Ask HOW?

I would like to imagine a place and time where our politics was about actions not viewpoint, practicality not ideology, getting it done not keeping it from happening.  Unfortunately, those times have been very rare in American history.  Much of the horror of the Civil War can be traced to the same ideological and emotional garbage that is tainting our politics today.

Instead of internal racial slavery, we are turning ourselves inside out because we basically don't like two people, and as a nation we don't.  We don't like Barak Obama and we don't like Hillary Clinton.  We have come so low in our electoral process that we have to like people to recognize their value and be willing to listen to reason from them.  It is almost criminal, how shoddy we have allowed our politics to become.

Hating Barak Obama comes from what?  The economy in the toilet?  No, really it is not.  The nation less safe?  Considering the fact that this latest "terrorist" attack smacks more of work place hatred that we can blame on radicalism, and that we have killed 90% of the identified dangerous international terrorist leaders, and that we removed forces from foreign countries and brought them home to rest and heal before they broke completely, probably not.  You remain, as you did on 9/11, much more likely to be the victim of a drive-by than a terrorist attack, and by some orders of magnitude.  Dislike and the rabid nature of the hatred for Barak Obama comes from a deeper and nastier place, that we dare not name.

Hating Hillary Clinton comes from what?  Well, that one is easier, she just is an easy person to hate.  She has the same issue I am told Lyndon Johnson had.  It feels like you are being sold a used car whenever they talk to you.  The difference is that LBJ sold some really good used cars.  Take a shower and you were good to go with reliable transportation.  Hillary, she is peddling bad used cars, with no CarFax and only sold as is.  She is by nature, a cold and unappealing personality.  She is not, however, anywhere near our worst Secretary of State.  And the truth is, her experience makes her more qualified, from an understanding and experience standpoint than anyone since LBJ.  And, maybe more so than LBJ was.  I don't mean that makes her right, but I think the rabid nature of the dislike comes from a deeper and nastier place, that we dare not name.

"I don't care what else I do, but I am going to repeal Obamacare!"  "I will never vote for legislation that funds Planned Parenthood!"  "I will defend the Second Amendment!"  "I will never vote for a tax increase!"  "I will prevent all immigrants from coming to America!"  "I will curtail welfare and not pay people to not work."

Those are the current flavors of the day, right?  All of them designed to remove the taint of the last eight years on our proud heritage and history, and some of them are worthy.  But, where we have failed, in our duty as citizens, that we should be performing to our candidates, is to demand the answer to the logical follow up question, HOW?  Do that a couple of times, and see how happy you are about where you plan to cast your vote.

These ideological goals are all well and good, but many of them are nonsensical.  I have been to the Mid East, many times.  All of the "trips" involved touring pieces of that region, small as they were, that were deemed safe.  All of the "trips" involved raining American hellfire down on top of terrorists and civilians alike.  It was the job.  Do you dislike me as much as the "terrorists" that we are so afraid of?  I guarantee you that I have helped contribute to more civilian deaths than any terrorist you can name.  The magnitude of the warfare I supported and contributed to, is vastly more destructive than all of Al Qaeda's dreams put together.  Conservative estimates are hundreds of thousands of deaths due to collateral damage in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The truth is probably millions.

I don't defend terrorism, or the animals that I went to help fight and defeat.  But, before we live in the absolute world, we must make peace with the real world.  Nothing will ever keep every bad actor out of this country.  We have had Russian, Chinese, Israeli (yes, especially Israeli), French, German, British and Japanese spies and informants here for decades.

We have allowed in hundreds, thousands of young African boys, who were trained to fight war, not pretend to be terrorists, but trained to fire Kalishnikov's, attack in supportive formation, seize tactically superior ground and live through shooting another human to death.  It saddened us as a nation that these young boys were taken by terrorist armies, trained to fight and forced to kill.  They have killed, not thought about it or been trained to do it, they have done it.  And, we did not refuse them entry until we could vet them completely and know without doubt that they are safe for entry.  We took them in because they were preyed upon and helpless, and we had pity on them.

Some of the least proud posts, and the least commendable statements I have made, is over allowing Syrian refugees into this country.  (And you were right Dan.) Like many others, I got caught up in the mental trauma that is our political landscape right now.  I forgot that we have no guarantee of safety, regardless of the best job that we do to ensure it.  People are the ultimate failure mode.  They will find a way to defeat and overcome any obstacle to their desires.  We should not let that stop us from allowing in orphans and widows and people that no longer have homes or villages.  Especially because we are the root cause of most of the displacement and migration.  Our warfare, and support of the overthrow of the governments of the region is without doubt the basis of the Arab Spring.  (And it is what the experts predicted prior to invading Iraq, by the way.)

We cannot repeal the Affordable Care Act without gutting Medicare and Medicaid.  They are entwined and joined in a way that to get rid of the things we dislike, we would have to dismantle VA care, Medicare and Medicaid, and remake them.  It could be done, but are any of you willing to allow more crippling of that safety net that I guarantee someone you love relies on?  We could do it, but someone better have a very good plan and a very solid understanding of the macro and microeconomics involved in one of the largest expenditures in the government, behind defense spending and corporate welfare, and probably not much else.  Who exactly is that person?  Because I don't know them, and they are not running for Congress or President.

