this old house

Another Sunday evening, another week I'm not quite ready to begin yet. I'm starting to think this is a trend.

When I made my first little foray into public display of my politics, this guy kept riding over the Congress Ave. bridge and booing us. "Disgraceful!" he shouted. "If it weren't for war, you wouldn't have the right to protest anything."

And I kept thinking to myself, "He's completely missing the point."

I'm not anti-American. I never have been. And in my opinion, the most important right afforded to me by the Constitution is the freedom of speech. It's misguided of that guy to think that I underestimate it. It also seems like faulty logic for him to assume that asking for peace now is going to undermine our freedom of speech -- as though Saddam Hussein is planning on coming to the U.S. to take it away from us himself. Somehow, that seems highly unlikely.

In general, I tend not to pay attention to alarmist rhetoric from either side of the political spectrum. Lately, the things I've been hearing outside of mainstream media have led me to question that policy.

I studied media as an undergraduate and as a graduate student, long enough to know that people believe the information fed to them by what they believe to be a reliable source. Network news qualifies in this scenario, but freedom of the press only extends to a press that works outside of someone's political agenda to deliver accurate information. Mainstream media has been squarely in Bush's camp, with regard to war and weapons inspections and terrorism. The straight truth is that if a news story isn't picked up by one of the five major news networks (NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, or CNN), 99% of the American population will never know about it at all. The slightest hint of information will be shot down as "leftist propaganda," and that'll be the end of it. (One of the greatest victories of the internet, in my opinion, is that this information will continue to circulate on a global scale in some venue, but that's the topic of another rant altogether.)

The state of my country today puts me in mind of an Ani Difranco lyric:
"I'm gonna take all my friends
and move to Canada,
and we're gonna die of old age."

This song has been playing in my head a lot lately. I especially like the protective bent of the lyrics -- not only is she intent on self-preservation, but Ani plans to take her loved ones with her, to ensure their safety as well. It's not easy to live in a country that takes it upon itself to police the rest of the planet, for better or for worse, and the idea of leaving based on political principle, though entirely unrealistic, has become less and less whimsical everytime I've discussed it. I can actually give you a basic overview of the immigration laws for Canada, but that, too, is a subject for another rant.

But when it comes right down to it, America is home. It's the place I grew up, and I can't imagine living anywhere else. It's sort of like the old house I lived in growing up -- the windows were drafty, the natural gas pipes leaked a bit (this wasn't really a problem, since the house was so poorly insulated that the natural gas dissipated before it could cause us any lasting harm), and there wasn't a square corner in the place, but it was home, and I couldn't imagine leaving it.

The analogous question in my mind remains, though: if I knew a hurricane were coming, could I possibly stay?