Now, why would the government decide that oil companies are cool to start doing the same work that killed 11 people and created a huge environmental disaster (kinda like the nuclear disaster happening in Japan, but in the ocean) just about a year ago? It can only be in response to an investigation into the very safety of deeper-water drilling as an industry, where the Dept. of the Interior decides that all the necessary steps have been (and are being) taken to assure that a repeat of the Deepwater Horizon disaster won’t occur. Right?

Of course not. For one thing, the nuclear disaster in Japan has made it clear that no amount of safety preparation guarantees protection from disaster. Planes still crash. Nuclear meltdowns can happen. Mother Nature is a bitch and we cannot control her.  “That’s why there’s AllState” that handsome black guy from 24 would say. There are, however, ways to decrease the likelihood of a disaster, or at least to mitigate the horrors that follow. That means we take precautions until the point at which we assume an appropriate level of risk.

The Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill wasn’t “supposed to happen.” There was a piece of equipment called a “blowout preventer” that completely failed to prevent a blowout. Now, after investigating the matter, the Department of the Interior reveals that blowout preventers themselves have an inherent design flaw that makes them unreliable. So, in an emergency, when blow-out preventers are supposed to seal off the well, they won’t. It’s like having a fire break out in your house, grabbing the extinguisher, and having confetti come shooting out. It made you feel safe knowing it was there when there was no emergency, but you’re screwed once the shit hits the fan.

We now know that the Deepwater Horizon event was not a single incident, but an industry-wide safety deficiency. So why are we handing out drilling permits again and, even more strangely, requiring the use of blowout preventers we know don’t work? Isn’t it irresponsible to return oil rig workers to platforms that run the exact same risk of exploding the way the Deepwater Horizon did? It seems ridiculous, but there actually is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.

In any number of endeavors, a certain level of danger is acceptable so long as the job gets done. Drilling for oil isn’t something we do for sport. We need oil. Our civilization runs on it. So what if blowout preventers don’t work, it’s symbolic anyway, because let’s be honest: There is a certain amount of tragedy we as a society choose to live with every day. Most of our energy comes from coal-powered plants and coal miners die all the time. We like to think not so often here in the United States, but it happens just the same. At the very least, breathing in all that coal dust for years is terrible for you, but people do it for their whole lives. There are lots of dirty, dangerous jobs out there, the most obvious one serving in the military.

Also keep in mind; people die all the time whether by murder, car accident, gun violence, drone strike, malaria, cancer, or just plain bad luck. We can’t stop it, although we sure do try to stave off the inevitable for as long as possible.  It’s a little nihilist, to be sure, but we’re talking about how this stuff works now, not how we’d like it to.

Requiring that blowout preventers actually do the thing their very name indicates they are supposed to would ultimately mean one thing: no more deep-water drilling. It is inherently unsafe to dig holes into pressurized chemical-reserves deep inside the earth’s crust. The industry can (and will) always fall back on the excuse that it is impossible to prepare for every worst-case-scenario and that doing so would make drilling cost-prohibitive. And, boy, we sure do want that oil. Humans don’t quit doing what we have to to get what we think we need just because bad things happen as a direct result. Hell, we don’t “need” to go into space but we find it worthwhile enough and aren’t deterred when a space shuttle or two disintegrates. We won’t stop exploring space, and we won’t stop exploring the oceans for oil because the society we’ve created demands it.

The government is going to do what it has to in order to keep us filling our tanks and driving along apathetically in our day-to-day lives, because it assumes (rightly or wrongly) that is what we want. It sounds effectively psychopathic to suggest that regulators are willing to just write off human life, but the prospect of aggressively rising oil prices (and the economic impact that results) scares government officials into doing crazy things. If preserving our economic model means allowing oil companies to gamble on the chance of another disaster, so be it. It’s just a matter of how many people are impacted by the fallout (in some cases literally) when things go wrong. More than likely, another well will blow out and more oil rig workers will die. There could be another deluge of crude oil mucking up our habitat. As long as it’s out of sight, the status quo abides.

Drill, baby. Drill.

Fox News features Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid embroiled in a sizzling scandal: He, for a period of time, had on his staff a woman (specifically noted as “Hispanic”) who had entered into a sham “green-card” marriage with a Lebanese guy with a Muslim-sounding name. Turns out it’s not legal to get married just to get legal residency in the US, and this Muslim-seeming guy admitted to authorities his having a sham marriage and was subsequently deported. This occurred only a month after the Reid-staffer began working for him, and she was let go after an “internal investigation” by Reid’s office.

