No Matter What Your Problem Is...

Government is, obviously, the answer.

At least, if you're a Democrat. Or a Republican. Or a statist. But this list is becoming repetitive.

It's something I've slowly come to realize about the people around me: no matter what the question they are faced with, or the problem that is confronting them, government inevitably, at some point, becomes the answer. Or, more properly, government money. Which is, of course, only our money taken from us by force then being immediately regurgitated into a behemoth system of government agencies and programs.

That network of agencies and programs is precisely what people have come to depend upon. I'm convinced, at this point, that the "American dream" as it existed for our forebears on Ellis Island is nothing but a pipe dream, a quixotic fantasy that is fostered by the optimistic denizens of American suburbia. That dream has been strangled by the idea that, no matter what goes wrong, government has money for us.

Democrats live this out in their rhetoric - that is, blatantly telling us exactly how they think all problems should be solved. Poverty is rampant? Well, we should steal more money from every citizen in the country to (sort of) solve it. A teenager is pregnant and wants an abortion? Well, we've stolen some money precisely for that purpose! There are people who can't keep their opinions to themselves and live with other people? Well, legislation should fix that right up!

Republicans are, in some ways, more devious. Their ideas of government intervention are more subtle. Most of them actually think they are for limited government and free markets. But then a question arises as to how, exactly, to stop abortions, and it becomes clear how they think - obviously, government is the only entity that can stop that...not individual action, with people reaching out to their fellows. Saving corporate interests, protecting big money, stopping crime, fighting the forces of chaos...all those things are jobs for the government. Quite obviously.

But for the life of me, I can't understand why. Perhaps it can be traced back to the fact that people don't want to be responsible for things. It's far more comfortable to let somebody - or something - else take care of it. This might give rise to the apparent inability of any politician to put their money where their mouth is and actually help a poverty-stricken community or reach out to single mothers and help pay medical bills. Perhaps that's just how governments work; they are inherently designed to reduce their subjects' intellectual capacity to zero through entertainment and then become the answer to everything.

But given our federal government's track record, I can't fathom the overwhelming trust that is placed in it. Our government can't stop a cave-dwelling Saudi with a core base of a couple hundred followers whose sole assets are a satellite phone and an ego as big as Betelgeuse, despite a pantheon of security guidelines, two massive wars and, of course, denying that the Taliban ever offered to give him up. But we can totally and completely trust it to successfully stop a kid from shooting himself up on a cocktail of drugs in a back alley. And we can totally trust our government's plethora of health and safety regulations to never let a drug get recalled. Ever.

All that's not even touching on the fact that the government is the biggest advocate of legal plunder in this country. You can get fined for letting rainwater run off your property! (That's actually a measure being considered in my hometown at the moment. Apparently, my town gets little enough rain as it is, so we don't want it falling on concrete. Exactly how property owners are supposed to prevent that is anybody's guess.) Before we know it, they're going to be fining us for breathing.

Oh, that's right. We release CO2 at every exhale. Us evil polluters, breathing all over the planet.

So I suppose it comes down to this.

Through some twisted process, government has become the ultimate solution to every problem. Because it's so good at solving things. And somehow, if we could just get a different person in there, real solutions would come along, and life would be dandy. If we could just squeeze a little more money out of somebody, all our problems would be solved. Jenny would have a good school that didn't fill her mind with fluff, Rob wouldn't be living in a tumbledown apartment complex in the middle of the Projects, Sarah wouldn't be pregnant at 16 and contemplating an abortion, and Timmy wouldn't be down the well.

Oh, and grandma would be baking apple pie.

If only.

Here's the deal, folks. Government has proven over and over again that it ruins everything it touches. The economy, the medical industry, schools, roads, puppies, the post office, important founding documents, libraries, other countries. They can't get involved in anything and it end up better than when they started. A new administration is not going to change that. More money and more power isn't going to change that. It will just give them more opportunity to twist more out of us.

We're all addicted to government programs. And we all know addictions aren't good. Let's break the government habit. Who's with me?

Muslim Hysteria. Rant.

This is mostly a rant in response to some of the people in my hometown. They're of the "Tea Party" crowd - you know, the We Hate Obama and Hence Muslims Club? Yeah, them. The goodly dose of Muslim Hate they've got in them is mostly what this post is about.

