March 04, 2009

Hey You, Get Off of My Side

A co-worker of mine once sent an email to the CEO of the (rather large) company that I worked for (and CC-ed it to half of the rest of the company), complaining about working conditions that were unsafe and could potentially harm employees, not to mention costing the company millions of dollars in legal fees, workers' compensation issues and other expenses. The problem was that the email was written in such a manner that there was one spelling or grammatical error for every four words. The worst part was that I agreed with this co-worker: these were issues that needed to be addressed, but now they would be relegated to the inane demands of a drunkard, all because the argumentation was poorly presented and riddled with errors.

As a fiscally conservative individual beset by a socialist administration, I feel much the same way. I am deeply troubled by the problem of attempting to spend trillions of dollars to jump-start the economy, not to mention an unwillingness on the part of the Obama administration to address the problems attendant in the banking industry for fear of upsetting the stock market. And yet, what is my alternative? Rush Limbaugh?! A Republican party that alternately embraces President Bush's spending policies, ridicules those of Obama and refuses to stand up to its own pundits? And what's worse, the current Republican party seems willing to allow itself to play Ann Coulter or Bill O'Reilly and make ridiculous and inane statements in an effort to "consolidate the base."

As a Christian conservative, this will hardly be the first time that a stalwart attempts to defend the ground upon which I stand and does it so poorly, unconvincingly and with such reprehensible tactics that I am forced to side with opposition in addressing my would-be ally before I can resume my own defense. And this troubles me... after all, while I would argue that I am at least a slightly above-average representative of mental acuity, I'm not that far above the median... and I would like to think that I'm defending an intelligent position. So why is it, then, that I am beset by idiots who occupy my positions? Or is it that there is an equal distribution of idiots and simply that I'm that much more sensitive to the issue because the position they defend is my own?

Posted by Vengeful Cynic at March 4, 2009 11:21 PM | TrackBack