but it is important to accept defeat, learn from your mistakes, and come back stronger than ever in ‘08.
It’s funny to me that, as evil, stupid, and downright worthless the Democrats painted GWB, he still won by a healthy margin. And then they have the stones to claim voter fraud.
January 7th, 2005 at 4:52 am
I just wish people wouldn’t get so riled up about the personality and image of Bush (with a capital B). He’s in office for another four years. Last I checked, that’s not the end of the world as we know it. Life might change a wee bit, and new events will occur, but it’s not exactly like the rise of Hitler or Napoleon. The people we hear from (ranging from the media to guys selling t-shirts) all want us to believe that Bush’s re-election is either the greatest thing since sliced bread or the death of the US. Neither is probably true and so I for one, would much prefer it if everyone screaming about something would talk about issues instead of just saying “Turn your back on Bush” or “He’s a moral man” (which I hear a lot from the right winged media). The trouble is that since Bush is a politician, we can’t trust anything that he says about how he’ll handle a particular issue. So instead of just not caring, everyone seems to latch on to Bush as a person. Some think he’s fantastic, others think he’s the devil. Personally, I seem to care only what he’s going to do on various issues important to me. I mean, I cringe whenever he makes a speech because I’m afraid he’s going to invent some new words, but I really only think of Bush as a “set of decisions that will occur in the next four years”.
As far as images of bush (with a little b), feel free to get as riled up as you like. However, keep details and opinions regarding this type of bush to yourself.
January 11th, 2005 at 12:01 pm
Ah, the triumphant return of Cory. How are things going on your side of the galaxy?
January 11th, 2005 at 5:54 pm
It’s miserable up here; there is snow everywhere. I don’t understand it. Haha. When I got out of work on Friday night, the wind was blowing 40 mph, snow was falling in sheets, and I couldn’t see the lanes on the highway, or really where the highway went either. It was nuts. When I got home, I had to honestly drive like 20 mph to wedge myself into a parking spot (which is basically like burrowing my car in the snow).
Other than the snow and the bitter cold, I’m hanging in there. I moved over to Spokane, WA about 3 months ago. I live in the downtown area in a renovated historic building that is over 100 year old. It’s a very cool apartment, albeit somewhat small. Spokane (population 500,000 I think) is pretty cool too. There are shopping malls, movie theaters, and a slew of bars just a few blocks up the street. Right now, I work as a cook at Applebee’s, which has turned out to be a really fun job. The latest plan, which is just the newest in a basket of latest plans, is to join the Peace Corps and go overseas for a few years as a math teacher. But we’ll see how this thing plays out; I’m about halfway through a pretty demanding application process.
I still read wtmcgee and fruitypants every so often, I just haven’t made any comments in a while. Daniel, I’ve even been keeping track of your school projects. Please send some of your beautiful weather up here and I’ll send you a FedEx package full of snow.
January 12th, 2005 at 7:52 pm
Good to hear you’re dealing with the shitty weather as well as someone can. I don’t understand how people can live even farther north than that in places like Canada and such …. I just couldn’t subject myself to that shit. Then again, I’m sure everyone says that same about life-long Floridians with their hurricanes, and Californians with their mudslides, earthquakes etc. I’m a warm weather creature, so I can imagine your pain up there. I actually think Seattle is an amazing city, but even it’s too damn cold to live in during the winter, so there’s no way I’d ever end up there.
When do you plan on giving the Peace Corps thing a go?
I know it’s a long shot, but if you ever wanna come enjoy the weather down here, you know you got a place to stay.
January 12th, 2005 at 9:47 pm
I have thought the same thing about people living in this area, namely: Why the hell would anyone endure this year after year? My conclusion so far is just that people don’t give it an incredible amount of thought. I think when you are around Northerners, there is sort of an attempt to see who can endure the misery with the best poker face. But I don’t really care whether or not people think I’m a man because I can endure the cold. I notice that when I threaten to move south again after this year, almost everyone seems to be with me. But there are other concerns of course; family, jobs, familiarity, etc.
