Wingnut World

Is it just me, or is the world getting just a little kookier and full of people who profess some mighty bizarre opinions about things? Unfortunately, these folks have some pretty vocal followers who act like a bunch of sheep and blindly follow these weird people with their even stranger views. It's almost like a collective insanity has gripped our country and people are willing to believe almost anything if there's someone charismatic enough to lead them to believe these things. You've got these so-called Tea Partiers who know that they are mad - about something - but they don't know how to fix what they perceive as being wrong. They just want to wave flags and rail about how this thing or that thing is bad but damned if they can come up with any solutions to anything they're upset over. They keep saying they want to take their country back - from whom? When did they lose it? Did they lose it? To whom? It's not as if it's been overrun by a bunch of totalitarians demanding blind acceptance of some sort of dogma, although to listen to them, they almost sound like the people they seem to fear are taking over. They're mad as hell and they aren't going to take it anymore, but the people they are following want to strip them of their Social Security, Medicare and a host of other government programs to which they are beneficiaries. They want to strangle government to the size to where it can be drowned in a bathtub, to quote anti-tax advocate Grover Nordquist, who, if he had his way, there would be no government and the private sector would run everything and corporations would rule. And who would safeguard your neighborhood? Or come to your rescue when your house catches fire? And who would teach your children? (Well, these folks are all for the for-profit charter schools, so they'd probably abolish public schools and replace them all with charter schools run by corporations.) And who would pave the roads and safeguard bridges? These nutty people seem to have lost their collective minds thinking that the private sector can fix everything when we've seen darn well that it doesn't and can't.

Then there are the crazy folks who use their religion as a way to divide instead of unite. A few weeks ago, some preacher down in Florida who has this tiny church of only about 50 people ignited an international scene by threatening to burn a bunch of Qu'rans on September 11 as a way to demonstrate their hatred of the Islamic faith. Thankably, enough pressure was exerted by international outrage and by the commander of the US military forces in Afghanistan that the guy backed off, but to cause an international incident by using religious intolerance as a way to get your message across is an improper use of one's faith. And now there is a battle before the Supreme Court over a grieving father's lawsuit against another loony bunch from a small church in Kansas who show up at military funerals with signs condemning the dead soldier and saying that they are going to go to hell for being in a military that they perceive enables gay people. They have signs like the ones in the picture that say stuff like "God Hates America", "God Hates Your Sons", "Pray for More Dead Soldiers" and other expressions of hate speech. These people get a lot of attention from the media for their outrageous behavior and as such, are being enabled by the media for so doing. They are getting the attention they crave at the expense of families grieving for a lost son or daughter who was killed in combat overseas. It's rude, crude and downright insulting that these people are allowed to invade a funeral and cause even greater emotional distress to a family already grieving for the loss of a young man or woman in uniform. To me, it's harrassment and as such, ought to be made illegal. Sure, I support free speech and the First Amendment, when done properly, but these kinds of protests have no place at a solemn occasion like a funeral for a serviceman or woman who has died in combat. I hope that the Supreme Court draws a line in the sand and tells these people that what they are doing will, from now on, constitute harrassment and as such, be considered illegal. Free speech has its limits. If it didn't, we'd be living in anarchy.

Truly, it seems that the world is getting wackier and filled with more bizarre, imbalanced, rude and boorish people every day. What is this world coming to, anyway?