We've grown far too accustomed to the absurd and egregious in America.
Blame the 24-hour news cycle. Blame reality TV. Blame Rupert Murdoch. Blame whoever you will, but the fact is the news today is filled with devastation, life changing, country altering, social policy ripping things; events that wind up a major news story for a minute and then float away unsolved, unresolved, but again unnoticed.
Take the oil spill in the Gulf. This morning President Obama said that the oil spill could be the most devastating ecological disaster or our era. Estimates are saying a five year cleanup is optimistic. And fishing has been shut down East of the Mississippi River Delta to Pensacola, FL.
I'll say again. Fishing has been SHUT DOWN East of the Mississippi.
Now that's so absurd, so beyond the pale, that the response should be off the charts. That includes no new drilling. Period. We get 1/3 of our oil from what we drill. 1/3. You mean to tell me we can't replace 1/3 of our oil intake with other, cleaner sources that if breached won't shut down fishing along a huge junk of coastline in the United States? Are we that dumb?
But that wasn't' the only absurd, out-of-this world thing that happened in that week alone. Nope, a state decided to launch a war on brown people. Arizona, the last contiguous state to be admitted to the union in 1912 (#48), Arizona with almost 400 miles of border with another country has decided to behave like the abandoned abused child, turning to every bad behavior it can think of to get the Feds to notice it, in regards to immigration.
Mexico issued a travel alert to Arizona for all it's citizens. A foreign country has issued a travel alert for a U.S. State for all it's citizens because of institutionalized bigotry.
And the reaction? The left goes way to far to try and say the issue is complex, there isn't that big of a problem from the immigrants, crime doesn't go up in immigrant communities, Arizona is run by Nazi's and populated by the KKK. I've heard so many comparisons to Nazi Germany's "may I see your papers, please," that I feel as though I'm in a bad rerun of Hogan's Heroes with Colonel Klink.
The right, of course, says hey, if you're here illegally we're coming for you and why shouldn't we? They say the Feds have completely let them down with the immigration issue.
And both sides are right. Arizona is becoming xenophobic and the people are here illegally.
As I watch the indignation I wonder where it was a few weeks back when the Arizona governor repealed same sex benefits for state workers (to be fair it also takes them away from children of same sex partners, full time students 23-24 years of age and adult disabled dependents). These benefits went out to fully legal Americans, and now have been taken away as quickly as former governor Janet Napolitano granted them by changing the definition of "dependent" in the law. Governor Bigot turned it back.
And as I was going to continue to stew on these two items over the weekend, some wanna be Timothy McVeigh makes himself known in New York City by leaving an SUV set to explode in Time Square. I questioned MSNBC's airing of the McVeigh tapes just two weeks ago, and since many of the same ingredients (all be it budget and cut rate) were in the New York SUV, I'm more apt to go with an angry tea bagger than Al Queda. Wild speculation, but if Rush Limbaugh can say, and he did, that the Obama Administration and wild ecologists blew up an oil rig, why not?
Any one of these incidents could keep a nation reeling for months or years, dealing with the fallout of each of these tragedies. Yet, the news cycle keeps going, and these horrible violations against a civilized country continue.
And how can anyone process this? Truly? As each of us tries to save our own lives from financial ruin, medical dilemma, family drama, the world is not only NOT slowing down, but going at such a rapid pace and with huge, cataclysmic events, that we become numb.
We have to be numb. Otherwise, the largest energy program in our history would be underway to get rid of the 1/3 of the oil we pump ourselves and replace it with wind, solar, geothermal, tidal energy and more. Right away. Close all the rigs and immediately retool and put those people back to work doing something else. Instead we let men die on oil rigs, or in dark mines, for energy. We destroy coast lines that may never come back, for energy we can now make elsewhere.
We lodge protests about Arizona, but in the back of our minds don't pay too much attention because those on the right have done a great job of dehumanizing these people by calling them illegal and who wants to go to Arizona anyway.
We think oh, those poor fisherman, or gee, I wonder if Red Lobster will be raising the price of crawfish now as an entire coastal region is devastated; the disaster boiled down to how it effects shrimp sales, and not property values, jobs, lives, tourism, on and on.
Absurd, all of it, and getting even more and more so. Each week something huge, something that would have caused major shifts in ways of life happens, and is here and then forgotten.
Even people's sins, especially their sins, are glazed over, romanticized or forgotten. War criminals go on book tours. Moronic opportunist failures like Palin get reality TV shows. Terrorists like McVeigh get two hours of air time and people strap guns to themselves and go to political rallies and we chalk it up to few wacko's.
What's absurd is we don't stop, say slow down, let's finally solve these problems or deal with these absurd issues before we go one step farther. But no. Band aids on gushing wounds, that's what we do, it's what we're used to. Quick fix, and then move on.
Only the chickens have come home and we are now the country of the absurd. A fact that I'm sure is news to no one and will be lost on most.