What the %# @*+!& %# is the country becoming?

by David Grand
April 8, 2010

I've shouted out cuss words so many times in my lifetime whenever I observed the crazy goings-on in the country that I now only muttering em under my breath.

Now, while it's good for the body and mind to vent pent-up emotions every now and then, one runs the risk of bursting a blood vessel or having conniptions if done too often.

And I never was so lathered up at any time as to scream out an open a window, like those people did who were worked up into a frenzy by that insane, television anchorman (in the1976 motion picture Network ).

For the last thing I would need would be for my neighbors to call 911 and/or for my sons to have me committed. Plus, it would take a screwdriver to pry loose most of my windows; and by the time I did my anger would have subsided.

 A recent incident that taxed my ability to restrain my anger to the breaking point was when I saw an unruly crowd on the steps of the Capital Building ranting and raving like lunatics over the pending health reform legislation, with the most boisterous among em haranguing congressmen as they climbed the stairs, going so far as hurling racial slurs at black members and even spitting on one as he passed by.

Suffice to say, it came closer to resembling the sort of feeding frenzy sharks engage in than a gathering of irate citizens airing their grievances.

And were it not for the presence of police, I don't doubt that shoving matches(or worse) would have occurred, if not a wholesale riot.

The only thing I could liken it to was the near bedlam that ensued at those Townhouse meetings last year, when congressmen speaking out in favor of health reform were heckled to the point that their voices could not be heard above the din. 

Luckily, they were on an elevated platform or stage, where even the best, tobacco-spitting person in the audience couldn't reach em with a wad.

However, in retrospect, those recent anti-government protests pale--in terms of their ferocity and blind hatred--to what black civil rights marchers endured during the 60s, when they were subject to savage beatings in their confrontations, not only with the wild, blood-seeking crowds, but with the so-called keepers of the peace.

That's an indelible blot on our history that will forever remain, right alongside the decimation of native Americans and the internment of Japanese Americans during WW 11.

And while it might surprise you (as it does even me) for me to say, that despite all the deplorable events I've witnessed in my life of man's inhumanity to man, I still believe, as Samuel Johnson said, "As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am  ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly."