POLITICS

   I've lived 73 years. I've worked, I've raised great kids. I'm an introverted old guy who likes books and trees and long hikes in the hills. I've never wanted to lead and am not inclined to follow. All I've ever really wanted was home and family and a business of my own so that I wasn't forced into that following thing. I achieved those goals.
   I have a question.
   What in hell is wrong with the American people?
   Where did all of the current barking, yapping, lying, absurd hatred come from? All you have to do to find it is go to a news web site and click on a story about our president, then read the comments that follow. TRY to read them, anyway, because many, many of the posters can't spell or write a coherent sentence. But the hatred, the menace, the snarl come at you like a hungry wolf.
   And the urban myths. Holy baloney. I have received the most blatant lies, exaggerations and outright fictions imaginable about Barack Obama. No sane person would believe a word of them, and yet. And yet, here they come with a gossipy hiss. "Passssss this on". The sender is always outraged that "Obummer" has gotten away with it for so long. Again I ask, what in hell is wrong with the American people?
   Most of my life I've avoided political stereotypes. I've given my votes to candidates I thought best without regard to party affiliation. I understand that there are elected Democrats who should not be doing the people's business. But dear God! The salvos of bile, the trainloads of lies, the twisting of words and motives coming out of the Republican/Tea Party bloc boggles my mind.
   What boggles my mind even more is that apparently a lot of Americans BELIEVE it and can't wait to act on it in the voting booth. Make "Obummer" a one-term president and all will be well again. Facts don't seem to matter. Truth has no place in the argument.
   I have not been happy with some of the issues the president has addressed. I think he has been wrong about some things, but I know he has been right about a lot of things. And I know he would have accomplished a lot more if there'd only been a modicum of cooperation from the other side of the aisle. More than that, I know he is a good and decent man who wants what is best for this country and its people. He has never deserved the nastiness, the put-downs, the caricatures foisted on him by wackos unfit to tie the man's shoes. And by egomaniacs eager to get past him to their own personal glory and significance.
   Many Americans will, I think, vote against themselves this fall without realizing it. Believing lies and putting into power people who will then turn on them. Power-hungry beasts who will take away from the people of this country whatever hopes they carry.
   I get a Social Security check every month. It is not an ENTITLEMENT. It is the end result of paying into the system for fifty years. I have Medicare. It is not an entitlement. It is part of that system I have paid into for all those decades and continue to pay into even now. If not for Social Security and Medicare I am not sure how I would continue living an independent life.
   Democrats gave those blessings to me. FDR and LBJ. And now the GOP/TP wants to take it away because THAT party blew our savings on wars we never should have fought. Of course, they want to blame "Obummer" for that as well.
   Okay, I'll stop. Nobody is going to read these words, but it felt good to put them down. My America now lives by the golden rule. Whoever has the gold makes the rules. I don't like that worth a damn.