Right now, I’m tentatively slated to leave the country this coming June. The last part of the application involves a physical, bloodwork, and dental x-rays, which I am working on getting right now. After that, they have to make a final decision about accepting me to a particular foreign country. I should know a specific date of departure sometime in March or April. I voluntarily chose french-speaking West Africa as my preferred geographic area, so if I go, I’ll basically be living on the equator (I hear it’s nice there!). But as I said, we’ll have to see how it goes. Africa is not a highly chosen area for Peace Corps applicants, although it is where they do the bulk of their work, so I think an offer will be extended as soon as I get the rest of this paperwork done.
I appreciate the offer on the visit to Florida. I’d go down there, except that it’s like 3000 miles away. Haha. The other problem is that I don’t really have the opportunity right now to take off work for long. If I do head down that way, I’ll make sure to plan a visit to Orlando.
January 14th, 2005 at 1:15 pm
and so, what are the futures good decisions the government will take for the wor.. your country ?
people are very polarized because even a foreigner can see the very polarized actions of the past four year “bush administration”. It’s very similar to Reagan years. the same kind of “feelings” (of course it’s not exactly the same présidents, actions, decisions, needs and all stuff).
and there are of course the patriot act, the iraq war, the crisis with nato and uno, the refusal of kyoto treaty . it’s very easy to find why to be annoyed by the last four years
and there are the “huge” deficit, and still bad social care system, problem in middle -east , recurrent disagreement with Europa community
well, for good reasons or totally stupid reasons maybe, it’s easy to be angry and very supportive or totally against.
I understand people (the so-called liberals or left-wing ? ) who are despaired by Bush reelection and want to show it, maybe to annoy or wake up others citizens , because there were also very enthusiast “right-wing” (conservatives? ) with very striking comment of the world or distrust of different believing (”you are with us or _against_ us” , not really sensible.. )
for a foreigner , if we just watch tv and read _some_ newspaper , the current USA seems to be divided in Two Factions.
and of course, with simple schema… :
mostly :
- North moderate tolerant New york and states on the coast open to the world and knowledge
again
- the middle and south states christians intolerant closed mind waiting war against Europa or middle-east…
interesting no ? ok maybe not. ^^;
January 14th, 2005 at 4:06 pm
Not to say you are entirely wrong about the US, but your description is a rather simplistic one. People in the US are polarized, yes, but I don’t know if we are more polarized than at any other time. During the last four years, we’ve also had a few reality checks that gave us a chance to reaffirm our similarities as well as our differences (the WTC catastrophe was one such reality check).
I think you best described the original issue (the “Turn your back on Bush” t-shirts) when you said, “I understand people … who are despaired by the Bush reelection and want to show it, maybe to annoy or wake up other citizens…” It is this attempt to “annoy or wake up” that I just regard as childish. I find it equally childish regardless of whether it is coming from the right or the left of the political spectrum. By annoying other people, I don’t know what sort of positive result is hoped for. By hoping to “wake up” other citizens, one must think that it is not feasible for a reasonable person to disagree with one’s own views (ie if you think someone needs waking, you must believe that there is one “correct” view that they are not seeing). I don’t wish to say that people who are anti-Bush are inherently wrong, I just think this example of it is childish and unproductive.
As far as some of the issues you mentioned, I think many US citizens have very mixed opinions on those issues. For example, I feel like the Patriot Act is probably going to do more harm than good, I think the difficulty of rebuilding Iraq was greatly underestimated though I think that in some way conflict between the US and Iraq was inevitable at some point, I am wary of letting the UN or NATO make many decisions for the US, and I think the rejection of the Kyoto Protocol was a good idea for the US (and I think that Bush’s suggestion to make pollution dependent on GDP was a reasonable one that the world seemed to reject). I think the deficit is not good, but I also think that one of the long term remedies for it is a reduction of social care rather than an increase of it.
I also think there is a lot of room for agreement and compromise on all of these issues. What we need though, is not people with anti-Bush t-shirts, but rather real discussion and information about the issues being commonplace among Americans. For example, I am willing to bet that fewer than 1 out of 100 American’s know why the Kyoto Protocol was rejected by the US and what the US offered up as a compromise to the issue. However, I bet that 99 out of 100 American’s have some “opinion” about the rightness or wrongness of the Kyoto Protocol, even if they don’t know what it actually is.