But a burning question remains: when did Harry Reid himself know about this woman, and for how long before firing her? (I guess that’s two questions)

“The Nevada Republican Party called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Tuesday to personally explain how somebody who confessed to a sham marriage with a Lebanese national later deported ended up on his staff — and precisely when he found out about her past.”

Seriously? Who the hell wants to know that? Oh, right. The Republican Party, who also want Reid to lose his campaign for reelection. They would ask stupid questions, if only to insinuate that the Senator lacks proper judgment. The article, however, moves on to suggest that Reid supports Hispanics and their de-sanctifying marriage with illegal Muslim immigrants that might also be threatening national security.

It’s actually pretty damn clever. Take an interesting piece of gossip and hit on all the conservative dog whistles in a compelling anecdote about an illegal immigrant marrying another immigrant (who was probably illegal at some point in her blood-line) in order to skip over the usual immigration process. Not only that, but this dude may or may not be a terrorist!

“Tarhini had been the subject of an Oklahoma City Joint Terror Task Force investigation. Following his arrest in 2009, he was interviewed by FBI agents who sources say asked about his ties to extremists groups. Some sources said they determined he did not have ties to any terror group, but other sources close to the case said that could not be ruled out.”

Holy shit! Queue the anti-immigration “watch-dog” groups who say our national security is being threatened by foreigners burrowing their way into the halls of power, and voile! You have a headlining attack-ad on Fox News against a Democratic candidate.

That’s what this is, after all, isn’t it? Every campaign does this; find the kinks in your opponent’s armor and blow them out of proportion with the goal of eliciting an emotional reaction amongst the audience. Hopefully it translates into votes. You want to stir up fear a the ballot-box, but this isn’t a campaign mailer or a TV ad: this is Fox News. It’s meant to look just like real journalism, even though it’s nothing more than tabloid fodder, political gossip that misses the larger point. Think about this rationally, just for a minute. What reason is there to think that Harry Reid can be fairly judged by the actions of this one woman? It’s her private life, and once it came to everyone’s attention, she was fired. The dude was deported! What more do you want? Who cares when Reid knew, or if he knew, because it doesn’t really matter now that the whole thing’s over and no one got hurt. All it does is throw more shit in an already toxic election-season.

And it’s not enough to go after Reid; now we bring former staffers and their personal lives into the fray, which is really classy. I especially like how these unnamed and unverifiable sources claim that the Lebanese guy (who was targeted by authorities for what? Merely being Middle-Eastern?) may or may not be linked to terrorists. I’m not defending what these people did (since it’s clearly illegal), but turning this woman and someone desperate to stay in this country into criminals in order to tarnish the image of a political opponent should be seen as unsavory. Instead, people call it journalism. There’s a human story in all this, but it’s ignored because it’s not about how or what we win, only that we win.

I’m done laughing now.

It’s been seven years since the Fall of Baghdad. The number of American and coalition dead stands at 4734. The number of American wounded is over 30,000. The issue here is not how small or how large that number is compared to previous wars; it’s whether or not any of them were worth the price.

Many people are going to spend their entire lives being convinced that invading Iraq in 2003 was a good idea (and, yes, we did start the war by choice). There were no weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein, while a terrible dictator, was not allied in any way with the terrorists behind 9/11. The burgeoning “democracy” in Iraq is violent and uncertain. It is impossible to argue that promoting democratic institutions in that country was best accomplished by what we’ve done so far.

Where was the imminent threat to our security that justified starting a war? Thousands of Iraqis died, many of them innocent civilians, as a direct result of decisions made by American officials. What did those deaths bring as a result? How much safer are American lives now that all of these people are dead?

These are not questions we can afford to ignore as a society. There is no way to say, “Oops, my bad” to the people who have sacrificed their lives for whatever noble cause our nation erroneously pursued. Because those people are dead. Left now are only their memories that live on in those who loved them.

What are they going to remember? That no matter what the facts seem to be, the whole thing was at least done with the best of intentions? I’m not convinced that’s true, either. But what does it matter, so long as we can go back to shopping?

