It’s been a while since I’ve posted.

In all honesty, I’m a bit tired of the same old aimless blogging.  This outlet is no longer as anonymous as it used to be, and, in true “careful what you wish for fashion” I’m in a conundrum: I have more readers, but they’re people that I know.  Some of them don’t always seem to be familiar–either with the concept of exaggeration for comedic effect, or with my tendency to use it liberally.  Some of them are likely to approach me in the hallway (either a literal hallway or a metaphoric one) and ask me about something I’ve written.

In the case of literal hallways, it’s even more alarming: I’ve written things about my work environment that are predicated on a good number of my coworkers not knowing that I have a blog.  Some people are good about keeping the secret, others … less so.

And so, I’ve tried to keep my liberal rants and raves to a minimum in the hopes that I won’t offend anyone.  And in doing so, I’ve made myself rather bored with the whole concept.

Well, I’ve got a rant.  And if it offends you, tough.

For a while, I’ve been trying to put my finger on my feelings about the current political situation in the country.  And, frankly, it’s not just a political thing although what set me off today is political in nature.

We have guaranteed freedom of speech in this country.  The problem that I’ve noticed is that as a society, we don’t practice responsible freedom speech.  Americans seem to think that if they have a thought on their head, it needs to be stated out loud.

At the moment, we have this whole situation going on with President Obama: the man has the gall to want to speak directly to schoolchildren to encourage them to stay in school.  The nerve!  Doesn’t he know that as a bona-fide secret Muslim who was born in Zanzibar* and is trying to convert the entire country to Socialist Fascism** that good right-wing American Christians will see right through the AntiChrist’s ploy to brainwash their children.  After all, Memaw and Naydell left school after the fourth grade, and they turned out just fine!

Seriously.

Our last president … well, let’s put it this way.  In eight years, he took the entire nation to war with one country that had something to do with 9/11 (sorta) but that wasn’t spectacular enough for the news media … or his popularity ratings.  So, we decided to go to war with another country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and posed absolutely no threat whatsoever to the United States–this second war was justified on the presentation of completely false intelligence that the White House, it has been revealed, practically made up.  As part of said invasion, it was revealed that our infantrymen were involved in torture of sensitive prisoners, and graphic humiliation of non-sensitive prisoners.  We went from having a balanced budget to one so far in the hole that it’s hard to fathom … and, oh, by the way, started the whole corporate bailout scheme that everyone seems to have forgotten about and now blames on Obama.

Let me say this: I have lost my enchantment with Obama.  I have.  I’m starting to think that the best chance the Democrats have to keep the White House in 2012 is for Obama to not run again.

That said, where was this level of vitriol and anger at Bush 43?  I hated the man — hated him.  For all of the reasons mentioned above, and much more.  To his dirty rotten core.  But if he’d spoken to schoolchildren about the importance of education, I would have made a joke that the speech would be titled: “Stay in School!  Don’t turn out like me,” and let it go.  I wouldn’t have petitioned the school board to either not show the speech or change their policies to allow children to skip school during it.

What we’re hiding here is racism, pure and simple.  People don’t like Obama because he’s an educated black man.  It’s not nice to say that we don’t like him because he’s black, so we make shit up.  He’s Muslim.  He’s socialist.  He’s fascist.  He’s Zanzibari Kenyan.  But, no, really it’s not because he’s black.  We’ve evolved.  (But only metaphorically — we don’t use that term to suggest that we believe in Evolution.  We all know it’s much more likely that an invisible guy who lives in the sky snapped his fingers and made the entire universe happen in six days.)

Moving beyond politics: Americans really do think that they can say whatever they want — which they can, but without any sense of appropriateness or decency.

Take, for example, an experience that I had in El Paso a few weeks ago.  Natalie and I delivered training to a group of 70 people.  At the end of the day, as we were proceeding to the rental car with our things, we reflected on the day.  “It seemed to go well,” she said to me.  “People really seemed to enjoy it.”
“I think so too,” I said, “but I noticed that there was at least one evaluation that seemed to be straight 1s down the line.”  [Our evaluation forms consist of rankings on a 1-5 scale: 1 is "strongly disagree / poor / strongly dislike."]

Natalie then did what we’ve learned over the years that you should never do.  While standing in the parking lot, she pulled out the collected evaluation forms and started going through them.

I should say this.  The number of negative evaluations was somewhere around 4.  Of 70.  Far outnumbered by the number of overwhelmingly positive evaluations.

However, the negative evaluations were really negative.  Like, nasty on a personal level toward the two of us.  One of them, for example, went into pedantic detail about what a poor speaker I am because I said “um” and “ah” too much during one of the presentations (which I had prefaced by saying, “I haven’t done this one in a couple of years, so bear with me”).  I won’t even repeat some of the other comments because, well, they’re not worth repeating.

We sat in the rental car (yeah, it was a dry heat, but 102 is 102, especially when the sun is shining directly on you) in shocked silence.  “So much for professionalism,” I said.
“What on earth would make someone think that it’s OK to say these things to someone?” Natalie asked.
“I … have no idea.”

The coordinator of the event contacted us last week to see if we could set up another date for later in the fall or spring.  “All in all, I think it went very well,” she said.

Natalie called to ask if there was any way to respond in a way that would both convey our enthusiasm and willingness to continue working together, while making reference to the unacceptable and inappropriate nature of some of the comments on the evaluation forms.  “No,” I said.  “It’ll make us seem petty.”

My guess is that the reason people say nasty things is the disconnect of the written word: it’s easier to write it out and not have to deal with the repercussions of watching what you say hit home.  I work with a professor like that: in person, he’s the sweetest, most generous guy.  Put an Ethernet connection between him and the rest of the world and he becomes the sadistic lovechild of Dorothy Parker and Jason, the machete wielding villain of the Friday the 13th movies.  I’ve never heard him use the f-word in person.  I’ve never read an e-mail from him that didn’t contain it.

Why are we, as a people, so unaffected by the notion of the effect that the words we write have on others?  Why do we think it’s OK to engage in such awful diatribe?  Have we really lost the ability to debate civilly without resorting to name calling, innuendo, and wild accusations?

In other words: what’s wrong with us?

*Yes, children: in 1961, Mombassa, which is now in Kenya, was part of the sultanate of Zanzibar.  It became part of Kenya in 1963.  I strongly suspect that the reason why no one in the birther movement knows this is because they all think Zanzibar is a made up place like Wonderland, Narnia, or Canada.

** Quick primer: fascists are on the extreme right side of the political spectrum; socialists are on the left side–and not that far to the left, either.  You think they’re farther than they are because American “liberals” are what, in most countries, are called “leftist-centrists,” meaning that they’re just to the left of the center on the political spectrum.  Socialists and Fascists do not like each other as a matter of course.  It is not politically possible for Obama to be a socialist while pursing a fascist policy.  It does not make you look smarter to try to use both terms together and pretend that they mean the same thing.  They don’t.  And it makes you look even more stupid than you are.