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Enough Rope?
Jun. 6th, 2006 10:10 pmJust some news items and links, because, you know, it just keeps getting more absurd. I think it's healthier, for me, to say absurd, when I mean worse. And it is. Absurd. Worse and absurd.
The thing about Charles Rangel repeatedly calling for a reinstatement of the draft is more than slightly old news, but I believe that Congress was supposed to convene to debate the bill today. There's no chance of it passing, of course, if only because it calls for mandatory service for men and women ages 18 to 42. Part of me thinks, yeah, maybe this wouldn't be such a bad thing. Maybe a draft would finally galvanize a serious resistance against President Asshole and Co. Especially if all those good Republican and "Democrat" moms were to suddenly find themselves having to pack their daughters off to Iraq.
Likewise, we'll not the see the anti-gay marriage amendment passed. Now, is it odd that I find no comfort in this? Whether it passes or not, whether there's a draft or not, the men and women running this nation would have things that way if they could. And consider this CNN poll on the question of an amendment to ban same-sex marriage. 50% of those who responded support such an amendment. 50%. I live in a country where perhaps half the populace would deny me the right to marry the person I love because we're of the same gender. I live in a country where, perhaps, half the nation so loathes who and what I am that they will openly and freely admit that I should be denied simple civil rights. Because, they say, I'm a threat to cisgendered heterosexual marriage, which we apparently need, because their god said so and, hey, there are only 6.5 billion people in the world.
Sometimes, the anger gets out. It's unseemly. But there you go.
How about a tiny and more or less irrelevant bit of "good" news to put things in perspective? The Santa Marta Harlequin frog and the San Lorenzo Harlequin frog, both native to Colombia, aren't extinct after all. Well, aren't extinct yet. I think the thing that always astounds me most about what humans have done to amphibians is that these guys have been around since the goddamn Palaeozoic. They've survived megavolcanoes and ice ages and global droughts and cometary/asteroid impacts. They survived the extinction of the dinosaurs. But they probably won't survive Homo sapiens very much longer. I mean, isn't that genuinely fucking astounding? Too bad no one's keeping score out there...
The thing about Charles Rangel repeatedly calling for a reinstatement of the draft is more than slightly old news, but I believe that Congress was supposed to convene to debate the bill today. There's no chance of it passing, of course, if only because it calls for mandatory service for men and women ages 18 to 42. Part of me thinks, yeah, maybe this wouldn't be such a bad thing. Maybe a draft would finally galvanize a serious resistance against President Asshole and Co. Especially if all those good Republican and "Democrat" moms were to suddenly find themselves having to pack their daughters off to Iraq.
Likewise, we'll not the see the anti-gay marriage amendment passed. Now, is it odd that I find no comfort in this? Whether it passes or not, whether there's a draft or not, the men and women running this nation would have things that way if they could. And consider this CNN poll on the question of an amendment to ban same-sex marriage. 50% of those who responded support such an amendment. 50%. I live in a country where perhaps half the populace would deny me the right to marry the person I love because we're of the same gender. I live in a country where, perhaps, half the nation so loathes who and what I am that they will openly and freely admit that I should be denied simple civil rights. Because, they say, I'm a threat to cisgendered heterosexual marriage, which we apparently need, because their god said so and, hey, there are only 6.5 billion people in the world.
Sometimes, the anger gets out. It's unseemly. But there you go.
How about a tiny and more or less irrelevant bit of "good" news to put things in perspective? The Santa Marta Harlequin frog and the San Lorenzo Harlequin frog, both native to Colombia, aren't extinct after all. Well, aren't extinct yet. I think the thing that always astounds me most about what humans have done to amphibians is that these guys have been around since the goddamn Palaeozoic. They've survived megavolcanoes and ice ages and global droughts and cometary/asteroid impacts. They survived the extinction of the dinosaurs. But they probably won't survive Homo sapiens very much longer. I mean, isn't that genuinely fucking astounding? Too bad no one's keeping score out there...