Apparently, there's an Islamic university in Brunei, and someone in my town has a relationship with them. As he owns some land here, he decided to donate land to this organization for the purpose of starting a Muslim community center. Just a quick note: we have about 100 Muslim families in our town, and that number is growing. (We also have a pretty healthy Hindu community. It's pretty fun, but that's neither here nor there.) Currently, the Muslim worship center around here is properly termed a cultural center, and it's about the size of my house. Which is pretty tiny. It's probably some kind of fire hazard or something.

Edit: I have since heard from someone who actually went and talked to our local imam and Muslim clerics that the planned community center is not, in fact, affiliated with the Brunei university. Big surprise there. It's funded by a private individual whose name is Unissa, apparently. Fun times.

Anyway. No sooner did certain people in my town hear about this absolutely awful Big Bad Plot than they started talking about it anywhere they got the chance: on Facebook, on message boards, on news stories, at council meetings. Now, I'm all for getting your concerns out there. That's perfectly logical.

But dear people...why?

Of course, compounding all this is a government investment program geared towards immigrants. Our City Council is (quite misguidedly, in my opinion) planning a grand redevelopment of our downtown area. It's pretty ridiculous and wasteful, for multiple reasons, but I won't get into that here. The thing that is getting the We Hate Muslims Club into such a tizzy is the EB-5 program.

Quick overview of EB-5: it allows foreign investors to gain green cards much more quickly than they would otherwise. Basically, they have to invest no less than $500,000 in a struggling or new business in the US, create 10 stable jobs for 2 years, and they will then get a green card. Note that all regular forms and tests for citizenship have to be completed and performed, no exceptions. In effect, the only thing EB-5 allows foreign investors to do is get put at the top of the list for the 100,000 or so green cards we issue each year. (The cap for green card admittance into the US - that is, total, all the dependents who come with the actual holder, etc., is 480,000.)

There are a few different tacks people in my hometown are taking in opposing this:

1. It's "not fair"
2. We'll let evil Muslims in
3. Or possibly commies, which is even worse, naturally
4. We don't need foreign investment. Because, obviously, national investors are investing in our hometown. Obviously.

To the first, let me just say: life isn't fair. It's not been fair for many years. If you think people don't already buy their way into this country, you are very naive, and probably trust your government way too much. The fact is that people with more money will always get in first, or get preferential treatment, or be the only ones who get in. It's how it works. Yeah, it's not "fair"...but as I said, life's not fair. Get used to the idea.

As to commies and Muslims (or possibly commie Muslims, which is much worse than the two separately)...really?

First, let me make it clear that not every Muslim is radical. In fact, not even most Muslims are radical. The percentages for radicalized Islam are very low. They're rising, but that's more due to our actions in their countries and the foothold bin Laden's ideology took than anything. Just because someone calls itself Islamic - be it a university or a grocery store or a kiddie pool - doesn't mean it's radical. Seeing as there are over 1 billion Muslims on the planet, and only about 400,000 of them actually want to kill us - and probably less than 100,000 actually have anything near the capability to do so - I'm pretty sure we're relatively safe.

Furthermore, let's face facts. If you're bent on causing destruction and mayhem in as cheap a manner as possible (considering you've probably come from a poverty-ridden family in Afghanistan somewhere), are you really going to have the resources or inclination to invest $500,000 USD in a company, stick around for two years while you create 10 jobs, get your green card...

All just to blow something up?

Am I the only one who doesn't see the logic in that? It simply makes no sense for someone to go to all that trouble, especially considering it's not all that difficult to get into this country some other way. Just go to Mexico first, and you can practically dance across the border. After all, we do have such a big illegal immigration problem, it can't be that hard. Right? Furthermore, considering how much Muslims like making babies, they'll out-breed us long before they manage to blow us all up.

As to the communists: we've been there, done that. Get out of the sixties already.

Investors aren't coming to our hometown. There's probably a reason for that. I think it has something to do with the fact that nobody even knows where it is, and even though we're one of the larger cities in Texas, people prefer DFW or Houston to our town. Sorry, but them's the facts. Not to mention, our people make huge talking points out of things like EB-5. And you wonder why people think we're a little bit mad.

So in summary: America's still free, even for Muslims. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And for the love of my sanity, please stop harping on things that don't really matter.

Edit 11/21/11: For a related, more Christian-oriented post, see this post on my personal blog.

Short-Term Memory Loss

You remember Dory, the little blue fish in the Disney-Pixar film Finding Nemo? According to her, she suffers from short-term memory loss- an unfortunate predicament that leads to some very interesting plot twists along the journey she takes with the clownfish, Marlin.

