You might have seen that there were thousands of anti-war protesters out and about yesterday. Tens of thousands of them in Washington alone. The real story, of course, is that more than 299 million people had better things to do with their time on a Saturday. But I digress.
I found the Washington protest, with its celebrity luminaries, rather interesting, because it reminded me of the group from the movie Team America: World Police. In that movie, the Film Actors Group (FAG), led by Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, etc., are the tools that Kim Jong-Il uses to try to deceive the American people while he plots their destruction. Well, Alec Baldwin was not there, but "Hanoi Jane" Fonda was there to take his place. Apparently she's changing her name to "Tikrit Jane" or perhaps "Sadr City Jane." And the rest of the usual suspects were there as well, saying the usual suspect things. It could have come straight from my Team America: World Police DVD, only they were uttering their words with a complete lack of irony.
I listened to snippets of her rant-filled speech, and was appalled. Like so many in Tinseltown, she just doesn't get it. There are people over there who want to kill her, and you and me as well. They hate us because our culture lets us do whatever we want, including not being pious Muslims. And unlike the North Vietnamese, they will come here and commit terrorist acts. We know this because they already have done so, and will do so again if we are not vigilant. And vigilance requires that we fight the war on the enemy's turf rather than waiting for them to again bring it to our own. Cutting-and-running will not reduce the threat to America, it will increase it. The problem is not US; the problem is THEM!
One of the memes that the liberal Democrats are putting out is that "The American people spoke loudly for change in November and an end to the war in Iraq." Baloney! Only about 40% of eligible voters showed up at the polls, and only a little over half of those voted for the Democrats. Unless you consider 22% or so to be a majority of the American people, which means that you need remedial math classes, the real message you should have gotten from November was "We don't care. Leave us alone to watch football and play with our new PlayStations." More than half of the people eligible to vote simply did not care enough either way to go to the polls. Not about the war in Iraq; not about the War on Terror (which should really be the War on Terrorist Islamists, if we weren't so damned politically correct); not about George W. Bush; not about the Democrats promises for "change," which will simply change the hands whose palms are getting greased, not the system itself.
In a way, that's too bad. It would be better for America if more people cared about the way this country is being run. On the other hand, I'm constantly seeing polls in which the American people expose colossal amounts of ignorance, much of which was on display at that Washington protest. I don't have a problem with ignorant people not voting. The ones who are not ignorant about the dangers facing this country but just apathetic? Well, they have no one to blame but themselves if and when disaster ensues.
