Friday, March 21, 2003

There's a lot of us who are happy to see the war to liberate Iraq going as well as it seems to be going that don't particularly want to give the victory to Pres. Bush. Why are we so uptight about this? Maybe because he's shown a total willingness to give juicy bones to his Rightwing supporters. There are a lot of us "confirmed batchelors" out there that see the potential of suffering from nosey, religiously motivated neighbors, who suddenly demand to know why we're still batchelors and who is that other guy, your "roommate"? We're attracted to the libertarian side of the Republican Party, but we have no delusions about which group of passionate truebelievers are in control of the Republican Party. Our experience is that it's the Christian Right, personified by John Ashcroft, has Pres. Bush's ear, and therefore the power of setting the agenda.
Today was anti-climatic in regards to my encounter with demonstrators. They were focused more on the financial district, so my district, the Civic Center, was spared drama. Since none of my work got done on Thursday, it was just as well that I could give work a few hours on Friday. It being Friday, I stopped by the Edge, an over-50, blue collar bar in the Castro. Most of the people I generally interact with were, in their conversation and attention span, oblivious of the war with Iraq. They were a little more focused on the demonstrators with generally a hostile attitude, but of those expressing an opinion, it was overwhelmingly pro-war, anti-Saddam, and anti-demonstrators. Bush was not generally an issue. These people do not consider George W. Bush to be a friend of their community, but neither do they think it makes the war bad or immoral.

Oh well. I'm very uncomfortable reading my regular favorites of the blog. Their hysterical level seems threatening to me. In the past couple of months, I found comfort in my level of agreement with so many of their points of view. I heard passionate defenses of sexual privacy and freedom from all sorts of personalities, some Christian identified, some atheist identified. But their celebration of the war's apparent success has taken a strident, anti-Democrat tone. I'm not a Democrat, but I still felt threatened by the degree of vitrol. Maybe I'm wrong. Hope so. Really do.