John's Blog

Poking around on The Onion I stumbled upon an old "infographic" from '04 illustrating What Are We Running Away From? which is kinda' cute. But as is usually the case, the line between comedy and tragedy is thin indeed.

I'm afraid that if a "real" survey was done today, the "16% running away from participatory democracy" would be much higher. Despite our recent midterm election where voters clearly registered their displeasure over the current Iraq policy, it's business as usual for "the decider". Apparently he has taken the mantle "leader of the free world" (& when are we going to stop deluding ourselves about that?) to mean he can ignore popular wisdom and the will of the masses to do whatever he damn well pleases.

Sure, just go ahead and spend an extra $100 billion dollars on this flawed and unnecessary war effort. Funding? No problem, we'll just cut $66 billion from Medicare and another $12 billion from the Medicaid budgets. Those elderly and poor people shouldn't be getting sick anyway! As a "compassionate conservative" I'm sure he feels bad about that. What's a little sacrifice if it means we bring peace, freedom, and democracy to the middle east? That seems to be working out pretty well.

The irony of this situation is that it was completely avoidable, and highlights the bad choices we've made. What if we hadn't engaged in an unnecessary war and had made equivalent expenditures on social programs, healthcare, education or infrastructure repairs here in our country? I'm dreaming here I'm sure, but we would have been better off both at home and abroad had we pursued quality of life goals rather than the neo-con agenda.

But if that isn't bad enough, our "fearless leader" still insists he knows best. He continues to lead us down the path to yet another war, this time against Iran. I can only hope that the Democratic leadership finds it's voice soon; so far I'm a bit disappointed that an effective opposition hasn't emerged although it's early in the game. But this is one game we can't afford to lose.

Tags: pop-culture, humor, politics