This is a good conversation to have. Many of you have raised excellent points. I will offer a genuine conversation in return.

However…

I never said I wanted the military to take over.
I don’t want a military coup.
I want balance.
I want government to stay within its consitutional boundries.

Because it has not, because they are out of balance w/ the private sector, feeding on it, my general level of trust, with regard to institutions, currently favors the men and women in uniform. I think they respect the Constitution more than our current legislators, or the Republican wads who governed previously.

I think I know your answer to this question, but I’ll ask anyway. Could we agree on one thing? ...that we need to cut government spending across the board by 20%? Including the military?

No more tired culture wars from either side. It’s about the spending and the power grabs by both fucking parties.

This will be my message to the Tea Party. Drop the abortion and gay bashing bullshit. Stop the culture wars. Stop with the ‘jesus said’ stuff, and start putting in candidates who will only cut spending.

Respectfully,

Tim Doctor (sans any trace of sarcasm)

The military, at present, is composed, at its highest level, of a very large group of right wing Christians intent on imposing their religious views on the remainder of us not so enlightened citizens.

Not really. I know you’ll find an article where some general or colonel is reported as saying something “fundie”, but that doesn’t prove anything other than one moron had a microphone stuck in his face.

,@mclaren: You used alot of words to say you’re an idiot.

Is this a joke question? Who exactly do you think pays for and runs the military? The War Faerie?

That was my favorite response to the question, I’ll give it a 8.5 out of 10 on both the “Sarcasm” and “Jesus, you’re a dumbshit” scales of distain.

That would scare the starch out of Washington, D.C.

Over starched is more like it.

Enclosed are the results of a recent poll of self-identified Republicans. Among many other appalling results, it appears that the majority of the members of your party think that the President of the United States might want terrorists to defeat us.

This is utterly inexcusable. Is this who you want to be? You have a responsibility to your country to bring your party back to reality. If you refuse, the rest of us have a responsibility to our country to work for the end of the Republican Party.

//repeat with state Republican Party, Republican Congresscritter, and every other GOP official I can think of who might have any influence. Look, it can’t hurt.

...Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane…

I’m glad someone went with a Stones-tinged comment. Thank you.

I see it like this. Jesus existed. He was a great man for helping the poor and downtrodden. From what I have read he never approved of people showing off how Christian they were. He led by example and when he died people made him out to be Superman when he most likely was a man like you and me who helped people.

These people make it seem like Jesus is coming soon on a white horse to kill people like me who refuse to buy into this idea that when I die I go to Heaven, Hell, Xenon (or whatever the Christian Science place is).

When I woke up in 2001, I saw an election handed over to a guy who scared the bejesus out of me and I swore I’d give him a chance. He spent his first 7 months basically on vacation and then 9/11 happened.

Then they wanted to go into Iraq, I found I was aligning with liberals and maybe I was one too. The Patriot Act then sealed it.

Overall, Gen-X’ers, especially males, are more Republican in their party identification and conservative in their ideological orientation than any other generation.

Unfortunately, I can’t really disagree with the assessment as my own un-scientific anecdotal data concurs with that statement. But I really don’t know why that is the case. Maybe my wife the sociologist can give me a good explanation…

We (GenX) are cynical. Very, very cynical. The weaknesses of the Clinton Administration combined with the criminality of the Bush II Administration have persuaded the bulk of my generation that there is simply no possibility of government ever achieving anything that will benefit us and a strong likelihood that it will continue to do things that harm us. Liberalism is based on communitarian impulses, and most of the great communitarian measures of the past have been under assault all our lives.

Clinton and the Republicans conspired to “end Welfare as we know it.” Health care reform, even of the most tepid sort, seems to slip farther and farther away. Social Security is under constant assault and all the measures that have been offered to save it are calculated to preserve its benefits for the generation just ahead of us with deep benefits cuts promised for everyone presently under the age of 65. In short, I think too many GenXers refuse to believe in community because they think community is just a scam run by Boomers to justify saddling GenXers with more unsustainable debt.

Also, a disproportionate number of us were either in the military or have peers who were in the military, and those connections tend to instill a certain jingoistic mindset among those who have either lost friends to military action or seen friends needlessly endangered. I have been routinely horrified by people in my age-group casually suggest nuking large segments of the Arab world. Of course, I also live in North Mississippi which is adds a whole other layer of bullshit to conversations like that.

Those are my kneejerk impression anyway, speaking as a very atypical, borderline Soshulist GenXer.

The U.S. army can’t even win a war against barefoot fifteen-year-old kids armed with bolt-action rifles.

The United States Army is a disgrace and should be disbanded. Based on their past performance, I wouldn’t trust anyone in the American military to empty a boot even if the instructions were printed on the heel.

By contrast, the United States Post Office handles over 667 million pieces of mail per day, 203 billion pieces of mail per year, and correctly delivers 99.99999% of it in a timely fashion at a cheap price. If the United States army were as efficient and as effective as the U.S. post office, America would rule the universe, every terrorist on earth would be dead or in prison, and Osama Bin Laden’s corpse would have been hanging from a lamp post in front of the White House 8 years ago.

That answer your question?

It’s so very lonely.

You’re 2000 light years from home.