America, you frighten me sometimes... more than anything, I just think some of the ideas that are popular are really strange. I don't really understand how some people really think the way they do, but these are my thoughts on a few matters.
First of all, as someone who does not really find organized religion to be a worthwhile thing in my life (although I'm all for people going that way if that's what they want), I cannot, for the life of me, understand why so many people want this country run like a theocracy. Who cares what it says in the Bible about gay people? I read the Bible once. It was really inconsistent. It said I shouldn't wear clothes with mixed fabrics. Right at this moment, I'm wearing a cotton-poly blend t-shirt that the US Army issued me. If the US Army issued it to me, and it's of blended fabrics, then that means that the US government does things that go against the Bible. Actually, I distinctly remember my Drill Sergeant serving me shrimp cocktail in the chow hall on Thanksgiving Day just a few months after I was issued this lovely shirt. As I recall, the Bible forbids consumption of shellfish as well (shrimp is considered shellfish, right?). Everywhere we look, the US government does things that the Bible doesn't condone. Evidently, this isn't a theocracy. Oh yeah, and there's that whole Bill of Rights, freedom of religion thing.... So let the gays get married. Who cares?!
And also, sanctity of marriage, my ass. We straight people have done enough to mess that up over the years. Do you know, I totally almost got married when I was a PFC in the Army so I wouldn't have to live in the barracks?! (Don't hate. If you've never been through a totally routine room inspection by the MP dogs and my First Sergeant at 5 am on a Sunday, you have no idea what lengths you would go to, to never have to do that again.) Somehow, it would have been totally hunky dory for me to marry any male person of legal age, just because I wanted to never again wake up to my First Sergeant's *lovely* face at *lovely* hours of the day, but a gay person can't marry someone they love (or some random person just to get out of the barracks, for that matter)? This is ridiculous, America. Just stop with it already. Nobody cares what your religion has to say about it, and there really isn't any sanctity left in the institution of marriage. (Individual marriages, yes. The institution, no.)
Secondly, this war on women bullshit needs to end right now. Homebirth midwives are losing licensing, birth centers are closing due to crack downs on back-up physicians, abortions are getting harder and harder to get, Planned Parenthood clinics are closing left and right, and I just paid 800 freakin dollars for an IUD last week. I'm pretty convinced that next, they're probably going to come after my right to vote, and alter my military record to state that I was not, in fact, a regular soldier, but a member of some auxiliary or something. OK, so maybe I'm being a bit facetious about that last bit, but the fact that we've lost so many reproductive rights, and our insurance companies are totally allowed to screw us (hence our insurance company covering exactly $0 of my recently purchased IUD) is pretty scary when you really think about it. First of all, it makes no sense from a financial standpoint. Yes, let's take away, or restrict access to, every service that could possibly prevent someone from having more babies than they're able to afford to care for. Births are so much cheaper than IUD's, of course. If you have enough unplanned babies, maybe you even qualify for Medicaid, and then the tax payers can pick up the tab for it all, including those babies' health care. Is this making a single bit of sense to anybody? Me either. It seems like a good portion of America thinks that what we need is more population in this country. Those people are, what I like to call, full of shit. Stop this war on women. Stop restricting choices when it comes to all things reproductive. This is really stupid. Any woman who votes for anybody who agrees with this stuff seriously deserves to be voted off the island.
Now, food. What the hell is wrong with you people?! Why haven't people totally demanded GMO's to be labeled, if not outlawed. You know, Monsanto may have their hands in a lot of stuff, but there's a lot of stuff they don't have their hands in, and we can still vote against them with our dollars. We can still do this, and it doesn't have to be super expensive either. Even if you still have to buy some of their crap, you can still demand that your elected officials push for GMO labeling. The food supply in this country is ridiculous, and we should not have to go to the lengths we go to just to eat something that isn't going to poison us. The fact that the citizens haven't demanded decent food standards, quite frankly slays me. We're the fattest nation in the world, we're incredibly unhealthy. Why do people think that is? Demand better. We should have done this already.
War. America, it's not our job to be the world police. It really isn't. You know when we leave Afghanistan, there's going to be a lot of upheaval, and that the government we set up probably won't last but a little while. Why? Because that's what's happened to every government in the history of Afghanistan. It doesn't matter if we pull out now, or in 20 years, it's going to be the same. Let's plug the hole in our national pocketbook, and end the war now. This is getting pretty old. I was 19 when this thing started. I'm 30 now. That's pretty much my entire life as an adult that there's been this war (and that entire time, I've had some stake in it, so nobody talk to me about service and sacrifice. I know better than I want to.). It's time for it to be over. Oh, and attacking Iran because they might have a nuclear weapon? Dude... have you checked out our arsenal lately? We are definitely not in a position to be getting onto people for having nuclear weapons. That's like whatever's worse than the pot calling the kettle black. Maybe we need to take a long hard look in the mirror before we start trying to tell other people what they can and cannot do, when doing the thing in question ourselves. If I were them, I wouldn't listen to us either. Dismantle a few (hundred) nuclear weapons, end some occupations, and then maybe we can talk about nuclear non-proliferation. Stop being hypocrites, America. It makes us look stupid.
Drugs. Why are people so scared of marijuana? It's just a plant. You roll it up, you smoke it, and it makes you calm and mellow. You might eat a lot. You won't kill anybody. You won't become a drain on society unless you use it too much, but that's true of a lot of other things as well (alcohol, anybody?) Everybody knows "that person" who totally ruined their life by smoking weed, but don't we all know a few drunks, too? Yet somehow, alcohol remains totally legal, and pot will land you in jail in most places. That makes absolutely no sense. America, people are going to smoke pot one way or the other. It's just like alcohol in that way. Ask yourself, how well did prohibition work? Exactly. It would be easier on everyone to just legalize it and get it over with. Not only would this cut down on costs from prosecuting non-violent "drug offenders" (aka, frat boys who got caught smoking a blunt behind the math building), but the prison population would decrease, and that would save us a ton of money, too, because we wouldn't be prosecuting, and often jailing, every person who gets caught growing some plants and selling their crop.
Basically, our country is in kind of a mess right now, and it needs to be fixed. There's more that's wrong than all this, but this was long enough as it was, so I'm going to leave it at this for now. By this standard, it looks like I'll be voting for myself come November, because I don't know one politician in all of Washington who has the balls to actually do this stuff.
OK, I don't really plan to vote for myself. I am totally unfit for public office. It's a lovely thought, though.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment