Pete Dodd Dot Com (.us)

Before my father reads this and starts doing the airplane around his house that his son has flipped over to the dark side, I want to make it clear that I still consider myself to be fairly liberal.  Well, actually, i consider myself to be fairly moderate, but some of my views are thought of as extreme to people – when they really shouldn’t.  Like, I think it’s ok for homosexuals to get married.  I don’t think this is an extreme view, but evidently in America it is.

But anyway, I’m a registered democrat and for a reason…  they are who I vote for.  Once you get the social shit out of the way (in which I agree almost 100% with democrats anyway), and get down to how to govern,  you have to choose which you think is the lesser of two evils.  Democrats believe that government is less evil than unfettered private corporations.  Republicans believe that government is worse.  Both could probably make valid points as both our (and just about all) government is terrible, but so are (just about all) major corporations.  They all suck.  I believe that corporations suck slightly more, but it’s certainly up for debate.

But i’m not here to preach about that.  That’s the typical shit out of my mouth about politics.  Who gives a shit.  What has been driving me absolutely nuts lately are my own people.  We can’t be the better party if we do the same exact shit as the republicans, especially if we don’t even realize that we are doing it.

Fear mongering is not just the dominion of the right, my progressive friends.  You will hear liberals go absolutely fucking nuts with “these republicans just live off of fear, they want everyone afraid, they want to scare you into war, fear fear fear” and then 20 minutes later these same people say shit like “if we don’t do something about global warming WE WILL ALL BE DEAD IN TWENTY YEARS OH MY FUCKING GOD HEAD FOR THE HILLS THE WHOLE PLANET WILL EXPLODE.”

A defensive progressive would probably argue that this is a false equivalency (much like they argue about msnbc not being as bad as fox news).  They will say “it’s good to help the environment, it’s bad to go to war.”  With that statement I can’t argue, but I don’t think it’s a false equivalency.  The thing is, republicans aren’t evil, hate filled people.  They aren’t.  I know you want to think they are.  You want to think they hate brown people, are scared of change and everything they do is irrational and out of fear.  But really, it’s just a set of beliefs, just like your own.  They actually believe that terrorists are a big threat to this country.  They want to do stuff to make sure bad stuff doesn’t happen to us.

Now, I agree, that’s misguided.  Terrorists certainly want to hurt us, but we needn’t live in fear of them or spend billions blowing up countries that don’t have much to do with them.  But the belief is pure.  It’s not just a lust for blood.

Just like democrat’s wanting to help save the environment have a true, honest desire to see the earth not become a shithole.  But just because what you believe in is a just cause, that doesn’t mean it’s ok to sell fucking fear.  The science about global warming is convincing but is by no means 100% fact.  And alarmists blowing it out of proportion don’t help the cause.  In fact, environmentalists 20 years ago saying that by 2010 the tides would be up 50 feet and major cities would be underwater only made the whole thing worse…  because here we are in 2011, and im in southern Brooklyn and as of this morning 5th avenue isn’t a river.

So stop selling your goddamn fear.  Stop making it sound like if republicans are in charge that we will all burn in hell.  Stop selling us so much goddamn fear.

The world is actually a pretty fucking awesome place right now.  People are living longer than they ever have, despite our daily warnings that every chemical ever is killing us.  We have better health care than we have ever had.  We have less poor in the world that we ever have.  There is better wealth distribution.

None of these things are things we should give up on and say are perfect.  Better health care would be great.  Less chemicals would be fantastic.  Less poor and less super rich would be a nice change for our species.  We should strive for these things.  But please, liberals, stop acting like these things are the end of the fucking world.  If you truly want to be progressive, try to make points that involve zero parts per billion of fear.

Also, stop taking topics in the news and trying to make political points out of them.  That terrible, terrible, terrible shooting yesterday is not something for you to use to create more fear of republicans.  Yes, I know Sarah “I’m a dumb fucking asshole” Palin had a map of congressional seats that her people would like to see swung back republican — with targets over each district, including a target over the congresswoman who is now in critical condition.

The thing is, the person who shot those people was fucking nuts.  Maybe this motherfucker will even admit that he saw that very map and took it literally…  but who cares.  He’s a crazy motherfucker.  And Sarah Palin is a dumb cunt, but she isn’t advocating that we fucking kill people.

I’ll put it this way, what if this person said he shot them because a song by *insert your favorite band here* and that band had a song about overthrowing the government.  Would you blame the band?  Of course not.  You would blame the crazy bag of dicks that did the shooting.  Which is what we should do here.  That doesn’t mean that people, especially palin and glenn beck, shouldn’t tone down their rhetoric, but it doesn’t make it their fault either.  If its their fault, it’s our fault also, because our rhetoric against them is just as strong.  It’s a pissing contest.

And I also love how birds dying is a sign that global warming is killing the planet *AND* it’s a sign that jesus hates faggots and is punishing us.   Maybe it’s just that birds die for reasons that aren’t related to our political/religious beliefs?  Nah, that makes too much sense.

I expect the fear shit out of republicans, not because they are evil, but because in general they are a bit more anxious people.  I expect better out of progressives.  Lately they are letting me down.  A lot.