Where do I even begin?

“So many people forget that the first country the Nazis invaded was their own.” – Abraham Erskine (Captain America: The First Avenger)

 

There are times as of late that I just want to get the fuck out of here. Leave the Unhinged States of America permanently, and it’s not over the great things. It’s over the things I think about as a father.

 

I worry almost constantly about the dumbing down of our country. Teaching religion – specifically Christianity – as if it were fact instead of gospel. I worry about the fact that about 50% of you just read that sentence and don’t know what the difference between fact and gospel is. I worry about denying the obvious to the point that we don’t talk about it or teach it any more – which is just plain dangerous. It puts us behind the rest of the civilized world, where they learn about these things.

 

I worry about my children because neither of them are what you would call mainstream. My wife and I aren’t mainstream either, but we’ve survived long enough to know who to deal with and move on when we deal with people who can’t handle our “otherness”. My children haven’t had that time to gain the experience necessary and there are people all over the place out there who aren’t interested in giving them the time because every last thing in our lives is scrutinized at such an intensity and so constantly that there simply isn’t a moment to breathe.

 

I worry that one or both of my children are going to wind up in prison, because that’s what we do these days. It’s a money making industry and that’s just so very very very wrong. The idea that someone makes a mistake or loses their temper for just a moment becomes a money-making opportunity for some rich bastard just makes me queasy.

 

I worry that either of my children could be badly hurt or killed because police have a tendency to stop and talk to people outside the mainstream. The odds are in their favor because they’re white and I’ll take that advantage, but it doesn’t guarantee anything.

 

I worry that so many people don’t realize just how much they “innocently” flirt with racism and sexism when they in fact do real harm. If you’d asked anyone in the south what the cause of the civil war was when I was a kid they’d say “Slavery”. Today they say “States Rights”. We’re intentionally making ourselves stupider and there’s a price to be paid for this.

 

I worry that the political establishment of this nation is so disconnected from real life that one of the richest assholes in the country is being seen as a man of the people, when it should be obvious that he is nothing of the kind.

 

I worry that we are scapegoating Latinos while conveniently forgetting the fact that THEY WERE HERE FIRST.

 

I worry that news reporting has nothing to do with news anymore. I worry that it has more to do with being first than being right. I worry that it has more to do with the opinions of the money behind the news than the coverage of it.

 

I worry that there are far too many people who feel persecuted because their right to persecute others is being further and further marginalized.

 

I worry that the effort to re-write our country’s history is so pervasive that most people don’t even realize that it is happening.

 

I worry that as an adult I have had a tougher time making friends with people because while my standards haven’t changed the people around me have.

 

I worry that facebook has sucked a lot of the creative spark out of me. I worry that the whole idea that everyone has to be connected to everyone else 24 hours a day 7 days a week has sucked the creative spark out of the rest of us too.

 

I worry that rent in San Francisco has increased 900% since I moved here, and half of that in the last 5 years. That’s not a typo by the way. Nine Hundred Percent.

 

I’m worried that there is a concerted effort to disenfranchise the very people who could fix everything.

 

I worry that privacy is a thing of the past at a moment when we need it more than ever. At a moment when we deserve it more than ever.

 

I worry that the policital right wing of our country, a group of people that I have friends in, has gone so far off the rails in terms of rational thought that there will be no reconciliation with them and as it has for the past 6 years, make actual governing impossible.

 

I worry that our infrastructure is about to suffer a catastrophic collapse. I worry that our rush to riches has destroyed our ability to plan.

 

I worry that the Republican Party of now wouldn’t recognize the greatest Republican of the 20^th Century, General Dwight Eisenhower, as anything other than a radical leftist.

 

I worry that Detroit and New Orleans, once great cities, will never be again.

 

I worry that the best news program on air, even with both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert off the air at the moment, is a comedy show on a pay network hosted by a man born in England.

 

I worry that on an international stage we’re just seen as a bully instead of as a leader.

 

I worry that so many children are trying to sit at the grown-ups table because the grown-ups have abdicated and are out getting drunk and congratulating themselves on how good they are.

 

I worry that people aren’t interested in any of this.

 

I am worried more than anything else about the fact that it seems that far too many people live in their own version of reality that suits their own world-view as opposed to the actual facts. We used to refer to that as insanity, and it is becoming mainstream.

 

The generation following mine is in pretty good shape, taken on an individual basis. The same can be said of mine I think. I have real hope based upon conversations with them that things will one day turn around again. But I’ve had that hope before and while I’m an optimist and even a romantic I am weary of how many times I’ve been wrong. Individuals for the most part are decent folk. Groups of people tend to be horrifying and that’s true of any generation.

 

I worry that we aren’t teaching anything about the fall of the Roman Empire – because we seem to be repeating it – and I’d rather not be here when it actually starts getting bad.

 

And I worry that my youngest child is looking at colleges in Europe only because it sounds better than here.

 

So I’m wondering if it might just be time to pack up and go. “I’m too old to be governed by dumb people” – Charlie Skinner (The Newsroom)

 

Cheap shots (sake, please):

 

If you don’t think this is child abuse then you need your fucking head examined.

 

It’s not just that this picture makes me think of the screens from 1984, it’s that the secondary headline on the page is “The most powerful woman on the Internet”.

 

Award-winning cartoonist Ted Rall has been fighting a one-man war against the Los Angeles Times. He’s not winning, but he should be.

 

Uptown Girls.

 

What does it take to get this woman fired?

 

10 years. Some perspective on that.

 

Dumb and Dumberer.

 

Ook ook motherfucker.

 

It’s the END of the rant that is the most important part, not the rant itself. I wanted to embed this one but embedding has been disabled at HBO’s request.

Ahem. Zen.