Anyway. Hilarious fish aside, I am of the opinion that Americans suffer from a bad case of short-term memory loss. Why?

Maybe it's because American Conservatives seem dead-set on forgetting that their golden boy, George Bush, began the bailouts back in '08. Maybe because liberals consistently forget that they hated the wars not so long ago. Maybe because conservatives also always forget that not too long ago they were marked as possible terrorists...and then cheer on the deliberate expatriation of terrorists and the stripping of Constitutional rights from them.

Maybe all of that...

There's a video my mom found during the '08 election cycle. It featured parodies of George Bush and Clinton, with a "baby" John McCain and Obama, and Bush and Clinton were giving their two prodigies political advice. At one part in the song, they are singing about how their political plans are failing, people are getting upset...

"But if efforts at deflection aren't succeeding/And you feel that your career is on the brink/you've one trump card to play before conceding/As the details of your scandal become more than they can handle/They will surely seek relief and with memories oh so brief/With but one cycle of the news they'll find trivia to amuse/*gasp* Brittney's back in rehab!"

Yes folks, that is exactly what America is like. And this is what we're doing to ourselves.

Welcome to the world of one-week attention spans.

Conquest through Corporation

So I had a thought last night- for the last ten years, our country has been embroiled in two conflicts to quash out radical Islam. Recently, we've also had problems with Iran (she's radical too, apparently). However, what we need isn't wars.

We just need to push Walmart and McDonalds to settle down there, make themselves at home, and open up shop. There's nothing like Western fast food and convenience to quash those pesky concerns about religious and national identity. It's worked great in other countries, anyway.

To the Slaughter House

"War on Christmas"?

It happens every year. Around Halloween, Christians begin to get geared up- they buy bumper stickers online that proudly proclaim their position, and begin chanting catchy slogans to themselves. Thanksgiving hits. The day after (and often before) the Christmas decorations go up in stores all over America.

And the holiday wishes start.

A smiling young salesman, after handing you your receipt, widely smiles and wishes you- "Happy holidays!" At this point, there are two responses: 1) smile, return the greeting, and walk away, 2) glare at him, turn away, and walk off in a huff, determined to spread the word of the highly offensive greeting you were given amongst all your friends and online acquaintances.

Heh. I guess you know where this is going, eh?

Every year, we go through the same thing. Christians, their tender sensitivities hurt by the salesman's greeting, loudly yell- "Jesus is the Reason for the Season!" and "Keep Christ in Christmas!" until, by the end of the Christmas season, they're all so tired, they have to retreat back to the comfortable, worn holes of gay rights and abortion.

The most outspoken 'War on Christmas' soldier is the American Family Association, which annually posts a 'Naughty or Nice' list of companies that are "FOR" Christmas. (They can't even find a way to incorporate Christian terminology into the name. They have to borrow from Santa Claus!)

Christmas has become the holiday of the MasterCard. Our only thoughts on Christmas morning are "I hope Sally likes what I got," and "I wonder what I got!" Very Christian thoughts, there. In effect, Christmas has ceased to be the celebration of Christ's birth that the Catholics made it into, and it has more and more begun to resemble the original pagan origins.

So what are we putting Christ's name to? Christ's name is more and more used to justify the most excessive consumerism that is seen the whole year 'round. Do we really want Jesus' name reduced to that?

But beyond that, the 'War against the War on Christmas' is just plain petty. Does it really matter what the greeter at your local grocery store says in the way of holiday greeting? 'Happy Holidays' is a nice- and much shorter- way to say "Merry Christmas, Happy Thanksgiving, Happy New Year, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa!" all in one simple greeting. How can you get offended by that?

And in the end, the way someone greets you is really irrelevant. Christians waste their time fighting about such a fringe issue when what they should really be concerned about is winning souls!

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.

Psalm American

Indolence is my shepherd, I shall not want, for unemployment insurance is with me.

My apathy maketh me to lie down before the TV, I am led through all you-can-eat buffets.

Commercials restoreth my appetite, they lead me in the way of gullibility for profits' sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of responsibility, I shall fear nothing uncomfortable, for the government is with me; their rhetoric and promises they comfort me.

I preparest a table in the presence of my TV, I anointest mine head with a pillow, my cup runneth over for my belly's sake.

Surely good living and willful ignorance will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in a state of euphoria all the days of my life (hopefully).