imaginary_golux

Man, I have whiplash from the last few days of Supreme Court/Texas legislature shenanigans. On the one hand, augh, why did SCOTUS squash the bits of the Voting Rights Act which made it work? On the other hand, WHOO! DOMA is dead. On the same hand, WHOO! Wendy Davis is all kinds of awesome. On the first hand again, WHAT EVEN with the Republican party calling a vote after midnight and trying to pretend it was before midnight and then sort of backing down and going, oh, okay, actually Davis won that round.

...Seriously, has the Texas Republican party not heard of the internet? It's this big thing with tubes, Al Gore invented it, it lets *lots of people* talk to each other *instantaneously.* Also lots of people on the internet don't like you guys and are only too happy to point out your moments of idiocy. So maybe don't give them ammo?

Eh, the world is a strange and occasionally frustrating place.

...
In better news, hey, as of a week and a half ago I'm married!

I'm American - a citizen of the United States of America. I love my country and its ideals dearly; I think that the ideas embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, in the Declaration of Independence and the writings of our Founding Fathers and Mothers, that all people are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, are wonderful ideas, ideas which all people should support, because only by treating everyone as our equals can we become better than we are.

I'm a liberal. I think health care is good, and people who are poor should be helped not spat upon, and if I have to pay taxes, well, that sucks, but they help everyone, including me, because they support emergency rooms and roads and sewage systems and all sorts of other useful things. I think women should control their own bodies and gay and lesbian people should marry whom they please, with all the legal rights and privileges attached to that state.

I would like to say this to my political opponents: I think you are wrong. That's why we're opponents. I think some of your ideas are actively harmful, and others are passively harmful. But I also believe that you have reasons to hold those ideas, and I would rather like to sit down with you and discuss this like civilized beings. Perhaps there are things we can agree on. Perhaps there are things we must agree to disagree on. Perhaps there are things I will think you are right about, and perhaps there are things you will think I am right about.

But I cannot do this - I cannot sit down with you, O hypothetical rational political opponent of mine, and discuss our differences like civilized beings, because as far as I can tell, the people who hold views in political opposition to mine also think that I and the others who believe as I do ought to be rounded up and shot like rats in a trap. I do not care for this view. I do not think my political opponents ought to be shot - voted out of office, yes. Debated publicly, yes. Disproved scientifically, yes. But not shot. Because that is not how democracy works. Democracy is a civilized system, and that means WE DO NOT GO AROUND SHOOTING EACH OTHER WHEN WE DISAGREE. Okay?