Fearmongers

As part of the fallout and follow-up from South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson's faux pas last evening during President Barack Obama's address to the joint Congress:

Republican Minority Leader John Boehner ... suggested some Americans were terrified by the administration’s health care and budget proposals.

“I believe that people ought to be respectful, that we ought to have civil discourse in America, but don't underestimate the amount of emotion that people are feeling,” the GOP leader told reporters. “Americans are frustrated. They're angry. And most importantly, they're scared to death. They're scared to death that the country that they grew up in is not going to be the country that their kids and grandkids grew up in.”

Seriously, is the American in which we now live the country that our own grandparents inhabited? Would we even want to live in such a place ourselves?

Been reading Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, and I have to say that there's no way this 20-21st century entity has any desire whatsoever to live in the same atmosphere and culture that my forebears endured. Personally, I like indoor plumbing, fast cars, fast food, brain-numbing network television, endless reruns on cable, 24/7 Internet access...

I have no desire to spend the bulk of my time and efforts hunting and harvesting, making and mending. I think the 7/11 concept is brilliant, and I want more immediate gratification, not less. Why on earth would I want to live in the same land that my ancestors inhabited?

More to the point, why would I wish the ills of our present society on the next generation? I grew up with the understanding that my parents worked so frigging hard so that I wouldn't have to do likewise. I studied hard in school so that my life and the lives of any offspring I might produce might have an even richer, more fulfilling range of opportunities from which to carve out their own experiences. So why on earth would a seemingly intelligent adult charged with the fashioning of said future by means of legislation desire to trap the youth who are our future in our past?

Go figure.

Really?!?!?

This morning's casually caught news article suggests that there are those within the U.S. military who consider paying the Taliban protection money to forestall attacks a reasonable investment. Well, there is a history within this country on a civil level of such behavior... Somehow, though, it does not seem possible that such behavior will sit any better with contemporary society than it did with early and mid-twentieth century America when it became widespread knowledge. On the other hand, there are a number of films glorifying violence that suggest that it was not the many but the few, or even just one, who made the difference and ended the practice by taking a stand against acceptance of such practices. Is that what is required even now?

It is difficult to believe that today's members of the military, raised on vigilante films, would blithely turn a blind eye to such malfeasance. Of course, today's volunteers don't necessarily join for patriotic fervor, any more than volunteers of any era have...

Huh.

New Month Old News

Nothing of note comes to mind as I listen to the news: fire, abduction, abuse, war, death... Perhaps I should change the channel, try some different sources for new material. Perhaps I should be content to lose myself in unrelated writings for awhile... except that my muddy mind insists on seeing parallels with the present day, with the world in which I live and move and breathe, with everything I read, watch, hear - most irritating, and not just to those around me, either. Ah well...

Perhaps the changing of the seasons will bring new ideas. Certainly it has brought new experiences to this old house.