Spadoman's Thoughts Today

Just checking in with a few thoughts. Seems like the creative originality faucet is turned off these days for me. That's okay. No one seems to be really going nuts with stories, and the news these days is stagnant with the health care issue and how the right is protesting, in their own way, the current policies of the Obama administration.

I'm pleased at so many things that Obama has already put into place. I understand how hard it is to press for more change from the eight years of hard line neo con policies from the Bu$hCo presidency. But I feel we need to deescalate and end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as quickly as possible. War is my "important" issue. After that, pick and choose and fix many things wrong with America, like health care, to be sure, but also things like rights for indigenous people and their lands, freedom for Leonard Peltier, normalize relations with Cuba and lift the archaic embargo, start proceedings to investigate war crimes of the holy triumvirates: Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, and stop giving money away to corporations, to name a few.

I don't like to watch and then hyperventilate about what the right is doing, but it is all around and it is hard to miss. As I travel through the blogs in the wee hours, as I usually do, I see the YouTubes, most recently, one posted over at Utah Savage blog, and read the articles about this or that. I come away with the idea that when Dubya was in office and I marched in the streets, I felt the media didn't report my side thoroughly. I felt strongly about my position. I "knew" I was right and the other side was wrong. You know something, I still believe that, but they, the right wing tea party et al, believe they are fighting for their country too. Just watching a snippet of the health care protest march video, filmed by a group sympathetic to the left by the way, the people against a single payer health care bill want to stay with their party, Republicans, and go against this administration. That is exactly what I was wanting when I marched for peace and justice in Washington DC on The Longest Walk, Minneapolis at numerous rallies, Saint Paul at the Veterans For Peace Convention and the RNC and in Ashland, WI, at the Tuesday Peace Vigil.

After watching the above mentioned YouTube, I felt weak and sick about how wrong these opponents are, but then felt relieved when I realized that it is just some people who have a different opinion than I do

.

People are allowed to disagree with each other. I can't change them and I accept the idea of true freedom for them to protest against what my chosen leaders are doing, just as I did a little more than a year ago. As I was talking at a coffee shop, sitting outside on a beautiful late summer day, in public space, about politics today in America, one angry person decided I didn't have the right to have an opinion different from their own. I reminded them about witnessing the letting of blood in Vietnam first hand. That usually shuts them up, at least as to what they say to me, with the occasional ex military war monger who still has a hard time admitting that the American war in Vietnam was also a lie and we never did kill for anyone's freedom, but for the lining of Wall Street pockets.

I say let them have their opinion. We on the left think they are wrong, just as they thought us wrong for eight years in the recent past. Don't ignore them, but rather stay the course and keep pushing in our direction. Don't dip to their level and lie. Don't hate and want to brutalize them. That's their way. That's not the true peaceful approach. Keep pressure on Obama and the House and Senate to make the changes we want for a peaceful truly free America, with justice for all.