SUMMER SOLDIERS

An expansion on a comment I posted on Lisa’s entry. Do I think that the president might have done a few things differently over the past couple of years? Personally, I believe the administration might have spent more political capital on putting people back to work. The president worked like an old time coal miner trying to put together a bi partisan consensus even though it was pretty damned obvious from the beginning that the ‘Pubs weren’t going to cooperate. Do I wish there was a way out of Afghanistan that doesn’t involve throwing our hands in the air, saying the hell with it and pulling out? Oh yeah. The only consolation is that Alexander, the Russians and the British couldn’t do any better.

Thomas Paine coined a wonderful phrase back during the Revolution in his pamphlet “the Crisis”. To the “summer soldiers and sunshine patriots” who voted Democratic in ’08 and aren’t happy or satisfied with the results and feel too “discouraged” to vote this time around; if you don’t vote you can’t complain about the results can you?

We’ve got a candidate for the house in my district who, among other things, believes that public education is socialistic and “child abuse” and should be abolished. That our radioactive waste could either be diluted and dumped in the ocean or mixed into housing foundations because low dose radiation is good for you. That the EPA should be abolished, and that all our energy problems would be solved if companies like Exxon and BP (and their employees) didn’t have to pay taxes. Of course now that he’s running for office and being reminded of what he said in the past, well that wasn’t exactly what he meant. Seems to be a lot of that going around.

It gets even better. Other candidates want to gut the fourteenth amendment. Some candidates would repeal the seventeenth amendment that provides for the direct election of senators. There are modern nullifiers who would allow the states to ignore any federal statute they don’t agree with. Andrew Jackson must be spinning in his grave. Sharon Angle is on the record advocating a “second amendment” solution if the election results don’t suit the far right radicals.

There is a radical minority who are willing to trash what we have in hopes of replacing it with something more to their liking. Now, they can’t succeed, but they can create a hell of mess in the process. An even bigger mess to clean up. Now all you discouraged folks out there; if you want to risk this by all means stay home, sit in a corner, stick your fingers in your ears and hum real loud.

As for me, my mail in ballot it already deposited in the drop off box. We filled ours out the same day we got them.