We run the risk of too easily allowing the burdens of war to fall on a small and easy to ignore segment of the population whilst going along with our lives as if nothing happened. The consequences of this war will not go unnoticed; thousands of PTSD suffers; a deep blow to our military’s ability to defend our nation; a permanent stain on our moral record. This was no liberation of France. This was no heroic defeat of a clear and present danger. It was at best incompetence and hubris, and yet no one has been held to account.

In fact, it seems like no one gives a shit about it at all.

Perhaps the trauma is too subtle, or too fresh. Maybe one day we will overcome our weak-minded instinct to rewrite history and convince ourselves we are, and always were, the victims. Without thorough self-reflection about how we, as a nation, were able to commit an act of war (an established crime against humanity) there will be no hope for redemption. There will only be the inevitable reckoning by those who have been wronged. And I don’t mean just Iraqis.

The war may be coming to an end, but the fallout is only just beginning.

To put it simply, the Republican party is now officially the party of really rich assholes (we’ll refer to them as RRAs from now on). Sorry, but any other conclusion is bereft of supporting evidence. This is not to say that Democrats are all saints, oh God no. For instance, I found President Obama’s oval office address about the BP oil spill too heavy on empty platitudes. No, I’m specifically addressing the ridiculous state of the opposition party, which is supposed to be a balancing force in our two-party system.

The Republican response to everything so far has been this: If the President even utters it, we oppose it. If he likes dogs, we accuse him of hating cats.  He eats ice cream on camera, we say he’s not doing enough to combat obesity. He uses too big of words in a speech, he’s an elitist.

You get the idea.

They offer top-tier bitching and moaning but not any actual ideas. The healthcare debate was a perfect example; instead of trying to come to an agreement with Dem’s on anything, they made shit up to scare people (remember death-panels?) and demanded that the bill be scrapped after a year’s work. They even tried to use Senate rules to deny Democrats the ability to govern despite their having a 60-fucking-seat majority. Oh, now that it’s 59, they no longer have enough of a mandate. Even worse: they used this tactic to block military funding, just to delay voting on healthcare. Classy.

The bill passed anyway, though it was watered down…which is perfect, because now if our health care situation doesn’t improve, it’s not because Republicans and conservative Dem’s made stupid demands that undercut reform’s effectiveness, it’s because the Dem’s were wrong entirely.

It’s Scorched Earth politics, and now the GOP is taking that to a literal extreme with the BP oil-spill by actively defending the oil industry while calling on them to be held accountable. The oil company either fucked up and needs to pay or it doesn’t; which is it? On one hand these clowns want to protect the industry’s ability to make tons (and TONS) of profit while on the other hand…there is a giant fucking oil spill on the Gulf Coast. They have accused the President of using this as an opportunity to wrestle control over private industry, going so far as to accuse Dem’s of “shaking down” BP unnecessarily. Oh no, socialist take over! Run for your lives!

Um, excuse me? The oil companies testified in front of these very same people and told them directly that the industry CANNOT PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT AFTER HUGE OIL SPILLS. They can’t. They don’t know how to. Why? Because it was cheaper to figure out how to drill deeper without a back-up plan. This spill is living-goddamn-proof of unregulated excess and yet the GOP is defending oil companies from potentially increased government oversight? They actually want to let these same inept and unconcerned oil companies to keep drilling EVEN DEEPER. Now. It defies reason.

…Unless that’s not a problem for you. Republicans are the ones who pushed for the loosened government oversight that created this disaster; it’s one of their main party platforms. “Let the free market decide.” Yeah, well, the free market just took a huge shit all over the Gulf Coast and (with complete mind-numbing hypocrisy) the GOP doesn’t want this disaster to discourage continued oil exploration. Champions of personal accountability my ass: BP fucked up and has the duty to pay for punitive damages but Republicans and oil-loving Dem’s don’t want to disturb the most ridiculous profit-margins ever. In fact, they have yet to get rid of billions of dollars in tax-breaks and subsidies to this oh-so holiest of holy industries. I thought Republicans hated bail-outs! Which is it? Make the industry pay even if it means they go under or make the taxpayer pay and say it’s to “protect oil-industry jobs” that are more important than car manufacturing jobs?

