Thank god for the budget settlement, because nothing's as American as shooting Americans
Oh, good news, everybody: thanks to the budget deal, South Carolinia will still get to commemorate the 150th anniversary of their treasonous assault on American soldiers tomorrow. Well. Glad that gets to go off without a hitch, then.
I might be less annoyed over the whole business if I really thought the business was going to be restricted to historical reenactment and/or a remembrance of the tragedy that was unleashed when certain Southerners decided they'd rather own human beings as chattel than participate in an evolving experiment in republic democracy. But I think it's pretty likely that a big part of this will be certain idiots waving their traitors' flags and thinking about how differently things should have turned out.
And I might be less annoyed if South Carolina wasn't a state whose elected representatives like to turn up their noses at Federal expenditures. I mean, I can't imagine this shindig is going to cost all that much, probably the equivalent of a spit-drop in a hurricane of phlegm, but all the same, could we maybe have some intellectual or ideological consistency? Especially in the context of celebrating an act of insurrection against a duly constituted representative government (elections aren't illegitimate just because your side lost, y'know).
Basically, as best I can tell, South Carolina has no interest in paying taxes for roads or schools nor accepting Federal money for the same, but it seems they're happy to accept those taxpayer funds for the purpose of pretending to shoot American soldiers serving their nation. And this makes them, per the logic of a certain segment of our society, patriots, because the Federal government has no business educating future participants in democracy, nor any interest in the practical aspects of literal, actual interstate commerce (i.e. the transportation of goods between and across states by way of an interstate highway system), but there's evidently some sort of Federal interest in memorializing the time a bunch of people tried to destroy the United States Of America and took up arms against it.
I can't help feeling that while I love historical reenactments and find them educational and sometimes thrilling, there's a ghoulish element to this one I find unpalatable. If one proposed a reenactment of Pearl Harbor or 9/11, I imagine a lot of people would find it in poor taste and if spectators showed up to wave Japanese flags or to shout "Death to the Great Satan!" or whatever, I'd imagine there would be a pretty severe ass-kicking handed out to someone. At the very least, one can imagine congressperson after congressperson taking the floor to deplore this tasteless recreation of a day that should live in infamy and how should Joe and Jane Public be required to pay for anti-American insults?
I'm not being fair, am I? Our congresspersons would absolutely be up in Washington lamenting tomorrow's events if they weren't so busy protecting America by defunding NPR and Planned Parenthood. There's only so much time in the day, and NPR's consistent contempt for the nation that tolerates it, expressed in the form of news programs that attempt to be reasonably objective and factually accurate, is a far greater threat to the solidarity and unity of this nation than honest, down-to-earth patriotism expressed in the form of pretending to blow up government property. And anyway, the patriots will only be firing blanks because real cannonballs might hit a tourist.
Sigh.
Do you ever feel like everything would make more sense if you were an alien observer who'd recently landed here and so didn't actually understand anything? "These earth-creatures are incomprehensible, Sam," you could say to someone presumably named Sam. "I have no hope of understanding any of their strange behaviors or the noises they make, but it's alright, I go back to Plaaxu on Thursday, thank Yxxarian." And you'd twiddle your tentacles and pine for the rational and sensible febrile Flaxonians gimbling in the wan ochre moonlight and gas-green fires of Lake Zzzlplx during the holiday season of Two-Thirds Wogglesday, you know, really banal and clichéd stuff like that, but soothing in its simple orderliness, especially after trying to figure out Americans.
I might be less annoyed over the whole business if I really thought the business was going to be restricted to historical reenactment and/or a remembrance of the tragedy that was unleashed when certain Southerners decided they'd rather own human beings as chattel than participate in an evolving experiment in republic democracy. But I think it's pretty likely that a big part of this will be certain idiots waving their traitors' flags and thinking about how differently things should have turned out.
And I might be less annoyed if South Carolina wasn't a state whose elected representatives like to turn up their noses at Federal expenditures. I mean, I can't imagine this shindig is going to cost all that much, probably the equivalent of a spit-drop in a hurricane of phlegm, but all the same, could we maybe have some intellectual or ideological consistency? Especially in the context of celebrating an act of insurrection against a duly constituted representative government (elections aren't illegitimate just because your side lost, y'know).
Basically, as best I can tell, South Carolina has no interest in paying taxes for roads or schools nor accepting Federal money for the same, but it seems they're happy to accept those taxpayer funds for the purpose of pretending to shoot American soldiers serving their nation. And this makes them, per the logic of a certain segment of our society, patriots, because the Federal government has no business educating future participants in democracy, nor any interest in the practical aspects of literal, actual interstate commerce (i.e. the transportation of goods between and across states by way of an interstate highway system), but there's evidently some sort of Federal interest in memorializing the time a bunch of people tried to destroy the United States Of America and took up arms against it.
I can't help feeling that while I love historical reenactments and find them educational and sometimes thrilling, there's a ghoulish element to this one I find unpalatable. If one proposed a reenactment of Pearl Harbor or 9/11, I imagine a lot of people would find it in poor taste and if spectators showed up to wave Japanese flags or to shout "Death to the Great Satan!" or whatever, I'd imagine there would be a pretty severe ass-kicking handed out to someone. At the very least, one can imagine congressperson after congressperson taking the floor to deplore this tasteless recreation of a day that should live in infamy and how should Joe and Jane Public be required to pay for anti-American insults?
I'm not being fair, am I? Our congresspersons would absolutely be up in Washington lamenting tomorrow's events if they weren't so busy protecting America by defunding NPR and Planned Parenthood. There's only so much time in the day, and NPR's consistent contempt for the nation that tolerates it, expressed in the form of news programs that attempt to be reasonably objective and factually accurate, is a far greater threat to the solidarity and unity of this nation than honest, down-to-earth patriotism expressed in the form of pretending to blow up government property. And anyway, the patriots will only be firing blanks because real cannonballs might hit a tourist.
Sigh.
Do you ever feel like everything would make more sense if you were an alien observer who'd recently landed here and so didn't actually understand anything? "These earth-creatures are incomprehensible, Sam," you could say to someone presumably named Sam. "I have no hope of understanding any of their strange behaviors or the noises they make, but it's alright, I go back to Plaaxu on Thursday, thank Yxxarian." And you'd twiddle your tentacles and pine for the rational and sensible febrile Flaxonians gimbling in the wan ochre moonlight and gas-green fires of Lake Zzzlplx during the holiday season of Two-Thirds Wogglesday, you know, really banal and clichéd stuff like that, but soothing in its simple orderliness, especially after trying to figure out Americans.
Comments
http://tinyurl.com/47w38yt
Really? Quite sure what's going on in South Carolina AND in Nevada are the best use of taxpayer money ;)