“Everybody's scared for their ass. There aren't too many people ready to die for racism. They'll kill for racism but they won't die for racism.” Florynce R. Kennedy

I’m having a really hard time editing the novel today, and I absolutely have to be getting that shit done, so I thought I’d just rant a bit and get what’s on my mind off of it.

…no jokes about how little there is on my mind on the best of days. You’d be preaching to the converted right now anyway.

Why am I distracted and pissed? The news. I know - huge fucking surprise. This time though I’m not even at my mother’s, and I’m not paying attention to CNN or Fox. Yes, Virginia, there really is a dearth of objectivity in media even in alternative, independent land.

I suppose that the Beck/Palin revival in Washington had something to do with it. The Park51/Cordoba House/Ground Zero Mosque bullshit also added to my angst. So did all of the alternative responses to both. Seems to me like everything just keeps getting more and more polarized, and the people that, according to my bias, should be enlightened and know better just, apparently, aren’t and don’t. I have seen the enemy…, and all that. And so the voices get louder, screaming across the growing divide. There aren’t any solutions out there, in that place where we yell epithets at each other. It’s tempting to give in sometimes and contribute to the erudite insult combat, but the results are generally discouraging, and I always feel a little dirty afterwards.

Wars of words aren’t really any better than wars with weapons. The body count appears lower, but we just don’t count it right if we think so. If we counted in terms of wasted brain cells and lost time and the new barriers of ill-intent we erect the attrition rate would be horrific.

This is not, of course, to say that debate and disagreement, even passionate disagreement, are bad things. But when we lose grasp of reason and self-control there is no upside. We’re supposed to be aspiring to something better, aren’t we?

All this openly racist banter that’s going on makes me wonder what it is our elders and parents fought for back in the not-so-long-ago. We won some new laws, but apparently didn’t win that many hearts or minds. MLK (oh man, you are so missed) must be rolling over like a motherfucker.

I openly pondered on FB the other day that this might all be a sign that the military/industrial/political complex has just figured out that a domestic conflict might be more profitable – put the war closer to the combat, so to speak, and save all that expensive shipping costs.

I know; how dark and depressing a thought is that, only because it seems to fit with a profitability mindset. It’s almost believable.

I also found myself wondering whether all the craziness was just the final frantic gasps of organized fanaticism, er, I mean religion as it kicked and spasmed its way into the grave.

See? I am an optimist sometimes!

Okay, I feel better. Back to making my make-believe world marketable.