Killing of Mailmen

So what I wanted to do is write about sitcoms or the new Shrinebuilder track. But instead I'm going vomit this at you, dear public. I simply can't help it.

Take a look at this video.




Your politics towards health care is not really relevant to me, but what this video shows is that the people who say inspiring words such as: "Abolish all health care" or "expand medicare rather than Obamacare," it makes it difficult for me to take you guys seriously. I wonder, where are you getting all of this? Where in the world is this coming from?

Notice how this name keeps popping up. Glenn Beck.

Okay. You know the guy. Unfortunately if you are a quasi-rational person, you would absolutely know that this guy is a journalist in the same way that I'm a journalist. A guy who reads whatever crazy shit he finds on the internet and present it as fact.

No, he's far worse than your average lazy blogger. He delivers it as more than fact but as warnings. He brings an apocalyptic doom in his rants and demands that people do something about it. He often compares himself as a modern day Howard Beale (our unofficial and *cough* unlicensed mascot here at Lack of Command). He makes this comparison due to his "mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" attitude towards the news Glenn Beck has clearly never seen the whole movie nor clearly has he ever read the full monologue. Beale says things need to change, where as Beck seems to only say things need to stop.

What I don't think he realizes is that a call for things to stop, for some people means a call to go backwards. So he uses the same tactics as McCarthy, getting Czars fired, protests started, and people's fears (whether legitimate or not) to shift to blind anger.

AP posted today that a man in Kentucky was lynched. He was a census worker and according to the report: the word "Fed" was sketched on his body.

So we're back to this are we? I understand the anger, I can even understand the hatred. Lord knows, I called for the head of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. With some degree of seriousness as well. Not in the sense where I really wanted to see them in the gallows, but I definitely wanted justice. Now, just because I felt anger and hatred, I didn't kill the fucking mail man!

A message to Republicans: to whoever wants to be the leading canidate in the 2012 presidential election needs to stand up now and demonize this kind of behavior. Honestly too. But you won't will you? After all, when George Tiller was killed this summer (in CHURCH of all places), what did you do? You all pretty much said: murder is wrong, but there's a special place in hell for him anyway. Or how about Joe Wilson? Shouting at a joint session of Congress at the President and than touting that line as a battle cry. You allowed it.

This is what happens when hatred meets stupid.

What happened? Where are the smart people on the right? The problem is the religious right has taken over. The only problem is we didn't see this coming but we should have. They've bullied and muscled there way on to the school boards, on to the library boards and community chairs. They did it quietly in some places. So they get to advance and give suction to those who were beneath them and agree with them on "moral standpoints." And used a media system and a "scorched earth" political tactic. Filling people with the idea of: it's us or them.

That mentality has carried over into the nut house.

This is may just be an isolated incident. I hope so. But this one incident to me is one too many. I desperately want there to be "have you decency, sir?" within the Republican party to oust these guys away from the megaphone, like in the McCarthy era. Here's the thing, I don't want it to get to that point. I don't want there to be another McCarthy era. Or another blacklist. Nor another Civil War.

Is it racism? Probably. Is it an irrational fear and anger towards the federal government? Probably. Is it people being poor and not having anyone to blame for that fact? Probably.

I don't know how to fix this. I wish I did. I thought that if someone could only show them that they are incorrect in their conclusions but welcome to the process, we would be done with all of this. All I know is that we as a society have to move past this. We have to grow beyond these all too familiar cycles. We have to be able to trust ourselves and each other. After something like this happens, it damages that trust I have for people and almost destroys any sort of hope I have for a better country or a better human race.

Only time time will tell how this will play out but we've seen this happen before. We need to change it before it gets that bad again. The killing of mailmen just because they are mailmen is the type of hatred that lacks all logic.

Anyway. We now return to our regulary scheduled program. Just pay attention. And remember, keeping your moral high ground is the most important when the stupid and the crazy lose theirs.




Command image: Mailman Command