Identity

Touching on something I wrote in the previous post.

I know that people who've come in here and read my blog must think that I am a Democrat, or a liberal. The two sites which have been nice enough to mention my on their blogrolls - The Moderate Voice and Balloon Juice - have me on the left voices section, as per my request. I do consider myself to be an independent moderate; it's just nowadays I find much more to be annoyed at from the Republicans than the Democrats. This is most definitely not to say that the Democrats are innocent of making me angry. It's just that their offenses seem lesser than those the Republicans offer, both due to the usual ineptitude of the party itself and the fact that they're not in power to do much damage.

Beyond that, though, the Republicans (and by this I mean the loud ones, the ones who are in charge nowadays) have hit several points of my psyche that grate like sand in the mouth.

I did not and do not appreciate being told that since I hold a different opinion about the war than those in charge, I am against America. Folks, if America was ever not embodied in a group of people, it would be Frist, DeLay, Cheney, Bush, Dobson, Perkins, and their kind. I do not say they are bad people in toto - I do say that when it comes to politics, they are bad people in situ. The only other example I could add to the antimatter embodiment is Joe McCarthy - and this tactic of smearing people who disagree makes him not fit in this group only by the small impediment of him being dead.

I do not and did not like the way the group of people in office acted with the maniacal energy of true fanatical believers, trampling over laws and customs to get their ways enacted. I fear the way the loud ones feel that extremitism in the act of THEIR conscience is not a virtue, it is a calling. And while I have to laugh at the hypocrisy displayed in their defense of it - see perjury and how the crime decision is based on which party does it - I also have to shudder that they don't a.)seem to NOTICE they're this hypocritical and biased or, perhaps worse, b.)don't think it matters anyway.

I do not and never will like the unholy conjoining of religion and the Republican party. We saw the square-dance calling the Republicans danced to in the Terri Schaivo case, performing the steps demanded of them by the guys in the painted on haloes playing the tin harps. We've seen how much pull they have by helping to destroy Harriet Meirs's candidacy, since she didn't seem like the "right type" according to their dip-in-the-moral stricture litmus test. (Of course, Ms. Meirs didn't need they help in self destruction - her appointment was the closest thing to a political suicide attempt I've seen in a while. That being said, the self appointed censors certainly pulled some weight in this matter.) We see that for these people, morality is a distant second to power, and the image they want to remake their neighbor in is called a "mirror".

I hate the way any fact that doesn't mesh in the puzzle pieces making up the loud Republican's view of the world is discarded. (The Republican War on Science exposes much of this.) It reminds me far too much of
"E pour si muevo", or Japan's rewriting of Pearl Harbor in their history books. It is a reflection of IDiocy; refusing any and all facts that call your beliefs into questions. There's the crux - to these people, science is merely a casting of belief - those facts that match your faith are okay, whereas those that don't are wrong. I wish I could have used this kind of reasoning in school.

Believe me, I groan at many things the Democrats do. But what they do that makes me angry, or embarrassed, are just not as important as being told that I am a traitor since I doubted the WMD information (odd to have been called so many names for being right), that science is wrong since it doesn't adhere to a conservative stance, that religion should be used for political power and separation, and that what was wrong when a Democrat did it is right when a Republican does. These ideas (for lack of a better word) are anathema to me.

So you see, I can remain independent and yet criticize the Republicans mainly. From polls I've seen, I'm not the only one doing so.