Good God, it's been a long time. More than five years.
I started this blog in June of 2006 when the "broad strata" of 17 wanna-be terrorists were arrested in Toronto. Looking over my posts after that, it's certainly interesting to see how all that played out.
I joined FaceBook in October of 2007 and my writings on this blog just withered. I think it was easier to get the one liners out and read by my friends than it was to direct them here. Honestly, I can't recall exactly why - it's just how it ended up.
A lot has happened in the last five years, hasn't it? A Fabian Socialist was elected to the Presidency in the US, and Stephen Harper finally got his majority government. I'm happy to report that we haven't sunk completely into the abyss on either count, but things are certainly teetering in the States. I'm not sure they, this continent, this hemisphere, or the world will be able to take another four years of Obama. The media doesn't seem to be quite as "on board" this time as they were back in '08. Shades of "Trudeaumania" - another Fabianist that almost sunk a country.
Bob Rae, the leader of Ontario's first (and only, thank God) NDP government ran into the same problems as Trudeau and Obama. All very smart and highly intelligent people who ended up dragging the populace down to a level of indescribable mediocrity in the name of equality and equity. And before you jump all over me on that last one, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron for a summary of Vonnegut's great short story. Hell, read the story itself if you haven't done so. You'll see what I mean.
Rae and Obama in particular spent and have spent their time falling all over themselves catering to labour unions, (minority) special interest groups, and indeed to the media that put them there. Obama has rejected what made the US great in favour of expanding government control of most facets of American life. He is surely under the impression that those he considers not as smart as he simply cannot be relied upon to fulfil *his* version of the American Dream (whatever that is).
More about him another time. In the meantime, take a minute and look at my post from July 15 of 2007. Not much has changed, has it?
Have you seen HBO's "The Newsroom"?
Here's the screed from the first episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7lKNjtvfpc
...and the root of it, as stated by newsman Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) is that we're no longer informed. And he's right. We're presented, typically, with two sides of an issue. On one side is the left, ala MSNBC, The New York Times, NPR, and so on, and the right, FOX, Sun-TV, Rush, and a whack of small-town dailies. It's our nature, as people, to gravitate to where we're comfortable - where there's a group like us - and once we're there, we usually stay. We listen to what should have been rational discourse degenerate into shouting matches with people who happen to have different opinions than ourselves and we're content in the knowledge that we're not alone and maybe these other people really *are* assholes after all.
How difficult must it be to permanently reside on one side or the other? We think it because Hunter wrote, and Garcia sang, "sometimes we live no particular way but our own". And it marginalizes us. We are the majority. We have to be. Surely it isn't possible that that many people on the left and that many people on the right have no room for - no time for - people with views that are contrary to theirs. It's not how it should be. We've sacrificed being informed for ten-second sound bites and snarkly little quips that put opposing points of view down. Sometimes so far down that they're never heard from again.
Make no mistake about it. There are plenty of people on both the left and the right whose mission is to silence the other side. The left does it with political correctness and the right does it with God and Patriotism. And it sucks.
So over the next while, and certainly leading up to the US election in Novemeber, I'll be tossing out my own ideas. Maybe you'll agree with me, maybe you'll find them offensive, and maybe it'll just end up being food for thought.
One way or another, it's going to be fun.
I started this blog in June of 2006 when the "broad strata" of 17 wanna-be terrorists were arrested in Toronto. Looking over my posts after that, it's certainly interesting to see how all that played out.
I joined FaceBook in October of 2007 and my writings on this blog just withered. I think it was easier to get the one liners out and read by my friends than it was to direct them here. Honestly, I can't recall exactly why - it's just how it ended up.
A lot has happened in the last five years, hasn't it? A Fabian Socialist was elected to the Presidency in the US, and Stephen Harper finally got his majority government. I'm happy to report that we haven't sunk completely into the abyss on either count, but things are certainly teetering in the States. I'm not sure they, this continent, this hemisphere, or the world will be able to take another four years of Obama. The media doesn't seem to be quite as "on board" this time as they were back in '08. Shades of "Trudeaumania" - another Fabianist that almost sunk a country.
Bob Rae, the leader of Ontario's first (and only, thank God) NDP government ran into the same problems as Trudeau and Obama. All very smart and highly intelligent people who ended up dragging the populace down to a level of indescribable mediocrity in the name of equality and equity. And before you jump all over me on that last one, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron for a summary of Vonnegut's great short story. Hell, read the story itself if you haven't done so. You'll see what I mean.
Rae and Obama in particular spent and have spent their time falling all over themselves catering to labour unions, (minority) special interest groups, and indeed to the media that put them there. Obama has rejected what made the US great in favour of expanding government control of most facets of American life. He is surely under the impression that those he considers not as smart as he simply cannot be relied upon to fulfil *his* version of the American Dream (whatever that is).
More about him another time. In the meantime, take a minute and look at my post from July 15 of 2007. Not much has changed, has it?
Have you seen HBO's "The Newsroom"?
Here's the screed from the first episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7lKNjtvfpc
...and the root of it, as stated by newsman Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) is that we're no longer informed. And he's right. We're presented, typically, with two sides of an issue. On one side is the left, ala MSNBC, The New York Times, NPR, and so on, and the right, FOX, Sun-TV, Rush, and a whack of small-town dailies. It's our nature, as people, to gravitate to where we're comfortable - where there's a group like us - and once we're there, we usually stay. We listen to what should have been rational discourse degenerate into shouting matches with people who happen to have different opinions than ourselves and we're content in the knowledge that we're not alone and maybe these other people really *are* assholes after all.
How difficult must it be to permanently reside on one side or the other? We think it because Hunter wrote, and Garcia sang, "sometimes we live no particular way but our own". And it marginalizes us. We are the majority. We have to be. Surely it isn't possible that that many people on the left and that many people on the right have no room for - no time for - people with views that are contrary to theirs. It's not how it should be. We've sacrificed being informed for ten-second sound bites and snarkly little quips that put opposing points of view down. Sometimes so far down that they're never heard from again.
Make no mistake about it. There are plenty of people on both the left and the right whose mission is to silence the other side. The left does it with political correctness and the right does it with God and Patriotism. And it sucks.
So over the next while, and certainly leading up to the US election in Novemeber, I'll be tossing out my own ideas. Maybe you'll agree with me, maybe you'll find them offensive, and maybe it'll just end up being food for thought.
One way or another, it's going to be fun.
posted by Somnambulist57 at
10:15 PM
1 Comments:
Welcome back
By
Anonymous, at 11:30 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home