Meh

Hi, people.  I know I haven't been around and some of you have chastised me for it.  There are a lot of reasons I haven't been coming online I suppose.  One of them is that the weather has (finally!) been nice, so we've been outside every minute that we can be and we're undertaking a big yard-improvement project which, along with the veg garden, has been sucking every spare minute and bit of energy.  We also went fishing--we got our son his own fishing pole (I don't fish, but my boys do)--and it was a blast.  I do have to apologize, though, to the people and pelicans of Roberts, Idaho:  We deeply regret that one of our drink bottles flew off the pier while we were preparing to leave and we were unable to retrieve it before it got way out in the middle of the lake.  My son couldn't go to sleep that night worrying about that bottle; he was especially disturbed by the thought that one of the pelicans might mistake the shiny bottle for a fish and eat it and damage his bowels.  Seriously.  I'm pretty impressed that a 3-year-old went through that thought process.  I promised him that next time we're there we will pick up any stray bottles we can find--he's big into picking up litter.

Also, and I've said this before I know, but when I come online I end up getting angry about something or another.  If I avoid the computer, I'm really quite a happy and contented person--I cannot say I'm even-tempered because that is sooo not like me, but happy anyway.  That's no small thing.

I'm going to try this summer to keep up blogging about my gardening and canning and all that, but I can't do the rest of it.  I can no longer waste my energy reading crap that is poorly argued and is bound to upset me.  I was already thinking along these lines, but the other night I chanced to comment on someone else's blog (someone I don't know) and I posted this response to someone who stated that Americans don't apparently care about other nations:

Part of the problem seems to me to be that the mainstream media inflate certain things and completely de-emphasize others. Most of my American friends are well aware of this, and shows like The Colbert Report make it pretty freakin clear. But people in other countries are less likely to see that than they are the Fox/CNN crap which emphasizes the standard government line and doesn't focus on war protests or really anything that gets far away from the press releases they get from government and Pentagon officials. If that's all you know about America, then your view of it is pretty well screwed. But that's what you get for trusting the news. Meh.

And I have to say to karlos that I find it absurd that you think America does not care about the existence of other countries and yet more absurd that you think American voters should care more about other countries than they do about themselves. First, America--both the government and its citizens individually--is involved in projects to help other countries all over the world (in the Middle East, granted, it's only Israel). Even some liberal commentators have acknowledged how much aid the Bush administration has given to Africa. American NGOs, too, such as Habitat for Humanity and the Peace Corps are also involved in other countries throughout the world. The CDC does huge amounts of disease prevention work overseas. So, I don't think you have any substantive case that America in general does not care about other countries in general.

And I know that a lot of foreigners think that when we vote, it should be with other countries foremost in our minds. But give me a break. What country's people do this? Certainly foreign policy is an important part of this election, and we all know it. But it is just stupid to suggest that we shouldn't care about our economy. For one thing, our economy, being so big and tied to so many others, matters to the rest of the world, less now than it used to, but it still matters--China needs someone to buy all that crap. For another thing, nobody--I don't care what nationality--is going to vote for something that hurts them personally, and a lot of Americans are being personally hurt by the current state of the economy. I'm having a hard time thinking of another nation so beneficent that when some sectors of its population had longstanding 20%+ unemployment, they would care more about their nation's reputation in other countries than about economic policy. Perhaps there is one, but nothing jumps out.

Of course, we don't necessarily have to choose. Ideally, a politician will step forward with a decent economic policy and a decent foreign policy. I doubt that person is John McCain from what I've seen so far; however, so far, the Democrats are not looking like the shoo-in party that they should be. This should have been a cakewalk for them, but it isn't going to be now, unless I am much mistaken.

I then received a private message from the person I was responding to that indicated that he (I'm guessing from the name, but possibly she) stopped reading my comment after I started turning it into a personal attack.  I realize I don't always get a lot of sleep, and I'm lazy about proofreading, but I don't see personal attacks.  I did refer to his statements as "absurd" and "stupid" but unless his statements have taken on bodily presence (in which case, someone should alert the tabloids!), that isn't a personal attack. 

I do understand that the third paragraph isn't particularly strong argumentation, but lately I have been especially bothered by this notion some people seem to have that America should be held to requirements that no other nation is.  A lot of people talk about how racist America is as if racism existed nowhere else or talk about slavery as if America invented it.  I am to suppose that we are also the only nation with any other kind of bigotry, too.  I am also given to understand that we are the only people who get do or would get testy at illegal immigrants or that we are the only people in the history of the world who get testy, period.  We suck.  We get it.  We suck, we're the worst people ever, and you hate us.  Fine.  I don't personally give a crap anymore.  We're selfish, we're ungenerous, we're crazed fundamentalists, whatever.  Oh, right, and we hate the environment.  Are we done here?

Yeah, so, like I said, I'm tired of that, and I meant to point out that a) the US does sometimes do good things, b) we do actually sometimes as a nation demonstrate caring towards other nations, c) if you believe that the US is entirely defined and delimited by what you see on CNN, then (and here's your personal attack) YOU ARE STUPID.  There I've said it. 

Anyway, so then this person wrote me another message indicating--I don't remember.  If Fight Club taught me nothing else, it taught me that sometimes you have to say, "This conversation is OVER" and walk away, so I deleted it.  I did read it, but I gave it no further thought, although I believe he did ask what I thought "absurd" means causing me to violently roll my eyes.

So, today I check in with the old Vox to find yet another message from this tenacious little person that went a little something like this:

I was going to tear everything in your reply apart in the post but a] i was tired. b] i thought it polite not to c] i stopped reading when i found the insults and your comment got off the subject and became a personal attack

d] i noticed those in your neighbourhood and i am sure that had a bearing on your desire to insult me

that's that i suppose