Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Checking In (Before Checking Out)

Now that the debt ceiling mess is out of the way, we can address the issue of... Well, let's see, football season is under way... You know, I can't think of a thing. For good or otherwise, I have seriously lost my passion for the political fights anymore.

Maybe it's because I'm back in the Big Mitten, Michigan. I feel safer here. It's a blue state, a union state, a place that has water you can drink and air you can breathe. Very different.

It's also a socially progressive state, despite the presence of a Republican governor and a legislature dominated by some of the smaller fish to be found in the GOP's hatchery ponds. I don't feel the need to respond so much as I used to when I lived in a Red state - Arizona, where Democratic congresswomen are shot through the head every once in a great while; thank God and everyone else, Gabrielle Giffords cast her vote as the debt ceiling bill passed in the House. Amazing.

Up here, things are a little different. Medical marijuana, for all the public spasms of certain public officials, is a fact of life now. Care providers are growing some glossy magazine cover material, and patients with medical cards are smoking marijuana, legally, in their homes. See? Progress. Takes a long time, but there it is.

It's not just a Michigan thing. Voters in Arizona, too, passed a medical marijuana law. That state, however, is doing everything it can to not implement the law's provisions, or to do so as inefficiently as possible (everybody's got to have goals, I guess). Then there's the issue of gay marriage. They're doing it in New York now; it's not just a Massachusetts thing.

All across the land, "liberalism" is continuing its inexorable march, as it has since the Dark Ages, through the Enlightenment, and the Renaissance, and the Victorian era. The natural desire for the expansion of human rights, the push for an end to exclusion, has seen civilization evolve through lethal, oppressive historical warts such as imperialism, fascism, communism... Mmmm.

Conservatism?

Regardless of whether or not such Beck-esque comparisons are accurate, or even necessary, social conservatives continue to do nothing but hold back our society (it is, after all, the dictionary definition of their movement). The next battle they win in the hearts and minds of the majority of the American public will comprise their first one, because they've basically been wrong about everything, and clearly aren't looking to make any dramatic course corrections anytime soon.

In the process of being obtuse and obstinate, they've aligned themselves with the Top One Percent that has been hoarding the fat of the economy for over 30 years now when it comes to profits, CEO-to-employee pay ratios and, let's face it, wages against inflation. All while essential human needs like housing, health care, food and energy have become the playthings of billionaires. Declaring oneself a conservative these days is nothing about which any sane person can take any measure of pride.

They just proved that when they put a gun to the head of the world economy in the name of "princibbles" that have been whipped up by wealthy profiteers and the smear-merchants who work for them, punching the daily time clock, settling their rich, fat arses into comfortable chairs, perching like the parrots that they are in front of their cameras and microphones.

Really, though, it's not my problem. Or at least it doesn't feel that way anymore. I'm out. It's summertime, as they say, and the living's easy.

pH 8.o3.11