I can’t wait to see how the GOP attempt to placate the genuine populist rage borne out of the chain of unfettered corporate-induced crises we’ve had, while simultaneously “shaking down” industry lobbyists for campaign money (oh, those RRAs have deep pockets and can vote, too, you know). You can’t have it both ways, Jack. If you haven’t already concluded that the GOP is officially the party of big-money America, the proof is in the pudding.

Keep that in mind as you fill out your ballot in November.

Just to be clear, drilling “here at home” is not somehow going to make us more “independent.” It really isn’t. When oil gets pumped it goes into an international market and Americans wind up buying from overseas because we don’t produce enough here at home to cover all of our consumption. Drilling more here at home will only increase the global supply and maybe help keep prices down but it won’t make us any more secure.

Say the Saudis stopped shipping us oil (which they wouldn’t since they want our money); it’s not like suddenly American companies are going to be there with new holes drilled in ANWR to make up the difference. All it means is that oil prices go up here at home. In fact, domestic drillers will have a huge windfall because now that the Saudis aren’t competing, their stuff is worth more. It’s a function of supply and demand. In the age of super-tankers, companies drilling here at home are going to ship their supply to the ones who pay the best, even if it’s not America.

So, international markets mean access to oil remains an issue of consumption, not where it comes out of the ground.

You want to be secure from oil price-hikes due to unrest in the Middle-East or whatever other reason? Stop consuming so much. Strip-mining our own landscape only prolongs our continued reliance on a finite resource that (despite what deniers and Republicans say) also contributes to Climate Change. We need to switch to renewables and start doing it fast, because Peak Oil is either already here or damn close. Probably within the next 10 years (and certainly within our lifetimes) we will see oil get well over $100 a barrel and never drop. It’ll only go up.

The point is that we do need to have “energy independence;” not from foreign countries, but from oil itself. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of the calamitous spills and geopolitical posturing over flammable muck. There is no future there. It’s time to start living differently and the first step is to curtail our oil consumption. Walk, carpool, bus, bike, as much as you can. You can be a D-bag and say that it’s too hard or not important enough for you as an individual to really care, but every one of us has a responsibility to be a part of the change.

We need to relearn how to sacrifice for that which is bigger and more important than ourselves. We will do so voluntarily at an inconvenience now, or we will be forced to do so later due to circumstance and it’ll be a lot harder to stomach. The choice is up to each of us.

The whole point of the flotilla was specifically to violate this blockade, which is viewed as contributing to the human suffering in Gaza. Israel claims to be discouraging the smuggling of weapons and rockets into the hands of Hamas, an organization hostile to Israel and regarded as a terrorist group by the West. The commandos boarded the flotilla with paintball guns and side arms for self-defense. Once being inundated by violent protesters, however, they opened fire.

At least, that’s one narrative. There is now an ongoing battle over what exactly happened; some allege that the commandos opened fire without provocation, while others portray the activists as welding sticks, knives, and hand-guns stripped off of Israeli commandos.  Was the use of deadly force instigated by activists assaulting the commandos? Did Israel have the legal right to board in the first place? There are a lot of questions and Israel says they are investigating.

What and how it all happened is probably going to depend on which narrative you want to believe. What cannot be debated is that Israel looks very bad for killing nine protesters, regardless of who started what. Bruises and broken bones will heal but you can’t bring back the dead. There is no amount of “sorry” that can make up for this. Of course, Israel believes it was defending itself, much in the way Americans are “defending themselves” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Suffice it to say that an already tricky political situation has been inflamed and threatens to burn out of control. Turkey, where all of the dead are from (save for one Turkish-American), has withdrawn its ambassador to Israel and is calling the raid “piracy” and “murder.” This is despite being regarded as Israel’s one Muslim ally. Egypt is opening its border to Gaza and shoving the blame for everything onto Israel. Of course, they have their own problems with Islamic radicals and weapons being smuggled into and out of Gaza, which is why they were supporting the blockade, too. None of these countries likes that Iran is supporting Hamas.

Why is this bad? Because it drops a grenade on already thin ice. Israel looks like the bad guy, whether or not they deserve it, all the while trying to restart peace talks with the Palestinians and defend against covert militant support from abroad. International outcry is all against them since they were, after all, the ones who killed unarmed protesters. The UN, US, and everyone else is unsettled about this event. The blockade itself has been cast as spurious since Israel is being very picky about what it allows to cross into Gaza. They are only now allowing snack foods to be brought in. Why weren’t they before? Can you make rockets out of Chee-toes? Meanwhile, weapons are still getting in.

