It's easy to break things. Much, much easier, it seems, than building them.
And so much of what's been built is, let's face it, kind of old. Even if those things still work, even if they still stand strong, all it takes for them to topple is a simple blow.
Easy.
And that's something a group of likeminded folks can really get behind. Because it's fast, effective and oh so simple to do.
And it's what the folks who call themselves the GOP have utterly embraced: breaking stuff. Like The Constitution. The independence of the press. The American dream.
Our hearts.
It's also easy, apparently, to be greedy. It's so easy to hoard wealth, to virtually wring it out of the people who put their trust and their earnings into the hands of bankers who in turn happily accepted them to use for their own gains.
It's easy to lie, to declare obstruction as an aim, to thrust a steel rod in between the spokes of a wheel and stop its progress.
It's easy to fabricate scary stories about monsters and create fictional worlds in which indecency is twisted to mimic decency, treason comes off as patriotism, education is derided as snobbery, virtue is mocked, venality is rewarded, and Satan masquerades as God.
It's easy to cling together in the safety and knowledge that you are finally getting something---anything---done, that a palpable alliance has been forged. With precious little empathy, with no regard for others, with no respect for history or education or the blood once spilled---and still being spilled---to preserve all that old stuff like liberty, freedom, human and civil rights.
What's hard, it seems, is living up to the expectations Democracy imposes upon those who would participate in society. What's hard is living up to the principles set down in the documents forming this nation. What's hard, it seems, is living up to the words spoken by Jesus Christ, who preached naught but love and mercy and justice and humility.
And therefore, what's incredibly easy is to declare oneself a Republican in a time when the burden of Democracy is being put squarely on the backs of those who have become the victims of such pathetic and lethal laziness.
It's like some dirty hippies once sang: it's easy to be hard.
Follow Steven Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheStevenWeber
Of course the lyrics of to song "Easy to Be Hard" from the musical "Hair" are speaking of a particular man who has embraced the world's suffering only to ignore/abandon the woman who loves him.
"Do you only care about the bleeding crowd? How about a needing friend? I need a friend."
To me it gives a new meaning to the saying think globally, act locally.
I do get what you are saying though...
George W. Bush. The Great Wrecking Ball, who began the destruction of our democracy.
Begins his presidency as he continued it, and as he left it afterwards. Mocking democracy's very meaning. Oh liberal please! You're not going to bring up Florida 2000 and the Supremes minus Diana Ross again, are you? Stop in the name of conservative outrage!
Lying the nation into a war. Condoning torture. Asking our brave soldiers to sacrifice and fight that war, but refusing to ask the wealthy to sacrifice one extra red cent to fund it.
Handing out drugs not paid for to the elderly like candy at Halloween, without telling them the price would be losing their Medicare coverage in the future.
Who must sacrifice? The "patriotic" Republicans say the wealthy have given enough. It's time for the masses to think about sacrifice and Saving Private Ryan's Bill. See you on the beach.
Like a bull in our precious centuries-long-collection-of-priceless-handmade-democratically-created-heirlooms "china shop", the Grand Old Pile Driver has plowed relentlessly towards an abyss of misery for the masses. An abyss with the shards of those all-too-fragile hard-won and delicate artifacts tumbling in after the relentless piston's agonizing thump, thump, thump.
And the irony historians will note, as they have in the past when corrupt regimes ascended and then ultimately destroyed their own countries, is that it couldn't have happened without the people's consent...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPMmC0UAnj0
As you listen, replace the word "Earth" with "liberals" and the word "Mars" with "conservatives." The "ACK ACK ACK" stuff, that can stay.
- Tom
Maestro, I bow to you in respect...
however, the bad ones far outweigh the good and they are the most vocal.
those are the ones i like to persecute.
You certainly nailed it there. I couldn't agree more.
"Those who would participate in society" do not all share the same mindset. They may all wish for the same things (food, shelter, happiness, peace, a future for their children) but they may not all agree on the best way to achieve those things.
So discourse and debate are essential – and, yes, it is hard to live up to such demanding democratic expectations. So far, so good...
But then you went and spoiled it all by bringing Jesus Christ into it.
Why?
What does JC have to do with anything? Isn’t that divisive? Even provocative? Doesn’t that demolish at one fell swoop all your other arguments about “empathy” and “liberty”? It seems to suggest that Christians possess some kind of religious superiority and they alone have a monopoly on the moral high ground.
The claim that JC “preached naught but love and mercy and justice and humility” is quite ridiculous. One counter-example that springs to mind (other commenters will no doubt have other examples) is Matthew 10:34:
“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword”.
That doesn’t sound much like love, mercy or justice to me.
Probably didn't say that well..... In the words of Dylan:
"In the smoke of the twilight on a milk-white steed
Michelangelo indeed could've carved out your features"
There's a "Jokerman" ...people do cower under, surround him, or it, grasping (lazily, fearfully, shamefully, defensively) to quick and convenient mysticisms and powers, which look pretty, make the jokerman look profoundly good...(like Jesus), and, knowing they are going to die anyway, prefer dying with the wool pulled over their heads clinging to the covers.
The Tea-partiers and the Free-Market Fundies seem to prefer the role of servile peasant to that of free citizen in a healthy, educated democracy. They deify the wealthy - no matter how crass, venal, and stupid - and are eager to abdicate the political power recognized for the individual by the constitution in favor of the fiat of crooked billionaires.
"The boy next door......"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTGk39b8csY
take your "glaucoma medicine" and enjoy.