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Toyota says plans 11-day factory halt in Japan
TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp , the world's biggest automaker, is to halt production at all its Japanese plants for a total of 11 days in February and March...
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Merrill brokerage chief McCann to leave
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bob McCann, head of brokerage at Merrill Lynch & Co, announced his plans to leave the securities firm, just days after its acquisition by Bank of...
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Asia stocks up on hopes of recovery
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Asian stocks edged up for a seventh day on Tuesday, boosted by hopes for a global economic recovery later in 2009, though the rising yen and...
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Oil steady above $48 on MidEast, Russian tensions
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil was steady above $48 on Tuesday after rising 5 percent overnight, as Israel's deepening incursion into Gaza and a spat between Russia and Ukraine over gas...
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Prosecutors seek to jail Madoff
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors asked a judge to jail accused swindler Bernard Madoff on Monday, saying he sent jewelry and other items worth more than $1 million to...
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Car sales plunge heralding bleak 2009
DETROIT (Reuters) - U.S. auto sales plunged by 36 percent in December led by outsized declines at Chrysler LLC, Hyundai Motor and Toyota Motor Corp as the battered industry closed...
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Apple's Jobs reassures investors about his health
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Inc Chief Executive Steve Jobs sought to soothe investor concerns about his health on Monday, saying his weight loss was caused by a hormone imbalance...
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Economists seek solutions, signs of life in housing
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Top economists at the Allied Social Sciences Association's annual meeting have been searching -- in some cases, in vain -- for signs of life in the...
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Cigna to cut 1,100 jobs, citing weak economy
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Health insurer Cigna Corp said on Monday it will cut 1,100 jobs, or about 4 percent of its workforce, and consolidate certain operations as it...
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Fed buys MBS in latest unconventional move
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve on Monday kick-started its latest unconventional program to boost the moribund economy, this time taking aim at the heart of the slumping housing...
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Written by Aaron Graf
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Wednesday, 12 November 2008 17:38 |
I'm Not a Pessimist, I'm a Realist
Whenever I try to discuss the bitter truth of our country's current direction, I always have to hear some squirrel-brained halfwit telling me that I need to look at the bright side of things. "You're one of the glass is half empty kind of guys," they’ll say. Well, since I'm not the bartender but the customer, of course I see the glass as being half empty. They usually follow up with "It's not as bad as you think," or "America's the freest nation in the world." No, Holland is the freest nation in the world: best respect for privacy, better health care, a military budget that actually has limits, and more freedom of the press. "You never see the good in things," they conclude. But that's a completely ludicrous statement. If I didn't see the good in things I wouldn't be able to point out the bad in the first place.
If you think that there's a bright side of the country waging a war on its own Constitution and labeling it the "War on Terror," you're probably a guard at Guantanamo Bay Prison. Unless I am the warden of Guantanamo Bay Prison, I find no bright side to the Patriot Act. There's nothing patriotic about it. If Thomas Jefferson rose from the dead to see this horrible atrocity he'd be railing against King George IV, telling us that if we were wise we'd rebel.
They claim foreigners hate us for our freedoms, but they don't hate us for our freedoms: they hate us for our depleted uranium bullets and clusterbombs. They hate us for overthrowing a democratically-elected government and installing the Shah. They hate us for having bases in Saudi Arabia. They hate us for our undivided support of Israel, a government committing one of the worst acts of apartheid in history against the Palestinian citizens. They hate us for arming and funding Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and the Taliban. They hate us because we had Saddam do our dirty work against the Ayatollah. They hate us because we've been bombing Iraq for nearly twenty years now. Unless I'm an executive at Lockheed Martin, I don't see the bright side here. So I guess what the neoconservatives are trying to tell us is that instead of fixing our foreign policy to stop terrorists we should just strip away our constitutional rights because they "attack us for our freedom." If they hate us for our freedoms and we dismantle them then Osama bin Laden apparently accomplished his mission. We're no longer free!
They tell us we should look at the bright side of the war in Iraq. Unless I'm working as a contractor for Kellogg, Brown, and Root with a salary of over $100,000 and a $60,000 vehicle all paid for by the taxpayers I can't find the bright side to this. Unless I'm a Bechtel executive who is making millions from privatizing the water in Iraq and depriving the people of the most basic necessity of life unless they pay me tribute I don't see a bright side. There is no bright side for the soldiers who have to guard these contractors while they sit on the base doing nothing. There is no bright side to KBR charging our soldiers $100 to do a wash load that still turns out grimy. There is no bright side to their mess halls being open only at certain times making them extremely vulnerable to attack instead of all day. There's no bright side to our soldiers waiting in lines stretching nearly a football food just for an overpriced KBR meal. There is no bright side to the millions of Iraqis dead because of our actions. Unless I'm Osama Bin Laden, who once never had the power to operate in Iraq but now has a swelling of recruits because our army occupies the country, I don't see the bright side.
I don't see the bright side of having an FCC that spends more time fining people for cursing or wardrobe malfunctions than serving their original purpose: to prevent monopolies in the media. When six companies control over ninety percent of all the newspapers, television, and radio stations I don't see how that would allow for freedom of information. Unless I'm Rupert Murdoch pumping out unfounded rhetoric on Fox News, the New York Post, and other media outlets he owns I don't see the bright side. Unless I'm a Clear Channel executive who owns nearly every radio station, I don't see the bright side in such a thing.
Unless I'm Pat Robertson receiving hundreds of millions of dollars a year to go to my mansions I can't find the bright side of Christianity being misused in the same way as Islam has to start a cultural holy war. As someone who has read the 1st Amendment of the Constitution, I don't see the bright side in the creation of the Department of Faith.
I don't see the bright side of waging a drug war to keep drugs out of the hands of kids when it's easier for a kid to buy an 8-ball of crack than a bottle of vodka. I don't see the bright side of crimes relating to drugs skyrocketing since the drug war just to prevent an individual from doing something that, unless he’s driving, will only hurt himself. I don't see the bright side of the DEA getting the right to flagrantly violate state law and throw people with cancer in prison for smoking pot to help with the loss of appetite and nausea from chemotherapy. I don't see the bright side in the DEA sponsoring dictators in Colombia, Peru, and other Southern and Central American countries to tell their people what they should be doing with their own bodies. Unless I'm a cartel leader, I don't see the benefits of giving an entire industry over to criminals when it could create millions of jobs, be regulated, kept out of the hands of children, and taxed to the hilt like alcohol.
I don't see the bright side in 50% of our prison population being nonviolent drug offenders on mandatory minimum sentences while rapists can get out within less than four years and be back on the street to rape and kill again. I don't see the bright side of the DEA murdering a fourteen year old girl because they were looking for her dad, for whom they didn't even have a warrant iin the first place. (To top it all off none of the agents involved were held accountable for their actions). I don't see the bright side in prohibiting farmers from growing hemp, which could not get you high unless the joint was as long as a telephone pole. It's a crop which grows almost anywhere and deposits nitrates into the soil, making it more fertile than before it grew and allowing for easier crop rotation. A crop that could make a better biomass fuel than corn, sugar cane, and fossil fuels put together! A renewable form of fuel, can be used to make paper without chopping down a forest, sails, lotions, construction materials, clothing, rope, food that only soy matches in protein levels The list keeps going on and on.
All I'm doing is stating the facts. I am an optimist in the sense that I feel if I continue to speak the truth and never back down, eventually I might change one person's mind. I am not a pessimist or a negative person. Nor am I an optimist. I am a realist. |
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