My New View

Last week there was a Letter to the Editor criticizing largely the entire Weathervane publication from two weeks ago. Upon arriving at my work, the writer switched from the individual to the systemic. It appeared to her three years of ineptitude as a writer instead of speaking only of my most recent article. Before I continue, I want to thank the writer of the Letter to the Editor quite sincerely. It is always frustrating writing without knowing what the readership thinks. I appreciate "Letters to the Editor" as well as personal emails as they help me adjudicate my thoughts and ideals.

After last week's "conservative hit job" on me, to quote the great Bill Clinton, I required methods of re-evaluation. After "reading my name in lights," so to speak, I decided how to improve myself. The main critique seemed to be against my dissent and lack of provided solutions. I am a proud liberal, and erudite political thinkers such as Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly, have clearly established such persons as inept whiners.

As an individual, I have difficulty accepting criticism. Therefore, I decided I no longer want to be one of what they have slanderously mislabeled. My beliefs are largely the core of my existence as they take on how I imagine the world should look like. They are a blueprint for my inevitable actions. As a result, I considered getting upset (a choice), I considered using my column to get vengeance (surprisingly tempting), I considered defending myself point by point with factual and statistical information (an article even I wouldn't read), then in the end I realized such petty responses are quite clearly against my belief system.

As the Venerable Bugs Bunny said, "If you can't beat them, join them." So, I did just that. This past week I looked at the world through...let us say different eyes. I changed my viewpoint and considered offering real changes. Liberal no more, I will not say who I tried this week to be, but all new changes would be in accord with my new ideology. Boy oh boy, was this not the week to become a conservative?

Does it not feel great? The "Me first" Christianity, the "I" centric politics, the tax cuts and military spending increases are typical, but this week, providing us with a slew of rhetoric to claim ,shows us as the ideology that does. That rascally Hugo Chavez came onto our soil and called our leader the devil. And while I skipped church for sleep on Sunday, I made sure to pray the same sterile two sentence prayer before dinner and bed all week. My new ideology is great, when you do not care for non-violent peace or equitable situations for all persons regardless of their race or social standing, prayer is easy and short. All you have to do is ask God to bless yourself and those you have deemed within your circle.

The advantages of my new ideology were not few and far between. While Chavez clearly meant more or less that Bush was acting like the devil and acting like hell on earth, such is just conjecture. No longer a liberal I have no need to defend the man for his rather unique worldview and anti-capitalist practices. Did you know he gave away 43 million gallons of oil to poor Americans last year? How dare he, we have spent countless years training the poor to accept their immorally forced disenfranchisement. He plans to double it this year. That is around 86 million barrels some elite American citizen could sell for scandalous profit.

I read all of this on the internet. This brought up an idea. Why in the world do the poor have equal access to the internet as the rich? This seems very dangerous to me. The internet is full of untampered truth. Look at me, I'm a middle class minority. What revolutions I might seed from the information I glean. I do not feel safe with it. There needs to be two internets or we must ban the poor from this one completely. With my new ideology, I am inclined to agree with a classmate's opinion from the other day: the only thing inefficient about the death penalty is that it is not used enough to eliminate undesirable elements of society, namely the poor and the mentally retarded.

Now that I am a good new Christian, the kind who supports the Greater Jerry Falwell, I can support the death penalty and war because all good Christians want the state of Israel to kick-start this hoot'n'nanny thing called "Armageddon." We can all start by stumping for Hillary Clinton because as our fearless leader Falwell says, "I hope she's the candidate, because nothing will energize my (constituency) like Hillary Clinton. If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't." So I guess anyway I turn, what I find is that I support Hillary Clinton and her crazy liberal cronies. Back to square one.

contact Kevin @ kevin.ressler@emu.edu