There are strong words being leveled against both the Israelis and Palestinian-supported Hamas. Both sides continue to use violence in what they see as their own self-defense. Meanwhile, life inside Gaza remains miserable and uncertain. I’m sure living next-door in Israel isn’t much fun either, but the Israeli response to this situation needs to appear more humbled than it has been because the voices of their supporters are diminishing. They are living next to what has essentially become a giant internment camp and the Palestinians are acting largely out of desperation, not mere ideological hatred. The violence will not stop until the Palestinians have hope of a real future. Brutal portrayals of military defense are not going to win hearts and minds, which is the only hope Israel has.

It will be easier to make this whole thing worse than to reassert an Israeli commitment to peace. They have real threats to their security and future, but they must understand that there are those who view them the same way. They must tread carefully before the storm hits and they have no friends left.

BP was on call to deal with disaster response but failed to do so after lying about its response capabilities.

Of the 55 million gallons aboard the Valdez, 11 million of those washed up into Alaska’s Prince William sound.

The blown-out Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico was preceded by the Ixtoc I oil platform spill that occurred in 1979; that blow-out occurred in 150 meters of water and released 126,000,000 gallons into the Gulf.  It leaked for ten months before a relief well could be drilled.

What do these events tell us?  That oil companies are willing to cheap out on safety in pursuit of business interests (aka profits) and that off-shore drilling is not a safe bet.  An entire coast of our country is being poisoned and we have the responsibility to look at what has happened before and how we got where we are.

This spill was inadvertent but it was not by any means inexplicable.  This has been waiting to happen for a long time, probably as long as it will take to recover from it.  Negligence, hubris, and criminal stupidity on the part of industry and government has sullied our shores for what might be generations.

Maybe now we’ll wake up and realize that there is no such thing as “cheap oil.”  Someone always pays.  We’ve known about the perils of oil dependency for decades.  Let’s stop waiting for the people making literal boatloads of money off of the status quo to change their business model (they won’t) and start changing how we power our lives.  We cannot go on like this, and I don’t think anyone who takes a real look at what’s unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico (and who looks back upon the travesties that have transpired prior to this) will feel right by pretending this doesn’t matter.

This will continue to happen over and over again until we stop relying so much on oil.  History tells you everything you need to know.

In outlining the historical development of modern Christian fundamentalism, Phillips reveals an interesting continuity of thought in American history: since its founding, the United States has been a place where people are free to worship as they please. Many right-wing Christians disparage the idea of separating church and state, but at its heart the point of doing so is to protect religion from being persecuted by the state. However, that also means that public institutions won’t protect existing churches from the real threat: competing religions. In the United States, you can go to whatever church you please and there is no place on Earth that has as many options as we do here. Religious fundamentalists support ingraining their version of the gospels into governing institutions and education in order to edge out competing theologies.

They have good reason to be afraid of other beliefs. After the United States was founded, Protestantism was the dominant brand of Christianity (and religious belief in general). Even then, though, there were splits in Christian sects that have been competing for followers ever since. Congregationalists, Baptists, and Episcopalians saw their share of the religious pie dwindle in the face of “splinter” groups like the Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormons. There are so many groups that now fly under a Christian banner, not to mention the non-Christian religions, that maintaining a flock requires appealing to the masses in whatever way possible. The lengths to which American believers will go to reach lost lambs was recently profiled by the Daily Show.

Populism in religion is a natural outgrowth of what has essentially become a “free market” of religious thought. Entrepreneurial minds can even turn a laughable science-fiction plot into the basis for a billion-dollar spiritual enterprise. But the outcry over Scientology or the Catholic church can easily be addressed by a congregation free to leave the church for one more in line with their personal beliefs. And therein lays the rub: church is supposed to be where people are given guidance on how to live righteously, knowing that humans are inherently imperfect. What happens when the church must shape its doctrine to placate to potentially unsavory beliefs?

What you get is two-fold: old-guard religions like the Catholic Church cling to antiquated notions of sexuality out of the need to placate to those who still harbor these outdated beliefs, only to see younger generations abandoning ship; “newer” Protestant outgrowths then welcome new flocks with hip ideas, particularly in America, like the notion of an individual relationship with God complete with your own personal Heaven. The freedom for religion to prosper like a start-up business is probably a uniquely American phenomenon, which would explain why since its founding the United States has become increasingly religious while the rest of the western world has done the opposite.

