Fun With E Mails

Ahhh...the chain e-mail. Such a great way to get a lot of people harumphing in agreement and indignation! Behold the following, which is usually accompanied by a photo of a hungry homeless white child- you know, an AMERICAN child.

In America - The Homeless go without eating.
In America - The Elderly go without needed medicines.
In America - The Mentally ill go without treatment.
In America - Our Troops go without proper equipment.
In America - Our Veterans go without benefits they were promised.
Yet we donate billions to other countries before helping our own first.

Of course, the problem with this is what happens when you fill out the outrageous soundbites with facts.

In America- The homeless go without eating because time and again we vote against helping them; calling those who are homeless 'unmotivated' and 'just needing some gumption' and 'if we feed them they become dependent- we don't want to ENABLE them, do we?'

In America- The Elderly go without needed medicines because we have the most profit-motivated and unregulated pharmaceutical and insurance industries in the world

In America- The mentally ill go without treatment because St. Ronnie cut them all loose and "taking care of those folks would be nice, Sugar- but how will we PAY for it?" Also, see above re: enabling and motivation. If we just give the mentally ill a good kick in the drawers and a cheerful "Get over it!" they'll be FINE

In America- Our troops go without proper equipment because there is no fiscal oversight of the bloated military industrial complex that lines the pockets of Halliburton and Raytheon. Send one of Cheney's grandkids over yonder to the sandbox as a regular enlisted grunt and see how fast the troops get equipment

In America- Our Veterans go without benefits they were promised because we KEEP GOING TO WAR and make more and more broken men and women


Maybe, just maybe, 'Rose-colored Glasses Lefties' want fiscal responsibility even more than the Right- we want the money we have put where it's needed most and not GIVEN to those who already make more apiece than the average small town in America.

You can call that Socialism and rail against it. But the entire text in that 'patriotic' chain email reeks of socialism- garnering support for GOVERNMENT to help our own people.

Because in a perfect Conservative World, all those people mentioned? Should just get off their asses and fix their own lives instead of waiting for the NANNY STATE to take care of them.

Or is it only a Nanny State when it cares for people we don't think deserve it?

When It's Not Fiction Anymore

There's this book that was written.

It's was written as one of those end-of-the-world, everything's-bad, we-need-a-hero sorta deals that also includes some paranormal activity and some pretty graphic scenes of physically intimate relations.

Except the end of the world wasn't brought about by foreign terrorists, or any sort of Liberal Gun Grab, or Literally Hitler come to life in the form of a brown guy who took all the money from rich people and gave it to unworthy (brown) poor people.

The end of the world was caused by an excess of the wrong kind of faith in the wrong kinds of things.

And by 'end of the world', I mean a slow, painfully avoidable rotting of the system from the top down and a society who has been taught that the best way to cure it is to cut out the healthy parts and throw them away.

Doubling down on ideology that will hurt them personally because they have been duped into believing the suffering of their fellow citizens is the unfortunate yet justified 'gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet' that will bring the country back from the brink, it all makes sense. Having faith in a God who celebrates those who suffer makes it easier to bear when it astonishingly becomes them personally facing a grim new reality of their own making. It's a perfect recipe for total dysfunction.

So everything is bad in the story, and it's because the wrong people are not only IN power, but get even more powerful when that element has the majority in all our top slots of government. Hey, look! We're almost there!

As of Tuesday...we're almost there.

So here's what I recommend.

I recommend reading this book. It's only 99 cents and a pretty quick read.

There's action, and guns, and a sexy chick who happens to also have some nifty witchy gifts and uses them to help other people. And give a few what they deserve.

Also zombies.

And a duck.

You know you need this after Tuesday.

Read it quick before it goes from being fiction to non-fiction.

And then lets get back to work. 2016 is right around the corner.

http://www.amazon.com/Wyrd-Justice--Weekends-Dystopia-Luna-ebook/dp/B00KKXPWAA/ref=sr_1_1_twi_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1415456552&sr=8-1&keywords=luna+q%27otu