on the American flag

Flags are powerful symbols and though I may long for an earth someday free of them (or perhaps free of what they currently represent to most folks), they're going to be with us for a while.

Anyway, ever since Sept 11 2001 I've carried a question with me that comes to mind every time I hear someone critical of another not wearing/flying/bumperstickering old glory.

Where was your lapel pin Sept 10 you jingoistic hypocrite?

I really don't care pt 2

It is said, us menfolk are cold and insensitive jerks who when words turn to things like feelings and empathy we fall away, disinterested.

So it is that I find myself watching this movie.

Being an amateur political junky I was looking forward to a discussion of the erosion of civil liberties, talking head wonkery, the usual.

About 20 minutes into it we get to know a family going through the nightmare of post sept 11 profiling and legally questionable detentions.

But I'm sitting there quickly losing interest as they insist on 'personalizing' the story in the event I can't make that leap on my own.

Honestly I kind of feel bad for my indifference but I found myself just not caring about these people and annoyed at their getting in the way of what I am really interested in, policy, analysis.

These people have suffered greatly and I worry about our erosion of liberties like many do.

Let's keep the family drama to Lifetime or Oxygen.

Does that make me a jerk?

I really don't care pt 1

I wish I had a more nuanced opinion on the Israeli and Palestinian situation (of which I'm fairly ignorant, but is it really any more complex than a gradeschool shoving match?), but in the end my fatigue at hearing this thing bitched about incessantly for literally my entire life leaves me with the desire to see both destroy each other for the good of the rest of the world.

I hold similar feelings for most Republicans/gun nuts who I fantasize finishing each other off in a massive quail hunt ala Dick Cheney.

The NeoCons may have invaded Iraq with a completely fabricated pretext, perfectly executed, at least there was the framework of something plausible.
Plus look at all that yummy oil.

Are these idiots fighting about anything more complex than the fact that my most precious and singularly unique and in noooo way similar god/prophet/one ring to rule them all sprang out of this utterly dreary sandy hell on earth and we must defend it because there's no way they could have made up the very same story about the very same place using different names.

Does that make me a jerk?