Dear Dad

My Dad’s opinions about current politics bother me. Some of it is because his opinions are different than mine, but also because they seem to lack any analysis of the current political trends. My Dad doesn’t criticize the current administration as he did the last one. He couldn’t stop admonishing Clinton for lying, but he’s mute on Bush’s many lies or Rumsfeld’s duplicity. Assgrafts, assaults on the constitution, Halliburton, Enron, Bechtel, amicus briefs filed by Bush against the expansion of the American’s with Disabilities Act (ADA).

SUVs are the bane of our existence. They create an imbalance between the have and have nots. They are the clearest demonstration of America’s financial and environmental irresponsibility.

We cling to California despite the fires, mudslides, earthquakes, and politics for the weather, the stars, and the industry and because whence we’ve come offer so little in comparison.

All of these things are swept under the rug of fear.

My Dad also studies and references the civil war constantly, but can’t see how were’ sewing the seeds for one right now. Can he really be happy giving $90K tax breaks to the rich?

I grew up seeking my Dad's advice and thoughts on all matters. Even when I disagreed, I always respected his opinion. When people complained that people who voted for Nadar cost Gore the election, he said that those people had a right to vote for whomever they wanted. It angered me. He was right.

However, over the last couple of years, his views have become increasingly right-wing and by extension so have my Mom's. While arguing about the Iraq war last Christmas, he blurted out, "I'm sorry that you don't have any use for this country" and walked off to bed.

I try to prod gently, but he categorically cannot comprehend what he sees because what he hears is blinding him.

Observations

Will the world ever become so wretched that a pretty woman would starve? It doesn't appear so living in the United States.

"There is and never has been a shortage of wingnuts, never a shortage of shills for the rich and powerful, never a shortage of grasping, lying, power-mad psychopaths at the top."

A sure sign of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting to get a different result like going to war or driving cars around ovals.

NASCAR is a joke. The president says we should cut our foreign dependence on oil, yet NASCAR celebrates burning through fuels as if they are heros. They're death shills.

The Irony of Tragedy and Story Telling

Good stories are born of horrible experiences. Murder, war, adultery, disease are the prime ingredients for these stories. On the surface, we claim to despise them. However, all our hero stories celebrate these themes.

After the murder, we follow the detectives. But would we follow a bunch of otherwise average, cantankerous middle-age men around if they weren't trying to solve a murder?

The "glory" of war is like the early morning dew that glistens and shines. But when that same dew becomes slick young men discover that the dew is the warning light reflecting from the cold hard pavement.

"The first casualty of war is the truth." How many times has that been written? How many times have history lessons been forgotten or re-written? Is it impossible to remove these barriers to progress no matter how painfully slow? Some could certainly point out that without wars we wouldn't have some of our advancements. But does that justify killing another human being in the first instant?

How did I get to this line of thinking? I've been watching crime dramas like "Cold Case Files" lately. I love them. But the more I watch them, the more I'm sickened by own fascination at others' suffering and death after the fact. Is compassion only a convenient emotion while the ambulance rushes another victim to the hospital? Where is that same compassion ahead of time?

Why is it that when we tell these murder stories much of the focus is on the murderer? If it's so sinful to murder, then why do we elevate murderers' status by making them antagonists in some many of these shows? What about the victim?

Are the stories tellers (networks and producers) so blind that they can't see how they elevate violence to an elegant pedestal while simply daily acts of survival or god-forbid -- sex -- are disgraced as lesser human events?

I do have the choice to change the channel. I can watch the latest propaganda from Fox, CNN, or NBC. I can watch possibly rigged-sports. I can watch an obnoxious shopping channel, banal Spanish-language programming, materialistic Asian, serene and stiff Deutsche Welle, obsessive Latin American soccer, or another stupid sitcom starring the young and restless of West Los Angeles. And everyone knows how reflective people from West Los Angeles are of the rest of the world.

Tsunami's a drink. Hurricane's is a football team. Human rights are boring.

Where are the stories that make a difference? GOP. Go away. You've raped and pillaged enough. Go tell your story. Give me 30 years off until you start your next war and tell old lies dressed in pretty clothing ("Pretty Hate Machine.")

By that time, maybe the world wise protests will stop you before you kill more innocents in the name of greed, greed, greed.