Messin' with Texas

I’ve been here for nine months now, and have done my best to make a life for myself. I have friends, I’m involved in local sports, I have restaurants that I frequent, I have bars that I frequent, and I even have a porch garden. One thing that continues to drive me crazy is the local mentality of the local political thought. Everyone here is just so conservative. As I posted on my blog recently a lot of people at work are extremely conservative. Sometimes I think I’m the only one who thinks differently than they do. This generally leads to me keeping my mouth shut and my head down. despite my best efforts, my tongue does slip from time to time, and I end up in arguments.  When I do keep my mouth shut I’m often prodded or berated by my conservative coworkers. that come after me armed with ridiculous evidence supporting their ideas that they’ve heard from TV personalities or from their friends who know as little as they do.

it doesn’t just stop there. I find a lot my conversations from all around the politics of the current time .  Too often I end up in debates about health care or about the Afghanistan war. even when I go out with my friends we end up having heavy politically dominated conversations.I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad thing -  after all I do love talking politics and especially since moving to Texas I am particularly  combative on political issues – I’m just saying it’s getting tiring.

the dominant political issues right now are of course government spending and the health care debate. for my coworkers, the champion of these two arguments is Glenn Beck. in an effort to understand the other side, I’ve started listening to talk radio. People like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck are idolized by my coworkers.  I find all three of these people to be unbearable. Glenn Beck however, is the worst. My efforts to try and understand the other side shown me  that the conservative side of the political debate is one founded on fear and mistrust of government. I think that probably the one unifying attribute of conservatives in this area; they all inherently missed trust their government, and would rather have as little government is possible.

The healthcare debate however, is one that is very close to my heart. I think it’s ridiculous that in this age when as a country we spend more on health care than any other nation in the world, we still have such dismal statistics on health (Read: if US healthcare is so good, why do other people live so long?). All the facts tell us that something needs to be changed for us to greater health care system up to par with the other industrialized nations. Yet still everyone seems to argue that this is not the case. They are being based on circumstantial evidence, misinformation, and boldface lies. They all rally behind their champion, Glenn Beck. For those of you that are reading this I feel it is important to point out the complete hypocrisy of what he has said about our current health care system. Watch the video below:

furthermore, if that wasn’t enough, check out the clip below,  were more of Glenn Beck’s hypocrisy is pointed out:

You can probably understand  how when a coworker cites one back as a good source, I immediately dismiss them as not being worth my time. I can’t find a quote but I believe there’s a quote along the lines that, “if you try to argue with an idiot, you will end up with two idiots arguing.” That’s how I feel when, people who don’t read, who don’t watch anything other than Fox news, try to explain to me the ignorance of my point of view. You can also probably understand why I  dislike Glenn Beck.

since we’re on the subject, I was browsing Amazon today and I saw this book cover. It made me laugh:

My initial thought was yes Glenn Beck is an idiot, and that this book must be all about  Glenn Beck. It is of course not, but even so the cover still as comedic value. Maybe his autobiography one day will look something like this as well. As for my gripes about Rush and Sean, I will save those for another time. I’m done venting for now.

( This entry was written with dictation software. This is the first time that I’ve used it and it is quite strange to speak my entry rather than to write. Seems to work okay and it sure beats typing — my wrists are still causing me a bit of a problem when on the keyboard –  but I feel that I cannot be true to my written style and that the style of this entry is distinctly different, and the content and structure is lacking. Please give me feedback over the next few entries as to what you think. Hopefully I can get used to this)

And another one (added Sept 26th, 2009):