Thursday, June 12, 2008

define patriotism and many deja vus

We're in a proper (I mean general) election season once again. Same old ho-hum topics on the economy, terrorism, the wars and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and health care. See how this new or veteran candidate handle warping questions from intellectual and idiots alike.

On the subject of idiots - the Republicans are nitpicking this very tired old patriotic thing: Michelle Obama, upon her husband's securing the needed numbers of delegates said "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country". Any simple-liberal minded person would see her as a cynical person embracing the current success of Barack Obama's campaign. An African-American woman married to a man of Kenyan and white parentage saying this, I think it is a big deal.


But no, the Republicans have to find the weak-ass ammo of patriotism to fire.

Is anyone really doing their work, based on campaign promises. I know things can happen that is unexpected but really - energy should be spent working on these issues instead of crowing and criticizing about this issue and that. Hillary had the same start as Howard Dean - proclaimed president elect only to burn out, say stupid or unnecessary things out from exhaustion and see your party opponents sail by (Kerry and now Obama). Haven't the Democrats learned anything? I wonder about McCain - I did a paper on his campaign in 2000 when I took a special course as part of my Government BA, what he did the evolution of his campaigning his wins and losses. He was doing well until South Carolina when Bush trumped him. This time, McCain was careful around South Carolina. He has the advantage of lessons learned this time around. It's pretty much the same for others who ran campaigns more than once or twice.

But the media and party people treat it as in once in a lifetime thing. It's exhausting, really.

This one last tired topic - patriotism. It's been nearly eight years. Even the flag waving red blooded American saw through both Republicans and Democrats making gafffes and being hawks on wars and discrimination in the name of patriotism. I like to think of patriotism that we have the right to question the integrity of where our elected folks is taking the country. The Patriot Act (can't recall if they updated the Act to continued or ended it altogether) is the dumbest name (it was 9/11, we hadn't been directly attacked by a foreigner since the 1812 War) and deciding if we are patriots based on our library books, internet searches, and wire tapping. The Law&Order show occasionally throws pot shots at the current administration. The police are looking into a murder - what else? - of an artist woman collector who made some contacts in Germany to buy controversial paintings. The police run into a wire-tapping FBI man who's following information on the murdered woman, that she is involved with terrorism. The FBI man tells Green and Lupo that there are "jihads" many other terrorist related jargon that the woman used in her conversations. But the police knew that the woman mentioned them because "jihad", etc are the name of paintings this German painter did. The FBI man is like, 'so she's not a terrorist? huh.' Apparently, their programming are wired into identifying these words and track down these suspects not knowing or bothering to find out the story. The FBI man shrugged at the police, mumbling "we didn't know". And left.

I know it's only a TV shows and they take certain dramatic licenses but that's something to think about isn't it?

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yep... they updated the durn ol patriot act.. pffft -j

6/16/2008 8:15 PM  

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