Maybe it's a boomer thing. Those of us in the right age demographic, who grew up on Vonnegut and Ken Kesey, seem to have an inbred sense of 'normal radar,' when we feel like inmates in an asylum whose jailers are seriously psychotic, yet unfailingly polite.
You ever feel that way? At least since high school? If you do, I'll bet that you're between the age of, say, 45 and 60, and had at least one counter-culture high school English teacher who snuck in "Cuckoo's Nest," and "Farenheit 451" along with Jane Austen.
Not that I'm bashing Jane Austin; I think in her own way, she was an outsider stuck on the inside, too. An unmarried woman, she has become the consummate expert on all-things-marriage. Not unlike Ted Haggard leading the charge against gay marriage, and after completing a three-week crash course on gay exorcism, emerged straight, again. Can you keep a straight face with this crowd?
But let's get back to the nuts in charge. Dick Cheney, for example. Is there an example of malfeasance that has taken place since the hijacking of the election and the Republican rioting in Florida that doesn't have his snarky smirk all over it? With a healthy helping of Karl Rove's malevolent recipe for success, topped off with a cherry wave? Recall that Karl Rove, after engineering the political rise of the idiot son of Poppy Bush in Texas, was named the Head of Policy (and not politics) in the White House. Are you feeling crazy, yet?
For now we know that Cheney outed Valerie Plame, a covert CIA expert on weapons of mass destruction in Iran (for God's sake) to punish truth-teller husband Joe Wilson and discourage other similar truth-tellers from going New-York-Times on them. Jeez, I don't know about you, but I think we could all use an Iranian wmd expert about now.
And this is the administration that touts its national security credentials? But wait! There's more. Isn't this the administration that has been discharging Arab-speaking counter-intelligence officers known to be gay?
Ok. I'm getting it. The real danger isn't the growing jihadist movement exacerbated by our "Bring it on" president, our disastrous foreign policy, our dependence on foreign oil from a shaky House of Saud that birthed 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers. It's the gays. Oh, and the shocking increase in impolite dissent these days.
But it's not only foreign policy that has us questioning our gut instincts. Every day, the president, the son of the man who, in 1992, couldn't answer how much a loaf of bread cost, touts how well the economy is doing. His minions are echoing him. The stock market is up, up, up! Productivity is up, up, up! Corporate earnings are up, up, and up!
Are you doing better? I'm directing this question to the 99% of you who are not en route to one of your three or four residences. Yes, the rest of you who are likely working two jobs, when one used to do, or are looking for one job because the other one got outsourced or, as I refer to it, squeezed out, to pay for the CEO's latest severance package of 30 to 40 million buckeroos. And that's for the CEOs whose stock was hammered because the company is tanking. You ought to see what the CEOs are getting for the companies that are actually doing well.
If you're not feeling a bit off-kilter, yet, wondering what's wrong with the polite lunatics in charge...Why not?
Maybe you're just too young and didn't read the same books we gray-hairs did. Perhaps that might explain why many of my fellow warriors in today's peace movement seem to emanate eau de Ben-Gay and other not-so-erotic pain relievers at our peace and justice meetings.
Is it American Idol and Prozac that has too many young people on the couch instead of on the streets, or at least in front of their computers, shaking with rage? Screaming with frustration, "I am normal! I am normal and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
Maybe in the end, Kesey knew that the power structure always comes out ahead because the powerful have figured out how to marginalize 'normal,' by elevating 'polite,' instead. To wit: Condaleeza Rice, while testifying before Congress about the now-famous memo that was presented to President Bush in Crawford a month before 9/11 entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike within the US." I wonder how many people were remarking to themselves that Ms. Rice's poise was admirable under such stringent questioning. Oh, and isn't she clean and articulate, too?
Well, if that's really true...then this is my valentine to every impolite red-blooded American out there who's been questioning her own sanity because she can't figure out why the rest of the country isn't as outraged as she is with the bums in charge.
Go ahead. Throw open your window and yell that you're mad as hell and you're not going to take it anymore. Throw off the mantle of 'polite,' and you might even feel better.
Then let's work together to set aside polite obfuscation and elevate the normal love of one's country instead.
Please. I just had to ask nicely.