Frivolous Lawmaking
In yesterday’s post, I listed just a few of the things that are going terribly wrong in our country. Today, I’m thinking about how our lawmakers are dealing with these large and pressing problems. Here’s a sampling of what our public servants have been up to lately:
- Holding a three day debate on a doomed constitutional ammendment to ban gay marriage.
- Blowing a lot of hot air about those dangerous Mexican immigrants, and arguing about how to stop them.
- Holding a vote on another doomed constitutional ammendment – this one to ban flag burning. (Note: three other countries have or had flag burning bans: China, Iran, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein)
These are all red herrings.
Rather than taking responsiblility for their disastrous failures and criminal behavior here and abroad, our elected officials are trying to distract us.
With elections looming in November and a growing public outrage over the war and numerous corruption scandals, they’re trying to create some outrage about issues they can control.
Let’s go down to New Orleans and see if they care more about gay marriage or building levees.
And let’s really think about flag burning. Studies show that there have been about 4 instances of flag burning in the past 20 years. This is more important than the health care crisis?
Let’s not get me started on illegal immigration. I need to write a whole post on that topic. Suffice it to say that this is another way to use people’s prejudice to stir up some votes.
The new politics is about appealing the absolute lowest, knee jerk, bigoted caveman in all of us. Forget about reason, let’s just make voters mad. Let’s appeal to the HATE in all Americans. That’ll get us re-elected.
But who wants to live in a country run by hate?
T said,
June 28, 2006 @ 1:35 pm
Good to see you blogging again..
Unfortunately, I feel like we’ve been living in a country run by hate for the last two administrations. I am so feverently hoping that the average American can see the current ruling party for the fiasco it has become and put the democrats back in office for a bit. While I don’t know how much a new administration can salvage, I have hope that at least the bigotry, criminal activity and cronyism will slow down considerably. Maybe even let our country stand for freedom and civil liberty again, rather then representing failure after failure on the domestic and international fronts, as this administration has. I just don’t understand how many more scandals the American public will put up with. It’s really, really out of hand.
Patti said,
June 28, 2006 @ 4:41 pm
I used to feel so shocked that I had to blog just to blow off steam. But, as one outrageous thing after another just kept piling up- I felt I couldn’t keep up. I became overwhelmed by the avalanche of cynisism, lies, and outright mean spiritedness that we are all seeing every single day.
I started to feel like nothing I do matters.
But I realize that’s a dangerous thing to give in to.
If we don’t keep on trying, then we’ve lost our country entirely.
Thanks for commenting, and letting me know someone is reading.