The Political Thread

There are really so few people that are truly and completely wretched on this planet. It's not wise to hold hatred for anyone that you truly don't know. Extremism is born of such hatred and leads to other retched behaviors. It's fun to "hate" the Red Sox, for example in a hyperbolic world. In a figurative world if you cross a line and truly develop a true hatred for the Red Sox and all of their fans, you become an extremist. You might then justify destruction of any property that has a Red Sox logo or pennant on display, or begin to have physical confrontations with Red Sox fans...

I hope what we've encountered is hyberbolic language that is over-expressing your views. In a vast universe in which we see and know only about 4% of what there is to see and know it is far better to offer a modicum of lave and respect for all human beings, even though you may strongly disagree with their politics or ethics...It is best that if we feel that McCain made mistakes in judgement we remember that he had many supporters that believed in him and the job is to convince those supporters to change their policies...

I never really cared for McCain's politics. I often felt as though he was indeed a war-monger. But he stood for what he believed, and I believe that he truly thought he was doing good for mankind. The world may be better off without him in office. It is highly questionable that the world is better for his death. He had a life with a family and friends that relied on him and loved him. As rizzuto wrote, it is far better to learn more about the man and to be informed of the good and the bad he did than to spew vitriol...

Real insight into his character... Trust me, I've seen more than enough of the 'good' he did. I think more people need to be cognizant of the bad, before they anoint him some kind of a hero. Obviously, it was a little bit of hyperbole saying the world was a better place... the world is definitely a better place with him not making political decisions.

It’s always been the way of the world, which doesn’t make it right. It’s not a 100% truth, but for the most part war is declared by old, wealthy men and fought by young men of lesser financial means...Most wars are publicly declared as standing up for right and defending the weak, but they also always have an ancillary financial agenda...

True inger, very true. But just because it's been the way doesn't mean it has to be. It might be very naive of me to think that.. and the cynic in my fights that notion a lot. Look at the shit going on with Trump and read between the lines.. Why is the intelligence community fighting him so bad? Could it be because he's not "towing the company line," in regards to Syria? He was 100% against going to war with Syria when he was running for office. Then, when he gave in and bombed Syria, they cried "but he only bombed air strips!!!" That's just my opinion on the matter. And as far as Russia... "How can you be friends with Russia... Putin is an evil evil man!!" Well, yeah, Putin is a POS (calling him a war criminal is ignoring the fact that there's worse people in our CIA).. but isn't it better to be friends with other countries than enemies? Why should we be scared of Russia? Our military budget is about 4x the amount of theirs.. so if we're told to be scared of them, maybe we should cut the budget of the military because obviously they need to find better ways to waste the tax payers money. These are really simplistic ways of me expressing my feelings on a very complex problem so yes, there may be faults in them, but I think you can see what I'm trying to say.

As far as the extremist views go... I've been saying this a while.. we live in a democracy.. people need to stop being so tribilistic in backing political parties views 100%... and learn to give a little. I'm very pro gun, but in the gun debating I'm willing to accept that maybe fully automatic guns should be illegal or harder to get. I think education will go a long way to solving that problem. I don't think America has a gun problem, I think we have a mental health crisis, and trying to figure that out will go a long way towards curbing the amount of mass shootings. I think the left's exploiting of mass shootings to promote their anti gun agendas is just as bad as the rights exploiting of when an illegal immigrant kills somebody. We need to find a middle ground on that issue as well. We can't open our borders 100% but we need to figure out why so many people chose to come here the illegal way instead of the legal way. Maybe we need to rework out immigration policies to reflect on that. I don't know the answer... but we can't have open boarders (maybe one day all nations will have open boarders, ha) but we also can't deport every illegal immigrant... we need to work together to find some middle ground.. even if that leaves people on both sides of the issue not happy.

Sorry if this is jumbled up.. I had some issues to tend to a couple times during this post so I lost train of thought a few times and left out some stuff that I wanted to write about.. but I hope you can understand my point. Being an extremist on either side of issues is not good.. We need to strive to find middle ground.. Still not willing to comprise on war though...

I have a few minutes, so I just wanted to apologize. I was thinking about it while cooking dinner and I should have never said this world is a better place without John McCain in it. Sometimes we take politics a little too personal and post stupid shit... and I apologize. I don't care about offending people, that's not why I apologize, I apologize because it was just stupid.

People, myself included, tend to make arguments in the heat of the moment and sometimes go a little too far and say stupid shit. I only have a minute so I just wanted to post this, but I have a well thought out post in my head and don't want to screw it up by rushing it.

The post has nothing to do with McCain or politics but just about how people screw up like I did and it invalids valid points by turning people off your argument.

The problem with posting an article like this is that although there is probably a lot of truth in here, there is also some hyperbole. There is certainly an agenda behind the stories as none of them offer a single shred of good information about McCain...It does sound like he made some decisions that a lot of young men would make if they were put in his position that are questionable at best. But who among us has made all perfect decisions every day, and stood up perfectly when faced with adversity every time? I know I haven't. I know that most people I know haven't. Heroes are heroes because they're rare breeds of people. Sometimes people wind up losing their lives because they risked them foolishly in hopeless situations. Sometimes we make a split second decision based on the small amount of information in front of us at a given moment. 

I recall when I was a young driver that I witnessed a head on crash in front of me. My blood ran cold and time seemed to stand still. I was frozen in place with my ex-wife and young son in the car. I'm sure it was only a minute or so, but it seemed like an hour before someone ran out from the business the accident occurred in front of and gave attention to the folks that were driving. As it turned out, it was fortunate that no one was seriously injured in either vehicle. But in that moment that I froze, perhaps I could have been of comfort. I would react differently now. At least I think I would. Back then, the site of blood would immediately put my system into what was called "minor shock". I would grow feint immediately. I feared what I might see, and that I might not be able to function. I do a lot better now than I did back then. Heck, I still can't donate blood, not that anyone wants blood from a diabetic. Does this make me a coward? Perhaps in some non-understanding eyes, yes. The truth is that I was somewhat helpless to react. I hated that, but I had no control of it. On the other hand, I once disarmed a man carrying a knife and saying threatening things to myself and some ladies nearby. I did CPR on a co-worker who died of a heart attack in the break room of the business where I worked. We react as we react. One day, we're a hero, the next we're a zero. We're human. Even John McCain had a right to be human, right?

To be honest, I read only a few snippets of this article. I figure that the information may be relevant if the man were still living and running for office. If he might have an impact on my life today or tomorrow. But he's not. When I could see it was an article that was obviously written with a negative agenda in mind, my reaction was that I didn't want to waste my time filling my head with shit that would whirl around in there and may come out at the wrong moment. Especially since it's now all pretty meaningless. The man is dead. It doesn't make him better, nor worse than he was when he was alive. It just is. That's why the phrase R.I.P. came about. Just let him rest in peace...