On one hand this freedom of thought is liberating, but it has a very troubling corollary. Americans are susceptible to commercial appeal not only in the consumption of products and services, but of ideas. In fact, the undeniable existence of competing social narratives in our political realm and in the media mirrors the relativity of thought within religious circles. In this country you are free to subscribe to whatever belief in God you so choose, which in turn affects the version of “Truth” you accept. We often conflate big-T “Truth” with a more generic reference to “truth,” which refers to the common pool of provable facts that form our “collective knowledge.” The problem is that today we are fighting more and more over the “facts” themselves and using rhetorical tricks to shape reality in a way that reflects preconceived versions of “Truth.”  Evangelists like Billy Graham and Glenn Beck (who performs like an evangelist, plain and simple) use this technique to shape peoples’ beliefs in incredibly dangerous ways.

Americans are increasingly at risk of being bought and sold by opportunists and charlatans who tell us only what we want to hear. The rise in popularity of evangelical Christian sects has in turn brought entrenched positions over allowing gays to have rights, women having domain over their own bodies, the role of science and critical thinking in our lives, and the presence of Christian ideals in our schools and institutions. These are all part of a movement to assert a particular brand of “Truth” via religious indoctrination masquerading as “populism.” It’s true that millions of followers are being united under a banner of self-righteous indulgence instead of being challenged to question the justness of their own actions.  This does not mean, however, that they ought to decide which version of reality we are to accept and abide by. The egotism underlying so much of the Christian-right today is being used to support such things as Climate Change denial (and anti-science beliefs in general) while, ironically, at the same time embracing social Darwinism. A democracy-proselytizing foreign policy coincides with a resource-hungry brand of consumption that sees the U.S. using a quarter of the world’s energy while only housing five percent of the population.  Continued complacency over these issues is a recipe for disaster.

Our adherence to democratic ideals means that the ideas with the largest number of followers will shape the path going forward. Unfortunately, too many of the voices claiming to have the answers are false prophets profiting off of deep-seated ignorance. So long as millions of Americans swallow the line that everything we are doing is fine and that God will reward us in Heaven if not on this Earth, we will slip into spiritual denial so deep that there will be no redemption.

Go figure, these are the same people who believe they have a one-way ticket to salvation once Armageddon begins, which is something they already accept as inevitable. Do we really want to see this line of thought shaping America’s future?

Timothy McVeigh was an angry young man but he wasn’t born to be a mass murderer. He was a Gulf War vet that is suspected of suffering from PTSD and then falling in with the anti-federal government crowds that fueled his discontent. Following the events at Waco he declared war on the U.S. government and as a result 168 people were killed.

That was 15 years ago.

Now look at today: we have thousands more of our young men coming home damaged from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These conflicts have been far more intense than anything from the first Gulf War. These men are returning to a country that is largely unaware of the war and its costs. I think unappreciative would not be too strong a word in this case, especially in the eyes of a combat veteran. What’s worse is that the government has neglected many of those suffering very palpable forms of PTSD and in some cases it has specifically marginalized these people due to the costs associated with their treatment.

McVeigh fell in with the gun-show crowd, survivalists, militia-types, groups that appeal specifically to people with military training and a sore-spot for the federal government. Couple this with the ravenous anti-government rhetoric popping up in our political debates, particularly on the right-wing fringes. Remember the guy who flew a plane into an IRS building in Austin? Recall the calls for secession and comparisons of Obama to Hitler and/or Stalin? Militia groups all over the country are gearing up and increasingly warning people about Big Brother on the march. This isn’t just rumor, it’s all over the place. The angry and paranoid fringe has been alerted and they are buying more guns as we speak.

Many of our political leaders are not tempering this nonsense. In fact, they’re actually trying to utilize it. They are pouring more fuel on an already highly volatile political climate, and there are plenty of angry young vets with more than enough reasons to dislike the United States government. It is the same basic formula that gave us Timothy McVeigh. The fringe that appeals to disturbed men like him is being brought into the mainstream by right-wing zealots and their cheerleaders in the media.

