I Just...What?

Sometimes when I drive, I like to listen to talk radio to stay awake. And since we don't have any new-fangled gizmo like 'Sirius satellite radio', that means Right Wing Yell Radio.

Because that's the whole show on the public airwaves. You know...the Liberal Media.

It sort of drifted in and out, but I finally found one that lasted for a good ten minutes before statticking away...The Michael Savage Show.

In ten minutes, I learned a few things.

At least I'm pretty sure I was learning, because every other sentence he said one of two things-

"You don't know this."

"This is something you don't understand."

So the first thing I learned was that Michael Savage is psychic and knows what I know and understand. Awesome.

And it must be true. He sounded very sure of himself.

I don't want to withhold this valuable information from you, so here it is, pretty much in the order presented, as I remembered to dictate it into my phone after manually closing my mouth that was hanging open in amazement.

-Atheists only believe in power. Atheists don't believe in tomorrow or an afterlife, so they feel they are free to do anything they want to without repercussion. Which is so weird, because *I'M* an Atheist and I do believe in tomorrow. Also, myself and all the other Atheists I know tend to treat this one life we have with MORE care and concern for others and tend to be MORE moral than someone who believes that they can do pretty much anything (no, wait- absolutely anything) and as long as they say, "I'm sorry" and give puppydog eyes to the Man in the Sky, they're totally cool. We have no 'spiritual loophole'- we're either good people or assholes and most of us choose to be good people...because it's the right thing to do- not to avoid burning in imaginary hell.

-This current administration is Atheist. That's why it's overstepped its power over and over again. Ahhh...cleverly disguised as a Christian family and cleverly using Executive Orders less than any other president in the history of Executive Orders. Nefarious.

-Israel is fighting for its life against Gaza, who keeps viciously attacking unprovoked. It's more than a regional war, tho- Israel as God's Chosen People are literally fighting for the future of the ENTIRE WORLD in a Judeo-Christian(?) vs. ISLAM battle and the ATHEISTS in the US who are pushing the LIBERAL One-World Order are sending poor little Israel to the Slaughter. I just...I can't. It's too insane. Gaza has NOTHING. They are trapped there and being decimated by an Israel that is armed to the teeth. I just...too much propaganda horror.

-The LIBERAL ATHEIST US government and its bastard media is 'DEMONIZING Vladimir Putin, who is our NATURAL ALLY in the war for a moral world'. Read that again. It's actually verbatim what he said. Again, slowly.

Ten minutes.

What if this sort of stuff was all I was exposed to? What if this, and Hannity, and Rush, and WorldNet Daily were my only sources of news? I'm surrounded by people like this and I can't get over it. They aren't bad people. But they swallow this shit hook, line, sinker, pole, fisherman AND BOAT. And if you try to put anything else in front of them that doesn't square with what they 'know', it just doesn't compute. Best case scenario is they look at you like you're an imbecile. Worst case is they'll tell you you're unAmerican and maybe need to move somewhere else.

Like where? America, land of the Free where everyone's voice and opinion counts? I'm already a citizen of that nation, thank you very much. Although more and more, 'living Blue in a Red State' is an exercise in courage/stupidity/futility.

This morning while drinking coffee, I had a brief online discussion regarding Robert Reich's latest column- should the US break up into different countries? Are we too far gone off either side to ever come back together?

All the vile bullshit Michael Savage vomited out onto the airwaves and I just typed out? That's 'truth' to a great many people. They hear it from their trusted sources and it's parroted from their pulpits and gets cemented in their heads that way and to question it gets tangled up in questioning God and lord knows we can't do THAT.

Lets talk for a moment about the refugees down on the border.

Here's what I read about that from the Right Wing just in the last hour and from just one thread-

"My sister said it takes $15,000 just to feed one of those kids till they get deported."

"I read that only 2% of the illegals are children, the others are gang members and adults who are just being released into our country."

Please note that this was in a conversation where the participants were actually grappling with the Christian humanitarian aspect of the refugees (although they can't bring themselves to refer to them as anything but 'illegals'), not your usual run of the mill Hate Crowd.

And they STILL couldn't do it- they still couldn't make the insurmountable leap from what they're being fed and what the real needs and issues are. They still spew out, "We need to take care of our own people first!" when...NO SHIT. Why are the two things mutually exclusive? They all need attending- the refugees, our homeless, our veterans, our children. All of it. None of it is right and we COULD afford it all if only we stopped being so damn afraid because we are being told to be afraid.

The very size and depth of their fear makes me afraid for our future as a nation indivisible.

I'm afraid.

I'm afraid that the internet made things worse instead of better. That instead of broadening people's horizons with learning different viewpoints and cultures, it gave the perfect platform to circle the wagons of isolationism- to burrow down in pockets of familiarity and stay there...vindicated by being surrounded only by those who think the same, look the same, hate the same.

I'm afraid that there is a huge population in the middle who have no clue. They don't want to think about things that are far away because it doesn't affect them, don't vote for anything other than president (if then) because they don't think it'll change anything anyway and it's SO HARRRRRRD to like, read up on issues and shit. So they coast, and ride the tide, and don't look up unless something finally directly affects them and it'll be too late. It'll be too fucking late.

I'm afraid that it's already too late.