The soul has greater need of the ideal than the real for it is by the real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we live

Monday, July 12, 2010

Everybody's got an opinion

Yes, everyone has an opinion and they're free to express it, particularly here in America where we're free to be the world's moralists and tell them exactly what they should think and do.

I read this morning that Roman Polanski won't be extradited to the U.S. for the crime he's accused of, and true to form a lot of the comments from Americans were charged with self-righteousness. 

I made the mistake of voicing my opinion and was roundly trashed by the commenters who need their meds adjusted.

But we are!  We think we're right because we're Americans, and we NEVER think of the opinions nor the needs, nor the concerns of others.  It's US, that's all that matters.  I did notice that those who trashed me were the self-same commenters who checked the option NOT to be replied to.  hehe.

Here in the world George Bush left us, one in which we're told to be stupid and fearful, which Americans were happy to do, we stomp around the world and regulate commerce, military conflicts, religious conflicts, and any other disagreement it's to our advantage to get in  the middle of.

I'm waiting for the day America gets her comeuppance.  I fear it'll be a biggen. Which is one of the big reasons I don't want to be here. 

Truthfully if I could find a country that would take me, in which I wouldn't likely be stoned to death just for being an American, I'd go tomorrow.  Alas, no one will have me.  I'm an American so I'm poor and they don't want me taking up space on their employment status.  I'm an American, so though I'm over educated I have no real idea how the rest of the world thinks, which makes me nothing more than a liability that has to be re-educated, and at my age they hardly want to make the investment.  I'm an American, so I'm going to think I'm entitled to EVERYTHING!  Which is a well-founded fear, so there's that. I'm an American so I'm infused with all that Christian bible-thumping crap(they assume) which they'll be not only mesmerized by but also which they'll abhor. AND I'm an American.  And if they're not a third world country they really don't have any interest in giving me one of the jobs we exported to them in the last decade.  

I'm a liability.

Of course, if Ronald Reagan, George Bush I, and Bill Clinton hadn't decimated the labor market in the U.S. and eliminated the middle class many of these problems wouldn't exist.  Alas, they did.

Why I aspire to the middle class I'll never know, but apparently I do.

But the catalyst for this epiphany was Roman Polanski's extradition hearing in Switzerland.  Is he guilty, well, yes and no.  First of all, what was he doing alone with a 13 y/o girl in the first pace, where was her guardian?
Second, what kind of judgment was being exercised by all the adults in this situation?  Third, wasn't this in the 70's?  There remains no understanding of that sexual mindset in this age of religious zeal and sexual phobias.  So yet again we apply our current restrictive and fear-driven mores to a person, a situation, and yes a crime that currently is really none of our business.  The woman in question wants nothing more to do with the whole mess, and Polanski is 76.

But we're the arbiters of everything moral here in America, so let's cast that first stone since we're so free of sin.

and so it goes:






ed note: It's been brought to my attention that I neglected to mention a few weeks ago that my beloved Cubbies were also in the Chicago Pride parade.  Thanks to Ernie Banks and the Cubs.