We could refuse to vote for legislation that funds Planned Parenthood.  We could remain ideologically pure.  It sickens me that they fund abortion, and I think it should be illegal.  But, like the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court has many multiples of times, upheld that right for citizens of our country, regardless of what my faith informs me.  It is law, and while I may disagree with it, it is not a crime and it is not illegal for our government to be involved in.

It always kind of concerns me that folks that are the most indignant about any potential impact to their Second Amendment rights, are often the most opposed to supporting the other rights, guaranteed by the same system of law and judicial process that protects the Second Amendment.  It is how our country was founded, built, designed and operated.  We do not get it right constantly, but we do not generally get it wrong, over and over and over and over again.  If we have, spend half the energy you do worrying about some government entity coming for your guns and build a movement to pass an amendment that prohibits abortion.  You can be opposed to the practice, but be careful about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Funding for Planned Parenthood impacts, depending on which side's numbers you are using, 20-50 million women.  Some small percentage of funds has any impact on abortion practice, counselling or performance.  The rest takes care of breast cancer screenings, pre natal care, general health care and reproductive health care, that many women would otherwise be unable to afford.  I deplore abortion, and I cannot fathom that decision, or being in a place to make it.  I am a man, I have not ever had the experience.  However, the wave of impact to the entire nation for defunding Planned Parenthood is similar to a pandemic disease.  It would impact more people than influenza has in the last 5 years put together, in this country.

Tax levels and the tax code remain fairly identical to the code that Reagan worked with Tip ONeil to pass in the 80's.  There are some small changes around the edges, and we have tinkered with the pennies on the dollar, but the force and effect are largely unchanged for 30 years.  In that time, the entire world around us has changed.  The 80's tax code was typed by hand on typewriters, then set into print by hand, then printed for review and distribution.  There were no computers in general use.  The Senators and Representatives smoked at their desks as they debated the legislation.  It went out on the three networks, and that is all the networks there were.  We read about it in newspapers and magazines.  Mesothelioma was not yet something that was awarded work place compensation.  Football only came on twice a week, Sunday and Monday.

Expecting that the world has changed to the extent that it has, that we have come to where we are, and that there is no potential that the best course for the nation may be to increase some tax rates is moronic.  Perhaps some should go down, but some certainly then, may need to go up.  Even if you pass the flat tax at anything more than 15%, and most agree 18-20% is the minimum, you are raising taxes on a segment of the population.  It is nonsensical and bespeaks of poor understanding and lack of comprehension to make promises that potentially are damaging to keep.

Why do Congressmen and Presidents go support and vote for these things, after making these bold statements?  Because here at home, it is unlikely that you understand the interconnected nature of the things we are hating.  It is unlikely you have seen the pictures from inside Syria, Lybia and Tunisia, that show what this flood of people are running from, and you are not getting it on CNN and Fox, believe me.  It is unlikely that you know that Planned Parenthood is one of the nation's leading providers of cancer screening for all of the cancers that impact only or predominantly women (ovarian, cervical, breast).  It is unlikely you understand that the Affordable Care Act is now the conduit by which Medicare and Medicaid are funded and controlled.  It is unlikely you understand that the majority of welfare recipients are white, and most have been thrown out of the work force due to economic contraction in their location, and have a legitimate work history prior to benefits.  Ideology meets practicality, and generally, decency allows practicality to win.  Almost always to the benefit of this nation, which has been built on what I just described, compromise.

We don't talk about those things on MSNBC or Fox News.  We show doctored pictures of some imagined horror being perpetrated by one side or the other.  We show a row of tenement houses with an Escalade parked in front of it, implying that they are all on the take from the government, and that by and large, their career plan is to survive on welfare.  Or we show cockroaches crawling on walls and babies living in filth to demonstrate how poorly we help them.  We show made up videos of horrific acts on fetal tissue.  Or we only focus on the equally horrific practice of killing abortion providers.  We show only examples of corporate greed and crime, and nothing about the giving and volunteering sponsored and organized by those corporations.  Or we show only the profits and sanitized claims mouthed by corporate shills.  We claim that people kill people and not guns, but then cannot explain why it is not worthwhile to be more rigorous in determining which people should then be allowed to buy guns.  Or we claim that guns are the root of the evil, and there is no conceivable reason anyone should have one, look at Europe and wonderful that place is.

We do not demand HOW, we just get together and shout about WHAT.  We have done that since 1988, and look at where it has put the country.  What do I personally hold against Obama?  He spoke of change, and while he enacted some needed legislation and made some difficult but necessary command decisions, he has not effected change.  I don't think it was in his power, unfortunately.

We still have the same uninformed angers driving uneducated debate around nonsensical issues.  And very few of our candidates are even aware that that is true.  That is the part that is so concerning.  It is one thing to be unintentionally ignorant, I am on many subjects.  It is another to be willfully ignorant.  I beg of you, please ask your candidates for all offices which kind of ignorant they are.  They are one or the other, we all are.  To do that, ask HOW?  It is the fastest way to test for the truth in their answer.

GLYASDI