I don’t know if this is just paranoia but everything seems to be pointing to very disturbing possibilities. The scene is set for something terrible to happen and I honestly don’t know what to do other than to warn people that we’ve been here before. Fifteen years ago, 168 innocent people died because fear and anger towards the government hit a boiling point within a disturbed mind. God help us if the other potential Timothy McVeighs out there hear the final call to arms. It will be someone’s children, someone’s parents, someone that’s loved who dies because hatred and fear poisoned a young man’s injured mind.

We have to stop feigning madness, before it becomes all too real.

Reality TV is a joke, but people love it. It takes a documentary feel by presenting facts in a narrative form that people are used to. Take nature programs, for example: the hushed British voice-over says, “The mother Hyena brings back the spoils of her difficult hunt to feed the hungry pups, whose survival holds the key to the species’ survival.” It’s so dramatic, so tightly edited, with a perfect musical backdrop and it makes you think that what you are seeing is actually important.

My God, it’s a microcosm of the universal struggle for survival, it’s beautiful!

No, dude, it’s about a fucking Hyena. There are thousands more of them so this one pack or whatever (which is probably a composite of multiple packs taken from countless hours of boring footage) doesn’t really matter. It’s just a story being told in a way that makes it more relatable to a human audience. Well, imagine if it’s actual people instead of wild dogs. Then it really feels important!  But in “reality” you’re just wasting an hour watching the exploits of a bunch of drunken idiots from New Jersey.

So I don’t get off on reality TV, so what? A lot of people do. It’s artificial and gimmicky, most of it is ridiculously commercialized and nothing more than tabloid fodder, but it’s something for people to do when they’re bored and unemployed. Fine, but at least understand that reality TV isn’t “real.” There aren’t cameras following us around in real life and the boring bullshit doesn’t get edited out. You remember that show Cops from back in the day? If it showed what being a cop was really like it would be five minutes of tackling drunk red-necks and 55 minutes of paperwork. It’s all edited, the personalities are mostly wannabe actors and it’s all just for us to laugh at or, occasionally, to relate to instances similar to ones we have found ourselves in (but without a camera crew around to catch it).

It’s not real, but it is a reflection of what we think is “real” about our lives. It’s art imitating life, and we shouldn’t take it more seriously than that. Unfortunately, the line between “fact” and “fiction” gets obscured as we look for real life stories that make for good TV, which is where people also look to get informed about, you know…real life. What we get as a result are videos from assholes like the faux-journalist D-bag that made ACORN out to be a prostitution ring. Turns out the whole thing was a wholesale editing-laced political hack job, but that didn’t stop the witch hunt that led to ACORN’s demise. It was the worst kind of journalism, the kind that doesn’t piece together the threads of a story but instead manipulates footage to fabricate complete lies. It’s propaganda masquerading as news and people swallow it.

Why is that? I believe it is in no small part due to our consumption of “reality TV” beginning to overwhelm our grip on reality. The line is blurred to the point where the information we’re seeing on-screen could be fact or a slightly altered version of a fact, tweaked in order to provoke an emotional response. Fox News will mischaracterize the President’s words or ignore minor details if the end result is better ratings. Is Obama’s nuclear disarmament plan endangering America? Not really, but we’ll speculate that it is and introduce ridiculous assumptions that back up our claims. It’s a 24 hour “news” channel that is essentially a 24 hour “reality TV” show about a 24 hour news channel. They’re actors reading a script and the narrative they are pushing isn’t “real” but it resembles reality enough to evoke an emotional response. It’s as manipulative as any form of art but Fox is claiming to be “fair and balanced” as they report and “we decide.” It’s only lying if people take it seriously, which people shouldn’t.

Unless they do. The Fox-supported Tea Partiers, the Glenn Beck disciples, the Hannity-humpers, they follow like Limbaugh-lemmings in a ridiculous display of life imitating art. These people don’t get it that Fox doesn’t have an entertainment division and a news division; they’re one in the same. They need ratings so they sell the most scandalous narrative their audience will swallow, even if it means advocating anti-democratic ideals. It’s a joke, and the American public is the one being played. Watch it all you want, but don’t take anything they say as being based in fact. They aren’t trying to inform, they just want to keep you watching. You don’t do that by telling people that everything is alright. You do it by asking, “Is Obama destroying America?” and making Americans sit through a commercial break to find out.

Fox News is about selling a product, and what you’re buying is a version of reality that only exists on TV. That’s where it should stay.