Angry voters? I've got one for you...

People keep talking about how the mid-term elections went Republican (and Tea-Party) because the voters are angry about the loss of jobs, the economy, and the wars.

Yeah? Well, I'm angry too.

I'm angry because people think it's a good statement to draw a Hitler mustache on a picture of the President of the United States. I'm angry because Americans think it's patriotic to vandalize their President.

I'm angry because people point the finger at Barack Obama, and blame him for the economy, blame him for the war, blame him for our troubles. But you know what? GEORGE W. BUSH tanked the economy. BUSH signed us up for these wars. BUSH started the economic stimulus and left Obama with a pile of bailouts. BUSH kept everyone in the dark and crippled us with fear. And now that the light has shined on BUSH'S catastrophe, we blame it on the man who WE elected to fix it.

I'm angry because people seem to think that eight years of destruction can be eliminated with two years of reconstruction.

I'm angry because it's okay to toss civility in political debate out the window now.

I'm angry because the Tea Party exists: a group of people who named their agenda after the Boston Tea Party. The Boston Tea Party was a protest against the unjust taxes that England had imposed on the colonies. It was a protest of people against their unjust government.

And I'm angry because somehow Americans have forgotten that WE THE PEOPLE are the government. So if we hate the government, we're hating ourselves.

I'm angry because if Barack Obama were white, the voters would see him differently and treat him differently, and nobody's willing to admit that people are reacting negatively to his race, but that race is a factor in how people approve of his work overall.

I'm angry that the politicians that make up the Tea Party have created a sensationalist campaign using language like "killing jobs" and "big government takeover" to perpetuate the fear of the uneducated masses. Using this fearmongering, they further their own privatization agendas, and ensure that their stakeholders and investors will continue to have economic success. This leads to the destabilization and destruction of the country's infrastructure. And the voters lap it up like kittens and vote for the demise of the very services they use.

I'm angry because the Tea Party and the Republicans seem hell-bent on destroying essential public services.

I'm angry because if they win, it means the end of Social Security, Medicare, library systems, mass transit, road maintenance, law enforcement, public education, and emergency responders. BECAUSE ALL OF THOSE THINGS ARE PAID FOR WITH--wait for it--TAXES.

I'm angry because people don't think for themselves, they think what they're told to think, and the prettier the package, the shinier and more dazzling the concept, the more likely it is people will jump on board.

I'm angry because it's okay for the Palins to call people faggots, and it's somehow also okay to be an unwed teenage mother and still promote heartland home-grown Focus-on-the-Family values.

I'm angry because people in this country still don't have equal civil rights and somehow that's not a problem for the majority of voters.

I'm angry that people can't marry each other if they're two consenting adults in love.

I'm angry that people don't have universal access to the health care they need.

I'm angry that American Indian tribes still live in third-world squalor on reservations, have rocketing cases of diabetes, suicide, depression, and alcoholism; they're disgustingly under-served as a group and that doesn't seem to be a problem for voters either.

I'm angry that our jobs are all exported overseas by greedy corporations who don't care about their communities, their CEOs just want to be in the top 5% of the earning bracket.

I'm angry that our Constitution is unrecognizable, that it looks like someone took an Xacto knife to it.

I'm angry that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (ah yes, remember? When BUSH II was king-I-mean President?) destroyed Habeas Corpus and now, we Americans no longer have a fair right to trial if one of us is suddenly declared an "enemy combatant".

I'm angry that because of the conservative Supreme Court Justices and the cowardly liberal Justices, corporations like McDonald's and Chase Bank now have the same "constitutional" rights as an individual American.

I'm angry because corporations are allowed to perpetuate their abusive money-making practices with no checks or balances, with no regulation, they can run wild and screw around with people's human rights, and no one will stop them, because they're perfectly within their legal "rights" to do it. (Ahem - Target? Wal-Mart? Need I go on?)

I'm angry because our food system (which is lorded over by corporations) is corrupt and unsafe and there is NO WAY out of it. There is NO WAY to acquire affordable, healthy food anymore without it being processed, engineered and genetically altered to hell. Here comes the mutant e-coli shitstorm, everyone, gird your loins.

I'm angry because our corrupt food system could be held responsible for the macabre state of an American's health. Diabetes, heart disease, cancer...why does America have such higher rates of these diseases than other countries? Because our food is shit. Literally.

I'm angry because it's okay to "raise" chickens in tiny shit cages and alter their genes so they're too fat to walk, so they lie in excrement for their entire lives without ever seeing the sun, and then - most of the time - we painlessly slice off their heads and soak their corpses in chemicals. And then we unabashedly feed them to the public. And "big government" is so crippled with its own lost-cause debates, nothing can possibly get done to change this picture.

I'm angry because the oil and coal companies have a chokehold on our land and they can rape the national forests and national parks all they want, and they can kill all the electric cars they want, and they can stymie environmental progress, because they are allowed to monopolize our energy, BECAUSE THERE ARE NO CHECKS OR BALANCES. No regulation = abuse.

I'm angry because our prison system is being privatized, which again means no regulation, which again means wanton abuse. Then these prisoners get out and are allowed to roam our communities. And do we offer them mental health care, to reform them and possibly ensure that they won't repeat an offense? NO, because we don't want to pay taxes, we don't want to offer people health care, we couldn't give a rat's ass about people's physical and mental health, we just want a tax refund so we can go buy a flat-screen TV.



As you can see, I'm angry about a lot of things (I've got more, but I'm running out of steam). And I don't sit around and do nothing about it. I write. I speak out. I vote. I give my money and my time. I try to make the world better, one person at a time. And I pray. I pray for the enlightenment of my fellow human beings. I pray for tolerance, love and peace. And I try to be the change. Oh yeah, and I avoid eating chickens.