Patriot Games

Barack Obama spoke today about patriotism, mostly his. He's defending himself against the charges of being unpatriotic.

It's times like this that I truly despair of Americans ever growing up. What does patriotism mean to the people who make this absurd charge? Conformity to some stereotype? Acting white? What threatens them? We all know it's some bizarre emanation from the unconscious, a code concept for fears of difference, subversion, whatever. But that doesn't excuse it. Non-idiot adults should be able to figure that out and get serious.

We have this complex of problems that truly do threaten survival. That millions of Americans are left helpless without adequate health insurance, and increasingly aren't seeing doctors when they are ill, to the tune of nearly 60 million Americans, is not an abstraction to me. My next serious illness or injury will likely be my last. Period. We're supposed to put off a decent health care system again because of the exploitation of national idiocy?

Talk about clinging to guns. After more than two hundred years the Supreme Court decides the right to own guns is guaranteed by the Constitution when guns are among the biggest delusions and the most dangerous. Guns keep you safe? Are you kidding me? You need them for hunting? Killing animals for sport is barbaric. Meanwhile children are gunned down in petty disputes that a fistfight used to settle. And what are guns best at doing? Making sure your suicidal impulse successfully kills you. Half of all gun deaths are suicides.

We have serious problems, and we need serious people to solve them, and serious voters to make sure they do. We can't afford another election based on delusion, lies, corruption and idiocy. Or it may be the last one that will ever really matter.

I used to get those pitying looks when my interest in Star Trek was revealed, but Star Trek fascinates me precisely because, behind all the space opera and bumpy-forehead aliens, there's the premise that humanity is finally growing up. Finally entering adulthood. And not a moment too soon.

These days to call humanity an adolescent race may be a social promotion. Patriot games are for children, and it's not very healthy for them either.