nah, i just have this thing where hypocrisy drives me nuts.
we're spending all this US taxpayer money (and driving ourselves into even Greenspan-disturbing debt [but as he's a bit of a team player he bit his tongue 'til he just coudn't anymore] ) in another country. the Bushies have emptied our country's former surplus (hey vote for me, i'll give you some tax money back) and spent the rest on 'national security' and Halliburton contracts, the possibly intentional yet either way agreeable side effects of which are to force public education and especially health care et al out of the public arena, and into private (for profit) hands...because, as they'll say, 'we just don't have the money', and people were so [fairly rightly] freaked out by 9/11 that they'll more easily accept it being spent on military/defense-related items, even if it's at the expense of education and health care...'cause you gotta be alive to go to school, etc, okay, fine. but allowing the educational system to whither on the vine is cutting off our own limbs, starting with the area above the neck (it's partly our citizens' fault, we seem to have an odd collective sense of entitlement that leads us to believe that we shouldn't have to pay taxes yet should still somehow have quality education if not at least some health care. how that one works i have no idea).
if there's one thing that those conservative folks can't stand, it's anything that smells even faintly of socialism. i'm completely down with personal responsibility, it's always the best course of action - and i really enjoyed Atlas Shrugged, too - but even my personal selfishness and lack of compassion for the strugglebunnies have limits. our former status as an educated and respectable people continues to drop (too many Americans are straight-up dumb-asses. they can rattle off every contestant in the history of American Idol but couldn't tell you the name of our first president if their life depended on it), and this bodes well for the future how? tuition costs rise and rise and rise, schools in my area are dropping classes left and right - starting with the arts and music, of course...the things that civilize and provide creative, cultural and emotional broadening - and some would already have gone belly-up if the wealthy residents of the area didn't pitch in to save them. now their largesse has become mandatory, if they care about the education of our children. necessary charity to save the schools - it's practically becoming a new tax. and what about the residents of less well-to-do or philanthropical regions? a slippery slope. in a scary direction. oh, sure, we're all in this together...except that to too many in power, we're not. how do you maintain such cheery optomism in the midst of a flaming building?
