An open letter to the wing-nuts

Dear American Wing-nuts,

Pray, enlighten me: when did Australia become a U.S. state? Was it right after Canada was annexed*? Because apparently I missed it.

Look, I realize that you're genetically programmed** to respond to any criticism of the United States or anything that you think threatens the pocketbooks of big businesswar effort, but you might want to try thinking a little about the stupidity of calls to prosecute Julian Assange for treason.

You see, to commit treason, you have to actually be a citizen of the country you're working against.*** I realize this is hard for you to grasp, but not everyone is a citizen of the United States. Assange is an Australian citizen. It is impossible for him to commit treason against the United States.

I'm not going to argue about the rightness or wrongness of Assange's acts. I don't care whether you think he was right or wrong. That's not the issue. The issue is: you're a bunch of morons who don't understand that citizens in other countries aren't bound by the laws of the United States.

Happy holidays!****

Love,

Me

* Note for the easily confused: this hasn't happened. If it had, you'd have better health insurance. And nicer neighbors.
** Well, probably just stupid and/or reflexive, but I'm trying to be nice here. Only not really.
*** This presupposes it's fair to say Assange is 'working against' the U.S., but I didn't want to complicate this too much by getting into that argument.
**** You should probably see a doctor about that blood pressure spike you have whenever someone says that.

Things I don't get

Here's one thing I don't get: A lot of people seem to think the Republicans are being taken over by crazy right-wing extremists, but also think the Democrats are a bunch of liars who make promises about how they're going to change things but then support the status quo. So, uh... why is no one seeing "vote for a third-party candidate" as the obvious answer? I mean, here we have a fair bit of evidence the two-party system just is not working for us, and yet... somehow it doesn't occur to people to try to change that.

Here's another thing I don't get: Why is it so hard for people to accept the word "moderate" means "actually holds positions in between the 'left' and 'right' positions", and that people who demonstrably don't do that aren't really moderates? No one seems to have a problem calling people on labeling themselves "liberal" and yet expressing non-liberal positions, or people labeling themselves "conservative" and yet expressing non-conservative positions. But if you call yourself a "moderate" yet express non-moderate positions, people will apparenty use this as "evidence" that "moderate" means something other than, well, moderate.

Here's another thing I don't get: The context of the following quote is that the Texas Board of Education—that bastion of eliminating accuracy in the name of upholding their narrow views, but I guess that's another topic—has decided that there is a bias in textbooks promoting Islam and condemning Christianity.

In interviews, Mr. Rives has likened his concerns about Islam to those he and other Americans once had about communists infiltrating American society. [source]

Why would anyone think this was a good position to publically take? The Americans who once had "concerns about communist infiltration" included people who did things such as use blacklists to keep people from being hired based purely on accusation, rather than evidence, and those people are fairly widely regarded as having been extremists and witch-hunters who damaged American society and played fast and loose with the rule of law. Why would anyone want to associate themselves with that?

random rants

Rant ho: